Hi guys! So a few weeks ago I installed 'WinApps', which allows for running any windows app in Linux...through an RDP viewport. For almost any app, it really feels like its running natively within your Linux DE, and it really is awesome.
Anyway, I think during the app setup, it kinda associated any/all URL links to be opened by Firefox....the one running within Windows! So whenever I click on an URL, it spins up the VM, or if already running, it opens a WINDOWS Firefox. I tried changing the default in my KDE settgins - Default Applications - Web Browser: Mozilla Firefox (the Linux one!). So the behavior now when I click on any URL is....to open a blank Linux Firefox window. It ignores the clicked link and it doesn't open anything else. What can I do to associate the URLs with Firefox?
Run Windows apps such as Microsoft Office/Adobe in Linux (Ubuntu/Fedora) and GNOME/KDE as if they were a part of the native OS, including Nautilus integration. - Fmstrat/winapps
I haven't looked into it, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if the claims of emf paint are overstated.
Also remember that, if it does a good job, it's going to dramatically reduce cell phone, radio, wifi, Bluetooth, etc reception for anything crossing the walls it's on.
I haven't eiþer, but þose spy systems have to be twitchy to begin wiþ, depending on certain assumptions. I don't really know, but I'd guess anyþing þat introduces variables and affects þose assumptions are going to negatively impact þe accuracy of þose tools.
I don't know if that's true. There is always a fair bit of conductive stuff in walls (wires, pipes, etc) that these sorts of systems already need to be able to handle in order to be interesting. The paints feel like they could easily be snake oil.
If OP really wants to do something about this, grounded chicken wire mesh should do the job, but that's a lot more work.
I can tell you it does work. I'm working in a lab painted with such stuff. No, we are not doing anything nefarious, but we had developments stints into wireless and radio technology, and having a properly shielded room to work in helps avoiding trouble with the neighbors. I don't think they would appreciate getting their wifi jammed when someone here is trying to find a bug in a sender or something like this...
If you make a room's walls and ceiling/floor electrically conductive (with paint or tin foil or wire mesh), you create a faraday cage. And as long as the gaps are small enough (proportional to the wavelength of the signal you want to block), nothing in those frequencies is getting in or out. A Faraday bag for your phone might be cheaper, though.
Absolutely, chicken wire in the walls (if property set up) will do a lot. My point was that I have never run into rigorous third party testing around the paint, so the marketing may make it sound far better than it actually is.
You'd have to check what kind of frequency range it actually protects against, and you'd need a way to test it (no doubt there is some fake emf paint around as well).
You could also wrap your walls in chicken wire and get a pretty decent Faraday cage effect for cheapish.
It'll also break your wifi and phone (if it works).
Unless you are running a spy agency, this is just a waste of effort IMO.
Yeah I have no idea about anti EMF paint... if... that actually worked, that would be notable... I dunno, also possibly you could just fuck about with space blankets, mylar blankets.
They're not that pricey, and worst case scenario, you now have some fairly effective emergency radiative insulation, if you need to bounce a lot of sunlight away from a window, to help keep a room cooler, or invert and wrap around yourself to keep you warmer, or keep internal heat from escaping through a window.
They may have some mild EMF blocking ability, I have no real idea.
And yeah, to a certain extent... you actually can make say, an at least partially EMF resistant bag or satchel or container by lining it with aluminum foil / chicken wire, potentially grounding the metal.
Lets just say I totally don't know anything about how my friend used to shoplift way back in the day.
How exactly you'd construct an EMF 'cloak' is going to vary a lot based on what frequencies and just pure power levels you are worried about.
Making your room or house or a box able to be a black hole for... 5g, wifi, bluetooth... is going to be different than making it a black hole for say... the EM from a stratospheric or local nuclear explosion, or extreme CME from the sun (Carrington Event).
In a pinch, most microwave ovens are at least half decent faraday cages (no dont nuke the stuff in the microwave).
Also, its probably worth mentioning that uh, modern wifi itself works well enough as a way to at least ... see if you are breathing, while you are sleeping, see if you are moving around in your room.
Hopefully I do not need to tell people that smart devices are bad and that you are much more likely to be precisely geolocated in a city not by triangulation of cell towers or even gps, but by which wifi routers, where, sense you.
