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- Comment on Fear that quantum computing is on the cusp of cracking cryptocurrency's encryption spurs a global investment firm to remove Bitcoin from recommendations 1 day ago:
Businesses that have smart leaders are already implementing (or have already completed implementing) post-quantum encryption systems into their business to protect them for when quantum computers and quantum programming mature and make their existing encryption defeatable. For most systems it’s just a matter of a software update and re-encrypting any data.
Eg: arstechnica.com/…/why-signals-post-quantum-makeov…
This is a problem for public proof-of-work systems that cannot change their encryption, eg: all crypto. Bitcoin cannot change how their coins are encrypted without redesigning and completely rebuilding their public blockchain - it would require concensus from all major bitcoin users and businesses (coin exchanges etc), and could potentially leave any prior-minted bitcoin vulnerable anyway. It will not happen anytime soon - and when it does happen, it may be too late.
Hence, its actually pretty high on the list of quantum targets, and will likely be attacked as soon as it’s available. Some people might be able to steal a bunch of Bitcoin and exchange it for other new (secure) coins or for cash, and get out before the Bitcoin public realize its been cracked. At which time the Bitcoin price will crash hard and may not recover (depending on what action they take to resolve the issue), so the cautious are getting out asap.
- Comment on Amazon is forcibly upgrading Prime members to Alexa Plus, and users are not happy 6 days ago:
Its a CIA-style listening device that people pay for and proudly install and display in their home, gathering data on them, sharing it with Amazon and anyone they care to sell or make that data available to - including police.
Ostensibly all to provide short voice answers and actions they could do privately with their phone in seconds.
- Comment on Circumcision classed as possible child abuse in draft CPS document 1 week ago:
Well, of course, that’s crazy behaviour.
But if you did it in a religious ritualistic ceremony and sucked the blood off the tip of the babies dicks afterwards, well that wouldn’t be weird now, would it.
You could even call it “Metzitzah B’peh” and it would happen so regularly and kids would get herpetic infections from the mohel’s so often (sometimes even dying that the New York Health department would have to issue warnings about it, and it would still not be weird, even when the families of the babies affected would refuse to name the mohel’s to allow the health dept to investigate and have them banned from performing the practice on future babies.
- Comment on Circumcision classed as possible child abuse in draft CPS document 1 week ago:
Literally the same thing that female genital mutilators say about their ‘cultural right’ to circumsize their daughters.
What are kids anyway in your eyes beyond property that parents should have the right to permanently brand with their mark of religion.
- Comment on Innocent African-American child George Stinney executed after being falsely accused of murdering two white girls | 1944 1 week ago:
They thought, “ah shit, he’s not tall enough - grab that bible, we can boost him up higher.”
The USA was far too kind to the Confederate states post-war. The racism has been allowed to fester - and in many cases thrive ever since.
- Comment on 'Microslop' is heading for Edge – major browser redesign is inspired by Copilot, and it's already seriously unpopular 1 week ago:
Internet Copilot One X.
- Comment on CD PROJEKT and GOG co-founder Michał Kiciński acquires GOG from CD PROJEKT 2 weeks ago:
It’s a badly-worded title. Better titles:
- “GOG Is Being Acquired by Original Co-Founder Michał Kiciński” - techraptor.net/…/gog-acquired-original-co-founder
- “Co-founder of CD Projekt Michał Kiciński has acquired GOG, the company’s game storefront” - engadget.com/…/co-founder-of-cd-projekt-michał-ki…
- Comment on CD PROJEKT and GOG co-founder Michał Kiciński acquires GOG from CD PROJEKT 2 weeks ago:
Making it independent from CD Projekt is probably a good thing for conflict of interests, but this seems like it will ultimately change very little as it’s moving from ownership by CD Projekt (and a small group of CD Project co-founders) to ‘independence’ from CD Projekt and ownership by a single CD Projekt/GOG co-founder - who remains the second-largest share owner of CD Project. It only cost him ~$23mil USD BTW, which sounds like a bargain to me, considering CD Projekt Red (while owning GOG) is valued around $10bil US between market cap and assets, and GOG’s slow-but-consistent increase in popularity…
- Comment on Evidence 2 weeks ago:
97% was reported by earlier small surveys, but I think the most rigorous and widely reported survey of scientists was Harris Interactive in 2007.
en.wikipedia.org/…/Scientific_consensus_on_climat…
That was followed up in 2010 by a survey of specifically climate scientists, whom hit 97-98%.
The ‘concensus’ has been constantly challenged in conservative media and circles so there have been many such surveys / meta-analyses continuing over the years and it’s been hitting 100% for the last several years. If any idiot ever parrots “science doesn’t work on concensus” my usually response is something like, “no it doesn’t, but when an entire field of scientists have determined a theory to have vast evidence-based backing its considered settled. The only thing that would change that is significant contradictory data being presented, yet instead every year we’re measuring huge volumes of data that confirm the concensus.”
- Comment on LG Electronics unveils 2026 Gram Laptop line with aerospace composite - up to 50% lighter than macbooks 2 weeks ago:
A Chromecast is not full of ads, but are they all just Google TV now? Is Google TV full of ads? I haven’t used one.
