irotsoma

@irotsoma@piefed.blahaj.zone

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Many Top MAGA Trolls Aren’t Even in the U.S - Elon Musk’s new X feature has been very revealing.⁩ ⁨⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Um…Koch Industries donated tons of money to politician to not retaliate against Russia when they invaded Ukraine, and they refused to pull out of Russia when lots of other companies were. And that’s just one small, recent example of their connections to Russia. Google can find lots of others. I mean go back far enough and their family had close connections to Stalin as well.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Americans are holding onto devices longer than ever and it's costing the economy⁩ ⁨⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s lots of things that could be innovated without faster processors. I mean if we’re just talking cell phones, adding a camera was an innovation, adding a touch screen and eventually touch keyboards that actually worked. These things were aided by faster processors, but not directly dependent on them. But these could be totally unrelated devices to phones or even computing at all. Innovation across the board including med-tech, business models, city planning, and tons of other industries have suffered from privatization, deregulation, and leading then to consolidation and thus little need to compete and thus little need to innovate.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Booking.com cancelled woman's $4K hotel reservation, then offered her same rooms for $17K⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  It used to be useful when there was competition to actually provide good service and actually negotiate prices. Consolidation to basically one parent company ruined the whole thing like most late capitalism consolidation tends to do…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Americans are holding onto devices longer than ever and it's costing the economy⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  “Companies aren’t innovating anymore and it’s costing the economy” is what it should say. When late stage capitalism leads to consolidation and cost cutting, stock buybacks, and other short term profit when competition is no longer necessary, that’s what kills the economy. That’s why monopolies and anticompetitive behaviors are bad.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Many Top MAGA Trolls Aren’t Even in the U.S - Elon Musk’s new X feature has been very revealing.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  A lot of that was sexism and racism forcing less fascist loving conservatives over to Trump combined with a general sense of betrayal. The Democrats made a huge mistake forcing Biden down everyone’s throat by forcing other candidates not to run (which they do most years bit it was really obvious this time with the disapproval of how far right the party moved to even select Biden) and an even bigger mistake switching to Harris against the will of the (admittedly sham) vote.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Press a button and this SSD will self-destruct with all your data⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  But charge the capacitor with what? That’s the point. If it doesn’t kill the data immediately upon pushing the button, even when unplugged, it’s useless unless some bumbling idiot thief/cop/agent plugs it in before just disarming the button.

  And as for fully physical, do tests with what? Another computer? Its a memory storage device with only an I/O driver and basic firmware. There’s no CPU to separately run software to detect if the components are destroyed. And if there were, that would have to be physically/electrically separated from the short that is going to kill the device and then physically reconnected, which would mean some kind of mechanical device most likely. Now were getting into a huge device, not a flash drive. The device already has capabilities to read and write data. Very easy to add a chip to give that random data to write over the existing data and a lot less power than a processor and motorized components.

  And again, it doesn’t solve the redundancy problem. Single point of failure is always going to go wrong at least one in some number of cases. Even top of the line components and the best quality control available can’t beat redundancy and it’s way, way cheaper.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Press a button and this SSD will self-destruct with all your data⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, but again, that requires precise destruction in a cheap chip while making sure both not to do it accidentally and making sure it’s successful afterwards. With redundancy, if one thing fails, there’s something else to do the job. Most corporations have abandoned this idea in exchange for short term profit and planned obsolescence. But it’s actually super important in real security.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Pornhub is urging tech giants to enact device-based age verification⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Exactly, so give parents the tools to filter and make it their responsibility to police their children. Don’t make everyone give up their privacy and sometimes, security, and safety to shitty corporations who will eventually leak all of their data. Which is exactly what both I and pornhub are saying.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Press a button and this SSD will self-destruct with all your data⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  What if the destruction fails, or isn’t thorough. Much harder to retrieve information from a partial block of memory if it has also been overwritten with garbage to erase it. Redundancy is essential to security.

  A device like that isn’t putting enough voltage into it to “melt” it. It you want it that well destroyed you’re going to need a high temperature incinerator with a good filter since it’s not safe to breath the smoke it will create. Or at the very least a heating element inside it, but then you need layers of heat protection so it doesn’t catch everything around it on fire or burn the person pushing the button.

