rob_t_firefly
@rob_t_firefly@lemmy.world
Artist, writer, comic, loud voice, activist, and nerd of all trades from New York City.
- Home: RobVincent.net
- Podcasts: modern.technology
- Toots: hackers.town/@Rob_T_Firefly
- Pronouns: he/him
- Comment on Itch.io has begun restoring NSFW content, but only if it’s free 4 days ago:
Add some massive unregulated grifting and hideous environmental consequences to your idea, and you’ve just invented cryptocurrency.
- Comment on Piss Post 4 days ago:
Excellent point!
- Comment on Yeah 5 days ago:
I wanna go gambling with your hard drive.
- Comment on Microsoft suddenly bans LibreOffice developer's email account, blocks appeal 5 days ago:
Or the terrifyingly-random bullshit that happens when someone chooses to depend on a free service such as Hotmail as their primary mission-critical address. (This article is about the developer getting locked out of their Hotmail, and the generally-broken state of Hotmail’s account recovery process.)
- Comment on Piss Post 1 week ago:
My version of this would have the smiley face in every square.
- Comment on The Substack app sent a push notification promoting a Nazi newsletter to several users. 1 week ago:
The full post by linked source Taylor Lorenz about this appears here on her Patreon (openly readable, not locked as of now).
She still writes on Substack, though, which ultimately works in support of This Sort of Thing.
- Comment on The Substack app sent a push notification promoting a Nazi newsletter to several users. 1 week ago:
- Comment on UK households could face VPN 'ban' after use skyrockets following Online Safety Bill 1 week ago:
The linked story has been updated. The headline now reads:
Labour rules out VPN ban in UK but issues warning to UK households
Labour won’t ban the use of Virtual Private Networks
And the story begins:
Labour Party Tech Secretary Peter Kyle has revealed that the Government is “not considering a VPN ban” - after reports in Guido Fawkes suggested it was possible.
- Comment on Brits can get around Discord's age verification thanks to Death Stranding's photo mode, bypassing the measure introduced with the UK's Online Safety Act. We tried it and it works—thanks, Kojima 1 week ago:
From what the article says the app watches you while you change expressions as prompted, so you can’t use AI-generated images. That’s why using a game’s photo mode, where you can toggle the CG facial expression around in real time while pointing your camera at it, is such a clever solution.
- Comment on Easy mistake to make 1 week ago:
Mike may have been binding before.
- Comment on I did the math to prove that Shaq is a woman. 1 week ago:
But how’d Aaron Carter get a jersey with the name O’Neal?
- Comment on "Pilot had to dive aggressively to avoid midair collision over Burbank airport." 1 week ago:
I had no idea who this person was until @zelahdieliekeis@piefed.blahaj.zone’ comment prompted me to look into it. Calling out crap like this is helpful.
- Comment on Transparent PCBs Trigger 90s Nostalgia 1 week ago:
You could swap one screw from that case into your current one. It wouldn’t be obvious to anyone else, but you’d know it was there!
- Comment on Brits can get around Discord's age verification thanks to Death Stranding's photo mode, bypassing the measure introduced with the UK's Online Safety Act. We tried it and it works—thanks, Kojima 1 week ago:
This is a clever way to bypass. If they get wise and somehow filter out Sam Porter Bridges’ face, you could always fire up any of the games of comparable realism which let you design your own characters’ appearance.
- Comment on Transparent PCBs Trigger 90s Nostalgia 1 week ago:
I still keep my actual ancient 5.25" floppy drive from my first 286 DOS box installed in a spare bay in my current PC tower. It hasn’t worked in ages, but as a chunk of my first PC is still part of my current one it means that, in a Ship of Theseus sense, I’ve been using the same computer for 30 years.
- Comment on Transparent PCBs Trigger 90s Nostalgia 1 week ago:
Enjoy the laptop, Cool!
