steltek

@steltek@lemm.ee

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A City on Mars: Reality kills space settlement dreams⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Is someone actually proposing that we’re simply going to dump would-be colonists on Mars with a shovel and some O2 tanks then wave goodbye? Like, no shit we still need to work things out but that just means it’s unknown, not impossible.

  This book seems unnecessarily pessimistic. I don’t know why I would spend money on doomscrolling, Kindle Edition.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨TikTok says it’s not the algorithm, teens are just pro-Palestine — The company denied allegations that it has been promoting pro-Palestine content in an effort to sway American opinion⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You’re demanding to view this as “good team” / “bad team”. Fix that first because it stops any hope for peace.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨TikTok says it’s not the algorithm, teens are just pro-Palestine — The company denied allegations that it has been promoting pro-Palestine content in an effort to sway American opinion⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I must have missed history class where the Warsaw Uprising attacked a peace festival.

  Being oppressed is not a license to become a monster yourself. I refuse to condone cold blooded revenge (both Hamas and IDF).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nothing Phone builds a blue bubble iMessage bridge while Google and Apple fight over RCS⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s far cheaper than your first car and arguably more important. You find a way when you have to.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨TikTok says it’s not the algorithm, teens are just pro-Palestine — The company denied allegations that it has been promoting pro-Palestine content in an effort to sway American opinion⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Excuse the tangent but you made me look it up. >50% of Americans weren’t eligible to vote in 2000 but apparently I need to answer for the Iraq War for the rest of my friggin’ life like that was my personal decision.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨TikTok says it’s not the algorithm, teens are just pro-Palestine — The company denied allegations that it has been promoting pro-Palestine content in an effort to sway American opinion⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Stupid lizard brains are too easily tricked with tribalism and anger though. It takes a real conscious effort to curate your feed like that.

  Any nuanced opinion on Gaza gets trashed because both “teams” view you as the enemy. You’re always pushed towards absolutism.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nothing Phone builds a blue bubble iMessage bridge while Google and Apple fight over RCS⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You can read about it here: macrumors.com/…/epic-apple-no-imessage-on-android…

  Using a dominant market segment to reduce competition in another has always been an antitrust violation. A notable example is MS leveraging their Windows monopoly to force Internet Explorer on people.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nothing Phone builds a blue bubble iMessage bridge while Google and Apple fight over RCS⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Teenagers today suffer unique threats to their health and wellbeing from technology. It may be super easy for you to say “who the fuck cares about the color” but that is far from the case for US teenagers. Willingly setting yourself apart from the group in high school is a precarious move in the best of circumstances.

  And for the rest of us, this goes way beyond the color being used. The SMS/MMS fallback in iMessage offers a terrible experience for non-Apple users. Low quality media, inability to manage one’s own memeberships in groups, and no encryption. For those worried about the lack of e2ee: Android users participating in an iMessage conversation don’t have that today. You’re not losing anything from this solution.

  Legal disclosures prove that Apple knowingly uses iMessage in an anticompetitive fashion. It’s a moat to keep people from switching away from iPhone. They are leveraging their position in the messaging market to shore up their restrictive phone products. I wish US antitrust enforcement was stronger in this area but until then, I hope Nothing has great success in breaking down this illegal barrier.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Marines Test Rocket-Carrying 'Robotic Goat' at Twentynine Palms⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Probably because that’s an blindingly obvious Chinese knockoff of Boston Dynamics’ Spot. BD doesn’t want to sell weapons but the USMC still wanted to try out their ideas so they found a company with fewer ethics.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Xbox's new policy — say goodbye to unofficial accessories from November thanks to error '0x82d60002'⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t have an Xbox but I love that mouse and keyboard are considered cheating devices.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Elon Musk Offers to Also Ruin Wikipedia⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Wikipedia is anything but anarchy. There’s so much bureaucracy it would surprise even Kafka.

  I also don’t think Elon’s psyche is built around an abstract notion of economic systems. He’s simply a narcissist that desires shiny things, in a very basic and unrefined way. Rich people just want to add baubles to their menagerie.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Japan Becomes 1st Country Ever To Fire Electromagnetic Railgun From An Offshore Vessel⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Uhh, I dunno how much declassification you’re looking for but here’s the US Navy’s Youtube channel with a video of some test firings: www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSce3nEY6xk

  IIRC, the problem wasn’t that it didn’t work but that the barrels wore out too quickly to be useful. I suppose they could have put this on a Zumwault like originally intended but that would just be a PR stunt when the main problem was throwing the gun away after 10 shots.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Top Apple analyst says MacBook demand has fallen 'significantly'⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  The Nvidia thing was subtle way to point out that you can’t “brew install” your way out of every bit of missing OS functionality.

  “Posix” is such a trivial set of APIs that until recently Windows claimed to be Posix compatible (and basically still is???). Darwin, the MacOS kernel, lacks pretty much everything above that slim foundation. No user or network namespaces. No capabilities. No ACLs. Even if you switch to GNU coreutils (ls, ps, netstat, etc), you get a reduced featureset because Darwin lacks /proc, /sys, ioctls, and other knobs&levers to make stuff work the way it does on Linux. Xorg works because X11 was common across all Unixen back then. And on the built in BSD utils, stuff gets weird like ls ~/Downloads -l doesn’t work and case insensitivity leads to weird bugs in things like shell wildcards (like ls ~/downlo*/*).

  The Linux network stack is complicated because it can do absolutely everything, at insane speeds and scales. MacOS’ network features are geared towards being a laptop and not much else. I won’t defend Linux as user friendly but it’s been my daily desktop for 25 years, I guess I’ve figured it out. I use and appreciate stuff like VLANs, bridging, nftables, ebtables, etc. If you need to change behavior, there’s probably a /proc/net flag that will do it. It’s stuff that MacOS hides or simply doesn’t have.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Top Apple analyst says MacBook demand has fallen 'significantly'⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Does this mean brew install nvidia-drivers works for you?

