Manjushri
@Manjushri@piefed.social
- Comment on A million new SpaceX satellites will destroy the night sky — for everyone on Earth 6 days ago:
Don’t count on it. These things don’t just zip along in their orbits. LEO is crowded. They have to maneuver to avoid collisions… a lot.
Over the past six months, Starlink satellites have been increasingly performing collision avoidance maneuvers. According to a report filed by SpaceX with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), SpaceX broadband satellites were forced to avoid more than 25 thousand times from December 1, 2022 to May 31, 2023. And since their launch in 2019, the total number of maneuvers has reached 50 thousand.
If Starlink or any other mega-constellation company loses control of their satellites for any reason, there could be collisions. A recent study (Note: PDF) suggests that a sufficiently powerful CME could cause a runaway Kessler Syndrome in as little as 2.8 days.
- Comment on HP realizes that mandatory 15-minute support call wait times isn’t good support 1 week ago:
I’ve been twitchy about Lenova since they got caught selling computers with a rootkit that reinstalled crap-ware that users had uninstalled. A user would uninstall useless software from their computer, and when they rebooted, the rootkit would kick in and reinstall the bloatware.
The “rootkit"-style covert installer, dubbed the Lenovo Service Engine (LSE), works by installing an additional program that updates drivers, firmware, and other pre-installed apps. The engine also “sends non-personally identifiable system data to Lenovo servers,” according to the company. The engine, which resides in the computer’s BIOS, replaces a core Windows system file with its own, allowing files to be downloaded once the device is connected to the internet.
But that service engine also put users at risk.
In a July 31 security bulletin, the company warned the engine could be exploited by hackers to install malware. The company issued a security update that removed the engine’s functionality, but users must install the patch manually.
They had previously been caught selling computers with adware installed on them.
Earlier this year, the computer maker was forced to admit it had installed Superfish adware over a three-month period on new machines sold through retail channels. The adware had the capability to intercept and hijack internet traffic flowing over secure connections, including online stores, banks, among others.
Users were told they should “not use their laptop for any kind of secure transactions until they are able to confirm [the adware] has been removed,” security researcher Marc Rogers told ZDNet at the time.
It was thought as many as 16 million consumers and bring-your-own-device users were affected by the preinstalled adware.
- Comment on French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle tracked via Strava activity in OPSEC failure 1 week ago:
Yep. This has only been an issue for nearly a decade.
The Strava Heat Map and the End of Secrets
The revelations began unspooling at a rapid pace after Nathan Ruser, a student studying international security at the Australian National University, began posting his findings via Twitter on Saturday afternoon. In a series of images, Ruser pointed out Strava user activities potentially related to US military forward operating bases in Afghanistan, Turkish military patrols in Syria, and a possible guard patrol in the Russian operating area of Syria.
Other researchers soon followed up with a dizzying array of international examples, based on cross-referencing Strava user activity with Google Maps and prior news reporting: a French military base in Niger, an Italian military base in Djibouti, and even CIA “black” sites. Several experts observed that the Strava heatmap seemed best at revealing the presence of mostly Western military and civilian operations in developing countries.
- Comment on Hermetically sealed, for your health! 1 week ago:
Be careful doing that. It takes a fair bit of water, but Water Intoxication is a real thing. It can make you quite ill and even be fatal.
Drinking too much water dilutes your blood and decreases the electrolytes in your body, especially sodium (hyponatremia). As a result, water moves into your body’s cells and causes them to swell. When you get too much water in your brain cells, it increases pressure on your brain and affects how it works. This leads to changes in your awareness, movement and behavior (altered mental status). Water intoxication is also potentially fatal.
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The amount of water that causes overhydration varies. It’s important to understand how your body uses water to know how much is too much for you. Your body removes excess water through your pee. In a day, this equals about 32 to 64 ounces (about 1 to 2 liters). In some people, water intoxication symptoms can develop after drinking about a gallon (3 to 4 liters) of water over an hour or two.
- Comment on YSK: The CIA proposed a 9/11 style false flag attack on US citizens to justify invading Cuba 1 week ago:
In the modern era, the US president doesn’t need to actually have a justification for starting a war, just the possibility of profit.
