Australis13
@Australis13@fedia.io
- Comment on South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware 4 months ago:
Well, I guess that's one ISP everyone will want to avoid...
- Comment on An ounce of prevention: Now is the time to take action on H5N1 avian flu, because the stakes are enormous 5 months ago:
Unless the human mortality rate is much higher than COVID, this is just going to be the same thing all over again. Vaccines take time to prepare and even though this is a flu strain (which should give us a headstart), there doesn't seem to be much happening with this yet (even the US has only just started getting organised with an order of 4.8 million doses, which is a drop in the ocean if their burgeoning outbreak amongst livestock manages to jump to humans). Waiting until we have rampant human-to-human transmission to order vaccines will be too late.
- Comment on Microsoft won't update your Windows 11 PC if it has these apps 7 months ago:
Turns out one of the video-editing programs I use (VideoRedo) has shut down anyway (I think the owner passed away) and so I'll need to look for an alternative anyway - I don't think I can activate it on new machines anymore.
- Comment on Microsoft won't update your Windows 11 PC if it has these apps 7 months ago:
Because I haven't yet updated from Windows 10 to 11 and had been putting it off. In the past week, though, I have seen a number of news articles highlighting issues I am going to have with Windows 11 and this particular article, indicating that they have been effectively leaving systems vulnerable simply because they have applications they don't like installed is just not good enough. I'd understand it if they were saying "we can't guarantee your OS stability with these apps" or "we can't guarantee these apps will work anymore" if they were removing older API support, but this is ridiculous.
- Comment on Microsoft won't update your Windows 11 PC if it has these apps 7 months ago:
Good to know. I don't play many games, but do have some older ones from GoG that would be nice to keep.
- Comment on Microsoft won't update your Windows 11 PC if it has these apps 7 months ago:
Thanks, will do!
- Comment on Microsoft won't update your Windows 11 PC if it has these apps 7 months ago:
I was already dubious about upgrading from 10 to 11 and this is final straw. I will have to look at Linux options and see if my Windows-only programs will run effectively under WINE.
- Comment on Powerful X-class solar flare slams Earth, triggering radio blackout over the Pacific Ocean 7 months ago:
My understanding is that we actually don't have much of a warning (under an hour), since a CME has to reach the satellite at the Lagrange point between Earth and the Sun for us to know it's about to hit Earth. According to the article below, this includes power companies, but I remain skeptical that there's enough organisation in place to shut down the North American, European or Asian grids in 15 minutes.
- Comment on Powerful X-class solar flare slams Earth, triggering radio blackout over the Pacific Ocean 7 months ago:
In general, people are appallingly bad at weighing up long-term vs short-term stuff, both in terms of risks and benefits. It's even worse when, as you say, there's no definite deadline or it doesn't directly affect those who can do something about it.
- Comment on Powerful X-class solar flare slams Earth, triggering radio blackout over the Pacific Ocean 7 months ago:
I agree. There were articles and documentaries about 20 years ago that I remember featuring these sort of events. The continent affected would take 20-30 years to rebuild its electricity grid.
- Comment on Coles paper bags have been shrinkflated 8 months ago:
Ugh.
My experience has been that Coles paper bags were already weaker/more prone to tearing than the Woolworths ones, so looks like they are doubling-down on their inferior product.
- Comment on started to feel headaches and such from headphones, measured how many microteslas it emits or whatever, is this safe? 9 months ago:
Very likely to be the physical force applied by the headphones, depending on how they are worn. I cannot use certain designs because they become uncomfortable even if only worn for short periods.
- Comment on How Australian undercover police ‘fed’ an autistic 13-year-old’s fixation with Islamic State 9 months ago:
This is utterly disgusting and I hope the officers involved in this appalling abuse of power lose their positions.
It serves as yet another example of why the neurodiverse community should never trust law enforcement.
- Comment on Delivery Firm’s AI Chatbot Goes Rogue, Curses at Customer and Criticizes Company 10 months ago:
Indeed. I'd hardly classify this as going "rogue"; rather, inadequate guard rails in place for this application.
- Comment on Nightshade, the free tool that ‘poisons’ AI models, is now available for artists to use 10 months ago:
The browser addon "AdNauseum" can help with that, although it's not a complete solution.
- Comment on Alaska Airlines Grounds Fleet of Boeing 737 Max 9 Jets After Midair ‘Incident’ 10 months ago:
That is better than a fuselage failure, but still disturbing if you're correct - surely there are checks for exit doir plugs since it would be at higher risk of failure.
- Comment on Alaska Airlines Grounds Fleet of Boeing 737 Max 9 Jets After Midair ‘Incident’ 10 months ago:
Multiple news articles are reporting that this aircraft had its post-production certification only two months ago. For a problem of this magnitude to develop in such a short time is very disconcerting.
- Comment on Why a kilobyte is 1000 and not 1024 bytes 10 months ago:
Huh? What does how a drive size is measured affect the available address space used at all? Drives are broken up into blocks, and each block is addressable.
Sorry, I probably wasn't clear. You're right that the units don't affect how the address space is used. My peeve is that because of marketing targeting nice round numbers, you end up with (for example) a 250GB drive that does not use the full address space available (since you necessarily have to address to up 256GiB. If the units had been consistent from the get-go, then I suspect the average drive would have just a bit more usable space available by default.
My comment re wear-levelling was more to suggest that I didn't think the unused address space (in my example of 250GB vs 256GiB) could be excused by saying it was taken up by spare sectors.
- Comment on Why a kilobyte is 1000 and not 1024 bytes 10 months ago:
Of course. The thing is, though, that if the units had been consistent to begin with, there wouldn't be anywhere near as much confusion. Most people would just accept MiB, GiB, etc. as the units on their storage devices. People already accept weird values for DVDs (~4.37GiB / 4.7GB), so if we had to use SI units then a 256GiB drive could be marketed as a ~275GB drive (obviously with the non-rounded value in the fine print, e.g. "Usable space approx. 274.8GB").
- Comment on Why a kilobyte is 1000 and not 1024 bytes 10 months ago:
This whole mess regularly frustrates me... why the units can't be used consistently?!
The other peeve of mine with this debacle is that drive capacities using SI units do not use the full available address space (since it's binary). Is the difference between 250GB and 256GiB really used effectively for wear-levelling (which only applies to SSDs) or spare sectors?
- Comment on I'd watch it. 11 months ago:
Yep, as Jellico in 'Chain of Command'.
- Comment on I am tired of corporatist technology and I need help to get away from it. 11 months ago:
I second the suggestion of RSS feeds (I use TheOldReader) and DuckDuckGo as search engine replacement.
Also, Mozilla's Pocket is a useful tool for collecting articles (and having related ones recommended to you).
- Comment on It's surprisingly easy to mix up a couple of coordinates 11 months ago:
Stargates dematerialise travellers too.
- Comment on Was updating my Christmas Trek Music playlist and realized y'all might like 11 months ago:
I needed that laugh. Thankyou!