I used to host a "drive" for my collegemates (and juniors), which consisted of all the courses and related material (lecture notes (official, or what i made), software, code, research articles, assignments, media, video lectures, books, test, etc...). Earlier I used sharepoint (onedrive) which our college had made a deal with ms to get (1 tb for everyone). But at some point sharepoint started "faultering" (while I am almost certain it was not realted to pirated books and stuff, but there was a small chance that it was), and I then switched to proton ( i got a yearly plan with student discount - coming to something around $2/month for mail and 15 GB storage). Earlier this year, I switched to posteo for mail provider (multiple reasons, but one of the primary ones was cost ($1 without discounts), a simple imap setup), but kept the stuff on proton drive. Now my subscription for proton has ran out, and do not plan to renew it.
I am not the only one who does this kinda stuff, but I was first in our department. Other departments (older than us) already had some other long running drives, which essentially become useless when original maker graduates, so new stuff has to be made for each batch. Also, most other drives are hosted on google drive, or sharepoint. I could consider the college sharedrive again, but recently microsoft broke the deal, stating our college was using too much storage (something like 50-60 TiB), and then froze acceess for everyone. this was sorted, with weeks of down time, and our limit decreased to 15 GB (1.5% of previos limit). I do not want that to happen with my drive. I also take some prestige in my drive, because it is arguably the best organised, and has the most stuff (i find many books, if not available, get them from library, or purchase them, then scan and ocr, or assignments, which you are not meant to share with others, but i do mostly because for end sems they serve as practice).
I want a "semi anonymous" (anyone can see/upload stuff without accounts) (semi because tonnes of stuff has my personal identity (name on assignments and tests), somewhat private and "piracy friendly" (so no mainstream stuff like google and onedrive works, especially because i currently do not have a account for either to upload), and non public (or at least, be something like a very long and random url, stuff which will likely not end up on search engine indices). I am willing to pay too, provided, once i get access to drive, others can upload/download stuff without accounts (people will likely not sign up for random stuff, yet another step of friction)(sharepoint was good in this aspect. you could make a public link to which anyone could upload. they did not have edit access (delete/modify existing files) without login, but those operations are relatively rare).
*What I have considered, but can not be done - *
a private git repo, with some hosted webui (something like forego) - the actual size of stuff is not that large (5gib if consider stuff only related to course work, 80gib if i include other stuff(like offline wiki/stack overflow/other wikis backups)), so i could just get something like a 128 or 256 gib ssd, connect to a sbc (which i would have to buy, but practically a 1 time cost).
a private torrent
a google/onedrive, but i compress and/or encrypt the stuff, so they will not practically check content
our college's existing infra (made by student welfare body), which already hosts tests for some of the courses, and another website, which hosts "some" (barely anything) other resources, likely useful websites, or lecture notes
*Why not possible? * - intended audience is essentially tech illiterate - many of them do not know much about what files/folders are. they usuallly do not dowwnload stuff (so they keep going back to drive, to view stuff in browser previews). they can not download stuff and then extract. they most definitely can not do that for the compression i usually use (it is a zstd in squashfs (as to why specifically this - it effectivelly uncompresses only the stuff it needs, like a pdf from a folder containing pdfs, so storage space saving at cost of slight cpu increase (zstd helps to lower that usage)), for windows - you need 7zip, which most do not have). they can not decrypt stuff. they can not torrent (like 95+% have no idea how torrenting even works. to them, that is just a way to acquire "linux isos"). out of 5%, maybe 4.5% will not be able to work with priavte torrents (something they have no experience with)
our college's infra forbids most of copyrighted material. they forbid tests which were not allowed to leave exam premises. (In those cases, I used ot memorise the questions, and recreate the tests, or when we went to check our answersheets, I would try to take pictures of question paper/answer sheets)(this was not the case for majority of courses, but a significant minority for sure)(this was done mostly by professors who teach a course multiple times, and do not want to design questions every year, and they just rehash old stuff). They forbid any executable stuff. (they have allowed file types of common multimedia formats. but from my minimal testing, they just do a stupid extension check, and not file metadata or headers, so i can fool this shit, by making zips and then appending a .txt or .pdf at end).
is there some other drive provider I can consider? which has good usability, and mostly anon? there is mega drive/pcloud, icecloud, and many others, who provide somewhat private/anonymous viewing. some of them have quite generous free plans too, so I can use some of them as backups. but most do not have a "qol" features (for example, afaik, mega drive does not do previews, they download in a wierd way in browser memory, and then to your filesystem, others have little information available).
I could consider maybe something like archive.org, if I do a very tedious task of making most of stuff not have my names, and making a archive.org account is easy , but that is still a deterrent.
edits -
PS: For anyone wondering about legality or ethics of this drive - it is a mixed bag. I definitely have copyrighted works which I did not acquire properly. I share stuff which I am not supposed to. hence i decided to post on piracy subreddit.
on to ethics - many of our professors know about this. most are fine with it. some complain that I am ruining future students, by providing most stuff in a easy single spot, and that leads them to not go to classes or stuff. But i disagree with them. kids not going to classes is only weakly dependent on availability of notes, but stongly dependent on the nature of course, for example teachers interactivity or teaching style. Some professors even like the drive, and also use it (as a reference for what was taught earlier, or questions they have already used.) IMO, their tests become better (less rote learning type stuff, and more applications based stuff, for which you can come up with questions for).
A funny side story - My drive was used in a "mass cheating" case. In one of our programming related courses (we are not studying computer science, and this course was a effectively - how to use python to do some scientific computation). Our prof was very chill, and allowed people to use internet freely, and even allowed using chatgpt (at that time, it was like a few months old) to write the programs (essentially, we were expected to know the "science", and formulate a good set of equations, and then use python (or any other language for that matter). so allowing use of internet/gpt was just to allow people not good at programming, but good at the actual science to perform well too.). He also knew about my drive, and encouraged people to check it. (I got most of the packages setup for most people, also had a good relationship with the prof prior to course). During midsem, a "eureka" like moment hit. My drive would largely automatically sync stuff once a day. what if, during exam, my drive would sync, lets just say, every 10 minutes, then my solutions (as i write them) would be avaialable on the drive in during the exam, and somewhat frequently updated. But it would feel odd for everyone to check a single drive, the same file, at the same time. So I also wrote small curl scripts for windows and mac folks, which would pull the required file every 10 or so minutes from the drive. Now it would feel as if everyone was checking some other code (probably old code from class)(ot was a open book/notes/internet exam). Was what i did technincally rule breaking ? - no, people were allowed to use my drive, i just made much of that process automated. Was it ethical ? - definitely not. I knew what I was doing was wrong, but I was doing it one part for the giggles. Also, I was not the one who actually came up with the idea (someone gave a rough proto-idea, upon which i further developed upon). What was the result? No one caught the cheating. Teaching instructors (tas) find it normal for people to check otheer files, or a terminal process running. Not everyone used it. I was not checking from others, but roughly 80+% of class was using it. But someone snitched (i got to know did that fairly soon. he also cheated). Luckily, no disciplinary action was taken against me (I could have been suspended, or even rusticated, since it was a mass cheating), but the prof was very chill. He did scold me a lot. did not talk with me in his usual jovial manner for few weeks, but it eventually got ok. NOBODY (including me) got any punishment or point deduction.
edits 2 PS2: while reading the last part again, I realised what i had done was something close to implementing a adblock. you are allowed to close the ads manually (like checking drive manually). It is only frowned upon, if a program (like ublock) closes all the ads (in this case, by blocking ads from being even fetched, in the background) (like using a curl script to fetch the file in background).
What about something like nextcloud? You could link nextcloud to external drive/mount like an encrypted google drive for example but keep it tech illiterate friendly for upload/download and read and you could control how you enable the access?
Portable file server with accelerated resumable uploads, dedup, WebDAV, FTP, TFTP, zeroconf, media indexer, thumbnails++ all in one file, no deps - 9001/copyparty
I could try these, but the problem is, I am graduating. I could set it up once, and maybe even give someone else (or myself) remote access to the hosting infra, but I would likely be less available to manage stuff.
Good dsolutions though. I could possibly try to make the latter solution work (managing nexcloud is relatively harder imo, and i have no idea how would i mount a encrypted google drive to it). It still feels like something only i would have to maintain, but if I can get it in a setup and forget stage (or like a annual maintainence), then I could consider it.
the only problem now is money. I would have to use vps for this kinda stuff. the sbc + ssd idea was something i had proposed to a junior. but hosting anything in college premises with college internet would have to "techinically comply with copyright rules". if it was a git like solution or torrent like, even administrators would not be able to access the stuff (comparable in tech literacy)(i am not talking about people who manage or internet infra, but copyright stuff, like our library department). With a drive like setup, they would be able to use it too.
Can i setup a password to access the stuff, like a simple password, common for all? then only student who have password be able to use it. maybe i can setup http authentication. but then again i would fall back to - it is getting too tough for them to use it.
