{"id":5529,"date":"2025-11-24T14:31:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T21:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=5529"},"modified":"2025-11-24T14:37:24","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T21:37:24","slug":"odd-lots-361","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=5529","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>This (scary) item is the most significant I\u2019ve seen recently: <a href=\"https:\/\/itsfoss.com\/news\/new-windows-ai-feature-can-be-tricked\/\" target=\"_blank\">Microsoft is working on features that obsess with granting a Windows AI its own private workspace on your machine, plus access to your Documents, Downloads, Desktop, Videos, and Music folders.<\/a> This will go nowhere good. Keep it in mind, and if MS asks for permission to enable this feature, weigh the consequences. MS admits the damned thing could install malware and have hallucinations. Huh. I won\u2019t use a computer that thinks I\u2018m dead.<\/li>\n<li>There\u2019s a cool group on Facebook called <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/oldradiogarage\" target=\"_blank\">Old Radio Garage<\/a>. Lots of pictures of&#160; tube-era radios, including a few on the bench being repaired, but not a lot of discussion.<\/li>\n<li>Speaking of radio, I (finally) took a closer look at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.accuradio.com\" target=\"_blank\">AccuRadio<\/a>, which is a free music streaming service that offers bits\u2019n\u2019pieces of almost everything musical. It takes a little study to find your preferences, but I was amazed at the breadth of coverage. You have to create a free account to avoid most commercials and have access to some features, but I think it\u2019s worth the benefits.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/aluminium-os-android-for-pcs-3619092\/\" target=\"_blank\">Google is evidently in the process of merging Android with ChromeOS into an OS called Aluminium<\/a>. (No, I didn\u2019t misspell that. It\u2019s the British spelling.) The Aluminium OS will evidently have AI all over itself, inside and outside. Gosh, I just can\u2019t wait to pass on it!<\/li>\n<li>We have AA, AAA, C, and D batteries. Why not B batteries? <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rd.com\/article\/reason-never-see-b-batteries\/\" target=\"_blank\">Reader\u2019s Digest has a short-form explanation<\/a>. What they don\u2019t emphasize is that B batteries providing high-ish DC voltage to portable tube radios never had a standard size, not that I\u2019ve ever heard of. I bought a 45-volt battery when I was 12 or 13 for a tube radio I was building, and it was like a long 9V battery, with the same power connectors, just more cells stacked up inside the rectangular case. I later saw all sorts of \u201cB\u201d batteries (most of them dead) in many shapes and voltages. Given the broad range of radios that would use it, a standard size and voltage would be impossible, which in truth explains all that needs explaining.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/forum.lazarus.freepascal.org\/index.php\/topic,72707.0.html\" target=\"_blank\">Lazarus v4.4 is out<\/a>. Built with Free Pascal 3.2.2. It\u2019s a bugfix release, but hey, there\u2019s no reason not be up to date. It\u2019s worked great on my several Lazarus projects under Windows 11.<\/li>\n<li>I used to call Free Pascal FreePascal, but that\u2019s no longer how the product\u2019s creators spell it. Free Pascal it is. Sooner or later I\u2019ll update <em>FreePascal from Square One<\/em> to reflect that spelling.<\/li>\n<li>And least but not last (ok. both least <em>and<\/em> last) <em>Politico<\/em> posted a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/magazine\/2025\/11\/21\/stardust-geoengineering-janos-pasztor-regulations-00646414\" target=\"_blank\">gigantic, high-fat article about a crew called Stardust who want to make chemtrails real,<\/a> in essence squirting air pollution back into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight and cool the planet. This is not a new idea, and not necessary, especially since <em>Stardust refuses to say what the particulates they want to squirt into the atmosphere are made of<\/em>. There is no climate crisis. Polluting the atmosphere with unknown crap is a scam. Don\u2019t fall for it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This (scary) item is the most significant I\u2019ve seen recently: Microsoft is working on features that obsess with granting a Windows AI its own private workspace on your machine, plus access to your Documents, Downloads, Desktop, Videos, and Music folders. This will go nowhere good. Keep it in mind, and if MS asks for permission [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[118,124,274,227,132,90,32,14,88],"class_list":["post-5529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-ai","tag-android","tag-chromeos","tag-climate","tag-lazarus","tag-pascal","tag-programming","tag-software","tag-windows"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5529"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5532,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5529\/revisions\/5532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}