matlag
@matlag@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on 4 days ago:
But they’ll likely be older, and learn to be more tech savvy to get around the block.
The school my kid attens provide Chromebooks, with a tight control of course.
That’s why 11y old had to learn from one of their classmates how to bypass the control. Thanks to tech protection they were safe from accidentally finding porn (did that ever happen to anyone in real life??) for at least one week.
The only part I mentioned was child development, which research has shown to have a negative impact (just like we did with cigarettes and alcohol).
We all agree. Yet I don’t understand why you so much want to defend a mechanism that is already failing its stated purpose. In case you missed it: it is a miserable total failure. It just increased VPN usage. That, and the massive data collection. Period. Nothing else achieved.
So now I guess it’s going to be ok to control VPN.
independent.co.uk/…/vpns-porn-online-safety-act-c…
That’s going to fail, by the way. Then I guess you must ban Tor at ISP level. Completely block it, for the sake of the children.
Then, then, then…
Then children are still exposed to porn, but we’re working on it! Meanwhile, would you come to the station explain why you visited that website and posted that nasty anonymous comment about the PM last wednesday night?
- Comment on 5 days ago:
And eventually, we always, always figure out their leaders don’t abide to the rules they set for others.
- Comment on 5 days ago:
Why do we regulate alcohol and cigarettes? Why dont parent’s just parent their kids? How would the kid even bave the money to buy them in the first place? To be clear, when these restrictions were being put in place, people absolutely had the exact same arguments you are making right now. The onus is on the parents.
And so now no kid can access alcohol or cigarettes, right? Right?? Aaaaah, yes they can…
Even kids with parents that have reasonable restrictions are easily able to access internet pornography because internet devices are everywhere. Internet devices are easier to access than cigarettes and alcohol, and can do just as much damage to their development. Why wouldn’t the government also control access to confirm someone’s age.
It’s going to have exactly the same efficiency: none. Kids educated enough to know they shouldn’t seek it won’t. The others will definitely find a way to get it. We will never hear about it after. There will be no report, stats, anything. How much stats have you seen on the efficiency of “anti-terrorists” laws?
Please do not respond to me about giving out your ID if you do not acknowledge my comment on use zero knowledge proof’s to verify you’re over an age.
I don’t acknowledge vaporware.
“Child’s protection”, “anti-terrorist”, “against pedophile” so many emotionally triggering words so that we slowly accept more and more control. Had this been proposed 10 years ago, people would have screamed this is “soviet-style”. Nowadays, it’s just one more small step.
I don’t give it another 10 years before you accept webcams in your house with IA monitoring you with complete guaranteed privacy as the IA is only to report cases of harm on children by their caretakers. It will just take a bit more push and a big case of child abuse on the news. We do watch people’s behavior outside the house, right? Why not inside? How many more kids are you ready to sacrifice in the name of privacy??
- Comment on 5 days ago:
The internet is different, and it’s currently the wild west.
As opposed to real world where I could buy alcohol without any problem at 15–16 and was offered cigarettes at the same age despite both being forbidden in my country? If kids wants something bad enough, they’ll get it. The stronger the ban, the higher the interest it creates for teens.
Again, if done correctly, it can be done privately and securely.
The only thing you could try is parental control on their devices. Be aware they will seek other devices outside, from their friends, etc. UK has seen an explosion of VPNs use since implementation of their control: it’s miserably failing already.
Or is it? Many adults went through the ID confirmation process…
Education: that works! Mindless coercion never works. But the advocate of these solutions know that very well. The kids were never their target.
- Comment on AI experts return from China stunned: The U.S. grid is so weak, the race may already be over 1 week ago:
We’ve been hearing about this decades.
Yes, you’ve been hearind that for decades, just like climate change: if you wait for an abrupt treshold with a clear before/after cut , you’re going to wait for a while.
China has developed an advanced high speed trains network. You have no idea how much US looks backward on that.
China still opens coal burning power plants, jut also a very large number of renewable and nuclear power plants. They’re serious about electrification.
