adespoton

@adespoton@lemmy.ca

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Passkeys are a trap. Do not use them.⁩ ⁨⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  The article has some good points, but is also reductivist.

  Passkeys can indeed be abused, but they solve a security issue that was being abused in the wild that TOTP doesn’t solve. They essentially close a security gap connected to shared secrets that ensures they can’t be abused by caching attacks in the same way as TOTP. They do this by exchanging some of your personal privacy for third party trust — and this in turn means that the third party is no longer storing your password in active memory, making it less prone to data leaks.

  But the big secret here is that passkeys aren’t exactly the thing companies like Google, Microsoft and Apple are telling you they are: that’s a single (or two, really, as MS uses a different implementation) of passkeys that slave your side of the shared secret to a mobile device or browser.

  Passkeys work fine in software (1Password works as a passkey vault, for example) or in hardware (Yubikeys are fully FIDO compliant and so implement everything but the transport mechanism). So it’s perfectly possible to use a safe and secure passkey that isn’t leaking data to the second party.

  The problem with passkeys is that it’s also possible to tie them to a TPM, which is controlled by the second party, not you. And this is the default method that Google, Apple and MS default to presenting when a passkey creation prompt comes up on “their” devices.

  So passkeys aren’t the trap; the pushed implementation is.

  Get a Yubikey or a password manager that properly implements them and they’re significantly more secure than TOTP. It’s essentially the same technology that Apple uses for Apple Pay.

  Oh, and of course, passkeys don’t get rid of passwords; they get rid of indiscriminate password use. You still need a shared secret to back the passkey; it just tends to be a longer “token,” “key,” or passphrase. At the end of the day, that’s no different from a traditional password except for the accepted length and how often it is used.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anthropic asks users to stop being mean to Claude⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  If the model is just a model, a pre-trained probability seive, what difference does it make if someone is abusive? If it causes a token spike, the user has to pay for that. The abuse shouldn’t survive beyond the context window and the model isn’t wired up to “feel” or suffer.

  So is this a publicity stunt (“Our model is as intelligent and human as a real person), or is it about social influence/normalization—they worry that if people become accustomed to abusing the prompt, that will trickle over into other social interactions?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How come the bacteria that make people obese don't seem to be affecting countries where there's widespread famine?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Let me re-frame the question in terms you’ll find easier to understand:

  The belief that fires need oxygen to burn is so prevalent in the forestry world; how come you don’t see massive forest fires in the desert where they’ve got the same amount of oxygen? A prevalent gas that can trigger combustion on demand sounds like it’d be useful, if true.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it hard for native speakers of languages that use 漢字 to learn ABC as it's different to their own?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  The answer is: English has a Germanic grammar, not a Latin grammar.

  This can be confusing since we have so much Latin syntax layered on top of that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why are entertainment figures jump on a chance to talk about a Free Palestine but not a Free Kurdistan?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I’d add India and Ethiopia off the top of my head….

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨For those of you with LineageOS and rely on F-Droid/FOSS apps, how do you make extra money without gig apps like DoorDash?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Even as a musician I’ve done very little gig work; most is arranged well in advance through venue and event operators. Most stages these days don’t want the hassle of managing gigs. Even busking is usually a “pay to get slots on the calendar at this location a year in advance” type of thing these days.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨For those of you with LineageOS and rely on F-Droid/FOSS apps, how do you make extra money without gig apps like DoorDash?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Post signs in your local community center and other physical locations where people usually visit. Ask your friends if they need a dog walker. Ask them if they know anyone who does. Use whatever is locally popular as a classified system. Ask local gyms if you can advertise the service with them for people who might want their pets exercised while they work out. Same for restaurants and pubs/bars.

  Social networking was a thing before social media and gig proxies. It’s all about finding the people.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Would taking a tbs of olive oil before each meal lower the GI of everything else you eat?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s what some limited tests have suggested. A tablespoon of apple cider vinegar mixed with a tablespoon of olive or avocado oil apparently does even better.

  But do your own research; I’m not a GI researcher or registered dietitian, and this is stuff that can affect your health.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨assuming the world is undergoing a complete and radical transformation at the moment, what is preventing more people from "waking up" and seeing the trends happening?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  While generative AI can’t become sentient, people can very much offload throught and information handling to the glorified autocorrect.

  And once it starts training solely on its own work, technological advancement may stagnate, as most people will be totally happy cooking this world to be told what they should do and think.

  We’re getting to the point where the haves are placid and the have nots are powerless.