- Comment on AI error jails innocent grandmother for months in North Dakota fraud case 2 weeks ago:
Damn! Thanks for pointing this out.
In the course of discussing whether Archive.today should be deprecated because of the DDoS, Wikipedia editors discovered that the archive site altered snapshots of webpages to insert the name of the blogger who was targeted by the DDoS. The alterations were apparently fueled by a grudge against the blogger over a post that described how the Archive.today maintainer hid their identity behind several aliases.
- Comment on Fascism bad. 3 weeks ago:
Having enlarged and/or over active amygdalas would go a long way to explaining a lot of traits expressed by conservatives. That includes their fear of going to going to the grocery store without a gun on their hip.
- Comment on Google's AI Sent an Armed Man to Steal a Robot Body for It to Inhabit, Then Encouraged Him to Kill Himself, Lawsuit Alleges. Google said in response that "unfortunately AI models are not perfect." 3 weeks ago:
That turns out not to be the case. P eople have been charged and convicted with convincing others to commit suicide before. Those at Google should be held responsible for this death in the same way.
Michelle Carter, who as a teenager sent texts urging her then-boyfriend to commit suicide three years ago, has been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter by a Massachusetts judge, who described her behavior as “reckless.”
- Comment on When did it become normalized to start passing credit card processing fees to the customer? 1 month ago:
This is really the best answer, I think. Except the agreement you used to have to sign to take Visa cards used to stipulate that you could not offer a discount for cash.
Visa’s rules have changed in favor of the merchants at last….. Visa has updated their V isa Core Rules and Visa Product and Service Rules, and the rules changed benefit all business owners in all 50 states ! …Now, you can offer a discount when your customer pays with cash in efforts to incentivize your customers and avoid having to pay credit card processing fees. (Therefore if you sell a product or service for $100, you get to finally keep all $100 of the sale….Not $96.00 )
- Comment on Socialist Co-Ops Against Silicon Valley Empires 1 month ago:
I’m in a very rural part of the USA. My electric, telephone(landlines which I don’t have), and internet are all coops. They are all very efficient and inexpensive. I’m very happy with them.
- Comment on New nickel-iron battery charges in seconds, survives 12,000 cycles 1 month ago:
Per the article they are working on that, whichever is good since cattle farming is not exactly eco friendly.
The researchers are currently investigating the use of other metals with this nanocluster fabrication technique. They are also testing natural polymers as more abundant replacements for bovine proteins to facilitate potential manufacturing.
- Comment on Homeland Security Spying on Reddit Users 1 month ago:
Security by obscurity is not really a good strategy. Lemmy is small potatoes, sure. But that just means they can devote a small number of assets to effectively monitor it.
- Comment on Recreating uncensored Epstein PDFs from raw encoded attachments 1 month ago:
…it’s safe to say that Pam Bondi’s DoJ did not put its best and brightest on this (admittedly gargantuan) undertaking
Actually they did. It’s just that their best and brightest are fairly dim.
- Comment on xkcd #3202: Groundhog Day Meaning 1 month ago:
If we count years from the birth of Christ, shouldn’t his birthday be January first?
- Comment on ‘We’re basically pushers:’ Two California courtrooms hear how companies may have hooked kids on social media 1 month ago:
It’s good to see all this come out, but I bet they don’t get more than a slap on the wrist that they’ll write off as a cost of doing business and then just keep doing the same sleazy shit.
- Comment on Players are returning their Dispatch copies due to Switch censorship 1 month ago:
Yep. In the words of George R. R. Martin
“You can write the most detailed, vivid description of an ax entering a skull, and nobody will say a word in protest. But if you write a similarly detailed description of a penis entering a vagina, you get letters from people saying they’ll never read you again. What the hell? Penises entering vaginas bring a lot more joy into the world than axes entering skulls.”
- Comment on Is it possible to cool my body enough to not sweat while exercising? 1 month ago:
Fans work well for me, but if it is humid in your house you it may not be as effective. Moving dry air can carry off a lot of sweat.