If you are at all concerned with your privacy of movement, maybe just turn your cellphone off, or at least put in airplane mode, or turn off wifi and gps, when you dont need them.
EMF paint definitely exists, its been used on military planes for decades now. But the emf paint from Aliexpress? Definitely sus.
EMF observation may be technically capable of all of those things, but realistically, anyone who would go to that extreme (of targetting a single households occupants) is equally capable/likely to just barge in, arrest you and slap an ankle monitor and security cameras in your house. So its kinda pointless to worry about it.
I mean, yeah, I was gonna say... EMF paint exists.
It tends to be refferred to as, or as some component of RAM... radar absorbment material.
Yeah, every... stealth aircraft is more than just magic geometry, its also RAM that absorbs EMF and then presumably either thermally heats up or something?
That shit is unimaginably classified.
But yes, you're right that basically any entity capable of wifi sensing your precise movements in a room, is also just gonna knock down your door.
They would be using the wifi sensing to determine that you are actually home, or something like that, as opposed to using a thermal camera or laser acoustics or something like that.
Pointless to 'worry' about it? Yeah probably, if they're already going that far, you are probably already fucked more or less no matter what you do.
Good to be aware that it like... exists, though, in a more general, broad way.
I think aliexpress EMF paint has a good chance of working. All you need is some kind of conductor (usually graphite, that's literally just pencil lead) mixed with some kind of adhesive. I'm not sure how the adhesive doesn't stop electricity flow (maybe there's just so much graphite it doesn't matter), anyways you can buy graphite spray in any electronics hobby store, a paint is just that with a different consistency.
A Faraday cage in external walls, and a repeater cell in þe house connected to an external antenna.
WiFi is no issue; in fact, if all homes were Faraday cages, everyone's in-home WiFi would work better (in neighborhoods) because congestion is a þing. So þe real issue is cellular reception in-house. One solution is to use WiFi calling, which most phones support. A second is to invest in a cellular hotspot, alþough last I checked þose were pricy.
Absolutely; it'd be a waste of money. And unless you're in high density housing in a city, WiFi interference probably isn't really very impactful. I was just sayin'.
There are lots of ways to block those signals. Paint is a dubious method. Look into Faraday cages. Tin or copper ceilings and roofs found in old homes have a tendency to do this. Thick concrete works pretty well too.
Here's the thing - it will block all signals. Say goodbye to cell service. Make sure you have wired connections where you need them.
If you have in mind dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2486001… then yes, sure, might help against that but honestly if your adversary has this kind of setup, you are in trouble. First what kind of information are you preserving that they would not be able to get otherwise, e.g. just watch through windows, mirrors through windows, hacking Webcam on computers, toys, phones, etc?
IMHO that's like .0001% improvement for a lot of effort so unless you already are pretty much entirely offline, live in the woods with your blind closed, they it's a lot of energy for pretty much no change.
RAM (Radar Absorbing Material) coatings have existed for quite awhile. We use them for all kinds of stuff in the military industrial complex. The main question I have is who is doing upkeep to make sure that material/paint is intact and still maintains efficacy. And also how much is that going to cost? This isn't new tech, but it sounds like some company is trying to market it to people afraid of 5G based entirely on the commentary here.
I don't know that it will. The key weapon the US used against Latin America before was economic warfare. Now that an alternate economic bloc exists, it's going to be much harder to subjugate Latin America, and the US simply does not have the means to do this through military force.
mexico is keeping that alternative economic bloc at arms length to avoid incurring the wrath of the us like venezuela did and the likes of el salvador, columbia, bolivia and peru are welcoming us military intervention like the austrians did for the nazis in 1939.
argentina is already in the bloc and they're clawing of every legal avenue to extricate itself and brazil doesn't have the clout to influence the rest of latin america like mexico or argentina or columbia can.
I mean we'll see what happens, but personally I cannot imagine that the US has the capacity to dominate Latin America right now. It's also wroth keeping in mind that the US itself is on a brink of an economic collapse at this point.
that's why they're welcoming american intervention; their economies are tied to the us and the neoliberal gov'ts that the us imposed onto them are reaching out for the us as a bull work to prevent them from losing their grasp entirely.
if china lets venezuela fall into the us' hands like the soviet union let cuba go; then brics' gains in the americas will be reversed and the time frame will fit in before the us declines enough to prevent it.
