Folks, with the new updates that've come down recently, Microsoft has installed its "Copilot" AI app on your machine. It cannot be removed.
But it can be disabled. Here's how (courtesy of the excellent Pihko Misit, aka @smokepaw.bsky.social over at Bluesky). I've just done this to my own desktop machine, and all's well with it now.
Here's what to do:
(1) You need to have Admin rights for the machine and be logged in to the administrator account.
Now, right-click on the Start menu (Windows logo on the Taskbar.) A menu pops up; about half way down it you'll see Terminal and Terminal (Admin). Click on the Terminal (Admin) option.
(2) A DoS-like box will open. (For those of you who've never interacted with a Windows terminal window before, it looks like this:)
On the command line (i.e. the first empty line), copy and paste this:
reg add HKCU\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsCopilot /v TurnOffWindowsCopilot /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
Then hit Enter.
If successful, you'll see a line pop up saying so. Congratulations! But you're not quite finished.
Now you need to close all programs and fully shut down the machine. A restart isn't enough, it needs to be fully powered down and started back up.
"And now," Pihko says, "ou have a NSA-like AI spy dormant on your machine. Stay vigilant, odds are it'll turn back on with future updates! Big Corporate wants you to be compliant. Don't be!"
Ppl: “Glaze and nightshade all your art!!”
Also ppl: * does not mention that you need to have a fucking NVIDIA GPU and running nightshade on one image takes at best 20 minutes*
Like the online version of glaze/nightshade requires an account. And last time i checked they arent accepting new accounts because of the high pressure.
Like i make my art on my ipad. My MacBook is from 2014. If i tried to download and run nightshade on my decade old macbook and go throufg 10+ years of artworks i might as well just set it on fire.
If a website has a paywall, like New York Times, DO NOT use the ctrl+A shortcut then the ctrl+c shortcut as fast as you can because then you may accidentally copy the entire article before the paywall comes up. And definitely don't do ctrl+v into the next google doc or whatever you open because then you will accidentally paste the entire article into a google doc or something!!!! I repeat DO NOT do this because it is piracy which is absolutely totally wrong!!!
at last. the project completed.
what happens to nitrogen when the sun rises
I'm starting a collection
If you see this on your dashboard, reblog this, NO MATTER WHAT and all your dreams and wishes will come true.
👏🏾Education 👏🏾is 👏🏾a 👏🏾right,👏🏾 not👏🏾 a👏🏾 service 👏🏾
Pass along and use the shit out of them
Firefox users have noticed that captchas - both the picture kind and the click the box kind - are not resolving on Firefox. Tests on Chromium based browsers show that it works perfectly fine on them. It is also known that Chrome will be disabling all ad-blockers in June when it moves to Manifest v3, which will greatly limit what extensions can do.
If you use Firefox, there is an extension called User-Agent Switcher and it allows you to change your browser's UA to Chrome. This will allow you to bypass reCaptcha/Captcha blocks set up by Google and make them function properly.
It could be a code snafu on Google's part - but given how predatory they have been acting lately, I'm going to guess not. Don't get locked out of your websites or feel forced to use Chrome again just to browse.