corroded
@corroded@lemmy.world
- Comment on Is it greener to just burn plastic? 1 week ago:
I think you could make an argument that even burning plastic in a firepit vs sending it to a landfill are roughly equal. Climate change and air pollution are both major issues, but so is plastic waste and microplastics working their way into everything. I have no idea of the overall harm of burning plastic is less than throwing it away; they both pollute the environment. I can see the the logic in thinking burning is a viable alternative.
Ideally, though, people would just stop using disposable plastic. Plastic is a fantastic material, but it was never supposed to be for “use once and discard” items. For creating durable objects with a decent lifetime, sure, use plastic. Don’t use it as wrapping over another plastic object.
- Comment on Stop Using Your Face or Thumb to Unlock Your Phone 1 week ago:
I really think this depends largely on who you are and what you do with your phone. I have face recognition and fingerprint recognition both enabled on my phone. It’s good enough to prevent a thief from gaining access to my device, and if law enforcement asked, there’s nothing on my phone that could possibly be incriminating. Realistically, I’d have no issue just unlocking my phone and giving it to a police officer, although I do know well enough to always get a lawyer first. Biometrics add an extra layer of convenience; it’s nice to just look at my phone and it unlocks. My concern personally is more about someone stealing my phone and accessing my accounts than self-incrimination.
If I ever was going to put myself in a situation where I’d run afoul of the authorities, I’d leave my phone at home anyway.
- Comment on Roku got hacked 1 month ago:
I’m a big proponent of self-hosting. I cancelled every streaming service years ago, and I host everything I want with Jellyfin and Navidrome. I’m very into certain genres of music, so I always make sure to buy merch or buy some albums on Bandcamp for the artists I really enjoy.
That being said, Roku does have its place. My older family members have lived their whole lives paying for shitty cable TV with 90% of the content something they have no interest in. Roku is a good alternative for them. It’s easy to set up, straightforward to use, and doesn’t cost much outside of the subscriptions for streaming services.
It’s been years since I’ve consumed any media that isn’t coming from my NAS, but the vast majority of people don’t have the knowledge or desire to set up a home media system. Mainstream smart-TV devices like Roku and streaming services like Netflix or Hulu certainly still have their place. They’re a shitty choice for people who enjoy tinkering with software and networking, but a good alternative for someone who just wants to watch TV but is fed up with the bullshit commercial-infested cesspool that is cable.
- Comment on Can you manage your house with a local, no-cloud voice assistant? Mostly, yes. 2 months ago:
The problem I have always had with voice control is that it just doesn’t really seem to fit into my home automation. I don’t want to give Home Assistant a verbal command to turn on the lights. I want it to detect that I’ve entered the room and set the lights to the appropriate scene automatically; I haven’t touched a light switch in weeks. For selecting an album or movie to play, it’s easier to use a menu on a screen than to try to explain it verbally.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m hugely in favor of anything that runs locally instead of using the “cloud.” I think that the majority of people running a home automation server want to tinker with it and streamline it to do things on its own. I want it to “read my mind.” The people who just want a basic solution probably aren’t going to set up HA.
Maybe I’m missing a use case for voice control?
- Comment on Haier hits Home Assistant plugin dev with takedown notice 3 months ago:
If any appliance manufacturer says that accessing your own appliance (that you own) outside their software ecosystem is financially “damaging” to them, they might as well be saying “Hey, just so you know, we’re collecting and selling your data.” If you have already purchased the appliance and their software is free, there is absolutely no other way that using a 3rd-party application could damage their bottom line.
Thanks, Haier, for letting me know never to purchase your products.
- Comment on Why docker 3 months ago:
My personal opinion is that Docker just makes things more difficult. Containers are fantastic, and I use plenty of them, but Docker is just one way to implement containers, and a bad one. I have a server that runs Proxmox; if I need to set up a new service, I just spin up a LXC and install what I need to. It gives all the advantages of a full Linux installation without taking up the resources of a full-fledged OS. With Docker, I would need a VM running the docker host, then I’d have to install my docker containers inside this host, then forward any ports or resources between the hypervisor, docker host, and docker container.
I just don’t get the use-case for Docker. As far as I can tell, all it does is add another layer of complexity between the host machine and the container.
- Comment on Bethesda are individually rebutting Starfield Steam reviewers, defending the loading breaks and "empty" worlds 5 months ago:
That’s fair. I also just realized that the game is set just a few hundred years after the invention of interstellar travel. It wouldn’t exactly be realistic to have stuff everywhere. Even real human civilizations on Earth still have areas of untouched land.