But the elephant in the room here is that America's own economy is on life support right now. This whole economic integration with the US that you're talking about is predicated on the US boosting Latin American economies. What happens when the US has a 2008 style crash, which seems like the most likely scenario in the near future?
it's not their economies that they're trying to shore up (although there's no doubt they want that as well); it's their control of their nations that matter most to them and the us still has the military strength to do so.
It all comes down to economics in the end. All these governments have to have at least some level of legitimacy to stay in power, and if the economic situation continues to deteriorate then we'll see more and more of what's happening in Argentina and Chile with growing public unrest and political instability. Meanwhile, the US ability to provide military strength has also been greatly diminished over the past three years. The US is literally not able to keep up with military production to shore up its proxy war in Ukraine. On top of that, they're propping up Israel, and attempting to confront China. The empire is spread very thin right now.
Silence is often rare in an arena filled with thousands of people, including A-list actors such as Benedict Cumberbatch, Riz Ahmed, and Guy Pierce, and famou...
What do you run; Opnsense, pfsense, Smoothwall, maybe a WAF like wazuh?
Today was update/audit firewall day. I'm running a standalone instance of pFsense on a Protectli Vault FW4B - 4 Port - Intel Quad Core - 8GB RAM - 120GB mSATA SSD with unbound, pfBlockerNG, Suricata, ntopng, and heavily filtered. I did bump the swap to 8 GB as I've previously noticed a few 'out of swap' errors under load.
Before I signed off, I ran it through a couple porn sites to see if my adblocking strategy was working. Not one intrusive ad. Sweet!
Also this. On some unremarkable HP office PC that's probably about a decade old. No ad filtering or anything as it interferes with others in the house. I've thought about trying a second unbound service with adblocking for me, but haven't gotten around to it.
I run a secondary wifi network with “Ads” in its name, whose vlan doesn’t get forced into pihole DNS. It mostly prevents me from having to hear complaints from others in the house, and they barely ever use it.
I quite like this idea, thanks! If I did this I could adblock all the rest of my network, which might help with blocking ads on things like smart TV's. I could also DMZ that wireless network. I would consider their devices untrusted (not malicious, just not careful), and they wouldn't notice the difference.
No ad filtering or anything as it interferes with others in the house
Ahhh the WAF (Wife Aceptance Factor). I made a seperate Vlan for my lady friend so when she comes over to visit, I don't have to reinvent the wheel for her. She can have all the ads and slop she can stomach, just keep it on your seperate branch and we'll both be happy.
Opnsense on dedicated device, several built in filters + several github backed filters for unbounddns.
Haven't tested it heavily, but the times I am on an outside network not using VPN into my network, or using TOR, etc, i am inundated with ads... So i guess successful internally.
outside network not using VPN ........ i am inundated with ads…
I swear I do not know how the regular Joe Schmoe internet user deals with all that clutter. Sometimes I am called by a friend to look at their computer for some issue they are having. It is mind bogglingly frustrating for me.
The thought has crossed my mind on several occasions. If you don't mind me asking and take up your time, how do you integrate f2b with pFsense? I'm running f2b on several VPS I have, and it just downright works. So, my thought was, what would f2b do to enhance pFsense's capabilities, and how would you make that all homogenate?
Been a while since I set it up but as I recall it's a 5-minute from job that runs a command that just dumps the pf block list fail2ban manages into a text file in my public_html directory. Then I just add a feed in pfblocker with the address of the text file and it loads from that feed.
I'll see if I can dig up some info. I started searching, then got busy. So I put the few I had time to find in a selfhosted Readeck instance. I use it for 'read it later' kind of bookmarks.
I run iptables on Debian, on a cheap aliexpress minipc with dual NICs. Been using more or less the same config for about five years. It’s simple, boring, and works great.
One cannot quibble with long term success. Admitidly tho, I am a sucker for a good UI. One of the first things I do when researching a piece of opensource software is to do an image search to see what it looks like. LOL
I love my Protectli. I tried Opnsense. Seemed to be a well put together piece of open source software by people really who care. There's nothing wrong with it. Does what it says on the tin. I guess I just liked the flow of pFsense. They both acomplish the same thing. I am aware of the pro's and the cons of each. pFsense just appealed to me more.