They took the lead in scientific publication.
US needs to put up tariffs to protect its car makers from being wiped out by Chinese ones. Western car makers rely more and more on Chinese batteries suppliers.
All the signs are there. You just need to ackowledge them.
People underestimate just how corrupt, dysfunctional, and incompetent the Chinese system is under the CCP.
As compared to what? In the US, corruption is legal, it’s called campaign donation and SuperPAC. At this stage, elections pick which pack of oligarchs will rule: GOP donators or Dems donators.
If the system is so much better, where are the high speed trains, advanced power grid, decarbonation plan, school that can get high potentials to the top, decent healthcare system?
Where are the fruits of this less corrupt dysfunctional and incompetent system?
China’s isolation give it the illusion that it’s better, but in reality, it’s even worse.
Alother delusion from local US news. China is not that isolated, they have developed deep relations with a number of countries in Africa and middle east, and they’re a privileged trade partner with many more. Worse even: with the current US policy of tariffs, several countries that were reluctant to have deeper ties with China are pushed in their arms.
Every major Chinese achievement from their mass transit system to their big corporations to their economic growth to them pulling ahead technologically to so many more, all come with big asterisks attached that make them much more questionable.
Meaning what? Their high speed trains are absolutely working. In large cities, half of the cars in the street are electric cars, majority from domestic brands and a few Tesla. They have very advanced and very cheap mass transit networks.
As I was saying: it’s just like global warming: if you sit and wait claiming it’s not really happening and/or not that bad, you’re totally unprepared when disasters hit you.
The only thing I will agree with you here is their emonomy is not half as great as they want to claim. The estate market has been in a free fall in all but the big 4 cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Guandong, Shenzhen).
But if the US wants to be the first power of the rest of the 21st century world, they need to wake up!
- Comment on PSA on privuhcy 4 weeks ago:
Yes, at least for Firefox:
- Comment on I'm setting up a Windows 11 laptop for my uncle. Is there a sneaky way to make it block right-wing bullshit websites? 5 weeks ago:
Technically that won’t be a baseless conspiracy theory though. Just not “the liberals”, and not hiding “the truth”.
- Comment on 5 weeks ago:
I do 1:1 videocalls on XMPP. Quite some clients implement that now. But there were no videoconferences until very recently. That’s changing, though. See Movim right now, for example.
Main 2 issues with XMPP are inconsistent clients (in terms of GUI but also features wise) and the incredibly, astonishingly, ridiculously sloooooooooooooooow evolution of the protocol through the XSF. Nothing can get in there until it’s “perfect”. Clients devs are reluctant to implement things until the extension is stable. And the best part is this approach hardly work: the best way to figure if something works is to deploy it in larger and larger scales and improve it on the way as you identify corner cases you didn’t think about. Not to review the description for months/year until it qualifies as literature…
- Comment on Welcome to the Labour police state 1 month ago:
Unfortunately France is only lagging behind, but on the same authoritarian path.
First thing done after terrorist attack: declare emergency state, a tool designed for cases where the state is at risk of collapsing because of invasion by a foreing country or violent insurrection…
The police gains the power to assign people considered at risk at their residence. Very first use: assign climate activists at residence during the COP.
Emergency state is reconducted multiple times without any rationale, other than vague “terrorist threat”.
One of the first actions from Macron once in power was to make it permanent, by passing its key elements in the law.
Protests against anti-social policies or for climate are now systematically met with a violent response. People come out with an eye or a hand missing due to flashballs and lacrymo grenades. Answer from the government is something like “they had it coming”.
Cases of activists and journalists intimidation by law enforcement are multiplying.
Give it a bit of time, and France will catch up.
- Comment on In 6 hours it will be illegal to say "I support Palestine Action" in the UK, with a sentence of up to 14 years in prison. 1 month ago:
So, if they shut down and a new org called “Palestine Initiative” that happens to be coincidentally led by the same folks… all good?
