NuXCOM_90Percent
@NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
- Comment on GitHub hits CTRL-Z, decides it will train its AI with user data after all 2 weeks ago:
Ooooh. Cloudflare Pages definitely looks like what I want.
Thanks
- Comment on GitHub hits CTRL-Z, decides it will train its AI with user data after all 2 weeks ago:
For no apparent reason:
Are there any good alternatives for gh-pages dor a super lazy/simple website? I’ve been meaning to actually use one of my domains for a personal website and pointing at which project is on which code repo site would be a good idea. But… I need that page to be hosted by one of them.
- Comment on Jensen Huang says Nvidia engineers should use AI tokens worth half their annual salary every year to be fully productive 2 weeks ago:
I mean… if you take into account fair price of utilities (water and electric) and skyrocketing costs of RAM… I don’t fully disagree.
Ballparking, but 50% of an engineer’s job being “boilerplate” and “charlie work” sounds reasonable to me. Maybe even 75%. That IS what generative AI is really good at. It is the kind of work that you can have a particularly ambitious student intern do.
What makes a good engineer is the ability to verify that work. In software this is “code review”. And the other aspect is actual innovation. Solving particularly complex problems or breaking a problem down into manageable and verifiable tasks.
And… guess how you maintain your skills to be able to do that? That’s right. Charlie Work.
Which is the problem. Managers (and wannabe managers) just see short term gains. So they want EVERYTHING to be done with “AI” because they want to bulk fire people and reduce operating costs. And they don’t at all care that they are causing a massive brain drain because that is next quarter’s problem.
- Comment on GrapheneOS refuses to comply with new age verification laws for operating systems — group says it will never require personal information 2 weeks ago:
It just seems like such a defeatist attitude to me to cede ground on this,
It’s not “ceding ground”. It is picking and choosing battles.
What does adding a DOB field to a user account do? Absolutely nothing that the Location, Email, Phone Number. whatever fields didn’t already do.
What does adding libraries to fetch cost us? Yes, I dislike that on principle. But it provides an OS functionality that is genuinely useful (age restricting accounts) and… it is one that I can work around should I ever need to.
What does it get us? It is an immediate response to “There is no way for parents to protect their children from this vile content” because… it is exactly that. It is an immediate response to “We can’t manage school systems” and “We want to provide a way to lock this down but those evil OSes won’t let us”.
Versus “holding the line” and ceding absolutely nothing… and then getting blindsided because this is a feature downstream companies actually want. So rather than implement it their way with all the hooks into remote databases at the systemd level, it is instead a wrapper for
useraddcommands.especially when the laws you mentioned actually being worried about would use this as precedent.
They don’t need a precedent. They are already pushing their own (often more restrictive) laws.
- Comment on GrapheneOS refuses to comply with new age verification laws for operating systems — group says it will never require personal information 2 weeks ago:
You’re saying there are already age checks for certain sites (and analysis of your web traffic and associated data being sold) and that this is no different, if I understand correctly.
Correct-ish.
I would amend that to be “All of this information is already out there and you provide it, without thinking, often multiple times per day”. But with the added caveat that this ONLY changes if a third party verification is required.
It is worth pointing out that while the California law requires no verification, the New York law potentially requires more than just a declaration of age. It’s worse elsewhere in the world.
To my knowledge (and skimming what I can find), the New York bill also does not require third party verification. At least, as of 2025-S8102A.
But yes, fully agree regarding the rest of the world. People get EXTRA pissy if you point out the EU isn’t magically doing exactly what they want it to do and always siding with “consumers” but… the frameworks and legislature being pushed through there are deeply alarming.
Right, but you see how this is also a bad thing right? Given that the FBI has now spoken about buying this data and uses it to target people, I would think that we would all want better privacy protections, not fewer.
Do not expect companies (and company adjacent) orgs to protect your rights.
But also? The FBI doesn’t need to “buy this data”. They can just buy the same marketing data everyone already has on them (unless you go above and beyond to obfuscate that).
And this legislature has absolutely zero bearing on any of that.
I don’t see how that should sway opinion about this being a good or a bad thing. It’s a bad thing for everyone, right?
No, it is not. Like I pointed out above: We always say “parents should watch what their kids are watching so that I can keep getting my goon on with tiktok” and all that nonsense. And do you know what the first step to ACTUALLY protecting kids online is? That’s right. Restricting accounts based on age.