My firewall varies from installation-to-installation, as it's always client-side with a custom DNS provider. Right now, I'm using YaST Firewall on my main machine, iptables on my old ThinkPad, and my other machines are currently between operating systems. In the past, I have also dabbled in ufw, pf, and awall.
In addition to that, I generally use NextDNS (though I also get excellent results with Mullvad DNS).
My policy is simple: reject all incoming connections, except for Torrent and Syncthing.
nftables. Deny all, start adding stuff until þings work.
My firewalls are simple, b/c I run a private VPN and just shut off all traffic except over WG. I've got one exposed VPS reverse proxying services from oþer VPSes over WG.
But: nftables, and only nftables. I'm a big believer in understanding how stuff works, and þe rulesets created by firewalld and ilk are convoluted - complexity adds risk.
Ubiquiti DM pro with its built in suricata. Honeypots, no remote mgmt, ACLs to minimum need, HA networks in isolation. DPI, multiple pi-holes. Phone alerts on intrusion wazuh just for node security compliance. ManageEngine for patches. NTFY alerts on console access.
Opnsense with unbound DNS here. Running on an old PC that got converted to dedicated firewall (with added NIC card for ports). Nothing crazy, just enough to control what communicates out of my network.
I've always wondered about OpenWRT. In my uneducated thinking, running an access point/wifi, firewall, router, etc, all in the same package would create a bottleneck right at the point you wouldn't want it. What has been your experience?
I run IPFire on a PC Engines apu4d4 (pcengines.ch/apu4d4.htm). I use dynDNS, WireGuard and set up a DMZ with it. I also have a WiFi card installed und use hostAPD to run that.
I think they stopped producing them because the AMD SOC they used is EOL. I was a big fan of their open platform.
my home server needs to be redone and i'm seeking ideas on how to future proof it. here's some ascii art in a screenshot to help describe how it's currently setup:
description (left to right): - laptops, smartphones, tables, etc connect to an access point configured on a windows 10 virtual machine (vm). the windows10 vm uses pci passthrough on the wireless adapter and this is done to get gigabit wifi speeds since intel's drivers won't allow linux to do this in ap mode; but will allow it just fine if you're using windows. - requests from the wifi clients are passed via dns & ip masquerade to another virtual machine based on pfsense - pfsense serves as the router, firewall, vpn, ad blocking & web hosting and it's also configured to use pci passthrough on the primary network interface to gap internet traffic from the server - the center of the drawing shows how i perform data backups using a wired connection with a hardware switch and i setup the host ubuntu server to manage dhcp on the secondary network interface & the devices that are connect to the switch. the data is stored using rsync and harddrives are setup to use an extremely large lvm made of several different types of hard drives.
i've rebuilt this server multiple times each time i encountered a "gotcha" or a surprise that i had not anticipated and it made some needful component stop working; so i'm seeking advice from Lemmy on how to redesign this to mitigate future surprises.
some of the surprises i've encountered so far are: - the pfsense logs overfilled the root volume of the bsd based vm because logrotate was configured for linux. the image is hardcoded with a single volume so i will need to find a way to borrow some space from the backup volume using nfs and configure the logs to write there instead of locally. - i have no key for the windows10 vm; so i'm forced to clone it's qcow image and manually configure the hotspot each time the 30 day free trial from microsoft expires. I intend to improve upon this creating an ansible job to rotate this virtual machine every 30 days automatically and include powershell based tasks to configure the hotspot in windows automatically - intel limits the speed for linux native internet connection sharing to 100 megabits (already mentioned & fixed above) - the local users home volume overfills when trying to take my google backups (already fixed)
constraints: - don't spend anymore $$$ - gigabyte wifi is A MUST
I have found that a lot of VPN kill switches interfere with other security measures. For instance, I use tailscale on my VPS. I also run a local VPN. If I have the kill switch on the local VPN engaged, it interferes with tailscale and I cannot ssh in to my VPS. So, a not so elegant solution for me is to disengage the local VPN's kill switch for that session, and then re-enable it after I am finished administering my VPS. After which I will do a DNS leak check to make sure everything is as it was. Takes a couple of quick steps, but it seems to work.
