t3rmit3

@t3rmit3@beehaw.org

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨VPNs Can’t Make You Anonymous Online. Don’t Be Fooled by Anyone Who Says They Can⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  You can’t be sure, but you can use providers and exit nodes that are based in places hostile to whoever you are trying to protect against.

  Also, functional anonymity can exist by different entities having different pieces of data that together would de-anonymize you, but who are unlikely to ever intersect. A good example of this is DMCA requests: if a copyright holder sees a US IP address on a residential Comcast IP, they’re going to file a court case and get a subpoena for the subscriber info. If they see a Hong Kong IP from a co-lo datacenter who would need to cooperate to tell them who owned that IP at that time, they’re not going to even bother because they don’t know how to even start filing a court case in China, and if your VPN has too much data it won’t even matter because no one will even have contacted them.

  It all depends on your threat model.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨VPNs Can’t Make You Anonymous Online. Don’t Be Fooled by Anyone Who Says They Can⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  There are people who get VPNs because they hear that they prevent your ISP from snooping on you when configured correctly, and just hear “no one can see what I do”, because that’s what snooping is, right?

  When I worked at a university IT dept, we’d often get content block hits for adult websites from inside the internal protected network, via the university VPN, because a professor or staff member thought a VPN would route their traffic ‘past’ us.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  This absolutely did not kill them. I’ve been dealing with federal procurement, including ATOs for DoD, for years, and 99% of companies never even remotely interact with it. Yes, there’s a large number that do, especially among Fortune 500s and up, but the actual percentage of companies who have military contracts is tiny. This was meant to intimidate them into compliance, but this doesn’t make them any less viable than AIaaS already is or isn’t.

  no company wants to become a supply chain risk to potential customers who might have a DoD supplier somewhere down the supply chain

  The order is actually much narrow than that; it only applies to companies who directly have contracts with the military.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AIs can’t stop recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations | OpenAI, Anthropic and Google opted to use nuclear weapons in simulated war games in 95 per cent of cases⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Would not be surprised if it’s trained on the thousands of policy debate “nuclear war terminal impact” arguments on openev.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Automated catalyst testing uses two coordinated robots, cutting 32 days of work to 17 hours⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not arguing against the automation used in this particular case; that sounds perfectly reasonable.

  I’m arguing that the only reason it’s newsworthy is because companies want to put a positive spin on automation right now, right as the majority of companies expanding automation aren’t doing it to benefit workers.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Automated catalyst testing uses two coordinated robots, cutting 32 days of work to 17 hours⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  But what’s newsworthy about this in 2026?

  It’s about framing the debate of “robots doing work” in terms of being a positive thing (“see? they’re helping us do important SCIENCE!”) so that people will be just a little less combative when they get a BigMac handed to them by a robot arm.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨California Just Killed Open Source - YouTube⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  They’ll likely only target fully assembled 3d printers, which is why just like their firearms laws it will only stop people who aren’t actively attempting to circumvent the law.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨California Just Killed Open Source - YouTube⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not sure if you’re being sarcastic, but given that this is an anti-firearms bill, they will probably do the same thing they do when you purchase a firearm magazine cross-state; they’ll open the box and check that it is ‘compliant’ with the 10-round limit. If it is, they’ll ship it on to you. If it’s not, they’ll ship you the empty box with a notice of seizure. You may also be contacted by CADOJ later, depending how much free time they have.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨CIOs told: Prove your AI pays off – or pay the price⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m sure they’re quaking at the thought of floating out on their golden parachutes…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Discord roll out global age verification system, including an "age inference" model that runs in the background⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  just say ‘doggo’ and ‘w00t’ and ‘roflmao’ a couple times and the AI will peg you as an elder millennial and leave you alone

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Smart Homes Are Terrible⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’d settle for any home, smart or dumb.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Amazon Ring’s Super Bowl ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m so mad they’ve switched from their “protect the children” for Boomers, to “protect the pets” for us Millennials.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Discord faces backlash over age checks after data breach exposed 70,000 IDs⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  IRC is still alive and well, team speak for voice chats. Hell, Nextcloud even has these, as well as video calls.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Counting the waves of tech industry BS from blockchain to AI⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Everyone forgets that “Information Technology” was just a rebrand from the more accurate “Information Systems”, which was itself the less accurate rebranding of “Data Processing”, which is what computers actually do. There was also the failed push by IBM for Information Communication Technology (ICT).