- Comment on ‘If I switch it off, my girlfriend might think I’m cheating’: inside the rise of couples location sharing 1 week ago:
Immature crap like this makes me very grateful to be a grownup married to a grownup.
- Comment on I'm hotmail 2 weeks ago:
I’m self-hosted on my own domain, baby.
- Comment on He suffered so we could learn from his mistakes 2 weeks ago:
- Comment on OpenAI’s Sam Altman warns of AI voice fraud crisis in banking 2 weeks ago:
I argued with my old bank for ages about this and they continued to insist enabling it on my account was a great idea.
The film Sneakers showed the world why voice ID was a massive security hole and an all-around crappy idea back in 1992, and some idiots are still insisting it’s a good idea in 2025 when it’s only become astronomically easier to beat than Robert Redford and friends demonstrated.
In my case, I’ve been doing radio, podcasting, and other voice work for a long time and as a result there are hundreds and hundreds of hours of my voice freely available out there. People can cut and paste me saying “my voice is my passport, verify me” or anything else they like together in Audacity, no AI needed, and fool any telephone-based audio security computer on the planet with it. And explaining this in-person to the branch manager of my former bank elicited nothing more than the blankest expression I’d seen since the pet goldfish I had as a kid.
- Comment on OpenAI’s Sam Altman warns of AI voice fraud crisis in banking 2 weeks ago:
What Mark Hamill Joker fan doesn’t have their own Mark Hamill Joker impression? Screw AI, just do the voice like we’ve all been doing for 30+ years.
- Comment on How it started... 2 weeks ago:
🍔
- Comment on Who had it worse? 2 weeks ago:
From a real-world perspective as a viewer, I think Q was created and written as a foil for Picard, the actors had awesome chemistry, and their TNG stories generally worked really well. On the other hand, as much as I really love Voyager, Q seemed awkwardly shoehorned into it for the sake of doing Q stuff and it really shows. The chemistry with the characters and actors is lacking, the fundamentals of the stories feel way off, and it all just doesn’t work as well.
While I generally rank TNG’s Q episodes near the top of that series, I tend to put VOY’s Q episodes near the bottom.
- Comment on Smart option 2 weeks ago:
Only your own lips.
- Comment on Final wishes 2 weeks ago:
Though this thing is a hilarious idea, obligatory reminder that 3D-printed plastic is not food-safe and you shouldn’t ever be using it for things that go in or near your mouth.
The printed plastic itself is not good for you, the surfaces are very porous bacteria farms which are literally impossible to clean thoroughly. The plastic filament, which is still pretty notoriously unregulated in terms of chemical composition, picks up traces of various other plastics, metals, lubricants, and grime from the 3D printer’s filament path, extruder, and nozzle which end up in the printed product. This particular Shrek pooper would be forever leaching microplastics and worse into your toothpaste, and I hope the photographer just set it up for the pic and wasn’t actually using it as pictured.
- Comment on Please tell me 2 weeks ago:
I want to know what name came in second.
- Comment on Please tell me 2 weeks ago:
Lichen takes a likin’ to those minerals.
- Comment on It's rude to show AI output to people 2 weeks ago:
I am not sure the kind of people who think using the thieving bullshit slop machine is a fine thing to do to can be trusted to have appropriate ideas about rudeness and etiquette.
- Comment on Episode Discussion | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 3x01 "Hegemony, Part II" & 3x02 "Wedding Bell Blues" 2 weeks ago:
Una mentions a “couple of litres” of blood. Did she mean pints, and the writers did a find/replace to make it metric and more futurey? Because “a couple of litres” is a lot.
This is months after the previous episode. I think the implication was that Una had been steadily donating blood so they can study it and/or have a stockpile for emergencies. It makes sense
as long as they avoid the “hey everyone, magic blood is the cure for death” crap from the second JJ movie. - Comment on Why did AT&T think "Eye of Sauron" was the way to go? 2 weeks ago:
They also leaned pretty hard into it when I worked against them for many years as a phone phreak. 😆