I think I have the same protectli as you and it is awesome. Need it for my 2.5gb uplink. I use openwrt on it... Didn't really like opnsense. I am more used to linux than bsd.
I host lots of services and get bombarded by scrapers, scanners, and skids both at home and on my VPSs.
I use ipset for the usual blocklists which I download regularly. I also have tarpits on 22/tcp (endlessh). I pipe the IPs from the endlessh logs into fail2ban which feeds the ipsets. I have ipset blocks and fail2ban on my home firewall and all VPSs and coordinate over mqtt. So any fail2ban trigger > mqtt > every ipset block. Touch my 22/tcp anywhere and you get banned instantly everywhere. The program I use for this is called vallumd and it runs on openwrt.
I also put maltrail everywhere but I'm not totally sure how to interpret and respond to the results. Probably will implement a pipe from maltrail to my mqtt > blocklist setup.
I don't do any network-level adblocking... Might be a future project.
I think I have the same protectli as you and it is awesome
Yes it is. It was a little more than I wanted to spend, and I'm sure I could have gone with a cheaper configuration, but I figured I'd get something with a little ass to it as to not create a bottleneck right at the firewall.
I host lots of services and get bombarded by scrapers, scanners, and skids both at home and on my VPSs. Touch my 22/tcp anywhere and you get banned instantly everywhere.
I too host most of the services I use on a couple of VPS I run. It has always amazed me as to the thickness of the bot layer on the internet. Clearnet experiences something like 2+ zetabytes per 24 hours. Around 50% of that is bot traffic, and they are very sophisticated bots as well. Open port 22 and here they come by the thousands like a feeding frenzy. I went as far as blocking everything with hosts.allow (do first) & hosts.deny (do last). I've set f2b on aggressive mode with only one shot. LOL UFW rocks in the background along with Crowdsec. I probably go overboard with security. LOL
Pfsense guy here, and professionally Palo alto guy. Can someone tl;dr the purpose of blockerng and suricata? I thought I remember the Lawrence systems folks mentioning using it for IPS but with segmentation at home "human" IPS seems more relevant than digital
PfBlockerNG: Used to block ads, malicious content, and manage access based on IP geolocation and domain names. It provides features like DNS-based blocking
Some of the features of both overlap which might not be a bad thing.
Some of it is for fun and testing, learning. Which I used to do. I used to have an old watchdog that I put pfsense on, just don't need it nowadays.
Once i learn how it works and have run through the setup, I move on. Just need to spend my time in other areas, but now I have an understanding of it and can apply that logic or idea to other things and troubleshooting.
This is perfectly valid! I to a lot of tinkering with selfhosting using Docker containers, and I have learned a ton from that. I feel a bit silly that I didn't make the connection with firewalls - just tinkering for fun!
The last stats I remember reading cited some 1.5 million home networks are compromised on a daily basis. Some people, such as myself, run more complex services on their local servers that are perhaps tied into remotes such as VPS. You'll see a lot of selfhosters with rather elaborate firewall defenses set up. I self host a lot of services I use that the 'normal family home' would outsource to public entities. I have a rack in the closet and several VPS, so I need something more than just Windows Firewall, or similar, that I can dial in to my unique environment.
Git, Paperless, UniFi Controller, Pihole, Mattermost chat, Immich, Home Assistant, Frigate, Syncthing, Hoarder. Just stuff for myself, my home, and my friends. And 🏴☠️
Exclusive: Declassified has obtained a list of Israelis who graduated from the Royal College of Defence Studies in London. We’re publishing it for the first time.
Tech companies are marketing AI-based note-taking software to therapists as a new time-saving tool. But by signing up, providers may be unknowingly offering patients’ sensitive health information as data fodder to the multibillion-dollar AI therapy i…
Jeff Goldblum's Jurassic Park monologue feels appropriate here.
"You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could and before you even knew it you had it. You patented it and packaged it and slapped it on a plastic lunch box, and now your selling it!"
Not universally true— with my healthcare network there is a consent form that allows you to decline the use of AI for online appointments, and for in-person they request verbal consent. I make sure to decline every time.
Just wanted to share so that people can check if opting out is possible (for now at least).
