Truck_kun
@Truck_kun@beehaw.org
- Comment on TikTok Stacking Algorithms in Chinese Government’s Favor with Pro-China Content Originating from State-Linked Entities, Study Claims 4 months ago:
That is clearly whataboutism.
It’s not a story about the USA, and there are other countries affected, including all of Europe, some middle eastern countries, and most of Asia (and many countries that do not have an adversarial relationship with China, such as lendees of the BRI).
You’re free to criticize the USA. US News outlets are also free to do so, and do it all the time; they also don’t, or may honor or not honor a request from the white house to publish or hold back a story. They are publishers and allowed to do that (NPR included).
This story is specifically about an accusation of the Chinese government influencing articles seen (not moderation of ToS breaking, or illegal content) on the U.S. version of TikTok.
NCRI said in its report that “our findings, which, while not definitive proof of state orchestration, present compelling and strong circumstantial evidence of TikTok’s covert content manipulation.”
TikTok has repeatedly said the Chinese government has no influence over its U.S. app, and proving otherwise would be difficult — something that the Department of Justice has acknowledged in discussions over a law that could ban the app.
Meta is another story; they are free to moderate/censor content, but if they start curating content, and not letting an algorithm decide what to show users based on their behavior, then that is another story. It is still legal for them to do, but they may also be determined to be responsible as a publisher.
If Meta advertised themselves to users as a curation of ‘conservative news’, or ‘US propaganda’, and that’s what their users are signing up for, then that is fine. They advertise themselves as social media, with what people see being based on user behavior and posted content. If Meta was US Government owned, or funded, then they are welcome to do that in other nations as well, as long as they follow that nation’s laws regarding the matter, otherwise foreign governments are welcome to act on it in their nation has appropriate. (Meta is not US government owned, they actually have quite a few legal battles and inquiries by the US government, and are a self-interested greedy corporation).
The same applies of TikTok. If they advertised themselves as a Chinese propaganda source and registered as a foreign agent (as is necessary when a foreign government has content control of the medium in question in the US), then that would be fine; they explicitly denied that though, and push the value of their algorithm, and that they are social media.
The US famously does have foreign state funding TV networks, and US Citizens are allowed to watch it if they so choose, just that they need to register as such:
The Justice Department announced the registration just hours after RT’s chief editor said the company had complied with the U.S. demand that it register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The move doesn’t restrict the channel’s content, but the network is required to publicly disclose details about its funding and operations as well as mark certain content distributed in the U.S. with labels.
Source: https://apnews.com/article/69e84148c8a44512bdc648b1bcac4f34
China has also had such TV Networks in the US since the 1990s.
- Comment on U.S. regulator proposes new rules for AI-generated robocalls and robotexts to protect consumers and stop election misinformation by phone 4 months ago:
Caused me to look back: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States
Before Trump every Supreme Court Justice was approved by over 60% of the senate (except Alito and Thomas). After Trump took office, most are close almost 50/50’s. None of them manage to reach 60% anymore. Goes to show how controversial Alito and Thomas were BEFORE things became hyper partisan.
- Comment on U.S. regulator proposes new rules for AI-generated robocalls and robotexts to protect consumers and stop election misinformation by phone 4 months ago:
It’s more a joke. At this point ISPs really should be designated a telecom.
But, if Chevron Deference is the reason it’s on hold, that’s not likely to chance until either the legislature passes something to say otherwise, or the supreme court swings the other way/toward normalcy. Which, if Harris wins this election and next election, there is a reasonable chance at. Other than their bitterness, some of the oldest and worst on the supreme court are just hanging on until a conservative takes the executive branch again.
- Comment on U.S. regulator proposes new rules for AI-generated robocalls and robotexts to protect consumers and stop election misinformation by phone 4 months ago:
The courts blocked that rule already. net neutrality is on hold indefinitely.
- Comment on US Email Providers - Other then Google, MS, Apple, ... 4 months ago:
I specifically found their lifetime plan reasonable to park a more professional sounding email address long-term to attach to resumes and the like, but not enough storage on that plan as my primary email.