  It’s not really about the algorithms; it’s about the evolutionary cul-de-sac humanity is shoving itself into.

  Maybe eventually we’ll find our way out, or have another civilization collapse allowing the planet to recover and us start over again without fully eliminating ourselves.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Should I move out?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Where does your aunt live in Canada?

  Asking because pretty much every major population area, someone is saying either the weather sucks or the people suck or both.

  And “moving to Canada” is not saying much — with 3.5 time zones and pretty much every climate from balmy to “the ice melts and the sun comes out in June”, and with city populations ranging from 3.5 million to 25 people, it really does depend on what you’re looking for and where your aunt lives.

  That said, you can get the same change of scenery by moving from Sydney to Melbourne. Oz isn’t all the same (in climate or people) either.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Flock Safety CEO's Home Marked 'Public Toilet' After It Was Blurred on Street View⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Here’s a question: when Google blurs things, do they go back and blur historical footage too? Is there even historical street view? I thought there was.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If I became the next president how would I go about getting the illegally detained people under Trump freedom? Would I need congress?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s more complicated than that; they’ve shifted from domestic concentration camps to foreign concentration camps — so the first thing you’d have to deal with is international diplomacy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨why don't pandas exist in Chinese history prior to 1869? the creature "Mo" that is referenced looks nothing like a Panda⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Along with the other things here, it took until 1869 for someone to come up with a specific “panda” taxonomy. Before that there were a number of different animals that all got grouped together, some of which looked nothing alike when studied up close, but were experienced in similar ways when moving through wilderness areas.

  Kind of like dragons.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can you open up an unmanned store in the US and will it stay in business or close down?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  In my area there are people with farms who have a kiosk at the end of their road where they stock what they have available — eggs, flowers, cheese, pottery, etc. and a suggested price list, plus a secure drop box.

  Seems to work out OK for them. Not sure I’d want to try that in a more populated area, but I HAVE also seen neighborhood libraries in urban areas that seem to survive (box at the end of the walk containing books to share; you can take a book and return it to any of the boxes in the area, and are encouraged to add new ones).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  So much for moving to Canada.

  In Canada, we believe in the responsibility of both the person and the society around them. Someone might make a mistake and do something wrong, and be held to account for that. But the system that allowed them to make that mistake also comes under scrutiny. It’s why we don’t have concealed carry up here and why firearms and alcohol possession laws are much stricter than in the US.

  Funny thing to me is that your attitude doesn’t really match to an era in history; it maps to an age of a developing person. I’ve heard those questions from people in their teens and twenties for the past 40 years. Usually by the mid 30s they realize it’s not so simple. Some people realize it much earlier, a few never seem to learn.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨As I don't say I will kill the president, can I at least allude to threatening? Like the 86 47 guy?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes; the question is: how high up is the ledge?

  I’d argue that at this point, even though “86” means to remove, “86 47” has been interpreted in a very specific way, kind of like a mob boss telling someone to “take care of him.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTube continues global crackdown on ad blockers, targeting mobile third-party apps⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Funny; I haven’t seen any change in uBlock origin on Firefox.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨99% of My Website Traffic Is Bots: A year of fighting scrapers on my 1.5 million-page website. What I tried, how I failed, and what's working now.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It has indeed occurred to me; none of those signs by itself is enough to flag the output as LLM generated. But when you put them all together, and combine it with the fact that the article itself claims everything else (the site pages, the anti-bot analysis and techniques, etc) was all generated by Claude, there’s little room left for doubt.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨In about 3 or 4 years can I move to Canada with 250k US and get myself a trailer and a couple acres to grow pot for the community? Get a license to sell it to local businesses?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It might? As long as you’ve got documentation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨In about 3 or 4 years can I move to Canada with 250k US and get myself a trailer and a couple acres to grow pot for the community? Get a license to sell it to local businesses?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You’ll have multiple issues there; none insurmountable.

  First, moving to Canada. Do you have citizenship or Canadian ancestors? Are you a persecuted minority from a war torn nation? You already indicated you aren’t entering the country based on wealth or needed skills.

  Second: working in Canada. Once you’ve moved here, you’ll need to get a work permit, a social insurance number, and get registered to pay personal and business taxes.

  Which brings us to the next bit: you’ll need to register a business and pay the licensing fees. If you’re planning to farm, you’ll need permits and inspections and a business plan for that as well.