  “Posix compliant”? I’m not sure you fully understand the gap here. Linux has containers, performant and feature rich virtualization, robust networking, user friendly GNU utils, case sensitive filesystems, etc. It’s not stuff you can duct tape on by recompiling Linux tools and be all set. You’re trying to keep up with a Ferrari using a Fiat.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Black Mirror creator unafraid of AI because it’s “boring”⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s more to “AI” than ChatGPT. Deepfakes, propaganda swarms, precise tracking of people online across pseudonyms/handles. The power available to malicious organizations and governments is absolutely terrifying. Any social media that doesn’t also have AI-based countermeasures is vulnerable.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Top Apple analyst says MacBook demand has fallen 'significantly'⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Eh, I have a MB from work and I’m still an repentant Mac hater. All the badass hardware in the world won’t save you from crippled software. MacOS will never be keyboard friendly and “MacOS UNIX” will never hold a candle to real Linux.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Top Apple analyst says MacBook demand has fallen 'significantly'⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  M1 Macbooks were also the first “Not Completely Shit” Macbooks after many years of awful problems so there was pent up demand from Apple users for something worth buying. Now that the demand is satisfied, sales will return to a baseline.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨$6.2B in profit wasn't enough: Nvidia hikes GeForce Now prices for Canada and Europe⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  And game streaming is such a profitable market segment too. I mean look at how well Stadia is doing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Apple considered switching to DuckDuckGo from Google for Safari - Bloomberg News⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  That didn’t stop them from plowing ahead with Apple Maps, even though its debut was total garbage.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Men Overran a Job Fair for Women in Tech⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I would be an asshole to show up to this.

  That’s the part I really don’t get. If you’re cis male looking for a job, do you really think crashing this event is going to reflect favorably on you and that you’d be more likely to land you a job? People are going to look at you and think that you have good judgment and won’t be a problem at all? What the heck is the thought process that makes this a good plan?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Men Overran a Job Fair for Women in Tech⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  This list comes across as very self-serving though. It’s basically saying men’s issues are only a problem for Feminism when it can be framed as also impacting women. I read the parent poster as calling for rising above a narrow single gender view of equal rights.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨D or d come on⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Here’s how to fix this[+]

  Create $HOME/.config/user-dirs.dirs with

  XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR=“$HOME/downloads”

  You may need to logout/in for things to reread this file.

  The full list of keys is:

  • XDG_DESKTOP_DIR
  • XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR
  • XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR
  • XDG_PUBLICSHARE_DIR
  • XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR
  • XDG_MUSIC_DIR
  • XDG_PICTURES_DIR
  • XDG_VIDEOS_DIR

  +: Since this is Linux, this is a fix for many but not all cases.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why We’re Pulling Our Recommendation of Wyze Security Cameras⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I tried RTSP on the wyze v3 cameras and it was unstable bordering on nonfunctional. Even if they worked, I think you also had to power cycle them occasionally to keep them going.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Apple Announces iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus With USB-C Port, Dynamic Island, Frosted Glass Design⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Never. The epic court case has evidence showing Apple views iMessage as a moat to hold their users hostage.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Certbot is great. Let's Encrypt is great.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m obviously a fan of LE but a simple self-hosted option with a custom CA would be great for local machines:

  • I don’t want every Raspberry Pi/laptop/temp VM/whatever published into the cert transparency record
  • Configuring the router to forward every local hostname to the machine’s .well-known would be awful (if my ISP even allowed port 80)
  • Exposing local machines to the Internet is an unnecessary degradation of security
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows after 28 years⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Gotta disagree. MS Paint is so blisteringly straightforward for how to use it. Google pointed me towards Preview but there was no menu option to create a new image from the clipboard contents. And then for editing, there was no easy to use tooltray that gives you everything you need right from the start. You could crop and such by going to through menu but you could feel the app hating you for trying to use it that way.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows after 28 years⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  What’s the MacBook equivalent of MS Paint? Open it, paste from clipboard, and then do a simple crop/edit? I was looking to do this the other day and nothing seemed to work.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨India landed on the Moon for less than it cost to make Interstellar | The Independent⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Why include R&D up to this point? Do we say Mars Pathfinder (Sojourner) actually cost billions because we include previous Mars missions?

  I think it’s just a bad article. They throw out numbers but don’t say how they got them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Close to half of American adults favor TikTok ban, Reuters/Ipsos poll shows⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Modernized privacy law alone wouldn’t be enough. The danger from social media apps (not just TikTok) is algorithmically swaying public opinion. It’s an ultra-refined form of propaganda.

  Taking the GDPR as an example, a modern and widely recognized privacy law, there is virtually no protection from manipulation of your news feed. GDPR is primarily worried about gathering and resale of personal information to data brokers. Within a service, it’s virtually guaranteed to obtain consent from people to gain full access to the site.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hexbear federation megathread⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  To avoid misrepresentation, I’ll quote my original proposition:

  It was not to compare ideologies but the end result of extremism and radicalization. Words become violent action and a willingness to forego peaceful change.

  The casual introduction and acceptance of capital punishment and “useful” applications of police brutality, as if they were common tools in a political toolbox, is a mark of the beginning of that very shift.

  Anyway, I’ve spent far too much time in here so I’m trying to put this whole post behind me. My own personal “disengage”, I guess? I just didn’t want to leave while being lumped in with the other people leaving crude, shallow dismissals as Russian tankies/bots/shills/trolls/whatever. I entered these conversations with a neutral viewpoint on Hexbear, not even in favor of defederation, but that has sadly changed quite a bit.