jarfil
@jarfil@beehaw.org
Programmer and sysadmin (DevOps?), wannabe polymath in tech, science and the mind. Neurodivergent, disabled, burned out, and close to throwing in the towel, but still liking ponies 🦄 and sometimes willing to discuss stuff.
- Comment on draw.io changed license from Apache 2.0 to non-FOSS-license on August 27, 2024 4 weeks ago:
As usual, the unresolved underlying issue is, how to get funding for FLOSS projects.
Entitled cheapskates are nothing new; a generic solution to the issue, would be something new.
- Comment on Chinese EV owners are losing access to smartphone app updates and driving features when companies go bust 2 months ago:
By the time they’re about to go belly up, companies no longer have the resources to ensure they comb through the code to remove the parts licensed from 3rd parties, and the liquidators see all assets as something to sell in order to cover whatever loans the company got.
In an ideal world, consumers would never buy a non-open sourced car, or phone, or IoT device.
In the real world, regulators need to force companies to give consumers at least some basic way to control the products they buy.
- Comment on How Star Wars walked away from the world’s first self-retracting lightsaber toy [The Verge] 2 months ago:
Smart to have a buyback clause in the contract, otherwise this would’ve been lost and locked until the patent expired.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
You say I don’t read… then proceed to explain the same that I already said? Ok.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
This is going to get interesting:
The decision imposes a daily fine of R$50,000 (£6,800) on individuals and companies that attempt to continue using X via VPN.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
A judge’s ruling on a previous case makes that ruling law.
Previous rulings are a precedent in Common Law systems like the US, UK, Canada, or Australia.
Only Supreme Court rulings become a precedent in Civil Law systems like the EU, Russia,most of the rest of America.
To draw an example, the EU never made a law about cookie splash screens.
A very poor example; Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive 2002/58/EC.
The EU at its top level creates “Directives”, which member states then are bound to transpose into their national Civil Law systems. Judges can interprete that law in different ways, none of which creates a precedent. Only a country’s Supreme Court decision creates a precedent for that country, but even then it can be recurred up to the EU Tribunal, which has the last saying.
- Comment on How Telegram's Founder Pavel Durov Became a Culture War Martyr [404] 2 months ago:
It may not be just the Kremlin. I’ve had several cases where I wrote about something in a Telegram chat, stuff I had never talked about before, and in a matter of seconds started seeing related ads on Facebook.
Alternatively, it could be the keyboard leaking all text, or I could have some other spyware, but I’ve only had that happen to me between Telegram and Facebook.
- Comment on Twitter loses World Bank ads over pro-Nazi content placement 2 months ago:
On the bright sight, he also promised Saudi Arabia to build a Hyperloop, also for The Line city in Neom, that’s turning out to be a great way to syphon SA’s oil sales state fund.
But seriously, a Hyperloop would work best on Mars, where the pressure differential would be minimal, while a tube would keep the dust out. Elon’s master plan is still to build a Mars colony with indentured servants under threat of no air. On the way, he’s scamming whoever it takes, and getting any investment or benefit he can land.
- Comment on Twitter loses World Bank ads over pro-Nazi content placement 2 months ago:
narcissistic arsehole
I’ve recently got suckered into a group that turned out to consider calling people “narcissistic” is an “ableist slur… because narcissism is a disability”.
EM is still kind of a real life Tony Stark, the character is not exactly an altruistic philanthropist either.
- Comment on I don't hate Body Type replacing Gender, I hate laziness 2 months ago:
Well, there is an OpenSource client, and private servers with custom rules. That makes every modification possible.
- Comment on Indigenous creators are clashing with YouTube’s and Instagram’s sensitive content bans 2 months ago:
US company enacting puritanical culture erasure guidelines? What’s new?
If they want their culture preserved, there is peertube and archive.org, but they may have trouble monetizing them.