- Comment on Bethesda are individually rebutting Starfield Steam reviewers, defending the loading breaks and "empty" worlds 5 months ago:
The two games with the most play time in my library are Starfield and Cyberpunk 2077, both of which received some serious negative reviews. I think that for AAA titles that are significantly hyped up before release, people will shit on the game no matter how good it is.
To be honest, it makes me angry at times. I write software; not games, mostly utilitarian programs for a specific business-related task or for my own use at home. I know how much time and effort goes into developing and testing a program so that it doesn’t explode when users of varying technical skill levels use it. The fact that people are so critical is really disrespectful to the countless programmers, visual artists, audio engineers, etc that go into making a full-scale game. Just enjoy the fact that you have a visually stunning and fun experience.
- Comment on Bethesda are individually rebutting Starfield Steam reviewers, defending the loading breaks and "empty" worlds 5 months ago:
I can definitely understand that. I think my complaint in more about the fact that all these big empty planets exist in the game, but there’s no reason to go there. How about adding another dozen artifacts and making the player search around the planet for them (land vehicles would be nice here). Or have a few crashed ships where you can scavenge epic weapons or ship upgrades, if you find them.
There’s so much they could have done while still keeping the “empty” atmosphere. It kind of feels like the added so many planets just to make the map bigger.
- Comment on Bethesda are individually rebutting Starfield Steam reviewers, defending the loading breaks and "empty" worlds 5 months ago:
I have quite a few hours into the game, and honestly not that many complaints. The comments about vast empty worlds are spot-on, though. When I finished my initial playthrough, I did most of the quest lines, but I still hadn’t visited the majority of the solar system.
There are something like 100 planets, but the game doesn’t give you any reason to go to most of them.
- Comment on ‘People have no idea’: How smart devices spy on us and reveal information about our homes 6 months ago:
You’re correct about an outside individual accessing your network, but that still doesn’t prevent a device on your network from phoning home.
I think most people have at least some open ports, though. Isn’t port forwarding required for a lot of online games? It used to be at least.
- Comment on ‘People have no idea’: How smart devices spy on us and reveal information about our homes 6 months ago:
You should never fully trust ANY device on your network. Even if it’s not collecting your personal information and sending it off to who-knows-where, there could always be a zero-day exploit just waiting for someone to find it.
- Comment on ‘People have no idea’: How smart devices spy on us and reveal information about our homes 6 months ago:
The best solution IMO is don’t let your smart devices have access to the internet. Put them on a VLAN, block them at the firewall, whatever method you prefer. Accessing your home network remotely is one thing, but your air conditioner doesn’t need to INITIATE a connection to the outside world.
- Comment on The UK’s problematic Online Safety Act is now law | Ars Technica 6 months ago:
It seems like “we’re protecting the CHILDREN!” is supposed to make any kind of bullshit legislation acceptable. It’s the parents’ job to protect the children. It’s the government’s job to maintain order, provide public services, and ensure the security of the country.
If you want to protect children from “legal but harmful” content online, maybe don’t allow your 12-year-old to have a smartphone. How about blocking sites like TikTok and Facebook on the devices that children do have access to. Monitor your children’s online activities. I have said for years that until a child is able to purchase their own tech devices and pay for the service, let them use the family computer.
Governments should hold the parents accountable for raising the children they chose to have, and step in when they choose not to; don’t enact sweeping legislation that harms everyone because the parents refuse to take accountability for their children.
- Comment on Los Angeles is using AI to predict who might become homeless and help before they do 7 months ago:
I don’t see addiction as a moral failing; it’s a disease. That’s why I am strongly in favor of robust social programs to treat mental health and addiction. All health care should be socialized in my opinion, but that’s a discussion for another day.
My problem is with people who are continually offered help yet choose not to accept it. I have seen it happen to people I know on more than one occasion. If rehab and sober living facilities are available, but someone makes the choice to continue their lifestyle of addiction or alcoholism, I have absolutely no sympathy for them.
Society should provide the resources for people to succeed in life. If they choose not to take advantage of them, that’s their problem, not mine.
- Comment on Los Angeles is using AI to predict who might become homeless and help before they do 7 months ago:
I’m far from pure and perfect, and if I ever need help, I hope it’s available. Addicts should have access to rehab. If they choose to continue using drugs or refuse help, fuck them. If they take the help that’s provided and get clean, I hope they are successful and happy in life.
- Comment on Los Angeles is using AI to predict who might become homeless and help before they do 7 months ago:
That’s great. I’ll do my part to help pay to keep them in jail. At least there, they’re not shitting in communal areas, leaving used needles in the park, and breaking into houses.
