Hirom
@Hirom@beehaw.org
- Comment on Detection of Strong S-Band Emissions from the Starshield Constellation — Observations and Regulatory Context 7 hours ago:
- Comment on Detection of Strong S-Band Emissions from the Starshield Constellation — Observations and Regulatory Context 14 hours 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 17 hours 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) 5 days ago:
Captain’s hair is nominal.
- Comment on Zero surprise 6 days 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 1 week ago:
Well done noyb!
- Comment on OpenAI signs $1 trillion worth of chip deals to feed its AI habit 1 week 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! 1 week 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 1 week 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 1 week 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? 1 week 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? 1 week 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? 1 week 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 weeks 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 weeks 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 weeks 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 weeks 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?
- 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 weeks ago:
Who is still doing loot boxes
A majority of Android and IOS games, and 36% of PC games according to a study.
- 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 weeks ago:
Good point, it’s a bit late, and may hit hard on some games that already implemented loot boxes. But it’s never too late, assuming it’s indeed a kind of gambling.
Hopefully it’ll lead to less games integrating loot boxes, so that people of all ages can play games with neither loot boxes, nor the age verification that comes with it.
- 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 weeks ago:
I’m happy with loot boxes being categorized as gambling when money is involved, and regulated as gambling.
By “cool with this” are you refering to age verification? That wasn’t a comment on age verification. You’re putting words in my mouth, or I was ambiguous in the above comment, or both.
Online age verification is tricky to do right, balance effectiveness and privacy. That’s true of any age restriction, whether it’s loot booxes, other kind of gamblings. Existing age verification has bad effectiveness, privacy, or both. That doesn’t gambling shouldn’t be regulated, or that age verification can’t improve.
- 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 weeks ago:
Good move. Loot box is gambling. Most have learned gambling is dangerous, especially for minors.
- Comment on Microsoft revokes cloud services from Israel’s Unit 8200 2 weeks ago:
Kudos to Microsoft workers who risked and lost their job to protest the company providing services to the israelly military.
- Comment on Regulating AI hastens the Antichrist, says Palantir’s Peter Thiel 3 weeks ago:
LOL
- Comment on A Cyberattack on Jaguar Land Rover Is Causing a Supply Chain Disaster 3 weeks ago:
Given the duration of the outage, I guess the company has both a complex computer system that’s all networked, and doesn’t have a solid disaster recovery plan.
- Comment on What do people actually use ChatGPT for? OpenAI provides some numbers. 4 weeks ago:
Yep, using ChatGPT is a way to increase one’s environmental footprint.
And the energy cost doesn’t appear to be fully passed to users yet, as OpenAI isn’t profitable yet. There are even free LLM services. So users don’t have an insentive to prefer less polluting alternatives, such as classic search engines.
- Comment on OK. I'm at wit's end attempting to convince Google's LLM to pronounce an English name correctly. 5 weeks ago:
I quikly gave up on correting those bots. Either you’re lucky and made a prompt that induced it to generate a decent answer. Or you’re not, and there’s no point on correcting it. In that case you’re better off doing whatever you were going to do without a LLM.
- Comment on Google’s $45 Million Contract With Netanyahu's Office to Spread Israeli Propaganda 1 month ago:
I wasn’t familiar Drop Site News and had a quick look:
- Jeremy Scahill is co-founder of this outlet. He’s a well known investigative journalist. Also co-founder of The Intercept. Author ofbDirty Wars.
- Lee Fang is co-author. He’s also investigative journaliste, formerly at The Interceptions.
- Media Bias / Fact check assessment rate the outlet Mostly factual, with a Left bias.
- Comment on Meta might be secretly scanning your phone's camera roll - how to check and turn it off 1 month ago:
A well informed, technicality litterate, reasonable person wouldn’t.
All of this is somewhat obvious for tech hobbyist. Many reasonable people start/keep using those products. They might not be fully aware or the risk, or don’t consider themselves at risk. There is strong peer pressure to use those service to stay connected with people and organisations.
- Comment on Who is the enemy? 1 month ago:
Everyone hate quacks.
- Comment on irl shiny 1 month ago:
#NotAllCockroaches