solrize
@solrize@lemmy.ml
- Comment on Is GW190521 a gravitational wave echo of wormhole remnant from another universe? 11 hours ago:
Oh come on, it looks like an interesting take on standard existing theory. Once you accept the idea of the universe originating from a microscopic singularity 13.7 billion years ago, why should you be so sure that there is only one of them? And what exactly do you want “proved” when the paper itself (p.10) seems to say that under the authors’ model, the wormhole theory has just exp(-2.9)=around 5% chance of being the right explanation vs the more conventional one?
Authors: we calculate that proposition X has 5% chance of being true Internet smartypants: oh yeah? Prove that X is true, hur hur.
Penrose (physics Nobel 2020) and someone had a sort of similar theory that some mysterious circles in CMB data were signals from another universe, and it was taken seriously until the circles turned out to be from some problem with the measurement equipment.
Me, I think this stuff is pretty cool and I wish I understood enough GR to read that paper. Leaving aside the whole topic of science (the study of actual natural reality) and treating it as a problem of pure math (finding equations that match a particular set of criteria without worrying about whether they describe something that actually exists), from what I can tell, it’s still a tough problem. But these kinds of ideas have been around for a long time, and the math works as far as anyone can tell. That’s the best you can hope for given that there’s no way to observe the big bang directly.
- Comment on how do school shooters know how to use guns? 14 hours ago:
- Submitted 1 day ago to science@mander.xyz | 2 comments
- Comment on [USA] How much of a bad idea is it to be flying drones in this political climate? Or carrying meshtastic radios Or Ham/GMRS radios in public? How likely are there gonna be karens that will harass you? 2 days ago:
I don’t fly drones and generally find them to be dorky, but it would have occurred to me to worry about carrying radios. I’m not worried now either. And, there really isn’t much that isn’t made in China these days, including quite a lot of mobile phones.
- Comment on Mastodon is bringing quote posts to the fediverse 2 days ago:
Aha, thanks, I didn’t realize boosting and quoting weren’t the same. I’m not very familiar with this stuff.
- Comment on Senators demand ICE cease use of facial recognition app 3 days ago:
What do they think it means for Senators to demand something? If they want to have a chance of making it happen, they have to do their job and pass a law, and even then it’s just a hope. They should know by now that sternly worded letters are useless.
- Comment on Mastodon is bringing quote posts to the fediverse 3 days ago:
There’s been a “boost” button for a while. I don’t know how long though. I haven’t tried using it. But I’ve seen some posts boosted by other users of that instance.
- Comment on Mastodon is bringing quote posts to the fediverse 3 days ago:
mathstodon.xyz has it. I had thought that was a mastodon instance but maybe it’s something different.
- Comment on Senator demands to know status of 'duplicate' Social Security database 'immediately' 3 days ago:
I don’t remember anything about him politically, but I liked the way Count Chocola embraced his nickname.
- Comment on Mastodon is bringing quote posts to the fediverse 3 days ago:
I thought it was already there and had been there for a while?
- Comment on [deleted] 4 days ago:
Wut. Usually it’s for elderly people who need someone looking after them. So yes this is sus.
- Comment on Microsoft still can't convince folks to upgrade to Windows 11 4 days ago:
Makes me miss windows 7.
- Comment on Google wasn't against this privacy bill, officially. Behind the scenes, it orchestrated opposition 4 days ago:
In summary
Google organized business owners against California legislation to force its Chrome web browser to safeguard personal data.
- Comment on Big Tech: Convenience is a Trap 5 days ago:
- Comment on emergency remote access 5 days ago:
You have to say what your installation is like. If it’s typical consumer cable modem crap that locks up and needs a power cycle now and then, the simplest approach might just be to add a remote power cycle mechanism:
isn’t the cheapest but it’s nicely packaged. That’s just a switchable power strip, so yes you’d need some kind of cellular internet or meshtastic or something to operate it.