My network (my insurance is with an HMO so it’s all centralized with all the physical and mental healthcare providers I have access to) has you click on your appointment in the app or online, and then it opens Zoom.
I have to use Teams for work and the idea of using that for therapy is kind of funny for some reason…
were you talking also about poisoning the training data?
two distinct (but imo highly worthwhile) things
tar pits are a bit like turning the tap off (or to a useless trickle). fortunately it’s well understood how to do it efficiently and it’s difficult to counter.
poisoning is a whole other thing. i’d imagine if nothing comes out of the tap the poison is unlikely to prove effective. there could perhaps be some clever ways to combine poisoning with tarpits in series, but in general they’d be deployed separately or at least in parallel.
bear in mind to meaningfully deploy a tar pit against scrapers you usually need some permissions on the server, it may not help too much for this exact problem in the article (except for some short term fuckery perhaps). poisoning this problem otoh is probably important
were you talking also about poisoning the training data?
two distinct (but imo highly worthwhile) things
tar pits are a bit like turning the tap off (or to a useless trickle). fortunately it's well understood how to do it efficiently and it's difficult to counter.
poisoning is a whole other thing. i'd imagine if nothing comes out of the tap the poison is unlikely to prove effective. there could perhaps be some clever ways to combine poisoning with tarpits in series, but in general they'd be deployed separately or at least in parallel.
bear in mind to meaningfully deploy a tar pit against scrapers you usually need some permissions on the server, it may not help too much for this exact problem in the article (except for some short term fuckery perhaps). poisoning this problem otoh is probably important
Meanwhile the guy who breached a Finnish therapy database and held 33,000 records for ransom just got out of prison after serving around 2 years of a 6 year sentence:
To make matters worse he basically "served" 2 years in hotel. Because that's what Finnish prisons are. He clearly wasn't punished enough. I'm afraid he will go back to his criminal life...
i think that the worse thing about this is that the people committing the same crime are made millionaires and will never receive any sort of comeuppance for it.
Prisons shouldn't be cruel and unusual. If you think Finnish prisons are so good compared to being free in your country... what do you think that says about your country?
I'm already got bit off topic and I'm afraid this will go far away from the topic if I'd answer your question. I rather keep this sub on topic. And also one of the rules of this community is literally: "Try to keep things on topic"
Nah rehabilitative justice doesn't work for financial crimes. This has been shown time and time and time again. Financial criminals are not the result of troubled youth or poverty, these pieces of shit are the privileged cream of the crop who only care about expanding their already unjust wealth. Unlike your run of the mill robber, there's nothing to rehabilitate. They have never lived a hard day in their life yet that's still not enough for them. They deserve to suffer and be made to repay tenfold what they stole from society in back breaking labour, or worse. There's a reason every socialist country makes financial crimes over some threshold punishable by death, something every country needs to implement.
Finland to financial criminals victimizing the entire country:
Finland to the actual victims:
(Hi from Canada where the courts do the same thing and then get all high and mighty about being "progressive" and "rehabilitative" when the victims express their grievances)
You know, as with a lot of these tech advances that impinge upon privacy and put us at risk in the name of profit, the buy-in, the thing they're offering in exchange, IS actually pretty worthwhile. This is extremely useful. It's such a shame that all this cool Star Trek shit that I would have been giddy about as a kid has been realised, but at a sinister and often hidden cost.
Is there any way this can be done on local metal? Would it achieve the same level of accuracy and sophistication of the progress notes? Because if this can be offered to the therapists that wanted it enough in the first place that they either knowingly or unwittingly sacrificed their patient's privacy for it, maybe they can be given an alternative.
I think nothing stands in the way of doing this on local metal, as far as technology goes. Something similar has already been achieved for personal photo sorting, e.g. ente.io/
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The specific application in this instance was that it creates "progress notes". Admittedly, as I have only the information from the article itself, having no background in this field myself, I can only make assumptions what those are like, but as the name implies it's charting a client's progress through therapy and would also imply to me a lot of summarising of information gleaned during sessions. I guess in as much as it also would necessarily have to create a transcript in doing this for you, I guess it also provides that too. This is portrayed as tedious and time consuming work by the creators of the service, who obviously have a vested interest in casting it in such light, but taken at its word, I would say in my opinion the advantage would be in automating some of the tedious and time consuming aspects of the job.