I honestly don’t have much experience with it, I just set it up to have to use with my domains, without having to pay a monthly fee.
Unfortunately, I have no input on their other plans
- Comment on US Email Providers - Other then Google, MS, Apple, ... 4 months ago:
I didn’t know about the tuta IMAP thing. Makes sense, unless they open it up for development from third party providers, but that is unlikely to ever happen. I can definitely see that as being a deal-breaker, and why I’ll probably stick with fastmail
- Comment on US Email Providers - Other then Google, MS, Apple, ... 4 months ago:
I only learned about quarantine the other day. Specifically I think it was me sending short messages that make sense when emailing yourself, like a photo with no body text, or just “test”.
Going through there, found my Gmail, my personal domain, and my @fastmail domain app going there until I approved one of them.
I had my personal domain on a lifetime mxroute account before this, but wasn’t using it. Made the move to fastmail to seriously move away from Google. I have my purchase ebooks backed up there, and they could close my account someday because of it, even if it’s a personal backup of purchased items and not sharing with others.
Also making a wasabi account and using rclone to sync my library, so can move away on that front too. though Wasabi has a perfectly usable web interface. i have my reasons for choosing them over backblaze.
- Comment on US Email Providers - Other then Google, MS, Apple, ... 4 months ago:
I’m a recent fastmail user:
Pros: First off, they put me on a 30 day trial, so had a full 30 days to try out; I would suggest trying their trial as one of your first things.
I do love that I can make so many aliases for different email things.
I do love I can add an API key to my bitwarden account to auto-generate email masks for things: https://bitwarden.com/blog/use-bitwarden-to-generate-email-aliases-with-fastmail/
Offer’s a reasonably priced family plan for up to 6 users (50 GB per user - after using Gmail from day one, including non-email storage, my Gmail is only up to 35 GB), and they have annual plan options which give you a discount over monthly for a better deal.
Has a calendar feature, and notes, for which I am putting stuff I used to text to myself, or message to my wife on discord.
Use multiple of my own domains (purchases elsewhere), and just set the nameservers to FastMail, and they handle setting up everything for modern email like DKIM, DMARC, and stuff. Though you are not obligated to purchase a domain, they have many you can choose from. They allow you to use a ton of custom domains (where as some other providers allow like 3, 10, or 30, depending on your plan).
They have an import feature from your old mail accounts. I did not try it, as I decided to start fresh. I’m trying to move away from gmail incase they lock me out someday, but my account is in good standing, and I have access to everything there as storage; just proactively moving all my important accounts over to my own domains.
I’ll put this at the end as it is a pro or con depending on your outlook: I trust FastMail to not use my data like google, and am okay with our business relationship. Because of this, I am okay with my data not being so hard locked down that FastMail is able to restore access/help users getting locked out of their accounts. For a true End-to-End encrypted option, I question if that recovery would be possible (which can be a good thing, if your purpose is protecting your data, even from warrants/court orders/subpoenas); they may have recovery keys, but what if you lost those?
Con: Found out after my trial ended, that when I email my work, my emails go to Quarantine. Our work uses Microsoft Outlook, and they have a quarantine feature that keeps stuff from hitting even the spam folder; my work has phishing set to ‘aggressive’, which is what is quarantining my emails. Once i passed one email through quarantine, i’m recieiving them fine now. Also if the user adds the email to their contacts list.
After looking around, this appears to be an ongoing issue with microsoft from fastmail emails. You cant email email the recipient to inform them of the quarantined email, because all emails are quarantined. Not a deal breaker, as it’s microsoft’s doing, not FastMail, but still annoying, especially if you have to tell them to add you as a contact first. May get better after your domain builds some reputation with their servers, I don’t really know yet.
A lot of people recommend https://tuta.com/ as a more privacy conscious option, and if I did decide to leave FastMail, they are probably what I would switch to. They do have a free email. Tuta also has family options, which can be more generous storage wise depending on your plan, but their family option appears to just be pay the full price of your plan for each user to add them to your family plan, and Tuta (at least from their pricing page), only has monthly as an option, no discounts for commitments.