You could still host nextcloud on your college infra but the copyright stuff on third party external storage docs.nextcloud.com/server/late…
Like this your stuff is compliant and you allow folks to access a google drive for example that you or someone else can manage.
Access wise you could create a dummy user for anyone to access or let people manage their account docs.nextcloud.com/server/late…
The good thing is that give you flexibility and integration capabilities depending on how you go.
Maintenance wise I self host it on my side with 2 docker 1 for the app 1 for the db so it is very straightforward. I use it to share with family that is not tech literate.
I would seriously consider this, and try to implement this weekend.
Like this your stuff is compliant and you allow folks to access a google drive for example that you or someone else can manage.
people would not differentiate (in future, i would not be the one to upload stuff, but newer gens would), so i would set everything to be uploaded to google. I would still try to maintain 2 offline backups in case google gets angry.
I use it to share with family that is not tech literate.
that is definitely reinforcing.
I would still try to find if i can host directly in campus, and not google or any 3rd party at all.
thanks for the suggesion, but syncing is not the problem currently. I can use stuff like rsync, or rclone for drive providers. problem is where to sync to.
Thing is, Resilio doesn't care - it could be an external drive on any computer, anywhere, since it uses it's own encrypted channel (via the Bittorrent protocol).
In this way you don't need a "host", a file server, etc. It has its own resolution system for finding peers. I use it for grabbing files from any box, anywhere, without needing a VPN or knowing machine names, etc.
I still don't know that it's the answer for you without fully understanding your work flow, it's just an idea.
Use cryptomator to create an encrypted volume (a folder), that you can then share through whichever cloud you want (like mega or one of the bigger ones).
it is meant to be editted by others. I do not think many others will be able to use cryptomator (afaik you would have to download the whole cryptomator folder, and then update). Still, thanks!
Seems things have gotten more complicated in the age of cloud computing. I think these archives have always been a thing. In the good old days sometimes on their infrastructure, buried several layers deep in some windows network share or on some specific computer in the computer lab or maintained by the student body of a faculty... And there was always some secret file stash somewhere.
If you're concerned with a long-term solution. Are there any entities run by the students? Associations or clubs interested in maintaining such a thing long-term? I mean technology aside, the real issue is that this is done by random individuals and they're gone after a while. Ideally this is done with some help of an entity that lasts longer than that and passed down to future generations.
there is another resource run by dev club, but not many of our department folks are in dev club. Also, their solution imo is worse. they techinically do have a index with search, but not a good one. also - very slooooooooooooow. Ans this is when their solution is smaller than mine (and their solution gets contribution from other departments as well).
I understand it would be better be done by a entity instead of a person, but problem is, entities would have to abide by institute rules. and then whole lot of problems from "why not possible" point 2 applies.
I could get some of my juniors to form a small group within department, but i do not think many of them do anything unless they are given a motive for it. and there is no real motive to maintain a good database other than helping others. entities can do "good things" but individuals often do it for selfish reasons. that was partially the case with me. I used to make notes, and then tons of messages from classmates to share notes, and got fed of sending stuff individually. then i started sending stuff in group chat, but not having a good way to search chat history meant people would not find it, and ask me again. so i made a drive. a course happens where people have to install software, but actual instructions are very hard - i get messages - i make scripts to install, or compile the end product and just ship it. You might think these are good deeds, but they are still selfish acts. I used to maintain a good directory structure anyway, might as well upload it.
The main issue is, you graduate as well and life will move on for you. You might move far away, get a full-time job, maybe have new hobbies or a family and time will come and you'll stop supporting it as well. I've seen that all the time and most privately run things vanish sooner than later.
Of course the entities have to abide by the rules. We also did that... officially... It just happened to be the case that some of the same individuals also did other things after hours, and not in their role as members of the entity... And while mingling you'd find similar-minded people and/or successors for the inofficial operations. It's a bit trick to get it right. The official entity of course denies any involvement, they can't take any blame.
And I'd say if you're the main/sole contributor of content, it's questionable if this even survives long term. Unless people upload recent exams and material, the content will become obsolete after a few years. Professors will have changed the questions and assignments or the entire course is done by a new professor and the archive will slowly become obsolete. So you kind of need some community anyways. Or skip the hassle and just upload the thing to archive.org or some one click hoster.
Another option would be to talk to the dev club. Maybe they'd like to revamp their solution and take yours, or they have some idea about tech infrastructure.
some day you’ll graduate as well and life will move on for you.
I am graduating. That is why when i leave, i want to leave stuff in a functional state so they do not have to start a fresh. I did mention this in post, but i wrote a whole lot more than i should have, and i do not expect anyone to read all this.
ou’ll move far away, get a full-time job, maybe have new hobbies or a family and time will come and you’ll stop supporting it as well. I’ve seen that all the time and most privately run things vanish sooner than later.
absolutely. as i said, individuals work for selfish reasons, and once i leave, i would not have a selfish reason anymore.
And I’d say if you’re the main/sole contributor of content, it’s questionable if this even survives long term. Unless people upload recent exams and material, the content will become obsolete after a few years.
yes. it does get obsolete. but our department is still relatively new (5th or 6th year since establishment) and hence, most course have not been taught by 2 or more profs. hence, much of it will stay relevant as long as professors stay.
My juniors have started bugging me again to get drive working again (new sem has started).
So you kind of need some community anyways.
I would have to pull some shit to form a sub division of department society. then i can get budget to either buy some drive subscription, or set something local, but set it behind some proxy, so it would appear not to be hosted in college (reverse vpn if you will)
Sorry, I read that after I replied and edited my comment, but a bit too late... That changes some things...
I agree. There's roughly two options. Either a static archive as your heritage. Or some writable file storage which can be kept up to date. And yeah, that needs payment, maintenance...
And from my observation, finding people willing to maintain something, or clean up after someone did some annoying things or filled up storage or whatever, is harder than setting up the technology.
Obviously that option would be preferable, though.
[...] or set something local, but set it behind some proxy
Maybe Cloudflare is your friend. They dominate the market of free reverse proxies / tunnels.
But I'm really unsure if I have any good recommendation that fits your situation. Ideally find a successor, next best thing is a Nextcloud, Google Drive, OneDrive or some of the other ones. And if that can't be done, split it into manageable chunks by course and dump it to some one click hoster or archive.org. That's all I can come up with.
And by the way, I did appreciate such archives and made use of them. And there's a lot of reasons (cheating aside) to share notes, PDFs, try old exams to prepare...
that was just one case. I was stupid. Now I am not.
I did appreciate such archives and made use of them.
to share notes, PDFs, try old exams to prepare…
exactly why i never said no to anyone. it is the age old saying - we stand on shoulder of giants. I remember falling ill, not being able to attend classes, and missing stuff. but then some friend would lend their notes. drive imo is just for that.
i do not think syncting would scale well with ~200 people during exam seasons. Also, that would require everyone to download syncthing (practically impossible task)(i think syncthing android app is depreceated or something, and only forks are alive, no idea about ioss clients). Also, that would actually download stuff, all from one server, that would be expensive (fetching 1 file or 1 course worth of file is relatively cheaper as compared to fetching all course files. At that point, i might as well implement a private torrent.
As a note, I believe that syncthing will actually scale up with more nodes as they will all share with each other if they know each other. If you're doing this 1 to many then this is not the case of course.
i did not know syncting could have multiple masters. afaik, syncthing had a master-slave architecture, where a folder on a device is master, and another folder is slave (both can true simultaneously, a folder can be used both as source and sync). if there is another folder, it can be slave of prior 2, but not master, because then you can have conflicting results (which master to pick). do you possibly mean something like a pyramid/tree architecture, where a father nodes has 2 daughter node, and each daughter has 2 and so on. if so, that is even harder to setup (getting people to ask others if they will be their father/daughter cell. this also has problem if some node is out of sync (because of being offline or something), daughters and grand daughter will also not sync. A cyclic link list is also possible, but again chain can be broken. and this can not be a doubly linked list either (2 masters). or is there some other way?
The way I've been using it for a few years is that most of my machines can see each other and I have a shared folder and versioning setup. As I add things they move between the different machines and once an additional machine has it it is available to the others until everything is in sync
You can definitely do chain topologies which are useful for certain things with a single source of truth
thank you. but i would prefer not to host stuff on google drive. but some other provider could work (as i said, i am willing to pay a reasonable amount).
So keep a backup. Torrents can be messy because they can be broken if there are no seeders.
If the content is static, then I’d recommend some older P2P filesharing like eD2K to keep one big zip/rar file backup shared among peers.
yes. content would be partially static. most files will not update, only new stuff will be added. and some files be updated.
I originally provided this an alternative to the broken AUR packages.
However, it seems that Arch users would rather use broken packages and
keep complaining to me instead of their packager. I spe...
Useless to you. I extremely need to know the Pythagorean Theorem for my work. Actually, absolutely everything I have ever been taught in math class ever, literally all of it and so much more, I have used. But I'm starting a PhD in electrical engineering in the fall, so I'm a bit biased 😆.