Could be an option to reset your TV, disconnect it from the Internet, and buy & use a Google TV device instead. The streaming devices seem to have far fewer ads and shit than TV manufacturers cram into their devices nowadays.
The hoops we have to jump through to minimise surveillance capitalism…
- Comment on Still trying to figure it out... 2 weeks ago:
Sure is. Like Cliff said, it’s a Western Pygmy Possum (from social media source).
Pic from Wikipedia :
- Comment on Spotify vs. Anna's Archive 3 weeks ago:
Spotify streams all music at 160kbps OGG for free users by default, so that’s what this archive is dumped at - the original Spotify content, no transcode.
Side note - it would probably not be possible to do a dump as a paid used (as they would notice a user account is being abused, and ban it), but paid accounts go up to 320kbps OGG and some content is also available lossless (as FLAC).
Anyway, 99%+ of people can’t consistently tell the difference between a 160kbps OGG and lossless, because of limitations in either their equipment, training, ears, or a combination thereof. This has been blind tested many times and the audiophiles that ‘swear they can tell’ are always proven wrong, they then usually blame the equipment or test. There’s tests you can run yourself too, eg here: abx.digitalfeed.net/list.html
- Comment on Teenage Jehovah's Witness can receive blood transfusion, judge rules 3 weeks ago:
The judge would never make a legal argument that “religious propaganda had reduced a person’s legal capacity” as it would have wide-ranging implications and would be challenged (and overruled) in short order due to freedom of religion laws.
The hospitals legal team appealed for an order because the kid was effectively killing themselves and they have a duty to do no harm.
This prompted the health board to go to the Court of Session to seek an order which would allow its doctors to administer the blood transfusion up to two weeks following the child’s procedure.
Its legal team told Lady Tait that such an order was necessary because blood loss was an “inevitable consequence” of the operation.
The judge deemed that weighing the child’s personal beliefs and medical risk it was in their best interest to allow the order. That is their justification and it follows other case law examined, there is no legal need for them to deem the kid incapable of making the decision. It’s only made the news because religious people making dumb decisions about their health is a common public interest story.
Lady Tait also wrote about cases examined by English courts, before concluding that in the context of the case brought before the court, it would be in the best interests of the child that the order be granted.
- Comment on Teenage Jehovah's Witness can receive blood transfusion, judge rules 3 weeks ago:
Sounds like a slippery slope fallacy. Just because a judge has carefully weighed that this is in the 14 year olds best interest now, does not at all mean more dire decisions against personal rights will be made in future.
I’ll worry if the courts ever start making decisions that go against the childs best interest.
The judge said they’re ordering this because there would not be time to solicit the court for an order if a transfusion does become necessary, and risk of death would be significant.
I’m fine with letting adult religious zealots bleed out if they’re too god-brained to accept help, but for a 14yo I think it’s pretty reasonable to save them from themselves so they can live to have a fully-developed brain.
- Comment on How AI broke the smart home in 2025 3 weeks ago:
For sure. IKEA is a great place to start (or stay), as it’s a cheap ecosystem and their app/implementation doesnt require permanent internet access - functions fine during an internet outrage, and quite privacy-respecting.
HomeAssistant is not anywhere near as hard to set up as it used to be. If you have an old mini-PC retired from work sitting around there are HA images for PCs now, and it’s pretty simple to set up to use your IKEA hub (or whatever you have already), while adding a huge swath of optional features.
I agree it’s still not something your average Joe will set up, but the continual lowering of barriers will get more people into running a self-hosted local config is a great thing for privacy and expanding the hobby.
- Comment on How AI broke the smart home in 2025 3 weeks ago:
There’s an xkcd for everything, isn’t there.
Its not wrong, but the major attraction to Matter is it must allow devices to operate locally (not tying them to cloud services that die every internet outrage, or permanently when the service retires), and it’s an application-layer protocol. Meaning it can operate over WiFi, Ethernet, or Thread.
Many existing smart home hubs have been able to program support for Matter and simply send out an OTA update to add certified Matter support.
- Comment on How AI broke the smart home in 2025 3 weeks ago:
The real issue with smart home adoption has been proprietary formats all vying for dominance and fragmenting the market. I don’t think AI has changed much.
Matter (and Thread) are a huge change to the SmartHome landscape because they’re open protocols and have well-documented standards - and they’ve finally begun appearing in big manufacturer’s line-ups such as IKEA.
Once their availability spreads I suspect a lot more people will get into running their own local (eg HomeAssistant) smart home because they won’t have to do the ‘ok do I need z-wave or ZigBee or HomeKit or IFTTT or Hue or Tuya or… you know what, fuck this’. It’ll all be the same protocol and communications and config & debug will be much easier.
- Comment on Backing up Spotify 4 weeks ago:
Well, since this archive says it contains the original ogg @160kbps for all artists with a popularity >0, it’ll be in this collection. Your wait may be over soon.
- Comment on Recommendation for Android File Manager 4 weeks ago:
I use Fossify FM for most on-device stuff, thumbs up from me too.