  This isn’t that. This is meant to destroy the data at a moment’s notice with the push of a button. Problem is that it has to be plugged in to do it, which in my mind is defeating the purpose.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Press a button and this SSD will self-destruct with all your data⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Capacitor wouldn’t allow long enough to wipe the data first. It’s a two pass system. Wipe data then destroy. Also capacitors lose charge over time much, much more quickly than a battery. You still would need to have plugged it in very recently. And yes to build enough voltage to destroy electronics physically and quickly with a battery, it would actually probably need both battery and capacitors anyway which would also increase size. I’m guessing it was a tradeoff of size vs functionality, but having it not work until it’s plugged in after pressing the button which is bright red when pressed, seems like a very simple way to bypass the destruction by simply disassembling it before plugging it in. Only good if the thief/agent doesn’t know why there’s a big red spot on it before plugging it in, which is a bad assumption for security especially if you deploy these widely so everyone knows what they are.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Many Top MAGA Trolls Aren’t Even in the U.S - Elon Musk’s new X feature has been very revealing.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s always been obvious that Putin was behind the Tea Party which evolved into MAGA, and even more obviously, Trump. Problem is the whole system is designed to only allow wealthy land owners to hold power, thus the two party system enforced by the electoral college, and the districting systems that are easily manipulated to give power to land area, above population. The whole system at the federal level is broken on purpose. All we can do is try to get more people to vote so population has more power over land area, but the conservative controlled states cut funding for voting and people have to work do can’t wait in line for many, many hours in large cities on election days. Only progressive states have mail-in voting and early voting and even there we’re stick voting for “lesser evil” candidates due to the two party system both controlled by the wealthy. There’s the far right fascist Republican party and the moderate right Corporate friendly Democratic party. No party gir the people.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Pornhub is urging tech giants to enact device-based age verification⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Have devices do the blocking for kids by having sites required to identify themselves as adult oriented in a standard way. The bad sites aren’t going to enact the requirements for people to identify themselves any more than they would enact the requirements for sites to identify themselves to devices but it eliminates the tracking of adults and blocking of legitimate content to children with parental permission like sexual education sites.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Press a button and this SSD will self-destruct with all your data⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Fatal flaw is it has to be connected to a computer to start the process. If someone truly wants the data they could just disassemble the device before it gets connected if the button has been pressed. They should have found a way to do it with a small onboard battery reserved only for that purpose.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨In 1982, a physics joke gone wrong sparked the invention of the emoticon - Ars Technica⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I wouldn’t say invention of the emoticon since it already existed since typewriter days in the same exact form and in print and writing for at least hundreds of years. Maybe the first recorded attempt to create a specific purpose for it on a computer system. But that seems pretty flimsy as an “invention”. But given the state of the patent system, just about everything I’m technology is an invention these days despite how long it has existed or how obvious it was.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The ‘Great Meme Reset’ Is Coming: From Jack Dorsey to Gen Alpha, everyone seemingly wants to go back to the internet of a decade ago. But is it possible to reverse AI slop and brain rot?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Yep. Government/taxpayer funded access to the internet including funding fiber to the home just like we did with phone lines many decades ago, and putting back laws to enforce net neutrality. That way it’s cheap to run a server again. Right now most residential access has poor upload speeds so you have to pay for expensive, business priced plans to run a local server to compete with big corporations.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Vodafone, EE, O2, Three hit with £3B overcharging lawsuit⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Ah, yeah, in the US they just hide that you’re paying for it by the credits I mentioned. Sneakier I guess, but it is what it is and they all do it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Vodafone, EE, O2, Three hit with £3B overcharging lawsuit⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t really get it and details are scarce in the article. Is the model different in than in the US? It says “you’re no longer paying for the handset, but pay the same price”. Do they bundle the cost of handsets with the monthly fee and just allow you to upgrade every some number of months? But if you forget to upgrade, or don’t want to, you still pay the same?

  In the US generally they charge for the handsets split up into like 48 payments and then have some promotions for popular phones where you get 48 monthly credits to cover some or all of the cost. If you cancel service, the balance usually comes due or if you change to a lower cost plan sometimes they let you keep the payment plan, but you lose the credits. It’s done different ways, but this is an example.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Wi-Fi Extender, Long-Range, Suggestions?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Could you mount the antennas, or even just one of them, externally? That may improve performance. A small parabolic antenna a few inches wide or a purpose made building to building bridging kit only needs a small mounting surface with a few screws, and as for the wire you might not need to drill a hole, though properly patched that’s not a big deal either, but instead use an existing hole by removing old, unused phone or cable wire.