For me personally, dissecting frogs (well actually I dissected a clam) was probably a waste of time, but for at least some of my classmates it was probably helpful. Long division is important because it stimulates algorithmic thinking, which is important for living in a computerized world. Area of a trapezoid is important because... sometimes trapezoids show up, or you can approximate a more complicated shape with a trapezoid whose properties are well understood.
It's also important for people who will never use it again. Learning algebra and geometry teaches you how to think critically and logically. So yeah, the gas station attendant over here may never use the cone area formula ever again, but at least it's not magic to them.
Honestly I think engineers of all kinds can benefit from more study of biological systems. As an engineer myself, I find there's a lot of inspiration to be gained by looking at life and understanding how it works. My primary work is controls and learning that biological muscle operates as bang bang control was mindblowing. Like look at the agility and complexity achieved by essentially a fuck load of on off actuators. It shows how far you can go with extremely simple methods and honestly helped me chill the fuck out about making everything perfect.
Honestly I think engineers of all kinds can benefit from more study of biological systems.
Agreed. My point was more that I didn't really learn much from actually dissecting a real animal. Like I probably would have learned more from reading a book or watching someone else do the dissection.
All of these things were useful to be taught. Just because you never needed to dissect a frog again in your life doesn't mean you shouldn't have an understanding of biology that these types of exercises provide.
'useful,' I doubt it for most people. Informative, like watching how to build a turbine engine, which you would probably never do in your lifetime unless you were an Aerospace engineer.
IMO all people should receive a broad general education. It's good for the individual and for society. Even a poet should have at least a basic understanding of how an engine works and have some exposure to mathematics or whatever.
Nowhere in the meme did it suggest removing it from the education system. It still doesn't mean it is useful for most people, outside of niche fields. The two things can both be true.
You forget most of what you learn if your memory muscle is not flexed regularly, especially on complex math equations and the like, so I would say it is useless for those that fall into this category.
But you’ll remember that you solved something “similar” before and know that you can trace back or use some keywords in google/bing/ddg/etc to find a blog or something that goes over it in detail. Helping you solve the issue.
If you never learn it in the first place. You’ll never know it’s there.
Even a poet should have at least a basic understanding of how an engine works
On the other hand, writers/artists trying to incorporate science and technology into their art while not actually understanding how the science/technology works are hilarious to the people that do.
(And I say this both as someone who somewhat knows technology and as an amateur sci-fi writer who definitely gets a ton of stuff wrong.)
People thinking knowledge outside their career is useless is how we ended up with flat earthers, climate change deniers, anti vaxxers, anti maskers, and 5G conspiracy theorists. Most of those people are not objectively stupid, but they work in industries not closely related to science and instead of trying to learn how science actually works, they just blindly go with their assumptions and post their own opinions online thinking they're just as much an authority on it as the actual experts. And then more people ignorant of science end up thinking their intuition makes more sense than the published knowledge so they start denying science too.
So i agree that learning things like this is important but feel the need to point out the reason we have flat earthers and other nonsense is because the capitalist ruling classes benefit from an uneducated populace and purposefully push nonsense conspiracies in the media to divide and confuse the working class. Yes education can help with these things, but plenty of highly educated people believe in this stuff too.
It’s not about the area of the cone. It’s about dissecting a problem to find that it is composed of smaller problems that you can solve more easily. It’s about recognizing the similarities to what you know in something you haven’t seen before.
Unfortunately that isn’t something you can teach without lots of arbitrary and pointless examples.
Also as a joke, it’s so unoriginal. I’ve seen a million of these same jokes about ‘useless stuff they taught you in school’ and they’re all so unfunny and tired—especially after the first time. Say something new.
All of these people who don’t apply the things they learn in school just don’t really think that much in my opinion.
When I was in the military in a leadership class, we had to use a protractor to calculate angles and distances on the map given a bunch of coordinates. I realized these were all right triangles, said fuck the protractor, and used trigonometry to get exact answers. I earned distinguished honor graduate, ie top of the class, despite my lab nerd POG ass being mixed in with a ton of infantry and ranger battalion guys.
I use dimensional analysis on a near daily basis because it’s just so damn handy. You can convert anything to nearly anything else as long as you have some numbers with the appropriate units in between.
Dimensional analysis needs to be taught way sooner (referring to USA education here). I'm sure I had some sense of it earlier, but it wasn't explicitly spelled out to me until college engineering courses. That's despite taking a significant number of AP and community college math and science courses in highschool. It seems like it should be part of middle school.
I’m always sad for people who never have to use their math skills again. I love figuring things like that out, even if it’s for some dumb idea I’m drawing.
Some people can absently smoke a cigarette by the river, fully unaware of the fact that the volume of their tits has changed by .17% in the last 24 hours.
School is meant to introduce you to a wide variety of fields and disciplines to help you choose a career. You might not have had any interest in geometry, but at least some of your classmates did and they may well be architects or engineers by now. Meanwhile, you probably had other things in school you liked but the other kids didn't, which almost certainly influenced the kinds of jobs you want as an adult.
That listicle in the link includes as 2 of the 13 items using a protractor and knowing the pythagorean theorem.
I have needed both of those things just this summer, and just as part of a hobby! When building things even just knowing the 3-4-5 shortcut for the pythagorean theorem is incredibly handy.
Yeah this seems generally opposed to the concept of a general education. I get that many people don't like that they had to learn all these things in an environment that generally sucked to be in, but also basic understanding of math, science, language, music, etc is just a nice thing for everyone to possess.
Like several of these things will be tangentially encountered at various points in your life. Yeah I've never had to write in cursive, but I've had to read it. I haven't done much chemistry since college, but carbon sure comes into the news a whole lot. I don't use a protractor much, but I've had to imagine them for various uses of space. I don't diagram sentences often, but it's really useful when learning a foreign language, and also way too much of the country thinks pronouns were invented in the 21st century. Communal making of music is something that used to be normal as a fun way to pass an evening and recorders are cheap and easy for children to learn.
also basic understanding of math, science, language, music, etc is just a nice thing for everyone to possess
Hear, hear!
You know, it also kind of sucks to live among a bunch of ignoramuses that don't know how anything works, who fear and hate people who look and act different, and who fall for the most low-effort lies and propaganda out there.
And yeah, since my experience is that I enjoy and appreciate life more as I learn more about the universe, and I would like others to enjoy existence, it IS a nice thing for everyone to possess!
You can lead a horse to water ... I get the sentiment though. Schooling is a great idea that is too often poorly executed. I've found that educational materials for math and science sometimes have a circlejerk kind of attitude, like the authors are laughing at the thought of students struggling with a problem "left as an exercise to the reader" immediately following a wall of dense, incomprehensible text.
Where can I find examples of otherwise dry subjects taught well? Is there an educational system that's praised in the same way they praise Scandinavian prisons? Or is the pain of learning just a necessary evil?
Sometimes what they're teaching you isn't what they're teaching you.
Maybe you don't need to know how to find the exact surface area of a cone ever again, but the idea of unwrapping a cone to measure the surface area leaves an impression of a technique for deconstructing a problem, or that problems can be deconstructed into simpler parts at all. It also leaves you with a feel for roughly what the surface area of different shapes would be.
Using a protractor teaches you how to measure accurately and use tools.
Cursive and recorder teaches hand eye coordination, and music is just fundamental to human beings.
Then again maybe you do need to find the surface area of a cone one day, and you could probably go ahead and work out how that would be done even if you don't remember exactly.
What's the counterproposal for a curriculum? I'm genuinely curious here, not trying to jump down anyone's throat. What would school look like without these things?
That's why in ny opinion it's criminal that for most high school math stops before calculus. Calculus wraps up so many loose ends and replaces rote memorization techniques with understanding. Why exactly is the area of a ___ = (formula)? Calculus answers that.
The quadratic formula too, calc replaces it. In fact if I had my way with the curriculum we would skip that one entirety in algebra. I'd also throw in a statistics class, which would directly impact just about everyone's lives, but that's another matter.
I never learned my times tables either. We don't teach them anymore anyway.
Except special needs, in our daily life is often needed geometry, trigonometry and algebra more than we think, but in the professional use it's more like this:
When I was an intern, I had a boss that made me calculate the volume of a large, round, but oddly shaped tank with calculus. Insisted I used calculus for some reason.
The literal Science Memes community was mocking higher education and the thread was full of people trying to convince others to never go to college. It's bizarre how strong the anti-education sentiment is around here.
There's a weird anti-intellectual contingent on Lemmy. I saw a dude the other day who was going on about how debt was the ultimate evil and then when questioned on it said that the entire study of economics was a conspiracy to make people want debt. Now there are kooky people on all platforms but this guy was getting upvoted a decent amount. I have also been downvoted a few times for pointing out flat out inaccuracies people have said about various religions and their beliefs because "religion bad" outweighs all logic.
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Cela se passe dimanche 3 août 2025, à partir de 11h jusqu'à 18h.
Formation organisée par Extinction Rebellion (XR), en présentiel dans le centre de Paris.