If I need to copy/move files between my phone and my NAS I use Ghost Commander as it has SMB support and the dual-panels make moving between devices easier to grapple with visually.
- Comment on Self-Host Weekly #150: Watchtower No More 4 weeks ago:
I’ve used it several months and can recommend it. No issues so far and seems to get regular updates for bugfixes and minor new features.
- Comment on What DDNS providers you guys recommend? 5 weeks ago:
Yeah DuckDNS gave me many false positive outages where its resolution failed, for multiple half-days every year I used it (5yrs+).
I moved to the afraid.org and its been solid, if anyone’s looking for another free service - only cost is you have to log in once every six months to validate your account is not dormant. They have a paid tier which gives more features (that most home users will never need), and that allows the guy running it to fund a very reliable service.
- Comment on What DDNS providers you guys recommend? 5 weeks ago:
I’m surprised the amount of people saying they have had no issues with DucksDNS. I’ve used it for about five years and had issues on and off with it being unresponsive many times.
Gave up and moved to afraid.org about a year back and that’s been a very solid service ever since.
- Comment on Why do you hate AI? 5 weeks ago:
It is absolutely predefined - if you make the same moves it will give you the same results, every time. Same as playing ChessMaster 2000 from 1986.
It may narrowly fit into the broad definition of ‘AI’ (like, since the 70s) but that’s not what’s being discussed in this thread.
Believe what you like though.
- Comment on Why do you hate AI? 5 weeks ago:
I agree it’s great at writing and frame-working parts of code and selecting libraries - it definitely has value for coding. $1500 bil value though, I doubt.
My main concern there lies in the next gen of programmers. The work that ChatGPT (and Claude etc) outputs requires some significant programming prior-experience to allow them to make sense of the output and adjust (or correct) it to suit their scope and requirements of the project. In additions it’s taking away the entry-level work that junior devs usually do and have cleaned up for prod by senior devs - and that’s not theory, the job market is dying now.
- Comment on Why do you hate AI? 5 weeks ago:
When people say “I fucking hate AI”, 99% of the time they mean “I fucking hate AI™©®”. They don’t mean the technology behind it.
To add to your good points, I’m a CS grad that studied neural networks and machine learning years back, and every time I read some idiot claiming something like “this scientific breakthrough has got scientists wondering if we’re on the cusp of creating a new species of superintelligence” or “90% of jobs will be obsolete in five years” it annoys me because its not real, and it’s always someone selling something. Today’s AI is the same tech they’ve been working on for 30+ years and incrementally building upon, but as Moore’s Law has marched on we now have storage pools and computing power to run very advanced models and networks. There is no magic breakthrough, just hype.
The recent advancements are all driven by the $1500 billion spent on grabbing as many resources they could - all because some idiots convinced them it’s the next gold rush. What has that $1500 bil got us? Machines that can answer general questions correctly around 40% of the time, plagiarize art for memes, create shallow corporate content that nobody wants, and write some half-decent code cobbled together from StackOverflow and public GitHub repos.
What a fucking waste of resources.
What’s real is the social impacts, the educational impacts, the environmental impacts, the effect on artists and others who have had their work stolen for training, the useability of the Internet (search is fucked now), and what will be very real soon is the global recession/depression it causes as businesses realize more and more that it’s not worth the cost to implement or maintain (in all but very few scenarios).
- Comment on Why do you hate AI? 5 weeks ago:
I know you’re meming, but in Civilization (as in most games), you’re playing against predefined scripts and algorithmic rules that the computer opponent has, as well as having cheaper costs for resources than the user at higher difficulty levels - because it cannot compete with a skilled human player at that level (it literally cheats).
No LLM, no neural network, no deep learning… not ‘AI’ in the modern sense that’s being discussed here.
- Comment on Why do you hate AI? 5 weeks ago:
… And NVMe SSDs, and large HDDs.
I bought a Crucial P310 MVMe 2TB card barely three weeks ago for the already-inflated price of $132.58 (not on sale).
The exact same card from the exact same retailer is now $225.13.
70% increase in 21 days.
That’s the average amount of inflation we’d have in eighteen years.
- Comment on Victorian premier delivers formal apology to Australia’s First Peoples for ‘rapid and violent’ colonisation 5 weeks ago:
LNP increasing… Greens and ALP both decreasing.
Fuck Aussie’s are poorly-informed voters. We’ll be back to LNP and right-wing coalition govt in no time, with the last 15 years of problems blamed on the 4 years of Labor rule because ‘they touched it last’.
- Comment on builder.ai has been tricking customers and investors for eight years – selling an advanced code-writing AI that, it turns out, is actually an Indian software farm employing 700 human developers 1 month ago:
But now instead of blaming a junior dev they can instead hit you with the, “Our apologies for this issue - we are modifying the prompts for the model and re-running in-unit AI tests, will revert back to you”, and charge slightly more.
- Comment on AI finds errors in 90% of Wikipedia's best articles 1 month ago:
Disagree, Wikipedia is a pretty reliable bastion of facts due to its editorial demands for citations and rigorous style guides etc.
Can you point out any of these personal fiefdoms so we can see what you’re referring to?