- Comment on Telly has only delivered 35,000 of its free televisions with always-on ads 2 months ago:
10 percent of Telly’s shipments through FedEx arrived broken
No big surprise there. Shipments I get through FedEx are always beat to hell.
- Comment on Exploding 🌳🌲🌴🌳🌲🌴🌳🌲🌴🌳 2 months ago:
The trees have probably already exploded. It’s how they knew to warn those east of them.
- Comment on UK police blame Microsoft Copilot for intelligence mistake 2 months ago:
Everyone wants to run everything like a business these days. They want to save on payroll so rather than paying actual police to do the paperwork, they want to use Copilot or whatever to do the paperwork for them. Of course, because AI models are so crappy and error prone, they need to spend the same amount of money on payroll to verify the accuracy of the AI output. But they don’t do that. They just run with whatever the AI output is and figure it’ll be close enough to accurate. After all, big tech keeps telling everyone that AI is wonderful and can do anything.That is far from the truth though.
A lawyer in California last year got in trouble for using ChatGPT to generate briefs for a trial. He wound up filing those briefs with the court even though they 21 of the 23 quotes from previous trials were complete fabrications. In another incident, a police department in Utah used an AI to generate a report from a traffic stop. That report claimed that an officer shape-shifted into a frog during the incident.
There are endless reports of AI making shit up and demonstrating how error prone those tools are. Yet, people who should know better keep trusting AI to do these important jobs, just to save money on payroll, when AI is clearly far from ready for prime-time.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
You need some heavy curtains. Doing anything like you suggest would just get the cops at your door for creating a driving hazard or something.
- Comment on Gmail's new AI Inbox uses Gemini, but Google says it won’t train AI on user emails 2 months ago:
…yet
- Comment on Innocent African-American child George Stinney executed after being falsely accused of murdering two white girls | 1944 2 months ago:
This is absolutely horrific and a stain on humanity itself. And there is another aspect that isn’t always brought up is cases of injustice like this. The police, lawyers, judges, and everyone else involved in the murder of this young boy, were quite literally covering up for the real murderer(s) of those girls. Whoever killed those girls went free, perhaps to kill again, because of the racist motivations of those involved in the trial and execution of this poor, scared, kid.
- Comment on What should the next President of the United States do? 2 months ago:
Prosecute the current one for his crimes, but we all know that won’t happen.
- Comment on Can pets tell who's petting them without looking? 2 months ago:
Not always. I was at my sister’s house and her cat was not over-fond of me. That bothered me because cats normally adore me. At one point, the cat was half-snoozing on a stool so I reached over to give him a pet. At first he started to purr and stretched out. Yes! Thought I, finally making friends. Then he looked over his shoulder and saw it was me. He hissed and ran to the other side of the room and started cleaning himself. I’d have been hurt if his expression hadn’t been so funny when he realized that it wasn’t my sister petting him.
- Comment on Hackers threaten to leak massive 'Wired' customer database 2 months ago:
the breach appears to be legitimate and includes email addresses, along with optional fields such as first and last name, phone number, physical address, gender, and date of birth — although many of these fields appear to be empty.
So, this may be the most inconsequential leak in a long time. Grats to Conde Nast for not storing a zillion pieces of data on all their customers.
- Comment on NVIDIA Puts 100-Hour Monthly Limit on All GeForce NOW Subscriptions 2 months ago:
That makes sense. Thanks for the explanation.
- Comment on NVIDIA Puts 100-Hour Monthly Limit on All GeForce NOW Subscriptions 2 months ago:
Okay, thanks.
- Comment on NVIDIA Puts 100-Hour Monthly Limit on All GeForce NOW Subscriptions 2 months ago:
Forgive my ignorance, but does this mean that my gforce card performance will be degraded if I don’t pay for this subscription? Why would I want to use this cloud gaming to play games I already own?
- Comment on Celebrating anti-intellectualism is the biggest danger to humanity 3 months ago:
Yes, Isaac Asimov, back in 1980, referred to it as a Cult of Ignorance.
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”