Viens interroger les concepts de violence/non-violence, découvrir la stratégie de la non-violence telle que suivie par XR, puis les différents rôles en action. Nous ferons également des mises en situation, le tout pour être prêt.e à passer à l'action non-violente !
Pour t'inscrire ne clique pas sur Participer mais clique sur ce lien !
Una riflessione tecnica sul perché il kernel Linux dovrebbe continuare a usare C invece di Rust, soprattutto per il supporto hardware legacy e la manutenibilità a lungo termine.
A technical reflection on why the Linux kernel should continue using C instead of Rust, especially for legacy hardware support and long-term maintainability.
Why keep all your results to yourself? - Blog with howtos and public free software and hardware OpenSource searchable knowledgebase about Linux and OpenSource - with a touch security, politics and philosophy.
I am looking for a very small display like 2“ or 3“ to use as a second display on Mac OS. Looking for a easy plug and play option, HDMI or Thunderbolt.
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Don’t abuse open-source software maintainers or this might happen
My Thunderbird add-on is incompatible with a Thunderbird fork called Betterbird. It says so in the release notes and explicitly says there, “Using Send Later with Betterbird is therefore not recommended.”
Nevertheless, knowing that this is the case, Chandler Sobel-Sorenson <Chandler@genome.arizona.edu> of the University of Arizona Genomics Institute wrote to me asking for me to help him with Send Later on Betterbird. In his email he acknowledged that he was using Betterbird and acknowledged that he knew the release notes said Betterbird wasn’t supported:
I was reading over the release notes. I didn’t see this mentioned, but I am using Betterbird 128.12.0esr-bb30 currently and saw that there are issues with BB. Could this be one? I can’t switch back to TB and would like to keep using Send Later so I hope we can figure it out.
That’s annoying and a bit rude, but he was at least polite about it on the surface, so I responded and told him (again) that I do not support Betterbird:
Regarding the issue you are seeing, I am sorry, but I do not currently have the capacity to support Send Later in Betterbird.
This apparently wasn’t the answer he wanted, so he wrote back and asked me again to help him with Betterbird, which I had already told him twice (in the release notes, and in private email) I couldn’t help him with:
That’s fine, sir, I completely understand. Although BB is supposed to be a drop in replacement and not exhibit such errors and the last version of SL was working fine, can you spare a minute and lmk if anything in the error stands out to you? Maybe assume I’m still using TB, does the error make sense or indicate anything to you?
Although his words here seem quite polite, he is not actually being polite. He says, “I completely understand.” OK, let’s take him at his word and assume it’s true that he understands. What he understands, then, is that he has now been told twice that I could not help him with using my add-on with Betterbird, and yet he persisted in asking me to do so. This is the second time he has intentionally crossed a boundary after having it explicitly pointed out to him.
In my next response to him, I was therefore more explicit:
My release notes already say that BB is not supported with Send Later.
And yet you wrote to me about it and asked me to help you with it anyway.
And then I told you (again, for the second time, since I already told you in the release notes) that I couldn’t help you.
And then you wrote to me again and asked me to help you again.
Do you not see how rude you are being here?
Please stop.
Do not create a Send Later issue about this. I will close it if you do, because, again, Send Later does not currently support Betterbird.
That’s when he switched from his work email account to his personal email account <scar@riseup.net>, presumably because he knew the message he was about to send would get him in trouble at work, and sent me the following:
Sir what the fuck is wrong with you? How many minutes did you waste writing this rude piece of shit email to me? When you could have just fucking answered my question, and said “No nothing comes to mind sorry”? I rescind my offer to help you with anything and I will post an issue on Github if I determine it’s most appropriate. Close it all you want, it will not stop me and others from finding solutions instead of being whatever sorry sad state you are in.
When someone is abusive like this to me in private, I name them publicly. Abusive people deserve to be called out publicly because (a) there should be consequences for abusive conduct, (b) the threat of public exposure deters people from being privately abusive, and (c) people who might be put in a position to interact with abusive people should be warned about them.
I had by this point already complained on Mastodon about Mr. Sobel-Sorenson’s earlier conduct without naming him. After his last message above I posted a followup to that earlier posting identifying him by name and quoting the above message and told him I had done so. He then posted several replies on Mastodon claiming I was the one who had been rude. When it became clear that he was not going to admit he had done anything wrong or apologize, I blocked him both there and in email.
All that happened over two weeks ago. Apparently since then Mr. Sobel-Sorenson has repeatedly asked the moderator of my Mastodon server to take down the postings in which I identified him, and the moderator opted to do that this morning. While I don’t agree with the decision to take down the postings, I can understand that it was probably easier for the moderator to do that than to continue arguing with Mr. Sobel-Sorenson.
However, the moderator of my Mastodon server does not control my blog, and this posting will stay up here until/unless Mr. Sobel-Sorenson apologizes.
We’ll just have to wait and see whether Mr. Sobel-Sorenson is fragile enough to now try to convince Linode or Akamai to force me to take down this blog posting.
The reasons behind the move were global and complex, but for CIOs, it raises frightening new risks, where cloud or SaaS vendors can cut a company off with no warning.
My company spent last decade automating moving entire organizations and all their software to the cloud. This decade weve been automating moving entire organizations off the cloud. Sometimes to private clouds but most of the time to on prem hardware just like the old n times.
So many were sold a magical fairytale of huge cost savings and reliability but were greated with an entirely different reality.
One extreme defensive move for an enterprise would be to implement full redundancy for anything not hosted on-premises. Redundancy for data protection is relatively straightforward, but having multiple email, supply chain, or e-commerce services is very expensive and disruptive. What are the odds that it would even be needed? Whatever those odds were, they just became much higher.
This is simply dumb. The odds are greater than zero. you must have a disaster plan. It sucks that MS did this but I don’t have much sympathy for anyone that decided to save money by ignoring DR.
The new model is SAAH (Software As A Hostage). You would think that overpaid CTOs and CEOS would be able to anticipate something as obvious as this. "The Cloud" just means "someone else's server".
The reasons behind the move were global and complex, but for CIOs, it raises frightening new risks, where cloud or SaaS vendors can cut a company off with no warning.
People keep forgetting that "the cloud" is just someone else's computer. You don't want to pay for in-house experts to support your IT infrastructure? Welp, being locked out by a vendor is a side effect of that.
What's wild to me is how much more frequent this sort of thing seems to be becoming. Cloud services make a lot of money, but this kind of stuff is gonna drive risk-averse companies (aka huge companies with lots of money) back to on-prem or other alternatives. It seems very short-sighted. If I was a cloud provider I'd want to make myself look as ruthlessly indifferent to the services I host as possible.
"In this instance, the cutoff was sought by the European Union (EU), in an attempt to pressure Russia to back off its assaults on Ukraine. But what if the requester was a government that just didn’t like what an enterprise said or did?" I find this quote hilarious, because that "what if" scenario sounds like exactly what happened.
Oh, I did too initially; I just happened to see this article in a different community where someone who actually read the article provided the line about the sanctions.
Although I did skim it before replying to you to make sure the quote wasn't being taken out of context.
My mother has never daily driven a laptop more recent than a nearly decade old macbook running macOS Sierra. (except, briefly, a quite nice work-provided windows laptop that she hated using.)
She is, however, about to buy a 2025 Lenovo Yoga 7 14", and wants to use linux on it.
As the designated "techy person" in my family, I have been tasked with choosing which distro to put on it. I chose fedora it supports modern hardware nicely, and it's what I use, which would make tech support easier.
What I'm not sure about is what desktop environment she should use. I'm currently split between GNOME and KDE, since they're the two that are the most polished and work the best on the kind of hardware she'll be using.
She seems to prefer a more traditional desktop paradigm (dislikes overly flattened ui's and autohiding ui elements like scrollbars), but given she's not very techy and currently uses an iphone and ipad quite a bit, so gnome might feel more friendly with how simple it is, and be a bit more touch-friendly.
I asked her and she's not sure either, so I'm asking here which one is might be better given the hardware and the preferences she's expressed.
I would crawl across broken glass naked to avoid using Gnome, but it is way better for tablets. You can try KDE, maybe you can get it to work somewhat, but unfortunately Gnome has been way ahead on touchscreen usability.
GNOME looks like it will be good for portable devices, but it's kinda not.
First, in my experience, Fedora on GNOME completely ignores battery limits (which are also set by jumping through so many hoops you can't even imagine). It just drains this thing to 0, which is not great for longevity. KDE, on its end, has it all in the GUI and it works flawlessly on all distros I tested.
Second, KDE has made plenty of great optimizations for touchscreens. A while ago, it was not great, but now it's just the best at handling them, especially if you theme it respectively and do not rely on defaults.
Third, customizations are so much better in KDE. You can make her laptop look and feel like a MacBook in no time, and edit everything to be touch-friendly.
One thing GNOME does well though for the use case you describe, though, is app theming, namely Adwaita. Luckily, Adwaita-themed apps and style editors for the rest are freely available on KDE, and you can even change their look as you like.
I use Cosmic sometimes, and I like it, but it's a work in progress. Things don't always work right, or they change from one update to another. An older person might want something more predictable.