- Comment on I don't hate Body Type replacing Gender, I hate laziness 2 months ago:
Crazy talk, and you’re onto something… that’s been solved already.
Crazy talk: you hate that a 10+ years old game is only getting cosmetic changes instead of a rehaul of the whole character model. That’s crazy, nobody’s going to do that, not the ones expecting a profit, and not the modding community doing it for free. If you feel it’s a silly change, you’re right, but realize that it’s the only change they could do.
You’re onto something: body feature sliders. Male, female, giraffe, and turtle bodies, have some structurald differences, that however mostly match to the same bones having different shapes. The solution is a body shape slider, or 50. It’s something that existed, in some games, since at least the 2000s. Others were lazy and didn’t do it.
For reference:
- Comment on I don't hate Body Type replacing Gender, I hate laziness 2 months ago:
Games could have multiple protagonists with different bodies, genders, personalities, etc… something like Overwatch did have that, you could even play as a hamster or a robot!
- Comment on NVIDIA: Copyrighted Books Are Just Statistical Correlations to Our AI Models * TorrentFreak 2 months ago:
Fruit of the poisoned tree. Disney’s “until author’s death + 70 years” copyrights are BS, would be nice if nVidia and all the AI companies were to argue to change that.
- Comment on Kim Dotcom to be extradited from New Zealand to US 3 months ago:
Maybe… but before sharing files, his priors include selling stolen phone numbers, some shady stock manipulation, an embezzlement sentence, running an illegal hedge fund, and other shenanigans.
- Comment on Disney wants a wrongful death lawsuit thrown out because the plaintiff had Disney+ 3 months ago:
Disney
stoleadapted most of those belowed stories and characters. - Comment on Kim Dotcom to be extradited from New Zealand to US 3 months ago:
As well as copyright infringement, Dotcom faces more serious charges, including money laundering and racketeering. He has long argued that he should not be held liable for copyright infringement carried out using his site
Ok… so what about that money laundering and racketeering, once again?
Really not sure how to feel about this. The copyright infringement damage claims are bonkers, but this guy is not exactly an upstanding citizen either. He already got some jail time in the 90s, fled to NZ, changed his name to a joke, and has been involved in random shady stuff over the last decade.
- Comment on Social-media firms are lowering defenses to foreign disinformation campaigns, researchers warn 3 months ago:
Good thing the Fediverse is a thing… too bad it isn’t more popular, and with more tooling, but good thing it exists.
- Comment on AI’s Impact on Black Americans 3 months ago:
consumer cameras were made with a certain type of complexion in mind
Not sure if it’s what you’re talking about, but consumer cameras, and most graphics systems, have been using logarithmic encoding (gamma) to fit a larger dynamic range into a reduced data range… which has the effect of reducing de detail level of larger areas of an image, with the idea that the human eye would struggle to see them anyway. It didn’t have anything to do with complexion, but with pushing technology to a minimally acceptable level on a limited budget. HDR cameras with linear encoding, are still quite expensive, way out of the consumer market range, and it doesn’t seem like that’s going to change too soon.
- Comment on Opinion | Don’t Get Fooled Again by Crypto 3 months ago:
Lightning Network is not centralized, anyone can run a node with their own wallet. Not everyone will want to, since there are management and safety tasks involved, but that’s up to each one.
Funds are stored in your own wallet… but again, you can use some bank’s wallet if you want to, up to each one.
Transactions are almost instantaneous, no need to wait for the channels to settle. You only need to wait when moving Bitcoin between non-LN and LN wallets or, if running your own node, when a channel closes.
You can find a list of physical stores accepting LN… mostly in El Salvador, but still.
- Comment on Opinion | Don’t Get Fooled Again by Crypto 3 months ago:
They’re not legal tender, not at all commonly accepted, and anyone accepting them (mostly in tourist areas) will charge an exchange fee because nobody’s going to take them as payment for their bills.
They’re all the same as casino tokens though, because they don’t have an intrinsic value, like for example an ounce of gold.
