splendoruranium
@splendoruranium@infosec.pub
- Comment on Is there a medieval equivalent of the youtube channel "Primative Technology" 5 days ago:
There are lots of traditional crafts channels from all the corners of the world, if that scratches your itch. How about something like this?
- Comment on Why are ghosts never racist? 1 week ago:
- Comment on [deleted] 2 weeks ago:
Driving a car and doing it regularly is the most dangerous task most anyone living in any number of western societies with service-based economies will ever undertake. There is nothing wrong with treating it accordingly - with awe, care and a healthy portion of respect and fear.
But whether the decision not to do it is a good one depends on your life circumstances. Do you live or plan on living in a big European city? Yeah, you don’t need a car in your life, good riddance. Do you live in a North American suburb or rural area? Er… not using a car is probably not an option unless you relocate.I had a pretty bad car accident due to failing to yield the right of way (I struggle with multitasking)
Maybe I’m misunderstanding something here. It should go without saying that when one is driving, one’s attention should ideally be focused on nothing else and multitasking therefore shouldn’t be a factor.
- Comment on Did YouTube just disable video playback for people using adblockers or is it just me? 2 weeks ago:
How do you know? Statistics reported by websites… which are recording user agent strings?
If you randomly stopped people in the streets and asked them what a user agent was, you’d get a certain percentage of folks that give you the correct answer. That percentage is the upper ceiling for any possible error margin that websites recording user strings have in attributing those strings to actual browsers, since nobody unaware of that term will know how or be interested in changing their user agent.
Do you think it likely that this percentage is going to be in any way, shape or form… impactful, considering that most people won’t be able to tell you what a browser is? 😜
- Comment on Friendly reminder that Tailscale is VC-funded and driving towards IPO 2 weeks ago:
Enshittification is inevitable for all free services (services as in with a server component).
No, it is not that bleak. It is only inevitable when there is an active push for a short-term maximization of user base monetization (which is very much in the nature of VC). It can usually be avoided with products that are wholly under the ownership of all users (such as a cooperative or a government-provided service) or - only if one is lucky - with products of financially independent private enterprises under vaguely benevolent and unhurried leadership (such as Steam, to some extent)
- Comment on Does anyone use a phone without a protective case? 3 weeks ago:
Sure, for a basic machine that allows for better than 20mph, or 35kph.
What makes you say that? Wearing a helmet is always recommended, since it provides protection against debilitating injuries whether the cyclist moves at 35km/h or is at a standstill. The basic risk of injury stems from being a mere participant in traffic, after all. Just like the basic risk of a debilitating defect in a piece of electronics that gets used every day stems from it getting used every day.
Trying to compare that to my phone is a false equivalency. Try trolling someone that hasn’t had both university level ethics courses, and university level debate courses that I fucking hated. The debate ones, not the ethics. Ethics I breezed through. Debate is some absolute bullshit because you have to entertain the viewpoint of liars, like you.
While I don’t understand how ethics figure into this, I’m glad that you understand how a debate works! I’ll graciously ignore the no doubt involuntary ad hominem (which you as an expert will know has no place in any kind of discussion) and will ask you to now employ the most useful technique you’ve likely learned in that course and rephrase the original point I made in a way that makes me go “Yep, that’s what I said!”, because from my point of view there must be some kind of misunderstanding. What (did you think) was I equating with what?
- Comment on Does anyone use a phone without a protective case? 3 weeks ago:
I wish there were aftermarket components available for that thing.
- Comment on Does anyone use a phone without a protective case? 3 weeks ago:
TIL I’m a savage with a crack-less Samsung Galaxy S10 e
Riding without a bicycle helmet is just never a good idea, whether you’ve ever hit your head or not doesn’t factor into it :P
- Comment on Why do some people say "I wouldn't want a government to dictate what I eat"? This would mean they'd be against food safety regulations, would it not? 3 weeks ago:
yes, however as far as I am aware there are no laws in the us against any private vehicle usage on private land. Unlike the FDA which criminalizes owning or consuming certain chemicals.
You may have reached the limit of that car-metaphor there.
- Comment on Why do some people say "I wouldn't want a government to dictate what I eat"? This would mean they'd be against food safety regulations, would it not? 3 weeks ago:
Exaclty … certain types in certain areas with a reason. That’s regulation.
Which is just what I wrote, yes. Excising every unmaintained or outdated vehicle from traffic everywhere for example is just as valid a regulation as excising a certain type of food - any food - from general consumption. There’d simply have to be a good reason. And once there is, yep, what can and can be eaten gets dictated.