In the more serious case where your box is at a data center, you generally open a ticket with the data center and ask them to reboot the box (“remote hands”). Sometimes they will do that for free, other times they charge you.
- Comment on Forgejo fills up hard drive with repo-archives 1 week ago:
Are you saying if someone (such as a scraper) tries to download a snapshot, forgejo makes a disk file containing the snapshot, sends it, and keeps it around forever? That sounds crazy to me and I’d open a bug or try to fix it.
- Comment on What's the name of the type of man I'm attracted to? (pictured) 1 week ago:
Idk what they are called but I know what version control software they use.
- Comment on Nepal bans social media(Facebook, X, Reddit, Mastodon, Discord, Signal, YouTube and more) for failing to register with the government; Only 7 to be open(Viber, TikTok, Telegram and more) 1 week ago:
Is there even a desktop client for Signal? The mobile app isn’t on F-droid so I can’t easily install it (I don’t use the Play store). Maybe i can get the APK from somewhere.
The other points are reasonably valid though the lack of end to end encryption is somewhat mitigated by self hosting.
I don’t understand why browser notifications are slower than other types of app notifications, but I’m not an Android wizard so maye there’s a reason. Does Signal require Google Play Services to get Firebase messages? I have that turned off too, so that’s another annoyance / privacy invasion that I’d have to enable.
I don’t particularly want Signal to be federated any more than I want all the world’s websites to be federated. I want a zillion separate non-federated servers, not like the tragic 1-way internet that we mostly have now. So your contacts file has something like email addresses in it, that tell the client what server to connect to for a given person.
Regardless of Signal’s financial intentions there’s no question that money and eyeballs hypnotize people and warps their minds. This happened to Wikipedia decades ago. They operate just like an internet startup where they obsess over user activity. They abandoned their vision of giving everyone in the world a free encyclopedia (i.e. every computer in the world has Wikipedia on its hard drive for completely private access) and instead focus on running a giant web site that constantly tracks people, gets censored, etc. They are swimming in money and are always asking for more anyway. I see Signal trying to reach a similar future.
- Comment on Nepal bans social media(Facebook, X, Reddit, Mastodon, Discord, Signal, YouTube and more) for failing to register with the government; Only 7 to be open(Viber, TikTok, Telegram and more) 1 week ago:
until someone makes a decentralized option that’s polished and reliable enough that nobody will be mad at me after I talk them into using it, Signal will be my go-to for messaging.
In fact that option already exists, it’s Signal itself, except that they deliberately made it harder to use that way. The client and server code are (from what I understand) both downloadable. So you can run your own server, modify the client to connect to your server instead of to Signal’s, compile the new client, and get your friends to use your new .apk instead of using the one from the Play store. Of course Signal could perfectly well have just made the server address a user configuration field in the first place, like Nextcloud does.
So why didn’t they? The existence of the social media feature tells something about their intentions. The fact that you can decide not to use that feature is irrelevant to what it tells. The idea is a many-to-many system with N users has N^2^ possible connections, which increases the site engagement and stickiness. That is, they are in the eyeball monetization business or are gearing up to enter it. So that’s at best a warning sign.
I have to say I don’t use Signal so I don’t understand what is supposed to be great about it. I have a self-hosted Nextcloud (including Chat) and it was a hassle to install, but hasn’t needed much attention since then. You can use either the Nextcloud app from F-droid or you can use an ordinary browser to chat over it, no app needed. That also means you can use a normal desktop computer instead of a phone. It does voice and video too, though those aren’t so great.
Jitsi Meet is supposed to also be ok for self-hosting though I haven’t tried doing that. I did play with their web client over their public instance (meet.jit.si) and that was quite nice.
GNU Jami unfortunately goes too far and tries to be serverless, and hits a bunch of reliability snags because of that. I tried to use it but just had too little success. I don’t know if it’s fixable without abandoning the underlying architecture. And, it needs an app. I think it’s preferable to support browser clients even if a mobiie app is also available.