You can make gnome more or less like mac with a few extensions, which works well in my experience. Extensions like apps menu, places indicator and dash to dock (or dash to panel) are useful.
You can make kde more or less like mac by sorting through a very comprehensive configuration gui, which is great for people who want it but not necessarily new users.
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Police in the south-western German state of Baden-Württemberg are to be allowed to use the analysis software from US firm Palantir, which is controversial among data protection advocates.
The regional ruling coalition has resolved its dispute over the software and paved the way for a corresponding amendment to the law, government sources told dpa on Tuesday, confirming earlier reports by regional public broadcaster SWR.
The police in Baden-Württemberg had signed a five-year contract with US company Palantir to use the analysis software Gotham, but the legal basis for this had been lacking until now, prompting criticism from the Greens. An amendment to the police law is necessary to permit the software's use.
The software was specifically developed for security agencies and is used by intelligence services, the military and police.
With Gotham, millions of data points from various sources can be analysed and linked.
The German states of Bavaria, Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia also rely on the software, but they have adapted their police laws accordingly.
Fuuuuck stop letting Palantir get away with this shit! And for fucks sake stop changing your laws to allow for their software.
You're paying them money! Make them adapt to you, and if they hit you with "it just doesn't work that way. This is how we have to do it," (which btw, is what they tell everybody) then give your contract and your money to somebody else!!
You know how people watched Hitler taking control and could preemptively see his plan was definitely to just keep going until he had taken all of Europe? This is the modern day strategy, except it's going to be the whole world instead of Europe and Peter Thiel is Hitler.
I think that's becoming a universal norm unfortunately. Governments don't seem to be at all concerned if the policies they implement do or don't please the people they are supposed to represent anymore, so who are they pleasing?
Companies. Germany tends to only care about German companies, to the point where they'll save them with taxpayer money every time their shares drop .2%
Ignoring conspiracy theory stuff, people aren't very good at perceiving changes in light levels if they happen gradually. During any solar eclipse there are wide bands where only a partial eclipse is observed. It's pretty common for people in those bands to not notice that something has changed even with 50% occlusion.
I'd chalk that up to the assumption that a cloud has partially or fully obscured the sun. If clouds weren't a thing, we'd be much more sensitive to light changes as they wouldn't be a part of our outdoor experience.
I'm not checking to see if the sun is still there every time the ambient light outside dims, y'know what I mean?
Photography hobbyist here: our eyes adapt to light more than we realize. What to us is a slight change in brightness is a dramatic difference to a photo camera.
If you ever get the chance to see one it's actually quite a bit more odd than a cloud passing over. It feels kinda wrong. Shadows do funny things especially around things like tree leaves. The colors are just kinda eerie. Like the other person said we're not super good at telling light levels so it LOOKS sunny but the sunlight doesn't feel warm.
But yeah if you don't know it's happening it is totally possible to miss a partial eclipse if you're inside or busy and just passing through outside.
You're right when talking about the average person with nothing but their eyes. But there are tons of companies and members of the public that have bits of tech that would call that out easily. Solar panels, environmental logging equipment, etc, would notice the drop in light levels fairly easily, and would be apparent when reviewing historical vs current levels, and the power grids would definitely notice the sun dimming dropping their power outputs.
Without going into conspiracy theory territory, there's no realistic way to hide that from the public.
Definitely, any changes natural or anthropogenic would be measured and to great accuracy. I just wanted to point out that the notion of the general public, especially if conditioned to distrust scientists and authorities, not noticing changes isn't the outlandish part. See global warming denial despite years of record setting temperatures.
I just wanted to point out that the notion of the general public, especially if conditioned to distrust scientists and authorities, not noticing changes isn't the outlandish part.
I figured, which is why I framed my comment the way I did. You may be able to discount the scientists, but can you discount them, plus citizens complaining about their solar output, power plants having to raise rates due to falling solar generation, crop impacts, and even just other citizens posting raw data all coming out with similar data over time saying it's a problem?
Having said that and looking at the state of climate change, I have a hard time not seeing the parallels against my argument. But falling solar output would have a much more immediate effect on us than climate change (and would likely reverse it to some extent).
You'd think that, but I've had the command "get a tan for God's sake you're transparent" used as an insult against me. You can be too white for white supremacists.
Stop pretending substack isn't a Nazi platform, because they actively support Nazi propaganda on their site and have refused to take it down or commit to keeping it off their platform.
Substack is run by Nazi supporters at the very least, which should be enough for people to flee in droves, but more people are ok with Nazis than we want to admit.
Oh yeah, I agree. I blocked hexbear, but not .ml yet. I'm still willing to argue with that group. It's just saying "lemmy" has a Nazi problem is like saying email has a Nazi problem.
There's some nazi instances like explodingheads or whatever, but everyone has and continues to defederate from them instantly so it's not much of a problem for users.
Lemmy's federated structure makes it easy to block the instances which don't moderate the nazis or tankies or anything else away to your satisfaction, while Substack is a centralized platform which has chosen to not only allow, but actively encourage and reward its nazis.
So, any such problem on Lemmy is "better" because we can all (as individual users, and/or collectively as instances) deal with it as we like instead of bowing to Substack's decision to be a nazi bar for all its users.
Communism has noble goals, even if the tankies advocate self-defeating ways of achieving these goals. I'm not aware of any noble goals behind Nazism or any kind of fascism. That, to me, puts even the most infuriating tankie above any Nazi.
The problem is that it is really the only viable platform for independent articles/blogs these days. That is already a ridiculously small potential audience (people who can read AND people who are willing to pay for content). Cutting out the one platform that got any traction is as good as quitting.
It is similar to why businesses (which is what we are talking about) couldn't leave twitter until like a year and a half ago or whenever bluesky went open sign ups. Yeah, it is a platform owned by nazis and infested with them but... it is also the only way to advertise said businesses and have any hope of surviving. That said, once bluesky gained traction there is absolutely zero reason to not, at the very least, diversify (preferably dropping musknet entirely).
For Substack? Ghost is an increasingly viable platform. But just look around here for any time someone posts a link to a 404 media article and you get "Ugh. Fucking scammers want to rugpull and steal all my personal information" for... wanting ANY email to be used for a free account to just limit the impact of bot/ai scraping.
Its less that "more people are ok with Nazis than we want to admit"... especially considering many of the people on substack are talking about said fucking Nazis. The problem is that "fewer people are willing to support independent media than we want to admit". It is the same logic of "if I like a youtube channel I'll give them money on their patreon" that is patently flawed.
But just look around here for any time someone posts a link to a 404 media article and you get "Ugh. Fucking scammers want to rugpull and steal all my personal information" for... wanting ANY email to be used for a free account to just limit the impact of bot/ai scraping.
I don't want to create a fucking account on every single fucking website I enter to read a shit article about some random bullshit
That's just making the internet even shittier place than it already is. Telling your readers to eat a hatful because scrapers are not respecting robots.txt? Please step on lego
So true, but I think Patreon will be the place to submit my articles. I deleted my Substack over this. You can make your post free and offer paid teirs what I do.
Oh yeah. Circulating random swastika-labelled push notifications talking about a sickness that "aflicks (?) all Jews" is a pretty big no-no in most, if not all, of the civilized world.
Well you see, it's like, this whole "solar" "energy", I done did tried to run my double-wide on two of those things with that U-B-S cable they come with, whole thing cost me around 30 dang-o smackaroos, and the little light was on saying it was "charging" all afternoon, but as soon as the sun went away, the light went away! Now how does a light know if it's daytime or not? Damn cia alien shit, just you wait. Then after a little while, it stopped charging my air compressor I use for my lady doll. Worst 30 bucks ever, all I got was blue balled and confused. Harbor Freight won't take em back either, feller was giving me a weird look when I tried to explain with my doll. Poor bastard ain't seen a pair of tits before or somethin.
I started a petition on truth social to bring back the sun at all times, so that myself and others don't get scammed by this "energy". Has over 64,000 signatures, mmmhm. It's all the damn libs fault, stealing our sun. Who's idea was it to have it go away anyway? Buncha dumbasses.
(fuck I think I lost brain cells but hopefully I created a character that everyone can see clearly in their mind. and yes I know geothermal [or whatever they think it is] isn't solar, that's part of the joke.)