- Fiat represents the trust an issuing bank has in everyone trusting it at a faster pace than the expiry of its loans.
- Casino tokens represent the trust a person has in the casino paying out when getting the token back.
- Crypto represents the trust in that someone will want to exchange it for something in the future.
Since the end of the gold standard, economy has been running on trust (aka: credit). These are just different representations of that.
- Comment on TikTok Stacking Algorithms in Chinese Government’s Favor with Pro-China Content Originating from State-Linked Entities, Study Claims 3 months ago:
Let’s play Devil’s Advocate: …maybe it’s not TikTok’s algorithm’s fault, but the CCP’s ability to have people skilled at manipulating it? TikTok could probably tweak its algorithm to prevent that, but maybe it’s more profitable to do nothing?
- Comment on Russia legalizes Bitcoin and cryptocurrency mining 3 months ago:
Barter is not a unheard of way to conduct business, even between countries without sanctions. The SWIFT network itself has become a sort of barter system.
I’m guessing in this case, they both distrust each other’s currency, so they might as well trade in Bitcoin as in any other currency they’d both trust more… if there was such.
- Comment on Opinion | Don’t Get Fooled Again by Crypto 3 months ago:
No it’s not.
Stocks are based on the “valuation” people give them, for whatever reason they want. Check Gazprom’s recent stock valuation for a reality check; it doesn’t matter what “real goods or services” it keeps providing, everyone who held Gazprom stock, got exactly $0 for it. For further information, check how much company shares are worth.
(Spoiler: they’re ALL based on “hype and sunken cost”)
- Comment on Opinion | Don’t Get Fooled Again by Crypto 3 months ago:
Cash is inflationary, “by definition” as per current monetary theories, meaning it is designed to lose value over time. Not much of an investment.
Also, I can’t use USD, GBP or AUD for “goods and services outside of itself”… unless I exchange them for EUR first, same as any Crypto.
- Comment on Opinion | Don’t Get Fooled Again by Crypto 3 months ago:
You can hide your identity on Monero, not so much on Bitcoin. BTC either gets linked to a series of identities, or is freshly mined, both of which can be allowed or denied by exchanges via law enforcement.
In the traditional finance system, hiding relies on bribery, mules, and straight up hacking. Those are common to both systems, and law enforcement knows how to deal with them.
- Comment on Opinion | Don’t Get Fooled Again by Crypto 3 months ago:
What is the inherent value of 50 USD?
Transactions on Bitcoin’s lightning network are still worth pennies, who cares about what some millionaires pay to settle them quickly.
- Comment on Opinion | Don’t Get Fooled Again by Crypto 3 months ago:
Unless you can defend that plot of land against a few of the largest superpowers combined… that land is only yours as long as your country wants to defend your ownership of it.
Water is already not yours in most places, and supplies are not guaranteed to last. Education gets lost with age, amnesia, dementia, and death. A sturdy pair of boots rarely lasts as much as a single lifetime.
- Comment on Opinion | Don’t Get Fooled Again by Crypto 3 months ago:
Perhaps there’s already an alternative out there somewhere which is actually useful and not based on avarice, fraud, unsustainable resource usage, or unsustainable hype
The USD… /jk 🤣🤣
No currency or money system can avoid those, they are intrinsic features of capitalism, which is an intrinsic consequence of “whoever hoards more X, gets more of most things in life”.
And can you blame people for wanting to hide their cards when hoarding X? Have you tried consulting real-time stock values, with market depth, and a list of market orders? Have you checked the pricing plans for a Bloomberg terminal?
Crypto is a world of transparency and freedom, compared to non-crypro markets.
- Comment on Opinion | Don’t Get Fooled Again by Crypto 3 months ago:
…or were you?
Depending on whether some of it becomes, or not, a reasonably popular means of value exchange in the future, “being fooled” will mean having bought some when it was cheap, or not. 😉