- Comment on Los Angeles is using AI to predict who might become homeless and help before they do 7 months ago:
I agree 100% as long as the criteria for obtaining government help is passing a drug test. I’m more than happy to have my tax dollars help someone who fell on hard times and needs some assistance to become a productive member of society again. I am not happy with my tax dollars going to house someone who would rather feed their meth or opiate addiction than get a job. Let them dig their hole and bury themselves in it.
- Comment on When does the future begin? 7 months ago:
long double future_time = static_cast(time(nullptr)) + (5.391247L * pow(10.0L, -44.0L))
- Comment on When does the future begin? 7 months ago:
Now plus the amount of time it takes a photon to move the Planck length.
- Comment on I'm so glad I waited nearly 3 years to play Cyberpunk 2077, but I dread the fact that this is our new normal 7 months ago:
I didn’t experience any of that. I do remember a bug where I would pop out the roof of my car, but it only happened a few times. Maybe I didn’t notice any of the other problems, or maybe I just got lucky. Out of all the games I’ve played in the last several years, Cyberpunk 2077 is the only one I’ve played through 3 times. I legitimately felt bad for the developers when it was first released because of how much people were shitting on it; judging from my own personal experience,a lot of the criticism was undeserved.
- Comment on I'm so glad I waited nearly 3 years to play Cyberpunk 2077, but I dread the fact that this is our new normal 7 months ago:
I never really understood the complaints when it first came out. I had a few graphics glitches here and there, but nothing really significant. I think maybe one or two of the quests had bugs. The game had beautiful graphics (especially with RTX), a great story, and it was a lot of fun. I’ve played through 3 times already.
I am aware that a lot of people had bugs, though, but I have to wonder who. Maybe I just got lucky with my hardware combination (i7-5960x and 2080TI)?
- Comment on Period tracking app options? 9 months ago:
That’s a very valid point. I would argue that if the concern is the government forcing you to decrypt the data, there’s really no good solution. If they have a warrant, they will get the encrypted data; the only barrier is how willing you are to refuse to give the encryption key. I think some jurisdictions prevent this on 5th amendment grounds, but I’m not not a lawyer.
- Comment on Hardware help! Looking to upgrade my home server 9 months ago:
I have a full-height server rack with large, loud, noisy, power-inefficient servers, so I can’t provide much of a good suggestion there. I did want to say that you might want to seriously reconsider using a single 10Tb hard drive.
Hard drives fail, and with a single drive, in the event of a failure, your data is gone. Using several smaller drives in an array provides redundancy, so that in the event of a drive failure, parity information exists on the other drives. As long as you replace the failed drive before anything else fails, you don’t lose any data. There are multiple different ways to do this, but I’ll use RAID as an example. In RAID5, one drive stores parity information. If any one drive fails, the array will continue running (albeit slower); you just need to replace the failed drive and allow your controller to rebuild the array. In a RAID5 configuration, you lose the space of one drive to parity. So if you have 4 4TB drives in a RAID5 configuration, you would have a total of 12TB of usable space. RAID6 lets you lose two drives, but you also lose two drives worth of space to parity, meaning your array would be more fault-tolerant, but you’d only have 8TB of space.
There are many different RAID configurations; far too many for me to go into them all here. You also have something called XFS, which is a file system with many similarities to RAID (and a LOT of extra features… like snapshots). As an example, I have 12 10TB hard drives in my NAS. Two groups of 6 drives are configued as RAIDZ2 (similar to RAID6), for a total of 40TB usable space in each array. Those two arrays are then striped (like RAID0, so that data is written across both arrays with no redundancy at the striped level). In total, that means I have 80TB of usable space, and in a worst-case scenario, I could have 4 drives (two on each array) fail without losing data.
I’m not suggesting you need a setup like mine, but you could probably fit 3 4TB drives in a small case, use RAID5 or XFS-RAIDZ1, and still have some redundancy. To be clear, RAID is not a substitution for a backup, but it can go a long way toward ensuring you don’t need to use your backup.
- Comment on Period tracking app options? 9 months ago:
As someone who uses Nextcloud, why do you suggest obfuscating the name of the calendar event? My nextcloud instance is only accessible from outside my LAN via HTTPS, so no concern about someone using a packet sniffer on public WiFi or something of that sort. The server is located on my property, so physical security isn’t a real concern unless someone breaks in with a USB drive or physically removes the server from the rack and steals it. If someone was to gain access to my network remotely, they’d still need login credentials for Nextcloud or for Proxmox in order to clone the VM drive.
To be clear, I’m not disagreeing with you; I’m wondering if I may be over-estimating data security on my home network. Considering you’re posting from infosec.pub, I’m assuming you know more about this than I do.
Also, I feel like I need to say that the fact that OP even needs to consider data security for something like really makes me wonder how parts of our society have gone so wrong.