I looked for months for negatives to substack before starting my publications there. This is all news to me. Looking at the alternatives costing the creators a fee for zero subscribers leaves me with no choice but to stay for the moment being also. Hopefully a real contender pops up soon.
i feel like I've never heard anything about substack and then all of a sudden out of nowhere i was hearing about it everywhere. never used it. now that I know it has a nazi/far-right problem, staying away from it by at least 1000 miles
Sentivamo il bisogno di ridere un pochino, in questi giorni difficili… e per nostra fortuna è arrivato da noi Zeb con un nuovissimo video di 15 minuti su un’altra delle sue opinioni ridicole… ed è subito un ritorno al 2016-2018, che quasi mi si scalda il cuore. Possibile indovinare cosa gli fa girare i maroni […]
“Stop Killing Games – Una norma a tutela della stupidità” (il ritorno delle opinioni assurde di Zeb89)
Sentivamo il bisogno di ridere un pochino, in questi giorni difficili… e per nostra fortuna è arrivato da noi Zeb con un nuovissimo video di 15 minuti su un’altra delle sue opinioni ridicole… ed è subito un ritorno al 2016-2018, che quasi mi si scalda il cuore. Possibile indovinare cosa gli fa girare i maroni stavolta? Ma ovviamente l’iniziativa Stop Killing Games, che lui reputa cringe! (Per quanto, a differenza di Pirate Software, lui non sia direttamente contro… è solo che reputa la cosa una stronzata a cui è inutile pensare; insomma, poteva andare molto peggio.) 😹 Allora, per carità, in questo suo yapping senza capo né coda qualcosa di giusto lo dice pure: per esempio, il fatto che per evitare la rogna dei giochi online che chiudono basterebbe giocare solo ai prodotti degli sviluppatori per bene, e non comprare più la roba di EA o Ubisoft, aziende che non fanno un singolo gioco davvero bello da credo almeno 30 anni… Ma in questo caso non so se la sua retorica liberista del “votare col borsello” funzioni, perché non so se la quantità di persone a favore di questa bella iniziativa sarebbe una massa sufficientemente critica qualora si organizzasse semplicemente per non comprare più i giochi di merda… (Cosa che comunque nella pratica non succederebbe, perché molti gamerz sono scemi, ma lasciamo stare.) 😧
Comunque sia, è abbastanza evidente che ha capito meno di metà della questione, nonostante ripeta più e più volte che lui si è informato e tutto, e facendo più volte il verso ad ipotetici commentatori che potrebbero rinfacciargli la cosa come me adesso… la differenza è che io delle argomentazioni ce le ho, e non dico “eh Zeb ma…“. Non serve nemmeno guardare tutto il video per capire che lui non ha capito che:
La legge non vuole obbligare i produttori a mantenere i servizi di un gioco in eterno, ma solo assicurare che una volta dismesso i giocatori abbiano comunque qualche modo di continuare a giocare, cosa che nella pratica significa permettere di mettere su un proprio server, come tra l’altro era normale ai “tempi d’oro del gaming” che lui ricorda con tanta nostalgia.
Non solo questo, ma anche in primis obbligare i produttori ad essere più chiari in anticipo riguardo i piani di dismissione, per cui deve essere scritta nera su bianco la data di morte di un gioco, così che i consumatori abbiano più dati per votare col borsello, come piace a lui, e non perdere l’accesso al gioco a sorpresa.
Riguardo i giochi single-player che richiedono un collegamento Internet costante, la butta completamente in caciara, ignorando che il problema non è la connessione Internet in sé, ma il collegamento ad un server remoto proprietario… quando (non se) questo verrà dismesso, il gioco anche se single-player smetterà completamente di funzionare, ed è questo che la legge vuole evitare, non fermare “il progresso tecnologico” come dice lui.
Per altri, già qui ci sarebbe da chiudere il sipario, ma a me non bastava… quindi ho visto il video dall’inizio alla fine. E quindi ho riso ulteriormente avendo visto che, con la seconda metà del video, caccia fuori a caso un benaltrismo assurdo su quali sono davvero i problemi dei videogiochi moderni (il cheating online), e che piuttosto servirebbe una norma europea per sistemare quelli; E ok, ci sta pure, ripeto… ma Zeb, porca puttana, hai 36 anni, puoi evitare di scadere in fallacie logiche così banali? Anzi: qualunque cittadino europeo può avviare un’iniziativa di raccolta firme come quella in questione… organizzati e crealo tu il disegno di legge per richiedere che i giocatori forniscano i propri documenti per giocare online, maremma maiala! 🥴
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Collective shout seems to have expanded its scope: games like cult classic Fear And Hunger have been removed from Itch.io, while horror game VILE: Exhumed has been delisted from Steam just a week after launch.
Involving the MasterCard Mafia in your puritanical crusade is next to criminal. The only solution is to [CONTENT REMOVED FOR VIOLATING RESTRICTIONS AGAINST ADVOCATING VIOLENCE].
Man, I knew it was only a matter of time but I didn't think it would be this bad, this soon.
Fear & Hunger is a goddamn masterpiece. Yes, it has depictions of nonconsensual sexual acts. It's in keeping with the lore of a world that is truly fucked even beyond our reality. It's an integral part of the worldbuilding, and it is by no means glorified.
I think the biggest problem is getting any crypto which usually involves an exchange which is also dependent on the payment processors you are trying to avoid
Do you think it happen randomly that payment processors are unavoidable to get crypto money ? Because it's clearly on purpose and a way to control a market they didn't have any leverage on.
Still the take above of "I would rather support payment processors than Cryptos" still sound super dumb to me. People are so extreme on their assessment of technologies here. There is no nuance. AI is all bad, crypto is all bad that's pretty much the tone here.
Until one emerges that's even slightly stable enough to use as a secure currency (and not a stablecoin...), there can never be the kind of broad adoption introducing an entire separate exchange paradigm to the global economy would require. And that's aside from the technical requirements that aren't met - there's no crypto network that could even come close to handling the load put on ex: the ACH, meaning awful lag on every transaction.
It's just not there yet, and pretending like extreme reactions to a comment that's both condescending and insulting to the users who disagree with you are unreasonable - or a reflection of nuanced opinions on cryptocurrencies in general- is disingenuous enough to be concerning. Surely you must see the flaws in how you're behaving here.
"Man, I don't understand why unregulated currencies are unpopular! I'm going to dismiss the heaping mountain of examples of it being abused with no possible recourse as just people being unreasonable in their dislike! That'll convince the masses!"
The issues are layered but the core aspect is that everyone can get scammed and banks have protections for getting your money stolen while crypto doesn't.
But the more visible issue is just how the unregulated aspect of it being used to scam people predominantly has marred the topic for so many people to the point where people just want to stay away from it all. If anything I think it ends up being a good example for how people need regulation and we can't just have anarchy because people will take advantage of other people.
To add a metaphor, sure it's not the gun that does the killing it's the human, but regulating how the gun gets used does help with gun deaths a lot.
If people had used cryptocurrency as a currency instead of as a "it's totally not a security, we swear, even though we're only saying that to evade SEC regulations a little longer" there'd be a lot fewer people calling it a scam.
For sixteen years, crypto's only use cases seemed to be buying illegal goods and securities fraud. Finally, we have another use case presenting: perfectly legal transactions that credit card companies have gotten cold feet about.
There also has been cases where people increasingly used cryptocurrencies as their national currency was subject to instability and severe inflation. Usually the governments cracked down on it hard, like in Turkiye.
The SEC had every opportunity to make up it's fucking mind for years, but even after repeated promptings from all the big crypto exchanges, they kept putting things off and randomly throwing lawsuits for violations for things they were asked for guidance on.
Also, this is the exact kind of transaction they had in mind when they created the tech, but everyone decided it was only ever for drugs, because that's what the Wall St owned media told them to think
Also, this is the exact kind of transaction they had in mind when they created the tech, but everyone decided it was only ever for drugs, because that's what the Wall St owned media told them to think
What were the completely legal products that had Visa and Mastercard standing on the sidelines in 2009? Because without a real life example, I don't think big media had to do much to get people to ignore this use case at the time.
First, I don't understand why processors give a fuck. Do they imagine people are going to just stop using credit in protest of how other people spend their money? Tell me another fucking joke.
Second, I'm not a game developer, but I suddenly want to make a horror game that includes graphic, exploitive, gratuitous depictions of everything they complain about. And name the game Collective Shriek.
The worm that keeps getting put into payment processor's brains is that they might somehow be held criminally liable for games people purchase. It's like telling a bus driver that they might be liable because they gave a ride to someone who robbed a store.
That what I just dont get about this. If payment processors think they are liable because these games cause harm then where does it stop? Supermarkets sell cigarettes and so on...
NOW that they've started curating, that has become way more likely to actually happen. They could have claimed to be a neutral carrier before. Actively filtering means they've decided to take on that responsibility, and the consequences for missing stuff.
So that's how it works. Maybe people should also start harassing payment processors for weapon purchases, buying fossil fuels, oversized SUVs and whatnot until they stop caring.
I don't get why the gaming platforms are removing games instead of removing the objecting payment providers as a payment option for purchasing those particular games.
If visa doesn't want people to purchase game X with Visa, then remove Visa as payment option for buying game X.
"That’s why Ukie strongly supports the use of robust classification systems like PEGI across all platforms, including those hosting adult or experimental content," the statement reads. "We believe payment providers and platforms alike should have confidence in trusted age rating systems and the enforcement mechanisms behind them."
Steam doesn't have to, you fuckwits. Collectively shouting your beliefs across the world and forcing others to bend to your religion isn't worth a response. Go fuck yourselves.
Do search engines not want articles about porn or do they just don't like the word? Because substituting one letter doesn't do shit if you want to obscure what you're talking about.