I haven’t tried Matrix. I’m enough of a luddite to still use IRC but it has shortcomings for how people use chat these days.
- Comment on Nepal bans social media(Facebook, X, Reddit, Mastodon, Discord, Signal, YouTube and more) for failing to register with the government; Only 7 to be open(Viber, TikTok, Telegram and more) 1 week ago:
A bar (place where you drink) is another type of a messaging system. Yu can meet people in them and have conversations there. That doesn’t mean it’s best to crowd everyone into one giant bar claiming that increases utility, compared with letting people freely open their own bars. Especially if the avowed purpose of the bar is enabling private conversations (facilitating giving you and your friend Bob a private place to talk, as opposed to creating a meeting place for strangers).
I can understand visiting a giant bar if I want to mingle with randos in public. If I want to talk privately with my friend, I want a small, private bar, preferably one whose existence is not known to anyone outside of my friend group. If the giant bar operator is going out of his way to prevent me from doing that, I have to say he is up to something not so good.
Sorry about the strained analogy but at least it didn’t mentioned cars. Well, until just now.
- Comment on Nepal bans social media(Facebook, X, Reddit, Mastodon, Discord, Signal, YouTube and more) for failing to register with the government; Only 7 to be open(Viber, TikTok, Telegram and more) 1 week ago:
I’m bothered mostly by the default Signal app’s inability to use a self-hosted server instead of signal.com’s own server, and have been dubious about Signal because of that. The social media feature is something I hadn’t heard of til just now. It reinforces my skepticism but it’s just another issue. I’d be more interested in Signal if I could use my own server without having to get people to install modified clients.
- Comment on Nepal bans social media(Facebook, X, Reddit, Mastodon, Discord, Signal, YouTube and more) for failing to register with the government; Only 7 to be open(Viber, TikTok, Telegram and more) 1 week ago:
It does say something about the mindset of the vendor, which is a legit reason to decide not to use an app. From what I can tell, Teslas are pretty good cars despite some issues here and there. But Elon’s antics are enough to make me decide not to buy one.
- Comment on Nepal bans social media(Facebook, X, Reddit, Mastodon, Discord, Signal, YouTube and more) for failing to register with the government; Only 7 to be open(Viber, TikTok, Telegram and more) 1 week ago:
Bah, more reason to avoid Signal. For private communications I want an antisocial network, not the opposite.
- Comment on Nepal bans social media(Facebook, X, Reddit, Mastodon, Discord, Signal, YouTube and more) for failing to register with the government; Only 7 to be open(Viber, TikTok, Telegram and more) 1 week ago:
I guess that centralized server thing is working out real well then. /s
- Comment on Nepal bans social media(Facebook, X, Reddit, Mastodon, Discord, Signal, YouTube and more) for failing to register with the government; Only 7 to be open(Viber, TikTok, Telegram and more) 1 week ago:
Signal is a social media platform?
- Comment on Cory Doctorow New Book: Enshitification 1 week ago:
I’m glad to hear that. It’s unfortunate that the blurb only described it as an audio book, so I went by without looking into it further.
- Comment on Cory Doctorow New Book: Enshitification 1 week ago:
Audiobook? Bah, I remember when books were for reading.
- Comment on A proposal to help the Lemmy devs 2 weeks ago:
Lemmy.ml is literally the developers’ home instance. You’re confusing instance admins (basically randos) with the developers. Anyway I like it here on .ml. I moved here from .world because of too much censorship there. You’re literally not allowed to discuss disapproved brands of cat food on .world. I still chuckle over that one.
- Comment on What is the difference between these 3 sets of movies? 2 weeks ago:
Iron Man 3 motto: “This time it’s not going to suck”. (h/t Tom Smith)
- Comment on Hypothetically, if you have memory problems and need to write down events, is there a system which you can verify that its not tampered with? (Like a digital checksum, but for a journal) 2 weeks ago:
Maybe there’s a technical solution but what if you forget to check it?
Anyway watch the movie “Memento” if you haven’t.