OP uploaded a modified image. I erred on the side of caution.

This is missing some of the text.

Original has this at the end - “…solo starts shooting like a d*ckhead”

This is just one product/service that PwC has provided to the UK Government, there have been countless more. It’s a drop in the ocean of wasted money.

But the Government isn’t being hoodwinked. It’s by design. Ministers need big departments and big budgets to boost their profile. PwC massively overcharge, so ministers can have their big budgets.

It’s win win. Only people that lose, are the tax payers.

PwC almost always subcontract, who then subcontract again. The people who actually did this work probably got 45k.

Subcontractors like companies like PwC, because they have access to Governments and multinationals and win contracts that boost the subcontracters’ profile.

How do I know? I worked at a subcontracting consultancy.

It’s not just PwC. It’s all the big Accounting Firms. It’s Capita etc.

This chain does “medium rare” cookies.

https://www.benscookies.com/stores/

They normally bake them fresh. Difficult to beat warm gooey cookies.

Agree with It Takes Two.

The platforming can be frustrating in parts, but as she’s played Mario and donkey kong, then it should be fine.

I mean the other obvious option are the various Lego games.

Lego Harry Potter etc.

Or as others have said: Overcooked

I’m sure everyone knows, but just incase. The Delta Flyers podcast with Garrett Wang and Robert Duncan McNeil is great.

Some talk of pants. Garrett has a big long moan about the shoes he was given for the role.

They are meant to taking about every Voyager episode, but Wang keeps going off on long fun tangents.

Later on they move to talk about every DS9 episode with Terry Farrell and Armin Shimerman.

I’m using Waterfox (based on Firefox but without the bloat), both desktop and mobile versions. Have nothing but good things to say about it.

Count the fingers

I switched to Waterfox recently. I really like it. It actually seems to work more consistently than Firefox did.

Cat, I’m a kitty cat.

Gi Joe parody

The talking boat

I totally agree. I still have a large mp3 and flac collection.

When Spotify came a long I used both for a while. But my Spotify playlists became so full of completely random tracks, it was never financially viable to even buy 10%, and its become more difficult to do so legally.

For the bands/artists I really like, I’ve bought CDs or if that’s not possible, bought digital versions.

I am attempting to transition away from streaming completely, but I have playlists which are 100+ hours long; which I’ve curated myself. I have a dozen others which are 8-20.

You could accuse me of having too much music. That i can’t possibly listen to most of it. Perhaps there is some truth in that. When you’ve had access to an unlimited buffet, it’s difficult to go back to a set menu.

Yes, ultimately I want to own all my most listened to music, but for now it would be nice to do both and have a player with physical buttons.

I miss physical buttons for when I’m listening to music.

Having to unlock my phone to skip a track or advance a podcast is really annoying.

I used to be able to click a button in my pocket. I could even slide a bit to skip forward and back 30 seconds.

I also like to listen to music in bed in the dark. The bright screen, the messing around with the unlock, really breaks the flow.

Yes I have earphones that are touch sensitive, but poking it messes with any good isolated fit I’ve achieved, the touch doesn’t always register and after a while, one ear starts to hurt. Especially when you need to tap three times to restart a track.

I’ve now got this stupid setup with a BT dongle in a usb a-c converter; which plugs into my phone and controls a tiny physical keyboard.

There are lots of mp3 players, but they don’t support streaming platforms. The ones that do, also went mainly touch screen only and cost a fortune. There is one physical Spotify player with buttons but it’s just a dumb cube with very basic functionality.

This video seems very low effort. If your going to waste vaste amounts of vital resources, at least generate something unusual. And clearly tag it as Gen AI.

“Video by Tom Furse” - Don’t know why this annoys me the most. At best he edited the output of a selection of prompts to fit the music.

The only AI music video I’ve actually enjoyed watching is this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGIvO4eh190

In the description they clearly state the reason for using AI (plus they also used some 3D tools.)

Gen Ai is good for generating horrible nightmarish visuals.

I think I hate Gen AI so much because by default it generates dream-like/nightmare imagery, hallucinations. We try and force it to produce real-life representations.

It’s an uncanny valley generator, used incorrectly.

It’s a lab-grown meat, that no matter how it’s manipulated, just doesn’t taste right. But companies try and pass it off as it’s from an animal.

For Christ-sake, if people want to use this abomination of a tool, use it to generate abominations.

Yeah they are sneaky. You are forced to download everything.

Do a “manual search” on the Nvidia driver page.

Once the “Game Ready” drivers are downloaded. Uninstall the nvidia app (if it’s installed already.)

Now to install.

Basically for any windows software, always choose “Custom (Advanced)” installation, instead of “Express (Recommended)”.

For nvidia, the next page will show you 3-4 options. Untick everything accept “Graphics driver”.

Definitely ignore “HD audio”. It tends to mess up your sound (at least that’s my experience.)

and “PhysX System Software” unless this out of date or missing. Then you can tick this.

Then just your graphics drivers will be installed.

Obviously you will miss out on the various additional features the nvidia app provides, like auto tweaking game settings. But it’s always a tradeoff.

As I said above. Always do “Custom” installs on ANY software. 75% of the time you end up automatically opting into to various forms of telemetry, and at worst find your browers have new plugins, your search engine changed, and antivirus installed. It can be time-consuming to uninstall.

Hope that helps. Let me know if you have more questions. I tried to add screenshots but the Lemmy app wasn’t having it.

I use this - https://github.com/ChrisTitusTech/winutil

But obviously get opinions from other sources first.

It claims to disable most Windows telemetry. Some Adobe. But I haven’t actually done any testing to prove it’s the case. It’s a pretty useful tool. Just use the restore point option first.

Last time I tried this method of disabling Adobe telemetry, photoshop stopped opening after a few days.

For nvidia/amd, just install the drivers, not their tool suite.

As the other posters mention, try to find alternatives.

Other than that, you can try and block at a firewall level. But few companies make it obvious like: http://nerferoustelemetry.pleasedontblockthis.adobe.com/

I literally got recommended this AI band as well. Normally I can search: “X band AI” and I get results whether or not they are real.

All I had were 50 pages about the original band leaving Spotify.

I blocked this suspicious sounding band in-case it was AI. Looks like I was right.

Just as a note: earlier this year I stated I’d keep subscribing to Spotify because the recommendations were worth the cost. I was wrong, and I’m slowly starting my transition away.

https://archive.ph/L2Gqp without paywall

It’s nice to see a remastered video and not a over-sharpened or AI upscaled reupload.

Haven’t found many older artists that actually released proper HD or 4K versions.

It was David Bowie’s - I’m afraid of Americans 4k vid, that sent me on a hunt for more like it.

So far, aside from Alanis M and David B, I’ve found decent remasters from:

50 Cent (in da club), Blur, Coldplay, George Michael (and Wham!), Green Day, Robbie Williams, The Verve.

I would say, nothing gets close to that Bowie vid.

This reminded me of a passage early on in The Hobbit:

'…Tell me what you want done, and I will try it, if I have to walk from here to the East of East and fight the wild Were-worms in the Last Desert. I had a great-great-great-grand-uncle once, Bullroarer Took, and—”

“Yes, yes, but that was long ago,” said Gloin. “I was talking about you. And I assure you there is a mark on this door—the usual one in the trade, or used to be. Burglar wants a good job, plenty of Excitement and reasonable Reward…’