For fastmail, I pay $132/year ($11/month) for 50 GB for 6 users, For Tuta it appears to be €3/user/month for 20GB, or €8/user/month for 500 GB (so for 2 users, you are either paying €6 or €16). Ultimately I found FastMail to be a better choice for me. If you switch to business, they do have a €6/user/month option for 50 GB /user, which would be €12/month, so comparable to FastMail’s family plan if you only have 2 users, but less comparable if you need more than 2 users. Due to tuta’s pricing structure, you could just get each user the plan they need (not sure if that requires separate accounts, or if can be done on a family plan, which does have domain sharing implications, but maybe everyone wants their own domains).
My recommendation would be to make a FastMail trial, make a free tuta account, and try both for a month, then make your decision.
- Comment on Ding Dong KOSA’s Dead (For Now) 4 months ago:
Thank goodness, hope it stays dead. I’m in figurative pain from agreeing with Rand Paul.
- Comment on US senators claim car makers sold driver data for pennies 4 months ago:
If you search for “home owner insurance non-renewal drone”, you should find tons of stories about it.
They may be hiring third parties, or doing it themselves, but regardless, it is happening.
Once again, to clarify, the smart camera thing has just been sitting in the back of my mind, not an accusation, just a concern as a possibility. Would probably be a fun investigation for an investigative journalist. Or just someone scouring those fun terms of service policies for language that might indicate such things.
- Comment on US senators claim car makers sold driver data for pennies 4 months ago:
My latest concern these car stories have brought on, is that Ring, Nest, Eufy, other smart home camera systems, are selling data.
No evidence to it atm, but Ring used to provide access to police; not a huge leap to selling collected data to data brokers and insurance companies.
Currently, insurance companies are deploying drones to check out properties, and terminate and/or non-renew home owners insurance based on the footage. It’s not a huge leap for smart camera providers to provide snapshots for this same purpose. It would be a huge betrayal of trust, and tank the brand, especially since many people set cameras up inside their home, but extracting pennies now, in exchange for losing several dollars per month subscription fees and hardware purchases, sounds just like something a lot of these companies would do.
- Comment on Google's reCAPTCHAv2 is just labor exploitation, boffins say • The Register 4 months ago:
I did try to get literal with reCAPTCHA a while back, and it just never finished. “Select every image with a bicycle in it” or motorcycle or stop light. I would select the images that only had a WHOLE in it, not the broken up ones into several images. It doesn’t like it when you try to answer it’s question properly.
Anyways, there’s several other captcha and anti-bot services now days, really would recommend people use a different provider, I hate reCaptcha so much.
- Comment on New game announced: Orcs Must Die: Deathtrap 5 months ago:
Can’t say I’ve ever been any good at it, but I do love me a good tower defense.
Haven’t played since OMD2, and could never get anyone else to play, but love the series. Glad to see it continuing.
- Comment on FTC accuse Microsoft of breaking promise not to raise Game Pass prices after Activision Blizzard deal 5 months ago:
No one saw this coming. Just wow.
Except for the vocal people that saw it coming, and were constantly shouted down as ‘Sony fanboys’, and Sony this, Call of Duty that.
The Bethesda acquisition has shown all we needed to know about how an Activision Blizzard acquisition would go. I hated seeing every pro-acquisition argument being about Sony and Call of Duty, and promises for Call of Duty to be on PlayStation.
I don’t play Call of Duty, I don’t care about it, I don’t even game much, but when I do, it is PC. Allowing further consolidation of Microsoft and Sony of other games studios is just not good for consumers or the market, it doesn’t matter which ‘team’ you are on.
- Comment on EU says X’s paid-for blue check deceives users, breaks law • The Register 5 months ago:
pile of pennies < Single Bill < stack/bundle of cash < pile of cash < scrooge mcduck cash dive vault
or
bronze coin < silver coin < gold coin < pile of coins < gold bar < stack of gold bards < fort knox
- Comment on Palestinians living abroad have accused Microsoft of closing their email accounts without warning - cutting them off from crucial online services 5 months ago:
For sure good advice. I do trust the registrar I am on though. They are not US based, I have been with them for like 15 years, they are well known, automatically provide domain privacy without paying extra, and are not godaddy.