  Alternatively, is there a window facing in the correct direction? Signals penetrate glass way better than all of the siding, insulation, drywall, etc in an external wall. Remember there’s way more material than an internal wall to penetrate. And if you have aluminum siding or certain kinds of insulation, it may not work at all. The tree branches may or may not be an issue depending on how thick they are, if they are branches with lots of leaves, the types of leaves, the density of the wood, etc. But the exterior wall penetration means it’s literally not line of site (you can’t visually see from one antenna to the other), so the rated ranges are moot and may or may not work reliably.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Wi-Fi Extender, Long-Range, Suggestions?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Is there lime of site between the main building and the target building or is the middle building blocking line of site? If there is line of site then directional antennas are your best bet. Problem with most access points and range extenders is they’re designed to broadcast and receive in all directions. With a directional antenna you concentrate the power and reduce the likelihood of interference.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨FCC to rescind ruling that said ISPs are required to secure their networks⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That goes for most industries. No need to protect your reputation or be ethical in a monopoly or even really in a duopoly. End-stage capitalism consolidation at its finest.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Revealed: Israel demanded Google and Amazon use secret ‘wink’ to sidestep legal orders⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean it is a similar intent to a warrant canary, though more active. What they should have done is make sure all of the data is stored in their country if it’s that sensitive or use only products that allow full encryption and don’t store much metadata. There are ways to do these things if you aren’t lazy and actually hire an experienced architect (I’m one for example).

  This was definitely much more of a legal overstep with explicit intent to subvert court orders than a warrant canary, though, and this unethical in it’s implementation if only questionable in its intent. However, the fact that the secretive orders exist in the first place and are not done just in cases where lives or true national security are at stake and only for limited amounts of time before being disclosed or something like that as most were originally intended outside of nations with fascist-leaning administrations like the US, China, India, etc., is the real issue and the reason for both this and warrant canaries to be necessary even if it wasn’t a fascist leaning administration doing it for possibly malicious reasons.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨International Criminal Court to ditch Microsoft Office for European open source alternative⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’d hope so considering the current administration is friendly with multiple people they have charged and issued warrants for such things as crimes against humanity and genocide. And the US has access to Microsoft data which likely includes all documents stored in any Office cloud products.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Meta denies torrenting porn to train AI, says downloads were for “personal use”⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean probably true, but that shouldn’t stop them from being liable if ordinary individuals are liable for the same actions. Sure, punish your employees, but if a parent is responsible to pay for a child’s pirating then an employer should be just as responsible for paying for an employee’s pirating.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Elon Musk’s Grokipedia launches with AI-cloned pages from Wikipedia⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, but this will not require any people to add content since it’s all stollen and simply manipulated which is easier to automate than producing original content which AI can’t be trusted not to hallucinate about quite yet. The idea is to then get the search engine AIs to point there as much as possible as it will likely be optimized for AI scraping rather than human browsing. Then since the AI results are prioritized more and more, they can get their truthiness to be what people see over actual reality.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Nah, the only thing the old analog 625-line resolutions looked OK on were things like my small bedroom TV in the 90s (though the refresh rates are major improvements in some media). The smaller living room TVs look way better with 720p and regular sized modern living room TVs are significantly better at 1080p. (Note that 4:3 ratio TVs had smaller advertised inch sizes than similarly sized 16:9 ratio TVs since they’re measured diagonally so I’ll avoid using actual sizes since they aren’t comparable.)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Depends on the physical size of the screen. Which is why mostly only wealthy people with 90-inch+ screens really have ever cared about 8K. 4K is a noticeable improvement on a 60 or 70 inch screen, but the extra cost of content isn’t anywhere near being worth it for most people.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨X is launching a marketplace for inactive handles⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Sounds like a good way to impersonate and use the reputation of someone who’s active on other platforms. Just like the “verified” stuff mostly just means you paid, not that your identity was verified which is always confusing people who aren’t careful, often used/confused by right-wing “news”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ChatGPT will soon allow erotica for verified adults, OpenAI boss says⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, but this will make it much easier and using much better algorithms to make it more realistic because OpenAI will start profiting off of it and devoting resources to it which they have way more of than the existing systems.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ChatGPT will soon allow erotica for verified adults, OpenAI boss says⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s going to be a disaster. It’s going to overly reinforce toxic sex understanding due to lack of sexual education. Most porn already does that, but is limited by what a human body can actually perform. AI will be able to make what is essentially sexual torture look like it’s what someone should normally expect sex to be like and make it look like the recipient is enjoying it…among many other issues.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI couldn't create an image of a woman like me - until now⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Despite living with one arm, Jess doesn’t see herself as disabled, saying the barriers she faces are societal.

  Actually, this is what disability is all about. It’s not that people can’t complete tasks or take care of themselves, it’s that society doesn’t provide the same tools to disabled people that they provide to so called “able bodied” people to allow them to complete those tasks.

  It’s the trope of the single grocery store that everyone goes to, but the person in a wheelchair, but otherwise able, can’t use because there’s a curb. So, suddenly they can’t feed themselves. It’s not that they are unable to feed themselves, it’s that they can’t access the food without assistance and thus are “disabled”. As soon as a ramp is installed they are no longer “disabled”, just differently abled.