  By this point you’re likely down to around $100k remaining. You MIGHT be able to find a decent trailer to buy for that price. But then you have to park it somewhere. Where I live, a couple of acres will run you around $5million CAD. But there’s lots of places out in the middle of nowhere where you can get a couple of acres for around $30k. That comes with no services however; you’ll need to bring everything you need from electricity and water to Internet and food. And likely you’ll need to pay someone with a skidder to build you a road to that acreage. And you’ll be in a place with very few people, -40 temps in the winter and hottemps in the summer with mosquitoes and black flies in swarms. And likely you’ll be outside a fire district, so the next wildfire that sweeps through will wipe you out.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨99% of My Website Traffic Is Bots: A year of fighting scrapers on my 1.5 million-page website. What I tried, how I failed, and what's working now.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think you’re still missing something then; the way words are bolded, the way bulleted lists are placed, sentence fragment structure, using actual <h#> structure and using it correctly, the even placement of generated images; it all screams “AI”.

  One of the reasons AI uses that type of structure is that it is easy to generate nested context that way in markdown, and then convert directly to HTML, and AI agents talk markdown. In fact, pretty much every long form article I’ve seen generated by AI looks exactly like this, right down to the lack of information density.

  There were definitely some places that were human tweaked, but most of this was generated in whole cloth off of the logs the website generated.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨99% of My Website Traffic Is Bots: A year of fighting scrapers on my 1.5 million-page website. What I tried, how I failed, and what's working now.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I tried to read that. Then I tried skimming for the actual content. I found some, but eventually gave up. Claude can definitely tell a long-winded story.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do turkeys that tell you to cook from frozen usually turn out as good as thawed ones?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I figure everyone reading that who is interested is already online on a device that can provide definitions and detailed video instructions on hiw to do it. Much better than I could.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do turkeys that tell you to cook from frozen usually turn out as good as thawed ones?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Same, but I spatchcock mine. Massively speeds up the cooking time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  To rich businessmen, a hacker has a certain reputation on the golf course.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If Q-Tips are not for ears what are they for? I use them to clean each individual key on my laptop from time to time.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  They were originally designed for cleaning ears by someone who didn’t know how the inside of an ear worked.

  That said, I’ve used them twice today already to clean the outer ear area AND to fish an errant piece of wax out of my ear canal.

  One problem is that part of a functional ear that helps it self-clean is a bunch of tiny hairs that a Q Tip can damage. Another problem is that you don’t want to poke anything solid anywhere near your ear drum, because tou can permanently damage the sensitive components at the end of the ear canal.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is everyone now so afraid of AI and machines? Machines print the money we live by, machines help us to connect to the internet and so forth. Why now are we all afraid of what they will do?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Of course this is the Patnou account again.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If I only have space/money for one exercise machine, what should I get?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve tried to answer that multiple times.

  First attempt: rowing machine. On paper, it’s the best solution.

  However, using it for a year, I found it really difficult to get motivated to use it, and any sort of injury, strain or discomfort was an excuse to skip the day’s row.

  I’ve also tried a recumbent stationary bicycle and a spinner. Again, both worked well for a while, but were hard to maintain.

  The ones with lasting power for me are:

  Combination chinup bar / captain’s chair / dip bar — this thing gets a LOT of use, as you can just do a few reps in passing or do a solid circuit training session.

  Kettleball - again, you can just pick it up and use it.

  Likewise, dumbbells.

  I’ve found that for any large piece of equipment, one that’s good enough quality to enjoy using is usually the cost of a gym membership. And with the membership, you get to use ALL the machines if you can discipline yourself to actually show up.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why weren't telephone lines and electrical lines not buried under ground? Which would have saved a bunch of money from upkeep and accidents?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve lived in areas where they aren’t underground BECAUSE of potential severe weather. The powerlines run through miles of wilderness and are serviced by helicopter. Which doesn’t come out when the weather’s bad. But if they were buried (which would be massively more expensive) they’d tear up lots of wilderness and flood/break regularly due to soil movement and tree growth.

  Plus, running conduit through rock is a lot harder than drilling a few holes to mount a pole.

  Where I am now? It’s all in conduit under the street beside the storm drains, except where there hasn’t been new development to pay for it. Seems like they have to service the conduits a lot more than the poles though, and fixing a pole line stays out of the way of traffic and takes a couple of minutes, where fixing underground shorts involves blocking off a lane, snaking the cables, and bringing in specialists — takes up to 3 hours for a similar repair.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are we at a point in human history where we can get robotic limbs and other things to better our day to day lives? Like a robotic arm where I can pick up 100lbs with one arm and so forth?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Follow you around? Your account posts everywhere, all the time!