adespoton

@adespoton@lemmy.ca

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If at a restaurant a guy is choking and I give them the Heimlich and accidentally break a rib while trying to save his life. Can I be sued?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Depends on the country you’re in. Some have Good Samaritan laws; some don’t.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do millennials keep looking significantly more youthful than previous generations?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  It ages the people around you too. That’s a big part of what’s changed.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do millennials keep looking significantly more youthful than previous generations?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah; most people for years thought I was a millennial if they were meeting me for the first time. I put it down to good diet, exercise, and not exposing my skin to the sun more than necessary (something that got me teased when young and everyone was trying to tan).

  People in previous generations didn’t tend to have a choice; they were exposed to smoke and sunlight as a matter of course.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, there’s poisonous, toxic and indigestible. Various things can be one of those three to various other things; since mushrooms came first, you’ll find that most of them tend to be toxic to other organisms that haven’t evolved to consume them. Also, it’s good to differentiate between the mycelium and the fruit; often the mushroom fruits ARE poisonous to mammals because they propagate by airborne spores, so the poison evolved as a protection against being eaten before they could spore.

  Other mushrooms depend on other features for their survival, from looking like a poisonous mushroom, to not fruiting, to making digestion by an animal part of their reproductive process.

  There’s probably more variety in the mushroom kingdom than there is in the animal kingdom.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If just before a cremation, I lined the coffin with 30 phone batteries, would the resulting lithium ion fireworks display have any meaningful effect on the proceedings?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  As a result, you’d end up with a bemused mortician the next time they used the coffin, and that’s about it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is the difference between a Server Farm and a Data Center? And how or why do data center's produce so much waste>?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I like your answer the best.

  I’d add that server farms sprung up to cluster network services around high speed network cables; they allow individuals to locate their services somewhere that others can access them easily.

  Data centres traditionally were run by single organizations to centrally store their data — where a server farms was about providing services in the most accessible way, data centres were about efficiently storing really large data sets in a single place.

  AI compute centres are really both at the same time; they store massive amounts of data AND provide an interface to that data in the same place, because the compute services need near instant access to the data sets to function properly. So you end up with heavy compute clusters and data clusters running side by side, as close to the highest speed and bandwidth network cables as possible.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨NOT SEEKING MEDICAL ADVICE. How does one deal with grief or loss in a safe way without turning to alcohol or drugs?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Remember that healing is not the same as forgetting. What heals is your ability to function as an empathetic human. Learning to carry grief can make you a stronger person to help others bear their losses.

  Also, people will unintentionally hurt you during your time of grieving. Accept it as part of the process of healing. Think of it as the world reminding you that it’s not all about you.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What should computer monitoring software actually let you control?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Computer monitoring software should be designed and set up to monitor hardware and software, not people.

  This isn’t to say that it can’t monitor people, but that shouldn’t be how it is architected.

  Identity monitoring software on the other hand… that should be monitoring people, with the goal to protect their PII from unauthorized access.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I grew up in the age of the Cold War. And was taught to hate Russia. All the way up to the fall of the USSR. What the hell happened between then and now? Is their like a timeline or something?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Looking from the outside, the US was already losing its focus and leading into ideological/tribal thinking with the Viet Nam war and the fight over Afghanistan. By the time the USSR fell, the US was heavily entrenched in tribal manifest destiny, and no longer focused on progress or willing to learn from what other nations were doing well.

  Russia, in contrast, was quickly captured by the soviet power mongers without the traditional trappings of the communist government to keep them at least partially in check. So they gathered their oligarchs and went full on tribal mafia.

  The US eventually picked China to be the new target of hate, but China was more canny and used that window to buy all the production and delivery out from under the US, and then went on to buy a lot of the land and companies within the US. As a result, the US government could only push Chinese hatred so far.

  And then Russia succeeded in working with rich Americans to get the oligarch class installed in the US as well, so there were people in power with shared interests.

  It all happened out in the open and shouldn’t be a surprise; there were even people warning about the likely result every step of the way.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do you fear for children's future with social media growing even more?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I led by example. No non-anonymous social media for me, and my kids followed my example. It wasn’t even a discussion.

  Doesn’t seem to have harmed them at all; they’ve got lots of friends and lots of Signal chat groups. And if you look for them online by name, you get a very curated and focused set of results, many of which are fakes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Passkeys are a trap. Do not use them.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yubikeys are the best of both worlds if you can get them — work paid for mine, but they’re my keys, not theirs, so I can use them for personal accounts as well as work accounts, and not have to worry about them being bound to a work device or insecure from being synced keys in a password vault.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Passkeys are a trap. Do not use them.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨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?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨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]⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨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?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨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 ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨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.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨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?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

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