- Comment on Having the ability to lie and manipulate with no remorse will get you much further in this world than having morals and being correct 1 month ago:
Yeah, that’s what the rest of us try to convince ourself so that we can cope with it. That or the idea that these people must sleep very poorly thinking about what they’ve done, while we’re actually the ones who have poor sleep thinking about what they’ve done and feeling powerless.
- Comment on WhatsApp is officially getting ads 2 months ago:
It’s not just the funding, it’s the business overall. Public companies need to show growing revenues year to year, and worse: growing revenues with a minimum yield. A product can grow by attracting more users up to a certain point. Then the only way to grow is by making more money out of the same users base. If the revenue is based on ads:
- Extend the product so that the user’s engagement increases (channels/others kind).
- Add paying features (freemium approach, that includes blue stars or whatever the hell you want it to look like…)
- Serve them ads
Freemium is not always working well and Meta never used it. They have no new great idea to extend the product without eating their other products users bases. So the only one left is more ads.
Funding is not the issue, for-profit companies are. Non-profit is the way to go. Federation is even better as individuals/families/small organizations can run their own servers.-
- Comment on Liquid Trees 3 months ago:
Trees provide shades that cool down the cities. These algae don’t. The main benefit of these “liquid trees” is to reduce pollution. You know what reduces even more pollution? Electrification and public transportation. Combine both. You’ll need much less space for motor vehicles lane inside the city and no need for “depolluting” inventions. Add some bike lanes and you’ll still have plenty of space for trees. They’re better looking and will do the cooling job.
So, as I was saying: praising a less efficient solution that may bring new unexpected issues down the road because the efficient solution requires people to change.
- Comment on Liquid Trees 3 months ago:
The issue with trees is you need to adapt the city to them, you can’t adapt them to the city. And people have proven once and again that they would invent anything to not move by an inch when our way of life is put in question.
So we push forward with absurd solutions one after the other: carbon capture, atmospheric geo-engineering, a damned nuke in antarctica, and now “liquid trees”.
Because the alternative is to change our ways, and we can’t face that.
- Comment on Liquid Trees 3 months ago:
The issue with trees is you need to adapt the city to them, you can’t adapt them to the city. And people have proven once and again that they would invent anything to not move by an inch when our way of life is put in question.
So we push forward with absurd solutions one after the other: carbon capture, atmospheric geo-engineering, a damned nuke in antarctica, and now “liquid trees”.
Because the alternative is to change our ways, and we can’t face that.
- Comment on Future apocalypse movies won't have survivors scavaging abandoned cars. 3 months ago:
Except most modern cars have turbo and direct injections and are very sensitive to gas/diesel quality. Even your diesel car will break down on an aged diesel. If the tank is not full, it will have degraded in contact with air, and if it stayed too long, it may have absorbed too much humidity and will ruin your advanced diesel engine.
- Comment on conduwuit, “featureful fork of conduit” (Rust Matrix homeserver), is discontinued 4 months ago:
Really? Do you realize how many people we’re talking about? This is where the idea that the human brain can’t comprehend interactions with too many people.
“Multiple indepondant people” might be 5% of the people, some of them under the mob’s effect (wouldn’t engage alone).
Maybe we miss another point of view, but maybe we don’t. This may be a screaming example of what you get as a representative of minorities getting a bit of attention.
- Comment on Undocumented 'Backdoor' Found In Chinese Bluetooth Chip Used By a Billion Devices. 5 months ago:
Summary: China is not a friend country. It’s a hostile country. Yes, we know.
But the news is… so is the USA to Canada now. A hostile country threatening to annex Canada and trying to cripple the economy as a way to achieve the goal. So either we slap 100% tariffs on US made cars, which would hurt Canadians, or we apply the same tariffs on Chinese cars, so reduce them from where they are at the moment.
- Comment on Undocumented 'Backdoor' Found In Chinese Bluetooth Chip Used By a Billion Devices. 5 months ago:
Yes, but Canada had implemented 100% tariff on cars from China, following the US. That’s pre-trade war. The proposal is to lift that one.
