boatswain
@boatswain@infosec.pub
- Comment on Discord delays global age verification rollout after backlash - Dexerto 2 days ago:
I’m still hopeful about veilid.com but I suspect that’s a long way out; the protocol is still in development stages, let alone implementations of it.
- Comment on The RAM shortage is coming for everything you care about 1 week ago:
[citation needed]
- Comment on Everyone is stealing TV 1 week ago:
Don’t do it; they’re a security nightmare: krebsonsecurity.com/…/is-your-android-tv-streamin…
There are safer ways to acquire content to view.
- Comment on Discord Users Threaten Exodus Over Age Verification Face Scan Controversy 2 weeks ago:
It’s absolutely feasible; it’s just not painless. The network effect is real. This is something most of us here on the fediverse should be well familiar with: I’d wager we’ve all left a big proprietary centralized platform for a smaller one with less content that doesn’t exactly fit our needs. Yes, it can suck; yes, you’ll miss out on content and discussions that you would have seen before; yes, you’ll be fine in a year anyway.
That said, it sounds like Discord is doing some backpedaling at the moment, and that the vast majority of people won’t have to do this. If that’s so, there’s some time before it enshittifies further. I’m going to use that to check out alternatives. My first step will be spinning up Matrix and a Discord bridge to see if that meets my needs. Then some of the other platforms, probably Stoat and Spacebar. I’m going to treat them as beta tests and give lots of feedback to the dev teams, which I hope will help incentivize development. I might even throw a few bucks at promising projects.
The ultimate end of centralized platforms is decay. It’s time to get serious about Discord replacements, at least for me.
- Comment on Discord Users Threaten Exodus Over Age Verification Face Scan Controversy 2 weeks ago:
Sounds like it’s experimental at the moment:
Voice/Video when?
Currently there is experimental voice/video WebRTC support in Spacebar. UDP connections are not currently supported.
This is a very difficult feature to get working, especially given that we must implement it the exact same way as Discord.com for client compatibility, so if you find any bugs please open an issue in Spacebar server.
We would also be incredibly thankful for any assistance.
So might not be ready for primetime. Voice is pretty critical to how I often use Discord. Video less so, but still important.
- Comment on Discord Users Threaten Exodus Over Age Verification Face Scan Controversy 2 weeks ago:
There’s also spacebar.chat, which I’ve been hearing some buzz about, but not really here; not sure if that’s because there are known problems with it or what.
- Comment on Discord Users Threaten Exodus Over Age Verification Face Scan Controversy 2 weeks ago:
Last time I tried to play around with Stoat, I never even got a verification email, so taking an hour sounds like progress I guess? I’ll have to try again.
- Comment on Discord Users Threaten Exodus Over Age Verification Face Scan Controversy 2 weeks ago:
I’ve been hearing good things about spacebar.chat. Stoat (formerly Revolt) is out there as well. Matrix is another possibility, but it’s more for individual channels rather than whole servers, so doesn’t fit some use cases.
- Comment on Discord will require a face scan or ID for full access next month 2 weeks ago:
I get it, but if bigger projects don’t move to alternatives, those alternatives have a lot less pressure to evolve. If a big project bites the bullet and moves, then there are more technically minded folks with a vested interest in making the platform better.
- Comment on [deleted] 5 weeks ago:
There’s a typo in your headline; you probably mean “a world when… were still valid” rather than “before”.
- Comment on 1 month ago:
The interesting thing here is that to maintain a trademark, you have to defend it, or you lose it. I’d think that would mean he’s going to have to get litigious and start suing anything that looks like it violates his trademarks.
- Comment on Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince talks about Italy fines while praising JD Vance and Elon Musk 1 month ago:
Gotcha, that makes sense to me; cheers.
- Comment on Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince talks about Italy fines while praising JD Vance and Elon Musk 1 month ago:
I am, yeah. Like I say, I’m just not understanding what they’re suggesting Cloudflare should be doing differently in this case, other than not invoking Vance and Musk (which granted is pretty gross to do).
- Comment on Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince talks about Italy fines while praising JD Vance and Elon Musk 1 month ago:
So your argument is that one of the biggest DNS resolvers should just bow to censorship imposed by a single nation? I’m not really getting what you think they should be doing about Italy’s demand. Are you saying they should just pay the fines and keep doing business there?
