jabberwock
@jabberwock@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- Comment on What Phone do you guys use? 3 days ago:
Depends on the book. For stock digital graphic novels, it’s much easier on the Fold. For webcomics they are usually optimized for a narrower vertical screen. Same applies to static PDFs.
Text really comes down to the viewer. Assuming it’s a book format that can be reflowed, reading can be just fine. I still prefer the wider format so I’m not constantly scrolling or tapping to turn pages, probably helps with eye fatigue too but not sure how long you plan to read on your phone anyway.
- Comment on What Phone do you guys use? 4 days ago:
I had a ZFold 4 for a good long while before switching to a Pixel with GrapheneOS (OP is right, it’s a legal requirement when joining lemmy). I can share my experience.
I really loved it but I also had very specific use cases. It was great for reading long-form content on the go and much more comfortable browsing websites, mostly those where they don’t have / use mobile-first design like old forums. It was also great for sharing content in person, like sharing a spreadsheet or slideshow in person became so much easier. Some edge cases were nice to have, like taking a conference call you could split screen at the crease and prop it up for a more laptop-like experience. Ultimately it did away with the tablet use case between my laptop and phone.
Downsides were definitely price, it’s like an $1800 phone, probably more now. I kept it for probably 4 years and still use it occasionally so I feel I’m getting my moneys worth. Not sure how the durability is these days, used to have issues with screens cracking even though mine is going strong. They redesigned it from 5+ in a way that it folds fully flat now and should extend screen life.
It really boils down to “is the screen real estate of two phones worth paying the price of two phones?” It has all the flagship features you’d expect, so you’re really buying the form factor.
- Comment on Did we win? 1 week ago:
In the US, I largely agree with you. Or use a website from a mobile browser. Different story in different countries where a smartphone might be the only compute the average person has, or where state services are tied to a mobile ID or bank app.
Not saying that should be the case, but if the choice is between running niche FOSS apps and removing yourself from societal benefits structures, I know what most people will pick. That’s the real danger of allowing one company to own an entire ecosystem and have enough power that they have conversations directly with governments about their people instead of with their people.
- Comment on Leaked Email Suggests Ring Plans to Expand ‘Search Party’ Surveillance Beyond Dogs 5 weeks ago:
Well I’ll be got-damned, looks like Search Party is a feature native to the Ring Neighbors platform and separate from the whole Flock partnership. cnet.com/…/what-does-rings-search-party-ai-pet-tr…
Specifically, this feature appears opt-out, so if someone does have a Ring camera, good idea to take a spin through the settings. Or, the easiest remediation was my original suggestion, chuck it in the bin (or responsibly dispose of it, if you can).
- Comment on Leaked Email Suggests Ring Plans to Expand ‘Search Party’ Surveillance Beyond Dogs 5 weeks ago:
FWIW, Ring announced they were canceling their partnership with Flock a few days ago following the Superbowl ad where they were universally dragged. blog.ring.com/…/ring-and-flock-cancel-partnership…
Do I think Ring is still running some sort of analytics on video feeds? Probably. Should you put anything from Amazon directly in the trash? Absolutely.
Silver lining I guess is that public pressure still works at least a little when companies try to go straight dystopian.
- Comment on Duval holding cue card for Brando who can't remember his lines. 5 weeks ago:
He seemed to play fast and loose with sexual consent, seems like plenty to warrant “kind of a piece of shit” if not more.
- Comment on Rent is theft 1 month ago:
What about cases where the move is only temporary? Should people sell every time and hope there is a place to live when they return?
In the private lender case, do you see that as different from someone who starts their own company and manages the property themselves while the renter pays them directly?
The earning equity piece isn’t necessarily incorrect, what the owner is losing is potentially the opportunity to move at all. This assumes they can afford a mortgage + whatever it costs to live somewhere else.
- Comment on Rent is theft 1 month ago:
The economists’ answer is that renting exists for the people in this situation. You may be moving to another country for a year or two. Are you going to buy a new house every time you move? Renting gives flexibility in that regard.
Likewise for refugees, putting them up in a rental is a more efficient solution than building new housing for each family.