  It’s been hype cycles since the beginning.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What games similar to hardspace shipbreaker can you recommend?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Every derelict I take salvage has so much crap I have to compulsively clean up, including my starter ship…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What games similar to hardspace shipbreaker can you recommend?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Keep in mind that these mostly aren’t direct analogues, and not all in the space genre, but I can think of:

  • Unpacking +
  • Power Wash Simulator 1 and 2 +
  • Papers, Please ++
  • Space Engineers +
  • Ostranauts +
  • Besiege ++
  • Terra Nil +
  • Sunken Engine +
  • No Place Like Home +

  Cleaning games: +

  Detail-driven puzzle or deduction games: ++

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨NVIDIA Contacted Anna’s Archive to Secure Access to Millions of Pirated Books⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  we’d better be careful to make sure that we aren’t simply giving the federal government (and the shitheads who run it) even more power and control over everything

  You do realize that copyright is solely a function of the federal government, right? There is no state or municipal copyright, it’s already the federal government who decides whether your copyright as a creator is valid or enforceable, or whether to just hand it over to another company/ billionaire.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Be Wary of Digital Deskilling⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  The real means to prevent this is unionizing, which is really the answer to most other techbro-hellscape problems too. Just like Hollywood is putting anti-ai clauses in their contracts, so too will tech workers need to. Unfortunately, given that the end goal is to remove the IT workers entirely, this is still only a delay if companies push ahead, since just like scabs, there will always be people willing to sell their fellow workers down the river for their own enrichment.

  The real question is what has to happen to end this horrible capitalist nightmare in general.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Attempt To Escape From Pain Creates More Pain⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  independent has always meant the freedom to create whatever you want without input from anyone else.

  Yes, and if a publisher is present, you cannot as a consumer ensure this is the case. No publisher actually puts their contracts with dev studios public for review, or allows people to review their internal communication.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Attempt To Escape From Pain Creates More Pain⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  No, this distinction prevents large studios from co-opting “indie” as a label, which people support because of that artistic discretion, and hiding it behind their opaque promises of such independence that no one can verify. You cannot trust a dev hasn’t been influenced by a publisher when they’re present, so the only way to ensure that is to not have a publisher present.

  I don’t know that movie, but I do know actual indie devs who use e.g. Patreon for funding. It’s not about not having money, it’s about who your money comes from, and whether there can be hidden stipulations on it. With publishers, there always are.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bose open-sources its SoundTouch home theater smart speakers ahead of end-of-life⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  This is great to see, and as long as it’s up to companies whether to do this, we need to encourage that behavior… but it also shouldn’t be up to companies’ whims whether to do this or not, it should be legally required for end-of-support devices and software to release whatever source code or changes are necessary to either operate the device/software independent of a server, or run the server ourselves.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How ATSC 3.0 aims to win over cord-cutters in 2026⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Honestly, operating a private streaming site is much ‘safer’ than pirate VHF/ UHF broadcasts, both in terms of what you’ll get charged with, and how long you’ll remain undetected. VHF and UHF broadcasts are literal homing beacons (and without something to bounce the signal off, very limited in what you’d reach).

  Jellyfin on an offshore VPS, with invite-only accounts otoh…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AMD and Nvidia are talking about local AI, good news for PC gamers and memory prices⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean… You can. You can train and run models yourself. Lots of people and orgs do.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Five Europeans denied US visas for combating hate speech online, accused of censoring ‘American viewpoints’⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  American == Fascistic == “Make America Great Again”/ Manifest Destiny == Settler Colonialist… viewpoints

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨France seeks to ban social media for children under 15⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  immoral people existing is not the problem here

  True. The profit motive is. People pushing harmful content are doing it because it makes them money, not because they’re twirling their moustaches as they relish their evil deeds. You remove the profit motive, you remove the motivation to harm people for profit.

  the difference is that there isn’t an algorithm that acts as a vector for harmful bullshit

  The algorithms boost engagement according to 1) what people engage with, and 2) what companies assess to be appealing. Facebook took the lead in having the social media platform own the engagement algorithms, but the companies and people pushing the content can and do also have their own algorithmic targeting. Just as Joe Camel existed before social media and still got to kids (and not just on TV), harmful actors will find and join discords. All that Facebook and Twitter did was handle the targeting for them, but it’s not like the targeting doesn’t exist without the platforms’ assistance.

  Said bad actors do not exist in anywhere near the same capacity. Imo the harm of public chat rooms falls under the “parents can handle this” umbrella. Public rooms are still an issue, but from experience being a tween/teen on those platforms, it’s not even close to being as bad.

  It wasn’t as bad on those… back when we were teens. It absolutely is now. If anything, you’ll usually find that a lot of the most harmful groups (red-pill/ manosphere, body-image- especially based around inducing EDs- influencers) actually operate their own discords that they steer/ capture kids into. They make contact elsewhere, then get them into a more insular space where they can be more extreme and forceful in pushing their products, out of public view.

  If it was the case that it was just individual actors on the platform causing the harm and not the structure of the platforms incentivizing said harm, then we would see more of this type of thing in real life as well.

  I’m not saying it’s all individuals, I’m saying the opposite; it’s companies. Just not social media companies. Social media companies are the convenient access vector for the companies actually selling and pushing the harmful products and corollary ideas that drive kids to them.

  I struggle to think of a more complete solution to the harm caused by social media to children than just banning them.

  Given that your immediate solution was to regulate kids instead of regulating companies, I don’t think you’re going to be interested in my solutions.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨France seeks to ban social media for children under 15⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  despite how harmful it is for society as a whole, and especially children

  If you don’t understand what the motivation is to target kids with ads and influencer content designed to push products is, you’re not going to solve anything. Kids have to have spaces to communicate with each other in order to develop healthy socialization skills. Locking them in a proverbial box is not healthy, and guess what, we killed off 99% of third spaces that welcome kids.

  If social media is banned for under 16’s, then children would have to communicate with normal chat apps.

  I feel like you are envisioning “chat apps” to mean “text-only”, but chat apps have been multimedia/ multi-modal for a long time now, and can be just as easily infiltrated by the same actors targeting kids on social media.

  at some point some systemic problems are better served by systemic solutions

  This is not a solution, this is a band-aid that doesn’t attack the root cause whatsoever.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨France seeks to ban social media for children under 15⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  You can.

  You just don’t want to either a) put in the legwork to do so, or b) be the ‘bad guy’ to your kids for doing it, so instead you just want the government to do it for you.

  What’s stopping you from setting up pihole and blocking social media sites at home, or turning on parental controls on their phones and blocking the sites and apps?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Chirp chirp chirp little chicken - interfacing Ace Combat 7 for some sweet telemetry for my VF-1 inspired home cockpit⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That is dope as shit. I love both Ace Combat (Shattered Skies especially! Woooo!) and Macross, this is such a cool simpit.

  Absolutely badass!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Enshittifinancial Crisis⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, it’s very well written and ‘easy to read’. I’ve seen his posts a couple of times on HackerNews, but I don’t think I ever read a long form blog post of his before. This was really good (even if I think a little naive).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Enshittifinancial Crisis⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Capitalism gonna Capitalism.

  We are watching one of the greatest wastes of money in history, all as people are told that there “just isn’t the money” to build things like housing, or provide Americans with universal healthcare, or better schools, or create the means for the average person to accumulate wealth.

  This could have been written about the War on Terror.

  I can find no analyst commentary on Meta making sixteen billion dollars on fraud, because it doesn’t matter to them, because this is the Rot Economy, and all that matters is number go up.

  I’m not sure why he thinks morality is a factor in market movement. You’ll not find the stock market negatively reacting to money being spent on genocide in the Middle East or murders in the Caribbean, or to Palantir expanding into a mass-surveillance apparatus either.

  Analysts that do not sing the same tune as everybody else are marginalized, mocked and aggressively policed… By not being skeptical or critical you are going to lead regular people into the jaws of another collapse.

  Yes, market collapses are actually loved by large wealth holders, because unless the entire currency itself collapses, the people with the most currency are the ones best-positioned to benefit from the collapse. Investors will ride the economy off a cliff so they can salvage the scrap at the bottom. Sam Altman literally opined about ‘redefining’ the social contract when AI collapses the economy in his White House presser.

  Analysts have, on some level, become the fractional marketing team for the stocks they’re investing in.

  Because major news, analysis firms, and banks are all owned by the oligarchy, and no one is being punished for using that power to manipulate the market. They know that if they’re a big firm and they say, “this stock is amazing!” it will go up, and since they own that stock, they get richer.

  When it happens, I promise I won’t be too insufferable, but I will be calling for accountability for anybody who boosted AI 2027, who sat in front of Sam Altman or Dario Amodei and refused to ask real questions, and for anyone who collected anything resembling “detailed notes” about me or any other AI skeptic.

  It’s sad to me that Ed lived through 2008 and still thinks there will be accountability in this system. At some point you have to accept that the purpose of a system is what the system does. Our system cyclically collapses, economically, in order to enrich billionaires. It happened during the DotCom bubble, it happened in 2008, and it happened during COVID, and that’s just in my short lifespan.

  I realize I’m pearl-clutching over the amoral status of capitalism and the stock market

  I really don’t think you are. You haven’t even begun to reach the bare minimum level of disdain and disgust-inducing realism one should have about capitalism, nevermind anything being remotely close to pearl-clutching.