Again, that’s already how it works, in traffic and in cuisine. - Comment on Why do some people say "I wouldn't want a government to dictate what I eat"? This would mean they'd be against food safety regulations, would it not? 3 weeks ago:
This would mean they’d be against food safety regulations, would it not?It would not.
Having traffic laws isn’t the same as banning cars, either.
Of course it is. Part of traffic legislation literally involves banning certain types of vehicles, either in certain areas or on any kind of public road in general.
- Comment on Minio strips away almost all features from OSS interface and suggests people use their paid "AIStor" service instead 4 weeks ago:
Monetary needs and all that. If it’s a startup with VC then there is either not enough people paying or not enough private users supporting by other means like bug fixing, support, etc. Or greed by VC.
Well, VC is greedy by design. A VC-funded business will never be optimized for longevity, a good product or happy customers. They may achieve those things en passant, but they’re never the objective.
For example: Any case of “there is not enough people paying” can also be rendered as “the scale and moving speed of the business is way off”.
- Comment on [deleted] 4 weeks ago:
Oh, right. A conventional public library can’t just pirate all of their content, I suppose.
- Comment on [deleted] 5 weeks ago:
How so?
- Comment on Selling BTC or not..? 1 month ago:
This might be a bit of a bad question, but I don’t know where to ask to get the least biased responses.
So, I have about $1.000 in Bitcoin that used to be $300 (I’ve put in about $1.500 in various shitcoins before getting those BTC)
I fly drones as a hobby and I was thinking of getting a new system for that amount of money.It’s not really a complex equation. If you need liquidity, liqudate assets. If you don’t need liquidity, don’t liquidate assets.
How badly you want your new hobby system is something only you can answer. - Comment on GitHub - gardner/LocalLanguageTool: Self-hosted LanguageTool private instance is an offline alternative to Grammarly 1 month ago:
Kind of offtopic: Can we call something offline if you need a server to run it?
Sure, you could run it on your own PC and that’s it, but I don’t think that method fit well with this community
Er… maybe I am misunderstanding your post but this community is literally built around hosting your own local infrastructure.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
So, uh, what’s wrong with that?
… with damaging infrastructure? Well, presumably the infrastructure will no longer be as good at serving its original purpose once it is damaged.
- Comment on Can local LLMs be as useful and insightful as those widely available? 1 month ago:
Why do people host LLMs at home when processing the same amount of data from the internet to train their LLM will never be even a little bit as efficient as sending a paid prompt to some high quality official model?
inb4 privacy concerns or a proof of concept this is out of discussion, I want someone to prove his LLM can be as insightful and accurate as paid one. I don’t care about anything else than quality of generated answersIf you ask other people for their reasoning and opinions, it doesn’t really make any sense to put something “out of the discussion”, does it? :P
But no, if you have no qualms about sharing your innermost feelings, sexual preference or illegal plans with those that have an explicit desire to exploit that information then there is little reason to attempt something as complicated and wasteful as self-hosting your own LLMs.
- Comment on Ubisoft Accused of 'Secret Data Collection' in Single-Player Games 1 month ago:
I’d say it’s more like your hairdresser tracking how long you are in their store and what haircut you get- but you do you!
I’m not married to the analogy, just totally flabbergasted that “Using your own software on your own computer when and how you see fit without being watched” appears to be a slightly controversial take for no apparent reason. Evidently I’m missing something, not explaining myself very clearly or both.
- Comment on Ubisoft Accused of 'Secret Data Collection' in Single-Player Games 1 month ago:
I run all my games in Linux and everything but Steam goes via Lutris which I configured to, by default, launch them inside a Firejail sandbox with no network access (plus a bunch of other security related limitations) something which I can override for specific games if needed.
That sounds like a neat setup! And no messing around with firewall rules either. I’ll have to look into it.
- Comment on Ubisoft Accused of 'Secret Data Collection' in Single-Player Games 1 month ago:
That’s the thing, though. I respect the analogy, but the equivalent here would be if the game was also checking your drive for other games, for financial apps, scanning your browser’s cookies to see which sites you visit, etc.
If, while playing a singleplayer game, they’re recording what actions you take within that singleplayer game, it’s understandable some people wouldn’t even want that - but I also don’t see that as nearly so invasive as other data travesties. Worse, highlighting it here feels like a “cry wolf” situation where you’d desensitize people to the most harmful privacy breaches.
Again, I don’t doubt that you do not see it as an incredibly invasive thing. I’m lamenting that you (and many) don’t.