Adding a user provided birthdate to your account in systemd is no more dangerous than having a field for location or phone number. Having an API to fetch this from the OS IS concerning but is also very much in that realm of "This genuinely makes browsing the internet easier"as, depending on implementation, your computer can auto-verify you so you don’t have to wipe the lube off your hand when you change sites.
And… its almost like those of us on open source OSes can maybe consider a way to go even farther with controlling what gets sent…
I don’t see how that should sway opinion about this being a good or a bad thing. It’s a bad thing for everyone, right?
Correct. But I would bet my bottom dollar that at least a few of the folk insisting this is the evil US (fair) forcing their will upon the world don’t realize their own governments might actually even be ahead of the game. Like apparently a bunch of live service games disabled chat in the UK in the past day or two?
No, I am saying that. I was saying that calling this a slippery slope doesn’t feel like it is based in the history of privacy erosion.
Again, that privacy already eroded away years ago. Pretending otherwise is just lying to yourself and increasing your own risks.
but just because it isn’t the first step doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fight against consolidated, government-mandated privacy violations, right?
The door to your home fell off and all your windows are shattered. Does it make ANY sense to freak out that your ex still has a key to your front door?
And that is why… it is more than a bit tinfoil hat but I really do wonder how much of this “outrage” is being intentionally stoked to distract from the very real concerns. If you actually care about your privacy then you need to educate yourself on what you should have been doing for years now. And consider getting on that.
I’m asking why we don’t try and just fix the problem instead of letting something like this slide by because there are other, similar issues.
Yes, let’s try to fix it. Complaining about a single field being added to a user profile (that already has user provided location, phone number, email, etc) ain’t it.
Focusing on the third party verification component… is part of it.
But also understanding that all of this is out there and never coming back is more important.
One of the biggest con jobs facebook has ever done is to pretend that they let you delete your account. And they do. Except… not really. Because User 1234 who has the real name field of “Fred Jones” was deleted. But User 1235 “Daphne Blake” isn’t and she has lots of pictures of her and Fred. And Old Man Wilkinson also has pictures of his home that some meddling potheads raided last month. So removing metadata from THEM would violate their digital rights.
So (simplifying), User 1234’s “real name” field is indeed voided. But their profile remains the same so all associations with Daphne and Shaggy and all the mansions remain the same. Same with the knowledge that some blonde haired d-bag with an ascot went to school with Red Herring. And that he is related to Skip and Peggy Jones. And that his name is suspected to be “Fred Jones” for the purposes of making sure to protect his identity in case someone registers as him and can’t provide ID to prove that.
But folk just fixate on “Delete your profile so that zuckerberg can’t control you!” and ignore all that.
Because understanding things is hard.
- Comment on GrapheneOS refuses to comply with new age verification laws for operating systems — group says it will never require personal information 2 weeks ago:
Can I ask you to explain your point, “age doesn’t matter, your digital footprint carries over?”
I… didn’t say that? Not sure if you replied to the wrong person?
But I’ll try to respond to what I can?
You mention solutions to protect yourself from the digital footprint carry over, but this law would just make it easier to overcome those solutions.
Assuming we are referring to the California legislature (I believe most/all of the US legislature if on the same grounds. The proposed EU "framework"s are very different), there is no requirement for third party verification.
It is literally the same check we already have. “Enter a random ass date that is more than 18 years ago”. This doesn’t “overcome” anything and, arguably, is a good law to get on the books so that you can say “Something is being done” before all the legislature and “frameworks” that want to be built around third party verification and “digital passports” do gain traction.
Now instead of having to figure out the various unique patterns of accessing the internet to determine info about you, you just tell them your age (or that you’re an adult, whatever) on those systems directly.
All of this is already happening and HAS already happened. You know all those stories about how google knows you are pregnant before you miss your first period? You know how you can quite often just click “verify you are human” and it processes without making you generate training data?
Hell, you know how targeted ads are a thing?