As I suspect you were driving at from the tenor of the question, there's a lot of ways this could go wrong, in particular privacy concerns when this service is offered in the manner that it is here where it's processed outside of the therapist's own clinic by 3rd parties and information is shared with additional parties and used for many purposes with only the flimsy promise of "de-anonymisation" which appears to be hollow. It could also maybe affect how the therapy is conducted, making decisions about how to summarise this information that will influence what decisions a therapist makes and perhaps that therapist might have summarised it differently if doing the notes themselves, then again this all hinges upon how effective it is considered to be. If it can be evaluated and found to be generally good, then it seems tentatively like this could be a pretty helpful tool for a therapist. But in general, my comment was really more directed at what I feel like is a sad state of affairs across the board with recent tech advances including generative AI as applied in any aspect of life or work, that I think is often lost in these conversations where the technology really shows promise or is quite impressive but because of the manner of its development or the surveillance profit model, it's basically tainted and ruined. I feel like I often come across commentary that fails to make the distinction between the negative aspects of how these techs have come about and are monetized and the tech itself where the latter is simply cast as inherently undesirable even when there's clearly reason enough for people to find it appealing in the first place for it to end up in use.
that's plausible. in my opinion a therapist should take the effort to take their own interpretation of what has been said, instead of relying on a machine that digests the system in a uniform way. words of a patient can mean a lot of things, even depending on things like their body language. but I have to admit I'm even more concerned about the privacy consequences which you pointed out. that's like, it simply can't go unabused in my opinion. too tempting. I wouldn't even want to run a business that just stores it without abuse, it's too risky too.
I am currently looking for a privacy respecting alternative for the medication tracking app I currently use. Apple's native health app seems to be decent privacy wise, but it lacks the ability to input my current capsule inventory and set a reminder at a certain amount of pills so I can refill them on time. (I should also note that I have an older phone so I'm running iOS 18.6? I'm not sure if the app has changed on iOS 26.)
Thanks for reading and I look forward to your recommendations. ^-^
I just use the native one. My issue is, I have medications that have to be spaced apart and Apple does not support that. Like pill A can be taken whenever, but pill B has to be taken 4 hours out. You can set them for times that are that far apart, but if you take pill A late, you aren't told to take pill B even later to compensate.
What you need? Sounds like you need reminders. Apple's medication tracking isn't a pill counter. So you either have a 1 or 3 month supply, typically. When you start taking them, you could set a reminder (in the Reminders app or in another app you like) for however many days before telling you to refill. Some of the prescription apps actually will remind you on their own when it's getting to be time to refill.
Perhaps only mildly interesting but I just did an apt show for birdtray on Debian 13 and got this in the second paragraph of the description:
It is a nasty hack -- an external process looking at Thunderbird's insides, it suffers from problems like noticing new mails only after a delay, having to restart Thunderbird just to hide its window, etc -- you'd want to use an extension like firetray instead -- but, it is likely that support for Thunderbird XUL extensions will be dropped soon, possibly by the time you read these words.
Not used to seeing this kind of language in the Debian repos tbh.
Sounds like a developer who's pissed they had to make this hack in the first place, not proud of it, and not the way they'd like to solve the problem. But the external factors they can't control keep putting up road blocks, so this hack was all they could come up with to temporarily solve the issue for themselves.
Yeah, part of the reason I like open-source. The devs don't need to sell you anything, so they can just tell you that what they made is a steaming pile of garbage.
i got my hand slapped for describing a project that i put together for an old-silicon employer in the recent past; i reverted it back just before i left. lol
I do too. But I have this illusion about Debian that everything is perfect, authoritative and dignified, which it is of course and then I am struck by this kind of candid resentment and bitterness in apt like a bolt out of the blue. I just don't what to think any more.
I always go back to Fedora. Different strokes for different folks and I’m definitely not trying to have a “Which distro?!?” conversation. Maybe you have philosophical reasons to hate it. (I do sometimes too.) But that’s my home base.