You shouldn't bombard those people with emails or phone calls or order pizza without toppings/cheese. Don't harass them and make their life miserable, don't ruin something they enjoy. Don't use OSINT to find more about them and certainly don't ask "where is your god now?" when they break down crying. Don't clog their systems with trashdata. Just don't raid them.
Talk with them in a civilized manner. Look at human history and you will see that every conflict can be settled if you are just willing to use words and nothing else.
You cannot reason with religious extremists. They believe they have the one true view of the world and nothing will convince them otherwise. They believe they are fulfilling gods wishes.
Nah, make their lives hell within the confines of the law. They aren't going to listen so it's a way better use of your time to fuck with them. Make them feel uncomfortable in the world because they do not belong.
4 likes, 0 comments - meltankardreist on March 27, 2024: "For more information email melinda@tankardreist.com or head to my website melindatankardreist.
Clickbait title. This is in the context of competitive coding, which is a very specific and constrained programming exercise with a time limit. Which is not at all comparable to real world software development.
Eh. That's like saying speed chess "is not at all comparable" to chess. There's differences but it's the same game. In this case speed coding still relies on the programmers understanding of the problem. There's just usually less edge cases that you have to handle (usually input can be read in a less safe way because it's in a specific format, and others)
It's more like comparing a review of Chapter 1 to a book report.
We know a computer is faster at things. It relies on that to perform iterations, overcoming the core shortfall of actual intelligence. Whereas the ideas a human gets are established almost instantly, especially with experience, but they perform slower.
Literally, this is the "development" in software development.
When I originally saw this report on another source, the key standout for me was how many people were beaten by the AI, and the fact the winner was 5% ahead, which really is a small margin. It was being touted as "Yay we beat the AI!" without acknowledging that there were a lot of people that lost to it.
It’s articles like these (that I absolutely never open) with those headlines that remind you that the media thinks that you are just a fucking complete moron and thinks so little of you.
The alert contained a swastika and prompted users to subscribe to newsletter featuring opinions and news important to the "white nationalist community."
A whites-only town in Arkansas revives far-right segregationist ideals, banning immigrants, people of colour, Jews, and LGBTQ+ individuals in a disturbing return to the past.
Doesn't make any sense to have it there, then. Even though it WAS last updated long after the headline became a lie, that was still 3 days ago, making it not i any way amongst the 10 LATEST news stories.
Sydney (AFP) – Australia will use landmark social media laws to ban children under 16 from video-streaming site YouTube, a top minister said Wednesday stressing the need to shield them from "predatory algorithms".
Communications Minister Anika Wells said four-in-ten Australian children had reported viewing harmful content on YouTube, one of the most visited websites in the world.
"We want kids to know who they are before platforms assume who they are," Wells said in a statement.
"There's a place for social media, but there's not a place for predatory algorithms targeting children."
Australia announced last year it was drafting laws that will ban children from social media sites such as Facebook, TikTok and Instagram until they turn 16.
The government had previously indicated YouTube would be exempt, given its widespread use in classrooms.
"Young people under the age of 16 will not be able to have accounts on YouTube," Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters on Wednesday.
"They will also not be able to have accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and X among other platforms.
"We want Australian parents and families to know that we have got their back."
Albanese said the age limit may not be implemented perfectly -- much like existing restrictions on alcohol -- but it was still the right thing to do.
A spokesman for YouTube said Wednesday's announcement was a jarring U-turn from the government.
"Our position remains clear: YouTube is a video sharing platform with a library of free, high-quality content, increasingly viewed on TV screens," the company said in a statement.
"It's not social media."
On paper, the ban is one of the strictest in the world.
But the current legislation offers almost no details on how the rules will be enforced -- prompting concern among experts that it will simply be a symbolic piece of unenforceable legislation.
It is due to come into effect on December 10.
Social media giants -- which face fines of up to Aus$49.5 million (US$32 million) for failing to comply -- have described the laws as "vague", "problematic" and "rushed".
TikTok has accused the government of ignoring mental health, online safety and youth experts who had opposed the ban.
Meta -- owner of Facebook and Instagram -- has warned that the ban could place "an onerous burden on parents and teens".
The legislation has been closely monitored by other countries, with many weighing whether to implement similar bans.
"There's a place for social media, but there's not a place for predatory algorithms targeting children."
So instead of adressing the algorithms we will collect information about everyone (including children) and violate their privacy instead. Makes perfect sense...
As a parent of young kids....youtube is a complicated mess.
It is full of really great content; but YT kids sucks...so if you want access to the good stuff it is standard YT.
But the utter shit that shows up in the side bar and suggested videos is insane.
For older teens/adults; you don't have to worry about the shit tier garbage that is suggested.
I block the ads, but that is a whole other level of cringe/inappropriate content that just gets shoved into videos; completely unrelated to what is on.
You can use uBlock Origin to block the recommended section or another player like FreeTube which allows you to disable that section entirely.
FreeTube also offers Hide Videos and Playlists Containing Text feature in addition to general channel blocking. That should help tailoring content to kids where YouTube fails.
uBlock Origin is not just an “ad blocker“, it's a wide-spectrum content blocker with CPU and memory efficiency as a primary feature. Developed by Raymond Hill.
Nelle remote profondità del Pacifico, esistono recessi ove la vita è rarefatta al punto da permettere di sopravvivere soltanto ad animali altamente specializzati, il cui metabolismo è calibrato al fine di minimizzare il consumo di energie ed al tempo…
Samsung’s One UI 8 update appears to block more users from unlocking their device’s bootloader, preventing them from installing custom software and making other changes to their Galaxy device.
There's definitely no law in the US. In fact the vast majority of Android device bootloaders come locked. Pretty much just Pixels and Galaxies that allow this.
And even when it comes to Galaxies, you can't buy from a carrier in the US or you'll often get a special version that, you guessed right, has a locked bootloader. (Two phones now, never again).
I have a s24 here and the last update to One Ui 7 removed the bootloader unlocking option in dev mode. But that was mounts ago and no one talked about it back then so they did it hidden in the dark. Disgusting. See by your self and confirm it.
I wish there was some (safe) way to play Flash games on Android. Gnash wasn't ready last time I checked a few years ago (that may have changed, but can't find anything for Android)
I also saw this earlier on F-Droid, but for some reason thought it was yet another social network/messaging service, and the lack of an useful description in the F-Droid page just made me skip it.
Damn fancy pants, ain't nobody who can afford to use 700mb of potential storage for a 24mb installer and a crack with a virus. That's why 32mb USB sticks were invented.
We plebs had CD-ROMs from Bulgaria filled with software compressed to the max including both Flash and that Adobe program used to create flash content. And ripped versions of games where the audio and video was recompressed at a barely tolerable bitrate. Everything with cracks and viruses of course.
That's how I heard Oasis for the first time, "Champagne Supernova". Bundled as an MP3 with that dang music player that I can't remember the name of. You know the one that really whips the llamas ass? Yeah, that's the one.
Absolutely, and the really fancy people even had CD-RW, an opti-magnetic system. But not all disk drives could read them, just like not all computers had an USB port!
Wild times, let's not even get started on DVD-R and DVD+R - we could be here for hours.
It's a phase change alloy, when writing a high powered laser is used to melt the alloy, when it cools quickly it becomes opaque. When erasing, a lower powered laser heats up the disc and returns it to its transparent state. A reading laser isn't powerful enough to change the phases at all. So, you have the idea right... just no magnets involved.
Reminder that this is the same app that a few weeks ago was found to be advertised as secure when it was still experimental and without being audited, and for which multiple serious vulnerabilities were found before they added the disclaimer saying it was experimental:
It was very clearly advertised as experimental and insecure:
Warning
Private message and channel features have not received external security review and may contain vulnerabilities. Do not use for sensitive use cases, and do not rely on its security until it has been reviewed
As the TechCrunch article I shared says, that warning was added only after the multiple vulnerabilities listed were found and publicised, and the original article in this post didn't mention the vulnerabilities or it being experimental either.
With Proton VPN downloads skyrocketing in th UK, the Online Safety Bill has lead to fears that VPNs can be banned in the country entirely. Although the ruling Labour Government has ruled out a VPN ban, Tech Secretary Peter Kyle has issued a warning to VPN users.
“Adults should get behind the aid verification system, because every time they do it, you keep a child safe.” Kyle told The Telegraph last week in a warning: "If platforms or sites signpost towards workarounds like VPNs, then that itself is a crime and will be tackled by these codes.
cyrano
in reply to sga • • •What about something like nextcloud? You could link nextcloud to external drive/mount like an encrypted google drive for example but keep it tech illiterate friendly for upload/download and read and you could control how you enable the access?
Another idea: github.com/9001/copyparty
GitHub - 9001/copyparty: Portable file server with accelerated resumable uploads, dedup, WebDAV, FTP, TFTP, zeroconf, media indexer, thumbnails++ all in one file, no deps
GitHubsga
in reply to cyrano • • •I could try these, but the problem is, I am graduating. I could set it up once, and maybe even give someone else (or myself) remote access to the hosting infra, but I would likely be less available to manage stuff.