All of that is the same thing. It is about building profiles that tend to be so ridiculously specific that it isn’t even “This user connecting from Norway actually lives in the US and is from Cleveland” and is more “Oh, this is Oswald Harvey using his nordvpn subscription. He tends to favor the endpoints that are 25% down the list”
I also think it’s a bit disingenuous to call ‘this is the first step towards something worse’ a slippery slope when that is exactly how the creeping erosion of privacy has gone in the US historically, but especially the last few decades.
- This is not exclusive to the US. This is something being pushed globally.
- I never said this is “the first step towards something worse”. That step happened LONG before programming computers was “women’s work” and the cray loveseat was a genuine accomplishment
Both of which speak towards why people need to educate themselves to understand what information is already out there.
You acknowledge that a lot of people don’t fully understand how to protect themselves (and offer solutions that require more money, time, and education to accomplish) and in the same breath that is why it’s okay that we make data collection easier.
Yes? I am sorry that protecting your privacy takes effort? I am sure that if you pay a random sponsor on an LTT video that they’ll claim to do everything for you?
Like… I really don’t know what to tell you?
- Comment on GrapheneOS refuses to comply with new age verification laws for operating systems — group says it will never require personal information 2 weeks ago:
That is really going to depend on what your actual risk is. There are a decent number of articles and videos out there that go into what journalists have to do and… they are generally ahead of the curve on stuff like that.
But what people SHOULD do is to gain an understanding of what is actually going on. This entire debacle REALLY feels like a mix of people being mislead as to what the California legislature actually is (whether for Views or more nefarious reasons) combined with making it abundantly clear that they know absolutely nothing about their current risks.
Like, you telling pornhub you are over 18 is not telling PornhubCorp anything they don’t already know from all the other cookies and fingerprints you are carrying everywhere. Hell, a lot of services are dedicated to tracking by IP to get around incognito mode and even caching to get around VPNs (although, most don’t have to bother since people have been trained to just put EVERYTHING through a vpn so that it doesn’t matter in the first place). They are literally just ticking a checkbox in the hope of not getting blocked by more payment processors.
So if you truly care about protecting your age? Have multiple devices. Learn how to split your traffic based upon device to get around many fingerprinting techniques. Figure out where to sit at Starbucks so that you have your back to a wall but don’t look like a pervert. And so forth.
Rather than freaking out and throwing tantrums because people are trying to inform you about how little a self-reported age at the OS level that can be requested matters.
- Comment on GrapheneOS refuses to comply with new age verification laws for operating systems — group says it will never require personal information 2 weeks ago:
I have a choice to who an d which third party collects my data.
Only if you actually understand what information you are and aren’t exposing about yourself in your every day activities.
Which… yeah, does really feel like understanding the meaning of a text/concept. So… spot on?
- Comment on GrapheneOS refuses to comply with new age verification laws for operating systems — group says it will never require personal information 2 weeks ago:
People can run secure systems that share minimal info.
And those generally aren’t the machines you want to connect to the internet and use for all your everyday browsing.
This requires all systems to store and share specific info.
Specific, unverified, info. That you are already sharing in most of the situations where it is being asked for.
So you’re making it illegal to have a private system. Sure most people don’t, but now you’re making it illegal.
A lot of things are illegal. Without the third party verification requirement, you are perfectly fine to hardcode that to say you were born on June 9th, 1969 by default. And that complies with the California legislation (last I read through it).
You think that’s okay because we don’t have good privacy laws right now? You want to give up?
No. I want people to actually understand what is going on so that they can actually protect themselves.
- Comment on GrapheneOS refuses to comply with new age verification laws for operating systems — group says it will never require personal information 2 weeks ago:
This is being baked in because of US law. I wouldn’t be surprised if the US made some federal laws requiring your religion in the near future.
And that is why it is a slippery slope fallacy. Eventually, superpowers are going to want to have access to your machines (they already do, but mostly in isolated cases). So any kind of data storage and overrides should be destroyed. So let’s go shred our hard drives and remove the concept of sudo/root access?
- Comment on GrapheneOS refuses to comply with new age verification laws for operating systems — group says it will never require personal information 2 weeks ago:
That doesn’t seem like a great argument for doing something that further reduces privacy and protection.
The point is that, without third party verification (which I am vehemently opposed to), it changes absolutely nothing. So it is just people whining about “freedoms” they don’t even have.
And… there actually are arguments that it is good to tear down the security/privacy theatre so that people can make informed decisions and understand their actual exposure and risks.