- Comment on Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince talks about Italy fines while praising JD Vance and Elon Musk 1 month ago:
It reads to me like they’re being responsible and not bowing to censorship; seems very similar to PornHub’s approach to age verification laws. What would be a better course of action here, in your view?
- Comment on Cory Doctorow proposes how to break free from US digital domination 1 month ago:
Who wants a stadium, though? Those things are a blight.
- Comment on Anthropic’s Claude ran a snack operation in the WSJ newsroom. It gave away a free PlayStation, ordered a live fish—and taught us lessons about the future of AI agents. 2 months ago:
- Comment on YSK that the First-Past-The-Post voting system allows a political party to gain an absolute majority with a minority of the votes 2 months ago:
It would be helpful if this included an explanation, rather than just an assertion. Can you explain how FPTP allows this, and how proportional representation fixes it?
- Comment on Introducing SlopStop: Community-driven AI slop detection in Kagi Search 3 months ago:
Maybe Cory Doctorow can? pluralistic.net/2024/…/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/
- Comment on Major Bitcoin mining firm pivoting to AI, plans to fully abandon crypto mining by 2027 as miners convert to AI en masse — Bitfarm to leverage 341 megawatt capacity for AI following $46 million Q3 loss 3 months ago:
Pretty close! It’s tar-soaked hemp fibers (rope traditionally being hemp), called oakum. Sometimes cotton under that for filling if needed. To me it still feels more about carefully easing out, particularly since paying out also has other uses that aren’t rope related, like falling off to leeward after a tack.
- Comment on Major Bitcoin mining firm pivoting to AI, plans to fully abandon crypto mining by 2027 as miners convert to AI en masse — Bitfarm to leverage 341 megawatt capacity for AI following $46 million Q3 loss 3 months ago:
As long as we’re being pedantic, when you pay out pitch, you’re not covering the deck with it. You’re making lines of it that go in between the deck planks. It’s basically caulking. You actually have to be careful to not get it everywhere (not least because pitch is really hot when you’re paying it out), so just like when you’re paying out a line, there’s a sense of careful control and easing out the pitch.
- Comment on Is Kagy web browser worth it? 3 months ago:
I’ve been on the $5 a month plan, and go over probably half the time. The months when I do go over, it just means I start the next month a couple of days early. I’m probably actually somewhere around $6 a calendar month; my Kagi month is probably only 28 days or so.
- Comment on Apparently Palantir can access the content of social media accounts that were deleted a decade ago. 4 months ago:
Ah, but “Planter” and “Palantir” have most of the same letters!
- Comment on Why are fruits and berries healthy, even though they are mostly just sugar? 4 months ago:
Yeah, that’s what my dad says, and he’s a medieval historian, so I believe him. I guess it’s possible that lifespan in 1901 was much shorter than the middle ages, but that seems unlikely
- Comment on GitHub introduces hybrid post-quantum SSH security to better protect Git data in transit 5 months ago:
NIST says 2035 should be the target date for organizations to get to something quantum resistant. The talk I saw at DefCon this year laid out a very convincing argument that due to advancements in the implementation of Shorr’s, as well as one other algorithm, that’s not an aggressive enough target and we should really be shooting for 2030. Apparently IBM has never missed a target date, and they’re looking at having enough logical Qubits by 2032 or so.
- Comment on Atlassian goes cloud-only, customers face integration issues 5 months ago:
Still seems like voodoo to me
- Comment on Atlassian goes cloud-only, customers face integration issues 5 months ago:
I’ve heard this before but I still can’t wrap my head around why some money counts and some doesn’t
- Comment on OpenAI Boosts Secondary Share Sale to $10.3B, Presents Offer to Employees on Wednesday 9/3 5 months ago:
This is the opposite of bag holding though, isn’t it? Since it’s an expanded offering to sell?
- Comment on Cory Doctorow New Book: Enshitification 5 months ago:
He got it right (which makes sense; he coined the term); OP didn’t.
- Comment on What would be ancient ways to properly store vitamin C? 6 months ago:
Sauerkraut is apparently a reasonable way to store vitamin C for a long time. I imagine cabbage in its own doesn’t keep too well.