Good dsolutions though. I could possibly try to make the latter solution work (managing nexcloud is relatively harder imo, and i have no idea how would i mount a encrypted google drive to it). It still feels like something only i would have to maintain, but if I can get it in a setup and forget stage (or like a annual maintainence), then I could consider it.
the only problem now is money. I would have to use vps for this kinda stuff. the sbc + ssd idea was something i had proposed to a junior. but hosting anything in college premises with college internet would have to "techinically comply with copyright rules". if it was a git like solution or torrent like, even administrators would not be able to access the stuff (comparable in tech literacy)(i am not talking about people who manage or internet infra, but copyright stuff, like our library department). With a drive like setup, they would be able to use it too.
Can i setup a password to access the stuff, like a simple password, common for all? then only student who have password be able to use it. maybe i can setup http authentication. but then again i would fall back to - it is getting too tough for them to use it.
cyrano
in reply to sga • • •You could still host nextcloud on your college infra but the copyright stuff on third party external storage docs.nextcloud.com/server/late…
Like this your stuff is compliant and you allow folks to access a google drive for example that you or someone else can manage.
Access wise you could create a dummy user for anyone to access or let people manage their account docs.nextcloud.com/server/late…
The good thing is that give you flexibility and integration capabilities depending on how you go.
Maintenance wise I self host it on my side with 2 docker 1 for the app 1 for the db so it is very straightforward.
I use it to share with family that is not tech literate.
Configuring External Storage (GUI) — Nextcloud latest Administration Manual latest documentation
docs.nextcloud.comsga
in reply to cyrano • • •I would seriously consider this, and try to implement this weekend.
people would not differentiate (in future, i would not be the one to upload stuff, but newer gens would), so i would set everything to be uploaded to google. I would still try to maintain 2 offline backups in case google gets angry.
that is definitely reinforcing.
I would still try to find if i can host directly in campus, and not google or any 3rd party at all.
Onomatopoeia
in reply to sga • • •Resilio Sync has an option for selective sync - it'll only sync files that a person selects.
It can be set read only (read/write is determined by the key someone is given, plus you can enable an approval mechanism and expiry of a key).
Not sure that really fits your use-case.
sga
in reply to Onomatopoeia • • •Onomatopoeia
in reply to sga • • •Thing is, Resilio doesn't care - it could be an external drive on any computer, anywhere, since it uses it's own encrypted channel (via the Bittorrent protocol).
In this way you don't need a "host", a file server, etc. It has its own resolution system for finding peers. I use it for grabbing files from any box, anywhere, without needing a VPN or knowing machine names, etc.
I still don't know that it's the answer for you without fully understanding your work flow, it's just an idea.
0x0
in reply to sga • • •Use cryptomator to create an encrypted volume (a folder), that you can then share through whichever cloud you want (like mega or one of the bigger ones).
Cryptomator - Free & Open-Source Cloud Storage Encryption
Cryptomatorsga
in reply to 0x0 • • •hendrik
in reply to sga • • •Seems things have gotten more complicated in the age of cloud computing. I think these archives have always been a thing. In the good old days sometimes on their infrastructure, buried several layers deep in some windows network share or on some specific computer in the computer lab or maintained by the student body of a faculty... And there was always some secret file stash somewhere.
If you're concerned with a long-term solution. Are there any entities run by the students? Associations or clubs interested in maintaining such a thing long-term? I mean technology aside, the real issue is that this is done by random individuals and they're gone after a while. Ideally this is done with some help of an entity that lasts longer than that and passed down to future generations.
sga
in reply to hendrik • • •there is another resource run by dev club, but not many of our department folks are in dev club. Also, their solution imo is worse. they techinically do have a index with search, but not a good one. also - very slooooooooooooow. Ans this is when their solution is smaller than mine (and their solution gets contribution from other departments as well).
I understand it would be better be done by a entity instead of a person, but problem is, entities would have to abide by institute rules. and then whole lot of problems from "why not possible" point 2 applies.
I could get some of my juniors to form a small group within department, but i do not think many of them do anything unless they are given a motive for it. and there is no real motive to maintain a good database other than helping others. entities can do "good things" but individuals often do it for selfish reasons. that was partially the case with me. I used to make notes, and then tons of messages from classmates to share notes, and got fed of sending stuff individually. then i started sending stuff in group chat, but not having a good way to search chat history meant people would not find it, and ask me again. so i made a drive. a course happens where people have to install software, but actual instructions are very hard - i get messages - i make scripts to install, or compile the end product and just ship it. You might think these are good deeds, but they are still selfish acts. I used to maintain a good directory structure anyway, might as well upload it.
hendrik
in reply to sga • • •The main issue is, you graduate as well and life will move on for you. You might move far away, get a full-time job, maybe have new hobbies or a family and time will come and you'll stop supporting it as well. I've seen that all the time and most privately run things vanish sooner than later.
Of course the entities have to abide by the rules. We also did that... officially... It just happened to be the case that some of the same individuals also did other things after hours, and not in their role as members of the entity... And while mingling you'd find similar-minded people and/or successors for the inofficial operations. It's a bit trick to get it right. The official entity of course denies any involvement, they can't take any blame.
And I'd say if you're the main/sole contributor of content, it's questionable if this even survives long term. Unless people upload recent exams and material, the content will become obsolete after a few years. Professors will have changed the questions and assignments or the entire course is done by a new professor and the archive will slowly become obsolete. So you kind of need some community anyways. Or skip the hassle and just upload the thing to archive.org or some one click hoster.
Another option would be to talk to the dev club. Maybe they'd like to revamp their solution and take yours, or they have some idea about tech infrastructure.
sga
in reply to hendrik • • •I am graduating. That is why when i leave, i want to leave stuff in a functional state so they do not have to start a fresh. I did mention this in post, but i wrote a whole lot more than i should have, and i do not expect anyone to read all this.
absolutely. as i said, individuals work for selfish reasons, and once i leave, i would not have a selfish reason anymore.
yes. it does get obsolete. but our department is still relatively new (5th or 6th year since establishment) and hence, most course have not been taught by 2 or more profs. hence, much of it will stay relevant as long as professors stay.
My juniors have started bugging me again to get drive working again (new sem has started).
I would have to pull some shit to form a sub division of department society. then i can get budget to either buy some drive subscription, or set something local, but set it behind some proxy, so it would appear not to be hosted in college (reverse vpn if you will)
hendrik
in reply to sga • • •Sorry, I read that after I replied and edited my comment, but a bit too late... That changes some things...
I agree. There's roughly two options. Either a static archive as your heritage. Or some writable file storage which can be kept up to date. And yeah, that needs payment, maintenance...
And from my observation, finding people willing to maintain something, or clean up after someone did some annoying things or filled up storage or whatever, is harder than setting up the technology.
Obviously that option would be preferable, though.
Maybe Cloudflare is your friend. They dominate the market of free reverse proxies / tunnels.
But I'm really unsure if I have any good recommendation that fits your situation. Ideally find a successor, next best thing is a Nextcloud, Google Drive, OneDrive or some of the other ones. And if that can't be done, split it into manageable chunks by course and dump it to some one click hoster or archive.org. That's all I can come up with.
And by the way, I did appreciate such archives and made use of them. And there's a lot of reasons (cheating aside) to share notes, PDFs, try old exams to prepare...
sga
in reply to hendrik • • •that was just one case. I was stupid. Now I am not.
exactly why i never said no to anyone. it is the age old saying - we stand on shoulder of giants. I remember falling ill, not being able to attend classes, and missing stuff. but then some friend would lend their notes. drive imo is just for that.
supervent
in reply to sga • • •Syncthing
syncthing.netsga
in reply to supervent • • •misterbngo
in reply to sga • • •like this
TVA likes this.
sga
in reply to misterbngo • • •misterbngo
in reply to sga • • •The way I've been using it for a few years is that most of my machines can see each other and I have a shared folder and versioning setup. As I add things they move between the different machines and once an additional machine has it it is available to the others until everything is in sync
You can definitely do chain topologies which are useful for certain things with a single source of truth
zabadoh
in reply to sga • • •Every Google account comes with 15GB of free storage.
Make as many Google accounts as you need.
Store files in Google Drive up to the limit for each account, then add links to the other GDrive archives.
Organize the files as needed.
Maybe make a free web page in Wix, Wordpress, or whatever with links to the files easy to search and find.
Pass the userid and passwords to the GDrive and webpages to whomever wants to be your successor.
You will be dependent on the generosity of Google, Wix, Wordpress or whatever to not cleanup the webpages and files due to inactivity.
So keep a backup. Torrents can be messy because they can be broken if there are no seeders.
If the content is static, then I'd recommend some older P2P filesharing like eD2K to keep one big zip/rar file backup shared among peers.
sga
in reply to zabadoh • • •thank you. but i would prefer not to host stuff on google drive. but some other provider could work (as i said, i am willing to pay a reasonable amount).
yes. content would be partially static. most files will not update, only new stuff will be added. and some files be updated.