A good example of this is that I am REALLY happy that we, as a society, have seen a drastic shift between calling things “Private Messages” and instead calling them “Direct Messages”. The former implies that only you and the recipient can see them. The latter does away with that and people rapidly learn (and communicate) that site owners and often mods can see everything you send along those venues.
- Comment on GrapheneOS refuses to comply with new age verification laws for operating systems — group says it will never require personal information 2 weeks ago:
Cookies already exist and there is countless leakage (both intentional and unintentional…). Like most things, you are not as private and protected as you seem to think you are. Just because a website is asking you to tell it (which is mostly for compliance, not knowledge) doesn’t mean they already know that you said you were 250 years old but your shopping habits suggest you are actually in your 20s and live in Detroit and really enjoy pegging.
Maybe we should add religion and skin color too
To my knowledge, very few nations tie laws or access to that slippery slope fallacy. And parents generally have those same traits (at least while the kid is living with them). So I am not seeing much benefit from this?
- Comment on GrapheneOS refuses to comply with new age verification laws for operating systems — group says it will never require personal information 2 weeks ago:
Even if we say I agree with this, why even ask for a specific year? Separate into child and adult, and let the super user make that change when asked.
Different countries (actually different regions within said countries) have different laws related to what “kids” can and can’t see. How much that matters is up to you. But it provides an automated check that ALSO avoids having to say “Hey mom? I just turned 18 and for no reason whatsoever it would be great if you could switch my account to an adult. Also make sure to knock and don’t look too closely at my laundry basket ever again”.
- Comment on GrapheneOS refuses to comply with new age verification laws for operating systems — group says it will never require personal information 2 weeks ago:
I would go so far as to say they are only big enough to make an updoot-bait headline at that.
- Comment on GrapheneOS refuses to comply with new age verification laws for operating systems — group says it will never require personal information 2 weeks ago:
Localized age checks ARE a good system and are something that should have been in the OS for decades. It is the basis for being able to make “child accounts” and is a genuine requirement for Linux to be a meaningful option for “normal people”. And having a protocol for software/websites to request that is a very good system to build on that.
We talk about how the problem of kids getting exposed to horrendous shit is a problem of “bad parenting”. This is the tool you provide to allow parents some control.
The issue is not the age check. The issue is verification. To my understanding, the California legislature explicitly does NOT require a third party. So it is literally just you saying “Sure, whatever. I was born in 1901. Now load the Maya Woulfe video faster”. And yes, this is a step towards that. But so is having network access or user accounts at all.
- Comment on GrapheneOS refuses to comply with new age verification laws for operating systems — group says it will never require personal information 2 weeks ago:
Genuine question:
is Graphene a “big name”? They talk a big game and are probably one of the biggest alternative phone OSes but all results I can find are putting them at 250k users and less than 2% of the Android market share.
But, more importantly: Do they at all care about US government contracts? Red Had have RHEL. ubuntu have whatever they call their premium OS for enterprise users. Google and Apple are obvious.
- Comment on Today is the day 3 weeks ago:
That nazi can rest in piss
- Comment on Tech hobbyist makes shoulder-mounted guided missile prototype with $96 in parts and a 3D printer — DIY MANPADS includes Wi-Fi guidance, ballistics calculations, optional camera for tracking 3 weeks ago:
There actually are some really cool proof of concepts where people have 100% 3d printed a gun. And “potato cannons” are generally a PVC firing chamber and barrel.
For legal purposes: Preface everything after this with a dozen "allegedly"s. A couple years back I went to a really cool event where people had built machine guns out of wood and plastic (FDM). None had any issue with doing well over 100 rounds each. That said, anyone with half a brain cell was literally hiding in a bunker nearby out of terror when the firing was going on. But… yeah.
Like anything, it is about pressure, strength, and geometry. And, as The Troubles in Ireland can attest… you don’t need THAT much skill to make something that will fire… once. Which is why there are so many shed machine guns and rifles with split barrels and completely exploded receivers in The Royal Armouries.
- Comment on Tech hobbyist makes shoulder-mounted guided missile prototype with $96 in parts and a 3D printer — DIY MANPADS includes Wi-Fi guidance, ballistics calculations, optional camera for tracking 3 weeks ago:
While I am fully opposed to a 3d printer ban (and abhor the efforts of Bambu et al to sneak that in), it is very important to understand why that is not a fair comparison and, if anything, sets a threshold that can be used to argue FOR a ban.
