mctoasterson

@mctoasterson@reddthat.com

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I mean......if you really think about it.....⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  “It’s all Isekai?”

  “Always has been”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Trump Will Bring America First Drug Prices by Knocking Out the Middlemen, Making Europe Pay Its Fair Share⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Many critical treatments and medicines are developed in the US. Congress could pass protectionist trade laws requiring that the poorest uninsured American can’t be charged a penny more than whatever artificially low negotiated costs are paid by foreign countries systems like the Canadians or the British NHS.

  Its possible that other countries could retaliate with cost controls for their own domestically developed drugs but it feels like this is an area where the US can and should have leverage.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google’s ‘Secret’ Update Scans All Your Photos⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  People don’t seem to understand the risks presented by normalizing client-side scanning on closed source devices. Think about how image recognition works. It scans image content locally and matches to keywords or tags, describing the person, objects, emotions, and other characteristics. Even the rudimentary open-source model on an immich deployment on a Raspberry Pi can process thousands of images and make all the contents searchable with alarming speed and accuracy.

  So once similar image analysis is done on a phone locally, and pre-encryption, it is trivial for Apple or Google to use that for whatever purposes their use terms allow. Forget the iCloud encryption backdoor. The big tech players can already scan content on your device pre-encryption.

  And just because someone does a traffic analysis of the process itself (safety core or mediaanalysisd or whatever) and shows it doesn’t directly phone home, doesn’t mean it is safe. The entire OS is closed source, and it needs only to backchannel small amounts of data in order to fuck you over.

  Remember the original justification for clientside scanning from Apple was “detecting CSAM”. Well they backed away from that line of thinking but they kept all the client side scanning in iOS and Mac OS. It would be trivial for them to flag many other types of content and furnish that data to governments or third parties.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tech jobs are now white collar trades that need apprentices⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I love how the trend in tech seems to be to shift 100% of responsibility for professional development to the employee.

  “Just get some certs on your own and build a homelab.”

  Yeah, I have 2 degrees and a bunch of certs, of which many require CEU or renewal costs. Everytime I ask for professional development it’s “yeah there might be some budget for this one specific thing next quarter”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Xbox Sales Hit Rock Bottom After Historic 2024 Decline⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Honestly all of this bullshit is why I went with a Steamdeck a few years ago. As a working adult with a family I have different economic obligations and priorities.

  I need to build a new PC soon (mine is now 10 years old) but I can’t justify spending $5K on a gaming rig. If I built now with a flagship card, just the card itself would cost more than I spent on my entire rig when I built it in 2014/2015. Pair that with Microsoft’s ridiculous operating system enshittification, and the PC situation gets even more complicated for me.

  Consoles have gotten to be a bad value proposition for me as well. Paper launches, scalping during the pandemic, DRM etc., services going offline. All that garbage leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

  I’m having a decent enough time with Steam sale games, Indy games, and retro emulation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  They need to make an open source version of the Hitster card game that lets you use this to listen to the whole song (if you choose) whether you have a Spotify account or not.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Smartwatch That Was Too Good For This World⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Anyone got a good recommendation for an affordable smart watch that works with GadgetBridge?

  I’m looking to move on from an ancient Garmin that barely holds charge for 2 days…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I would do this for just 1.99⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Yknow one great thing that costs about 1.99 (one time cost)?

  Those little plastic slidy bits that cover up the laptop webcam and mic.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it time to ring the alarm on internet door cameras?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  90% of it is idiots reporting deer/coyote sightings or falsely reporting fireworks as “gunshots?!?!” at 1:00am. If have literally been woken up by stupid Ring notifications more than by the fireworks themselves.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Those YouTube ads everyone hates made $10.4 billion in just three months⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I think your theory is plausible. On the YT smart TV app, the ads seem to be increasingly about unpleasant things like dick pills, period pads, and constipation treatments. I think they literally serve up unsavory ad content as a way of punishing you into shelling out for a subscription. Jokes on them, I just switched to SmartTube.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why was Hitler so mean and hateful toward one group or another? I find it hard to believe he woke up one day and said you and you suck but these people over here are good. Taking it so far as killing?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Respectfully, do some reading of even middleschool level history books. He didn’t personally decide to “be mean” to particular groups. His worldview was shaped by the post WWI dynamics in Europe, latent stereotypes and domestic problems within Germany, and a whole lot of misapplied emerging science. He literally believed in racial supremecy and was trying to build an ethnostate. This motivated him to define groups of ethnic “undesirables” and also to lump in other groups that he found politically inconvenient. Read about the scapegoating of Jews circa that time. He likely believed his cruelty towards them was somehow justified because he laid all of Germany’s problems (economic issues, humiliation of the country and loss of territory post-WWI) at their feet.

  TL; DR - Bad actors believe their evil behavior is justified.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Engineer turns old 3D printer into a tattoo gun that you definitely shouldn't use at home⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  They made a custom mount attaching the tattoo gun to the toolhead that included springs or something with extra give to accommodate a slightly irregular surface. They also used a small patch of skin on a relatively flat area.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨26 years late but I finally beat Half Life⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The Orange Box is one of the last gaming purchases that I actually got my moneys worth out of.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Broadcom reverses controversial plan in effort to cull VMware migrations⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  But not before causing 2+ years of tedious previously-unnecessary migration work. Thanks a lot assholes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Feds Say You Don’t Have a Right to Check Out Retro Video Games Like Library Books⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Not a lawyer but I believe in the US this would be legal as you are granting the use of the original license and not duplicating any content for simultaneous use by others.

  What I would like to see is a gentlemans agreement of sorts where companies agree not to come after people for playing pirate, emulated or archival copies of games that are decades old and not for sale in any format anymore. I guess this is somewhat encompassed in the framework of “Abandonware”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK: You don't own your Kindle e-books.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I am now of the opinion that you should just download books off indexing sites/IRC/ Usenet/torrents and if you like the book and want to support the author, buy a physical copy, or buy 2 and put one in a neighborhood free library. That maximizes the good you are doing and helps your community instead of just generating Bezos bux.