You’re doing something on your computer. Locally. In your own time. With a thing that is - ostensibly - yours. Why is it even remotely acceptible that some corporate entity is watching you over your shoulder while you do it? I’m running out of words to express how nuts this seems to me. - Comment on Ubisoft Accused of 'Secret Data Collection' in Single-Player Games 1 month ago:
I’m sorry, but that’s a terrible analogy. In the gaming scenario, Ubisoft is collecting the data on their own product usage
Well, in the corporate software-as-a-service insane troll logic hellscape in which we live that could indeed make sense. Mind you, that’s not meant to be a rant against you but against the fact that this train of thought has indeed been completely normalized.
In the fantasy world of the past into which I’d like to go back to live happily it is precisely not Ubisoft’s product. It’s mine. I bought it - none of what I do with it is any of Ubisoft’s business. The business transaction has been concluded. If they want to know what I do with my game then they can ask me nicely about it. I’ll certainly not allow them to install a proverbial camera over the executable. - Comment on Ubisoft Accused of 'Secret Data Collection' in Single-Player Games 2 months ago:
Based on the article text, it’s only citing things like how long you play. I thought most games collected telemetry like this?
A commonplace travesty is still a travesty and metadata is still data. If my hairdresser asked me “Hey, in addition to me cutting your hair and you giving me money I’d also like you to constantly keep me updated on your sleep schedule, your vacation plans, marital status changes and the myriad of other things that can be directly gleaned from aggregate timeline data - all the other hairdressers have started doing it as well!”, I’d likely look at them incredulously for a few seconds while silently imagining stabbing them with their own scissors.
Calling it “telemetry” has somehow normalized it over the past decades, I suppose? I just don’t understand how anyone could ever accept this as normal.
- Comment on How are the blatant anti-competitive practices of Apple just…allowed? How is this even possible? 2 months ago:
Global anti-trust efforts are simply not very strong and never have been. They make for boring political platforms and are constantly under attack by corporate actors.
Ideally no business should ever be allowed to grow to the point of being able to exert political influence at all let alone rival the power of small nations, but here we are.
Any rational business will employ all and any anti-competitive practices that they can come up with if they can get away with them.
- Comment on Are Nintendo's $80 online game prices a result of tariffs or is Nintendo just using them as an excuse to price gouge as corporations do? 2 months ago:
Okay, here’s a slightly hot take.
I’d rather the price go up and the games remain ad free and high quality (not you, pokemon, you can get fucked) than become enshittified with micro transactions, ads, etc
I don’t like it. But it’s much more acceptable to me
That’s absolutely a false dichotomy. In a world where games exist that are ad-free, high-quality and affordable, there’s absolutely no reason to believe any notion of high prices or in-game ads being a requirement for development. It’s just not true. Don’t fall for it.
- Comment on Cheapskate's Guide: Nuking web-scraping bots 2 months ago:
They block VPN exit nodes. Why bother hosting a web site if you don’t want anyone to read your content?
Fuck that noise. My privacy is more important to me than your blog.
It’s a minimalist private blog that sets no 3rd party cookies and loads no 3rd party resources. I presume that alleviates your concerns? 😜
- Comment on I'm looking for a no frills, physical key EV. Am I looking for something that no longer exists? 2 months ago:
Are there instructions/hobbiest forums for just that?
- Comment on I'm looking for a no frills, physical key EV. Am I looking for something that no longer exists? 2 months ago:
The profit margins on cheap cars isn’t high enough yet to introduce EVs at that price.
What price? OP does not talk about cost at any point, they only require specific features.
- Comment on Is it rude to reply using English under posts in a language you can’t speak? 2 months ago:
nah, it’s better for information integrity to reply in the language you understand imo, comments translated using translator services are very obvious anyway and some people are multilingual
Sure, I agree? Maybe there’s a misunderstanding here. Maybe I should add that it simply would never even occur to me to enter a conversation if I didn’t natively understand the language that’s being used.
- Comment on Is it rude to reply using English under posts in a language you can’t speak? 2 months ago:
I often reply under Japanese posts, and I always assume users will use a translator as I do, but maybe in the context of a Japanese this may look rude?
Can’t speak for others (obviously, as this is about individual etiquette perceptions) but I would consider it to be polite to only enter conversations with unknown parties in languages that the parties have shown to be capable of speaking and understanding.
Using a new language entering a conversation would therefore signal either familiarity (“I know they understand me”) or rudeness (“I don’t care if they understand me”) to me, I suppose.