I’ve ranted in detail before so I’ll do the short version this time:
You are not going to make a barrel or springs yourself. And the good news is that you don’t need to. None of that is a controlled/registered part (for the vast majority of guns) and you can literally buy those at a walmart equivalent. And there at least used to be pre-packaged bundles available online for your ghost gun needs.
So that mostly leaves the receiver and fire control unit. I will bet you money that giving a rando off the street 24 hours to figure out how to go to the local communal machine shop and make even a frigging sten and they will fail miserably. Whereas there are videos (fuck vice for how they abused their workers but old-vice has a really good video where they literally made the gun Luigi allegedly used) of people going from 0 to glock in 12 hours of print time and 4-5 hours of filing.
And that is the big difference. How much that matters when you are considering a country where you can buy the same gear that Tier 1 Special Forces use to abduct (admittedly really shitty) world leaders for under a thousand bucks is a HUGE question. But from the “ghost gun” perspective? There is VERY much a big difference between having a CNC and machining a receiver+FCU versus doing the same with an Ender 3.
- Comment on Tech hobbyist makes shoulder-mounted guided missile prototype with $96 in parts and a 3D printer — DIY MANPADS includes Wi-Fi guidance, ballistics calculations, optional camera for tracking 3 weeks ago:
Ignoring the legal repercussions of this:
Most of this makes sense. Stingers go back to the late 70s (?) and most of what we see used in Ukraine is closer to a decade old than not (and based on even older tech). Tech advances and what used to be hard becomes cheap.
That said? I would be very curious how this handles inclement weather. Wind and rain are a mofo and that (among other reasons) is why model rockets and the like are only ever really flown on beautiful clear days. And I don’t know enough about how the communication with javelin et als work these days but wifi seems REAL questionable.
Still. This is a really cool project and really speaks to the changing nature of warfare. And, once again, highlights the real reason so much money has gone into FDM processes.
- Comment on I don't have money to pay premium to not see ads. What in the world makes you think that I have money to buy what you are advertising me? 4 weeks ago:
The sad reality: All that means is that the corporations don’t care about you. But the ad sellers can still use you to pad views.
- Comment on Microsoft patents system for AI helpers to finish games for you 5 weeks ago:
Yeah.
It is a REALLY dangerous tightrope to walk. But this makes me think of Arkham Knight. I LOVED Asylum and City. Even Origins was pretty good. But that fucking Batmobile.
So I beat the game, enter postgame, and take a look at my menu to see what I need for the secret ending. And I IMMEDIATELY shut the game down and go watch it on Youtube.
I would have loved to be able to skip past most of the random trophies hidden everywhere and instead do the fun puzzles and the Deathstroke fight and so forth.
The “correct” answer is that hiding the “real” ending and having so much bloat is the real problem. But different games have different ideologies. I LOVE Souls games and had a blast with Elden Ring’s DLC. I ALSO remember the hilarity of watching all the chuds get angry and mock games media for saying it was hard… and then getting their proverbial shit pushed in by like 90% of the Shadow Land and wet themselves at the mere sight of the Messmer, let alone the harder bosses.
Which gets back to the ongoing discussion of creator intent versus accessibility.
My expectation is that, should this take off, it would mostly just lead to even more padding similar to what we see with open world bloat. But… yeah.
- Comment on Valve reconfirm the Steam Frame, Steam Machine and Steam Controller are due in 2026 5 weeks ago:
Steam Machine, and presumably Controller, will release.
The Machine is just an HTPC with MAYBE a bespoke mobo and cooler (to my knowledge, nobody got a close enough look to truly confirm that). If they were planning for a Q1 release, those would have been all but done by the time they were formally announced and they are living in a warehouse.
The issue is the off the shelf (well, bulk purchased) storage and memory. Which… is the issue for a lot of computing at all levels right now.
My guess? We will have VERY limited release provisioned Steam Machines. “We got 500 units at this price” then “We got 700 units at THIS price” a week later and so forth. And there will probably be a Bring Your Own Memory/Storage version with greater availability for those who have some stockpiled or want to gamble.