No matter who people choose, just remember to keep your domain locked when not changing registrars, and protect your registrar login with 2FA. Treat your registrar like you would treat your primary email or bank account.
- Comment on Palestinians living abroad have accused Microsoft of closing their email accounts without warning - cutting them off from crucial online services 5 months ago:
That I really couldn’t say, only a few weeks in on emails that were not being used before, so not really getting “unsolicited spam”.
I am getting a lot of messages related changing my accounts over.
Their spam filter is configurable though:
They also have complex filters you can set up to either auto-label, or auto-sort non-spam into folders, from basic usage, up to complex regular expressions; depending on your level of dedication.
All I set up for now is an auto-filter any email with ‘unsubscribe’ somewhere in the body to be sent to an ‘subscriptions’ folder. I will get around to it more eventually.
- Comment on Palestinians living abroad have accused Microsoft of closing their email accounts without warning - cutting them off from crucial online services 5 months ago:
I just switched to FastMail a few weeks ago with my own domains to move away from Google, to prevent this vary possibility.
I realize how screwed I am if my email carrier arbitrarily decides to but me off. Haven’t changed every account, but I started with my bank/financial accounts, and basically intend to change them over time; every time I log into an account for something, I plan to change it.
- Comment on Alternative YouTube clients having issues loading videos 5 months ago:
I dunno, I watch YouTube on desktop with a premium account.
Since they began experimenting with ad injection directly into videos a month or so ago, I no longer use YouTube really. Videos rarely load proper the first time. Often takes 7 or 8 reloads of the page to get a video to start, sometimes stopping mid video.
Clearly since I can get it to play, it feels like a Google problem. Could be because I’m on Firefox, or Linux though (maybe even an update to something else, but all other video streaming services work just fine). Turning off uBlock Origin and uMatrix do not help at all.
Even if it isn’t Google’s fault, it’s still causing me to not use their service anymore. Feels like they are just trying to drive away users in general.
- Comment on Sony kills off [recordable] Blu-ray and optical disks for consumer market — business-to-business production to continue until unprofitable 5 months ago:
So patents last 15-20 years… regular Blu-ray patent has already expired I guess, but Ultra HD Blu-ray is the current patent, releasing in 2015… so another 6 to 11 years before consumers can do whatever they want with the technology.
Would be outdated by then by the next new thing though.
- Comment on J.K. Rowling Blasts “Gender Taliban” David Tennant After ‘Harry Potter’ Actor Said “Whinging” Trans Critics Are On “Wrong Side Of History” 5 months ago:
but this whole discussion could’ve been in agreement
From my point of view it was, but if someone just wants to fight about something and be right, even if you’re agreeing, best just to move on with life and not waste time on it.
Either way, predictions are not guaranteed, but looking optimistically forward to the election tomorrow.
Cheers and enjoy your night/day.
- Comment on J.K. Rowling Blasts “Gender Taliban” David Tennant After ‘Harry Potter’ Actor Said “Whinging” Trans Critics Are On “Wrong Side Of History” 5 months ago:
My reply said nothing about only Tories being solely responsible, only that they have been primarily in charge/in power for the last 14 years and are about to take a major fall from power in the upcoming election this week.
I didn’t praise Labour, merely said they will be the primary benefactor of the change in power, and that they are the UK equivalent of Democrats in the US (a simplified comparison for a non-UK audience, that happens across this thread); which isn’t untrue in general, even with your above complaints.
This is indeed a UK thread, but JK and Tennant are world renowned, and having them both in the title will draw in a larger audience.
- Comment on J.K. Rowling Blasts “Gender Taliban” David Tennant After ‘Harry Potter’ Actor Said “Whinging” Trans Critics Are On “Wrong Side Of History” 5 months ago:
I think this is a good place to add context for those outside the UK that don’t pay attention to politics, especially foreign politics:
The UK is having elections on July 4th. The House of commons has… 650 seats, of which the Conservatives (Tories, equivalent UK version of US Rupublicans) have ~350 seats.