That said, the model provides an inherently exploitative market and needs some kind of overlay to function efficiently, which in most US cities it doesn’t at all.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
I bought an Analogue Pocket maybe 9 months ago, so glad I dodged the fascist bullet on that one. But kinda sad that I have to wake up each day and read the news to see what product I have to start boycotting because someone running the company has jumped on the wrong side of history.
- Comment on Delicious rocks 2 months ago:
+1 for Explosions & Fire and Extractions & Ire. This guy puts out videos where he’s synthesizing various explosives or just extracting weird compounds from things, all laced with a blend of Aussie humor and shitposting. Highly recommend
- Comment on Is it completely impossible to do age verification without compromising privacy? 3 months ago:
Could tie it to something like a biometric. That and storing it on a write-only device would keep it from being shared too wide. The trickiss to tie it to a true multi-factor and not just something you have (if unencrypted) or something you know (if ASCII armored).
- Comment on Is it completely impossible to do age verification without compromising privacy? 3 months ago:
I’ll address the second objection first regarding the phone or browser. You’re always going to rely on some technology for the solutions that use cryptography, you just can’t do those calculations long-hand realistically. That said, look up frameworks like CTAP that allow a potentially untrusted user terminal, like a browser, to interact with a trusted hardware token. Those hardware tokens can be made fairly tamper-proof, see FIPS authorized Yubikeys, such that the phone is pretty much removed from the attestation process. Yes these can still be stolen, but they make hardware keys that are fingerprint authenticated and the biometric stays on the device. Doesn’t get much more self-sovereign than that.
The existence of a trusted credential provider is a challenge. Fully self-sovereign credentials need to either be trust on first use or validated against a larger system everyone participates in. Even if we had some system of birth certificates tied to a distributed ledger, we would have to trust the third party recording that certificate in the first place, be it a hospital, doctor, or state entity. These trust and proof systems don’t create the trust, they just allow us to extend that trust from one claimant to a verifier. Whether you place that trust in the state, an individual, or an independent third party is up to you.
- Comment on Passkeys Explained: The End of Passwords 4 months ago:
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the FIDO2 standard works. It is not designed to be vendor specific and as other people in this thread point out, plenty of open-source secrets managers and hardware implement passkeys.
What we’ve seen is the typical Silicon Valley model of “embrace, extend, extinguish” so you’re right to be wary of any implementation by Google or Microsoft.
Same goes for biometrics - how you unlock the passkey isn’t specified in the standard. It is left up to the implementation. If you don’t want to use biometrics, you don’t have to.
- Comment on Chaotic Evil 4 months ago:
Alright, devil’s advocate here - maybe this setup can prevent it. You plug something permanent, like a mouse & keyboard, into the leftmost port and leave the right two open. Then when you try the first one and it’s misaligned, move to the other port and it’s correct. No flipping of the USB connector required.
I don’t think that’s why they did it but hey…
- Comment on After police used Flock cameras to accuse a Denver woman of theft, she had to prove her own innocence 4 months ago:
For anyone unaware, there is a community effort to map these cameras. deflock.me
- Comment on Everyday AI looks more like the '08 housing bubble 5 months ago:
I think you are overestimating the amount people will pay for convenience or cling to their old ways.
Did e-readers kill the bookstore? Some people will always prefer to cook out of a book or dive into docs to write code.
Or look at the modern streaming landscape. In the beginning there was basically Netflix and everyone was fine paying that monthly fee for the convenience of streaming basically everything. Now we have 20+ vendors all charging for some subset of content. And we have seen a corresponding loss in subscribers as people hit the limit of what they are willing to pay for convenience.
- Comment on Everyday AI looks more like the '08 housing bubble 5 months ago:
I’ll play devil’s advocate here: agreed that the rest of the (US) economy seems to be slowing or shrinking but remains buoyed by AI / Mag 7 stocks. That said, a lot of the investment reflected above is in data centers and hardware (Nvidia, Coreweave, Oracle, Microsoft).
The bubble pop will hinge on whether there is value in this data center buildup beyond AI. Unless everyone starts paying fistfulls of cash for AI chat, these companies may be able to find another use for all that compute and avoid a total crash. That could be a target for all that investment you mention.