- Comment on Undocumented 'Backdoor' Found In Chinese Bluetooth Chip Used By a Billion Devices. 5 months ago:
Because that’s not about privacy, that’s about the trade war. Retaliatory tariffs on US cars increase cost of cars for Canadians, as there are almost no car assembled in Canada. Reducing or eliminating tariffs on cars from China would lower cost of new cars for Canadians while keeping the tariffs up.
For privacy and security, not a single new car on the market is decent right now. That should be regulated, but that’s no concern for any politician at the moment.
- Comment on The US Treasury Spent HOW MUCH Illegally? Now You Know Why the Left Wants to Stop DOGE. 6 months ago:
thefiscaltimes.com/…/Chart-Day-Unauthorized-Spend…
Looking forward to see US shutting down its veteran’s healthcare or the FAA, among others.
That’s going to be a show seen from outside.
- Comment on Germany hits 62.7% renewables in 2024 energy mix, with solar contributing 14% 7 months ago:
They do. But you need to reduce the generation to make sure you don’t heat up too much the water for the ecosystem that lives in. Less water means the temperature difference before and after the plant is higher. That’s the constrain.
- Comment on Germany hits 62.7% renewables in 2024 energy mix, with solar contributing 14% 7 months ago:
Prices capped have nothing to do with nuclear energy and everything to do with stupid EU price policy.
France used to have a monopoly by a state owned company on electrIcity: EDF. But everyone knows that’s terrible, and private market is the way to go. At the time, electricity in France was the cheapest across Europe, but it’s still terrible because… well that HAD to change!
In order to introduce some competition, generation, network and “distribution” (billing…) activities were separated.
Then private distributors (again: billing companies with 0 generation capabilites and 0 grid network) were allocated some quota of electricity from the nuclear electricity generated by EDF at low cost.
In addition, and that’s the European policy: electricity price on the market would be set at the cost of the most expensive generator at a given time. Example: 100% nuclear today: cost is set at cost of nuclear. 95% of electricity from nuclear, 5% from gas: 100% of the electricity that day is billed at cost of gas! 80% nuclear, 15% gas, 5% coal: 100% of the electricity billed at cost of coal!
Why? So that the priate newcomer would get huge benefits and be able to invest in electricity generation. But: there was 0 constrain in doing so, so they just rack up benefits at the expense of EDF and clients! Even better: since they get such low prices from their quota, they’re cheaper than the EDF split distributor company. So at some point, their quota was insufficient for their client’s demand. Time to invest… hahaha! No I’m kidding: time to ask for a bigger quota, of course granted by Macron and his team.
Then came Ukraine invasion. Uh oooh! Gas price exploses, even the “distributors” start to feel the pain. What to do? Well, kick out their clients! Refure to renew contracts, or ask for such a ridicuously high price to make sure they just go! EDF’s hisorical distribution company is legally obligated to take them back. And that’s where the 2nd joke kicks in: EDF gave s much quota of nuclear electricity that they no longer have enough for these clients they have to take. No worries: the “distributors” sold back the electricity quota… at market price, ie mostly gas price!
With the price of gas multiplied n times determining the cost of the whole production, it became unbearable for clients. That’s where genius Macron and Lemaire (Minister of Economy) set a “shield” (cap) on the bills. It’s no shield nor cap. It’s actually the state of France paying the difference in the bills between the actual bill and the cap they set. That’s public money!
And again, that money didn’t go to resources. It went straight to “distributors” (rather call them parasites).
For sure, the heavy maintenance work on the nuclear power plant done at the time didn’t help. They decided to do it on all plants at once (another bad call) and it lasted longer than planned.
But the price issue has nothing to do with nuclear and everything to do with stupid policies.
And now, lesson learned (not): Spain and Portugal got out of that absurd elecricity market. Germany and France (and many other countries) made a few changes and keep going. Because competition with multiple private actors in electricity is good. Can’t you see it??