They are expected to literally lose hundreds of seats in this elections and fall out of power. Labour (UK equivalent of US Democrats) has not been as progressive as people expected/wanted, but they are expected to be the big winners. Hopefully the UKs situation improves from the past 14-15 years of the Tories rule… seems like they’ve gone scorched earth, and the UK is a shadow of what it was even a decade ago.
Those same whiners in power, are about to experience a near political power extinction event.
- Comment on A supermarket trip may soon look different, thanks to electronic shelf labels 5 months ago:
I have no actual list outside my head.
atm, Wendy’s because of their plan for dynamic pricing based on how busy they are, and ‘my local KFC’, because I had to wait 50 minutes for my order (for 2), and they gave away the last of something I ordered to someone who came in like half an hour later, and they weren’t going to be making more. (that and KFC is way over priced for their standard menu if you aren’t getting some kind of ‘deal’)
- Comment on A supermarket trip may soon look different, thanks to electronic shelf labels 5 months ago:
All companies that plan to have dynamic pricing, please let me know.
I’ve already stopped going to Wendy’s; I’d love to add you to the list of places never to patron again.
- Comment on safety first 6 months ago:
The boiling method, and using ultrasonic devices so far sound promising:
https://projectboard.world/isef/project/eaev062t-harnessing-ultrasound-for-microplastic-filtration
Neither method is 100%, and sadly even if it were, there is no way to avoid ingesting microplastics. It’s basically in all food sources at this point. Any animal, or plant have them in them, and those sources are going to be exposed to them; even rain has microplastics in it now.
I suppose the best way to actually avoid microplastics in the food chain would be growing plants in a greenhouse type environment (with dug up deep pre-plastic dirt?) only using properly treated water? For meats, I guess lab grown meat would be the way to avoid it, using plastic free (or less) sources for material?
I’ve actually been throwing out old spices in recent years, but maybe I should be saving them. Maybe they are the last vestiges of plastic free spices, and will be worth a fortune to paranoid rich people that want flavor?
- Comment on Has ethernet become illegitimate? A librarian flipped out after spotting me using ethernet 7 months ago:
Also, it is a library… very real possibility they have actual computers you can use/borrow for people that cant use their wifi for whatever reason (such as not having a laptop/tablet/smartphone).
- Comment on Has ethernet become illegitimate? A librarian flipped out after spotting me using ethernet 7 months ago:
My first reaction is yeah, you don’t just plug into random Ethernet. The wi-fi is likely a visitor network setup for guests to the library. That ethernet port could provide access to their private intranet, and be a security risk to the library. Worst case scenario, it could result in malware, ransomware, and/or millions of dollars in expenses to recover (on a library budget, that could mean permanently shutting down the library even). After reading your post, I would say, no harm intended, just don’t do it again. After reading your comments about intentionally being vague about ‘plugging in’ to lead the librarian to think you were asking to plug in a power cord, and not specifically meaning ethernet connection… yeah, you’re clearly in the wrong. Just be up front; if they say no, so be it. They may be able to direct you to a visitor ethernet plug-in, or maybe not. If this were an AITA thread, i’d say yes, YTA in this case.
Asking in an security community… I would assume some level of technical awareness, and you are likely well aware of network segmentation, and that no IT department would be happy about a guest plugging their laptop into random rj-45 jacks around the building. Maybe it’s not well designed, and that actually has access to firewall administration? - Comment on New Discord TOS binds you to forced arbitration - Opt-Out Now 8 months ago:
A few years ago, wasn’t there a company (maybe it was uber?) that was being overwhelmed by arbitration fee’s for a large number of arbitration cases? I forget the outcome, but it may be due to their agreement stipulating they would cover arbitration fees. Either way, forced arbitration needs to go.
- Comment on Russia Is Making Its Own Gaming Consoles 8 months ago:
Russia actually does produce their own CPUs: