Hirom
@Hirom@beehaw.org
- Comment on 8 Million Users' AI Conversations Sold for Profit by "Privacy" Extensions 3 days ago:
The extension remains live and featured as of this writing.
The Chrome Web Store should be avoided for security. Google keeps failing at moderaring their store, at the same time kneecaping legitimate adblockers with manifest v3 in the name of security, and failing to remove actual malicious extension after both manual review and dislosure of its behaviour by outsiders.
Running Chrome without web store without web extension isn’t ideal either, it would leave people without protection from malvertising nor tracking. So better avoid Chrome altogether, use Firefox or Zen Browser or Tor Browser.
- Comment on ¡! FREE REFILLS !¡ 4 days ago:
No distilled water?
- Comment on Graffiti 1 week ago:
Thanks.
Whoever cropped the author or artist signature should whip him/herself.
- Comment on Machine go brrrrrrr brrrrrrrrrrr br br br br br br brbrbrbrb 1 week ago:
Antimatter remind me of this Fringe scene: www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdoO5tCCOms
- Comment on Trump Family’s Crypto Empire Collapses: Nearly $1 Billion Wiped Out as World Liberty and Memecoins Crash 2 weeks ago:
Schadenfreude
- Comment on Google is experimentally replacing news headlines with AI clickbait nonsense 2 weeks ago:
Another reason to stay away from Google Discover.
RSS is the way to news from online newspapers. It avoids the bias and nonsence injected by AI and algorithms when getting news via social media and big techs platforms.
- Comment on Microsoft finally admits almost all major Windows 11 core features are broken 3 weeks ago:
And then Microsoft gets annoyed when people don’t immediately start using Win 10, then Win 1.
Seeing the results, it looks like Win versions had more QA done before the release, whereas nowaday a bigger part of QA is done by customers after the release.
- Comment on "This is a blatant, unapologetic act of vicious union busting" - Hundreds of Rockstar employees sign letter to management, demanding fired colleagues get reinstated 4 weeks ago:
You may be right, but I don’t see how that change the calculus. Should employees and union be complacent with corps’ bad and potentially illegal actions, refuse to defend colleagues, just to avoid hurting the corporation pride?
- Comment on "This is a blatant, unapologetic act of vicious union busting" - Hundreds of Rockstar employees sign letter to management, demanding fired colleagues get reinstated 4 weeks ago:
R* should have thought of that before doing union busting.
- Comment on 1 month ago:
the printing process requires much less energy and produces many fewer greenhouse gas emissions than traditional TFT manufacturing methods
A carbon tax would make this kind of production process more viable commercially than more polluting processes.
It’s necessary not only to have the technology, but also the right insentives.
“Unfortunately, the National Science Foundation program that we were pursuing funding from to continue working on this, called the Future Manufacturing program, was cut earlier this year. But we’re hoping to find a fit in a different program in the near future.”
It sounds like the US may not even have the technology with cuts to research. Don’t be surprised if another country leapfrog the US again in electronics production.
- Comment on Spoopy Sun 1 month ago:
Nothing spookier than cut to science and research funding.
- Comment on Revealed: Israel demanded Google and Amazon use secret ‘wink’ to sidestep legal orders 1 month ago:
Contractual obligations and contract terms do not superseed laws. If anyone is doing something unlawful through Google or Amazon’s infrastructure, a NGO or union could sue.
- Comment on mercy merci 1 month ago:
I started releasing rather than killing spiders after reading “Blade Runner: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”
In that future, most animals have disappeared and people consider the sight of a spider as an extraordinary thing. Sparing a single spider might be vain, but it feels right knowing insect/spider population is quickly decreasing.
- Comment on Detection of Strong S-Band Emissions from the Starshield Constellation — Observations and Regulatory Context 2 months ago:
- Comment on Detection of Strong S-Band Emissions from the Starshield Constellation — Observations and Regulatory Context 2 months ago:
SpaceX playing fast and loose with régulations!? Say it ain’t so!
- Comment on Hackers can steal 2FA codes and private messages from Android phones 2 months ago:
Sûre, but it’s still a serious problem even if it’s a side channel attack.
Almost everyone rely on the OS/hardware providing some isolation between apps People often install shady apps, and browsers automatically execute JS/bytecode from random website they visit. Using a modern device
- Comment on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | Season 4 Clip | Paramount+ (NYCC 2025) 2 months ago:
Captain’s hair is nominal.
- Comment on Zero surprise 2 months ago:
Big oil prefer us to feel hopeless about climate change, rather than doing something about it and aiming one’s anger at them.
Think about which actions, even small ones, you can take to reduce dependency on fossiel fuel, and oppose big oil peacefully.
- Comment on noyb win: Microsoft 365 Education may not track school children 2 months ago:
Well done noyb!
- Comment on OpenAI signs $1 trillion worth of chip deals to feed its AI habit 2 months ago:
Meanwhile, Nvidia has promised to pump $100 billion into OpenAI over the next decade, a move that will conveniently help OpenAI pay for Nvidia’s own chips.
OpenAI and NVIDIA’s future are getting tied together more than they already were
- Comment on it's true! 2 months ago:
Is there an alternative to grass that covers well, and doesn’t spread fast like an invasive plant?
I’ve read about clover but it does spread fast.
- Comment on RUMOR: 'The Future of Xbox is Software Publishing' as Next Console Generation Faces Doubts 2 months ago:
It’s not possible to continue releasing ever-more powerful hardware every few years, while remaining affordable. Xbox Series X and S are still relatively expensive 5 years after release. Their price is apparently higher then before, possibly due to inflation.
Hopefully they consider doing a refresh of series X / S, with slightly more efficient hadware but similar computing power. Adding more compute has diminushing return on game quality anyway. And there’s probably room to fit more without changing storage/compute by pptimizing games and software.
- Comment on Wine 10.16 released with fast synchronization support using NTSync 2 months ago:
NTSync is available as a kernel module. Not enabled by default un Debian nor Fedora, but it appears possible to use it without rebuilding the whole kernel.
wiki.debian.org/Wine/NtsyncHowto fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/NTSYNC-Contained
- Comment on Way past its prime: how did Amazon get so rubbish? 2 months ago:
I doubt “Not on Amazon” would be a selling point. If merchant have put up with it this far, it’s probably because Amazon bring sales.
If leaving allow selling at a lower price, that would definitely be a selling point. But they would need a solid online store, their own or another markeplace.
- Comment on Way past its prime: how did Amazon get so rubbish? 2 months ago:
The path to a better Amazon doesn’t lie through consumer activism, or appeals to the its conscience. Corporations, being artificial, immortal colony-organisms that use humans as their inconvenient gut flora, do not have consciences to appeal to.
A great argument for efficient regulation.
- Comment on Way past its prime: how did Amazon get so rubbish? 2 months ago:
That surprised me. I always try to buy from the manufacturer’s website or official reseller rather than Amazon to avoid such bullshit. Apparently that’s not enough.
If brands selling on Amazon are overprice, could favoring brands that do NOT sell on Amazon help find products with a fair price?
- Comment on How automakers are reacting to the end of the $7,500 EV tax credit 2 months ago:
Ford and General Motors have come up with a temporary solution: buying all their own EVs before the credit expired, then leasing those vehicles to customers through dealerships at a $7,500 discount
Nice loophole
- Comment on Brazil's president has signed a ban on selling loot boxes to minors as part of a larger online child safety law 2 months ago:
I’m not convinced an outright ban would be helpful. Regulation focused on harm reduction, ie restricting to adult like various kind of gambling, would be less heavyhanded, hopefully better compromise.
Looping back on the earlier comments, adding extra requirements on age verification is the more controversial part. Especially since privacy-preserving solutions aren’t ready. Clearly neither of us are happy with that.
I’d be happy if regulators just categorized loot box as gambling, applying the existing declarative age verification that already apply to gambling.
The choice between state regulation and self-regulation depend on various factors, eg exactly how it’s implemented, people’s opinion on freedom to operate companies without state intervention. A meta-analysis conclude results vary a lot from self regulation, it can go well or fail. This is just an opinion and nothing definitive, but I don’t think the game editors that make money from setup efficient self-regulation. It would hurt their bottom line.
- Comment on Brazil's president has signed a ban on selling loot boxes to minors as part of a larger online child safety law 2 months ago:
If loot boxes were on the wane even before hard regulation was passed, then maybe the hard regulation wasn’t particularly needed.
That’s if and maybe. I would assume neither, but will keep an open mind in case evidence appear.
Let’s assume Loot Boxes are on the wane. Do we actually know they were on the wane BEFORE regulation passed (which started happening several years ago), or whether regulation caused them to wane? Do we know that self-regulation efficient for loot boxes? Self regulation results vary a lot, and is often ineffective, so I’m skeptical.
On the other hand, there is evince linking paying for loot boxes to gambling addiction, and plausibility since loot box exploit human’s tendency to look for rewards to extract money from players. There’s clearly a problem, and I wouldn’t bet on the companies that created it solving the problem.
- Comment on Brazil's president has signed a ban on selling loot boxes to minors as part of a larger online child safety law 2 months ago:
The link above is the primary source, they mention “OUR recent study”. The article publication date is February 2025, but they don’t give the exact date on their study.
Even if that figure already decreased since the study, or was overestimated, would it change the point of the regulation?
If less mobiles games integrated loot boxes, let’s say 50%, or even 30%, would change whether loot boxes is gambling or not? Or worth regulating?