As for the controllers? Controllers are actually really cheap to manufacture. Their cost is the R&D that goes into them. But they are generally very high mark-up (for the platform holders) and used to help offset the cost of the console itself. Think “gold plated HDMI”. That is why there have been so many third party controllers over the decades.
But those ALSO are sitting in a warehouse. It is just a question of how Valve wants to use them to offset Steam Machines.
The Steam Frame? Pretty sure that is fucked. Because the memory and storage is going to be soldered on (or outright integrated onto the board to begin with). And, as someone who has owned two HMDs (a Windows MR and now a facebook quest some shit or another)… it was probably always going to be a failure.
- Comment on Meta's AI display glasses reportedly share intimate videos with human moderators 5 weeks ago:
Exactly. This obviously wasn’t a brain fart + typo.
The kink shaming of some people.
- Comment on Meta's AI display glasses reportedly share intimate videos with human moderators 5 weeks ago:
Believe it or not but not all sex starts with walking into the bahtroom, closing the door, disrobing, and hopping under the covers.
- Comment on The Nuremberg Trials 2.0 will see 'generative AI' used as an excuse in the same way some tried 'just following orders' as an excuse after WWII 5 weeks ago:
Considering that we have folk ALL over social media already using “they are just following orders” to excuse what the US military is already doing to our own fucking people…
But I also suggest reading up a lot more on what the Nuremburg Trials actually were (and weren’t). It is good that we kind of universally acknowledged “I was just following orders” is not an excuse for murder, rape, and genocide (… for about as long as we acknowledged nazis were the universal evil). But the reality is that it was a complete and utter shitshow with very few actual convictions. In large part because… war is a LOT more “air bud rules” than people realize. And most of the ceremonial high profile targets… actually had good lawyers.
Over dramatized youtube essay, but Jacob Geller has a really good video where he goes into this.
- Comment on California law to require operating systems to check your age 5 weeks ago:
If anyone actually looks through the legislature and the discourse around it:
It is not age verification like you need for pornhub. You aren’t giving a photocopy of your license to some org to verify you exist.
It is literally the same logic as “please enter your birthday to continue”. Just say you were born on jan 1 1900 or whatever. That will then be fetchable by the app/browser to send when a site requests it.
Which… seems like a really good system? It allows people who care about what their kids do to lock down their accounts. And it provides no meaningful PII for adults (or kids whose parents don’t care).
- Comment on "Cancel ChatGPT" movement goes mainstream after OpenAI closes deal with U.S. Department of War — as Anthropic refuses to surveil American citizens 1 month ago:
Like with ANY kind of science (and, like it or not, that is what “AI” research and products are), the money comes from governments. Real Genius is one of my all time favorite movies (and has influenced my life WAY more than it should) but… anyone with an advanced STEM degree can tell you that the reality is you 100% know where your money is coming from. And you are either a naive moron or you figure out why the US (or UK or FR or RU or CN or…) government is so interested in your work to rapidly generate connections between social media posts and your buddy’s really efficient graph search algorithm and…
I am all for shitting on openai/chatgpt for immediately bending over backwards for the us government. Let’s not pretend anthropic/claude are paragons of virtues and privacy.
- Comment on Four years after the last one, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2's enhanced editions have a new patch out in Steam beta 1 month ago:
Finally, dynamic language support should make it easier from here on out for Beamdog to add new translations to the games without the need for a full patch “on most store fronts”. Instead, the developers anticipate being able to drop in new languages “on an ad hoc basis”. Speaking of, patch 2.7 adds community-made Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, and Ukrainian translations to Baldur’s Gate 2, plus Hungarian and Japanese ones to Icewind Dale.
THIS worries me a lot. Either the language packs become DLC (good) or they are going to be streamed from somewhere and the game lasts as long as the content server does.
Still, awesome. People shit on the Beamdog releases because “I can just run this with these forty mods and hacked binaries and a syncthing server and…”. But they are incredibly competent remasters/ports.
Just a shame Icewind Dale 2 is still in the “forever lost” state source wise. The Twins were actually a really fun set of antagonists.
- Comment on Firefox 148.0 arrives with AI controls 1 month ago:
I mean… people using Firefox are doing it because of all the shit Google is shoving down chromium. Firefox has a LOT of room to fuck up before that is going to impact that demographic.