I HAD MANY QUESTIONS ABOUT BITLOCKER FROM LAST NEWSLETTER – so here is a further update!
More folks saved, others ruined by this nightmare. CHECK YOUR SYSTEM! Call if you have questions!
CRYPTO Meltdown continues! Genesis dead. Sam has billions hidden. Crypto lost $2 Trillion in ‘value’ and 10000 coins are now worthless.
CHATGPT – an AI good enough to pass my Modified Turing Test!
Recently I’ve been studying ChatGPT – from OpenAI (a Microsoft Effort) -which has been taking the computer world by storm.
Its a LLM – an AI that has been fed billions upon billions of documents and analyzes them and makes DAM good responses to questions.
It has already been banned by school districts as the kids can make up an entirely passable paper – from the computer!
What is the Turing test? Lets ask ChatGPT!
CDB asked ChatGPT: “explain the turing test” It responded:
–fromAI–
The Turing Test is a test of a machine’s ability to demonstrate intelligent behavior that is indistinguishable from that of a human. It is done by having a human judge engage in natural language conversations with another human and with a machine, and then deciding which of the two they are speaking with. If the judge cannot reliably tell the difference between the machine and the human, then the machine is said to have passed the Turing Test. The test was proposed by Alan Turing in 1950 as a way to evaluate a machine’s ability to “think.”
–END–
Now thats a DAM good answer! and again this was generated by my question above! This is ALREADY good enough to be an ‘intelligent’ search engine (Google is afraid of it!) and a good HELP board. As I have told folks for years the FIRST true AI will be a help desk, will speak in a slight Indian accent and you won’t know you are not talking to a person! This pretty much passes that test right now. A group of english teachers could not distinguish between high school assignments written by their students – and essays from CHATGPT. Makes you think! Just read that ChatGPT averaged C+ in law school essays! Impressive.
STARLINK – YEAH!!! 189MB download speed – in the middle of nowhere!
I was at a customer’s this week installing a Starlink dish. For those who don’t know this is Elon Musk’s entry into the Internet Provider market. He has been launching tons of little Starlink Satellites and you get a Ground dish (no outgoing phone line needed) and you are all set! We installed it in about 30 minutes, and all you do is point your phone up at the sky till we find a ‘decent’ spot, tell it to initialize and it will rotate and tilt the small (foot and a half rectangular) dish till it says ‘happy!’ and suddenly we have 189mb download speeds (in the middle of Virginia farming land). VAST improvement over what he has now – and its under $100 per month for the service. VERY VERY impressive! Cant wait till I get it for MY house!
ENTERPRISING FOLKS have UPGRADED the new M1 / M2 macbooks! Those that cannot be upgraded!
How can this be? Well – with great difficulty. Turns out there are TWO big chips right by the M1/M2 CPU – one is a NVME chip (single ship ssd) and the other is a big ram chip. Turns out you can (with GREAT difficulty I’ll point out) de-solder both these chips and replace them with a larger SSD chip and a bigger RAM chip! And the M1/M2 board accepts the new memory and SSD without problem it is reported.
NO I wont be offering this service anytime soon. I’ve looked over the procedure and it is at LEAST a 50-50 chance you damage the logic board!
Read more here if you dare: https://www.macrumors.com/2021/04/06/m1-mac-ram-and-ssd-upgrades-possible/
LINUX – its not just for breakfast anymore! GARUDA gamer linux!
A number folks have asked me more about Linux – and there are some new interesting versions.
Check out GARUDA linux – its a game players version! There are a LOT of games you can now play on a Linux laptop! And I can set up nice Linux systems on virtually any computer!
BLAST FROM THE PAST! FROM THE FILES OF THE ELDEST GEEK: THE FBI COMES CALLING!
How about the time I came home to my log house in Pinecliffe Colorado (at 8500 feet) and found a business card tucked in my door from the FBI. And on the back ‘call at your earliest convenience’!
Well, next morning I met the Boulder Special Agent of the FBI. And we had a nice lunch. He had never heard of BBS systems (from last newsletter) and wanted to know why a top secret DoD computer was calling one of MY phone numbers – very frequently! I had to explain to him what a BBS was – and he slowly relaxed. I thought at first he was expecting me to be speaking in a Russian accent!
He became a customer and I learned lots of interesting things! I thought his life would be boring in Boulder, but in fact he was kept rather busy! Many foreign nationals attended the University of Colorado – and their governments sent along intelligence folks to mind them. One of these was a Saudi national and customer of mine as well. Turns out there was a Saudi princess who was getting drunk at frat parties, and my customer arranged for her to be spirited back home to stop embarrassing the Saudi government. One day he was in the shop at the same time as my little special FBI agent and they talked shop. Turns out my Saudi customer was effectively the HEAD of Saudi FBI and was in overall charge of security at a recent international conference held in Ryiadh! When he heard my local FBI agent was FBI – he rattled all the FBI people HE knew and when he left my little local agent was in utter awe. My Saudi customer knew ALL the top brass on the seventh floor in Washington. People, my little agent said – that HE would never meet in his entire career!
Those were the days!
TOPTECH REMOTE SUPPORT PLANS! AVAILABLE NOW! (sign up at www.theeldestgeek.com and give us your feedback!!)
You can register at www.theeldestgeek.com and the support plans are available for you to sign up for! 19.95 a month or $199.50 for a year.
Sign up and let me know everything works! Any problems? Call me at 7034013806 🙂
SUPPORT TOPTECH AND THE ELDEST GEEK! WE NEED IT! LOTS OF NEW ITEMS IN ADOPTION CORNER! GIFT CARDS! (?)
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If you want a gift card of our services for a friend just ask! Happy to make up one!) YOUR SUPPORT IS MOST APPRECIATED!
LIQUID SPILL REPAIRS or WEBSITE development! We can help! NEED HELP WITH GOLD/SILVER? Or Antiques? We have a LOT of expertise 🙂
I’ve been a precious metals dealer for years – started in the Antique Center. And we buy gold/silver – we pay more than pawn shops or jewelers!
And if you have something you THINK is valuable I can find out what pretty much anything is worth!
ADOPTION CORNER:
SYSTEM OF THE MONTH:
A super nice Razer Blade 15 i9 laptop! 32gb, RGX3080, 2TB SSD! Come see it!
Click here for the current adoption list – all are basically ebay prices but come with 6 month warranty and we do trade-ins and move-data as well 🙂
And we are open to haggling!
VERY NICE 16in 2019 Macbook Pro – will be ready shortly!
also a 2019 i9 15.4 with 500gb SSD!
and a 2017 i7 15.4 with 500gb SSD!
2020 13in Macbook Pro 500gb SSD.