It’s partly because I learned on WhiteHat/CentOS/RHEL for work. But even today, it’s my stable, baseline distro. They don’t change Gnome or push updates without at least some testing. (I know.) Drivers almost always work. There’s (usually) documentation written by paid professionals. It’s just a good, solid OS that I can make mine without uninstalling shit or worrying it’s unstable.
Debian is perfect for that too, obviously and I’m eternally grateful for Arch’s wiki and community. But for my needs, Fedora strikes a near-perfect balance.
I like Fedora and Debian a lot, but update fatigue drove me crazy with Fedora in particular. I know I don’t HAVE to update everyday, but if they’re available I can’t help myself. I like how calm and still Debian feels in comparison. I’m running mostly Debian 13 now days and I’m going to try holding out the full 2 years before the next version. It’ll be a bit of a marathon as I read about all these new features every 6 months.
Typically with Debian distros, I set security updates to be automatic and I just go in every now and then and update the rest. But I pretty much only use it on servers and Raspberry Pi side projects.
To be clear to people who find this, none of these distros we’re talking about are for massive scale. We’re talking personal stuff, side projects, small businesses, etc. Don’t put Kali Linux on your laptop. It’s made for a specific purpose.
To be clear to people who find this, none of these distros we’re talking about are for massive scale. We’re talking personal stuff, side projects, small businesses, etc. Don’t put Kali Linux on your laptop. It’s made for a specific purpose.
Arista had a mass produced network switches line based on fedora circa 2020; they back ported everything to keep it up to date.
Haha, perfectly valid, thanks for the clarification!
Edit: Just realizing who you are here, and wanted to express my gratitude! Bazzite has been the thing that finally allowed me to feel comfortable ditching Windows on a gaming living room PC, with all my finicky requirements for HDR and a clean controller-driven experience, and it's been a fantastic decision.
"The new Video Player prioritizes a distraction-free viewing experience"
How can you say this while having the controls overlaid onto the video, youtube-style, and cropping the video corners ? admittedly corners are rarely of the utmost importance in any film, or other video file. But just don't touch my corners.
I like the "Power connected status change". Helps to find out if the charger is relly plugged in. Hopefully Papers will receive support for digital signage which evince never did. This is still lacking in GNOME.
Rubio ranted, “This happened because on October 7th these animals, these barbaric animals, conducted this operation ... against innocent people.”
He concluded, “It needs to end. And how does it end? It ends by eliminating the people who did it, by ending them as a threat.”
As vast as the crimes of US imperialism have been in funding, arming and enabling the Gaza genocide, Rubio’s statement marks a new turning point. American imperialism, dropping its veil of promoting “democracy” and “human rights,” has adopted language that would not be out of place in a speech given by Adolf Hitler.
Rubio’s use of this genocidal language was the starting gun for the full-scale Israeli onslaught on Gaza City, as tanks and warplanes moved in, displacing countless thousands at gunpoint over the choked coastal road to Gaza’s south.
On Monday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio held a joint appearance with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to inaugurate what Netanyahu called the “concluding moves” in the US-Israeli onslaught on Gaza: the conquest and destruction of Gaza C…
In a congressional hearing in July of last year, a research scholar on antisemitism named Charles Asher Small shared an explosive finding: Funding from the government of Qatar had fueled a 300% spike in antisemitism on university campuses in the United States. Members of Congress responded with rapt interest. “I want everybody to hear this. So universities that took money from Qatar had a 300% increase in antisemitism [compared to] other universities?” said Iowa Republican Rep. Randy Feenstra.9
The statistic about Qatari funding for antisemitism became the highlight of Small’s testimony to Congress. But this precise statistic was never actually recorded in his study.
Small repeated the same claim in a Senate hearing in March of this year. But when contacted for comment about the figure, ISGAP could not point Drop Site to any specific report or finding. One ISGAP study published in 2023 did report that, from 2015-2020, universities that received money from “Middle Eastern” donors had a 300% increase in antisemitic incidents compared to those that do not. But this report is also disputed—and there is no data in it specifically linking Qatari funding to a rise in antisemitic incidents.
Drop Site interviewed over a half-dozen former employees and scholars of ISGAP, many of whom explained that the organization has strayed from the mission of academic study of antisemitism into a hyper-fixation on Qatari funding of U.S. institutions—while ISGAP itself has accepted foreign funding from Israel.
ISGAP is attempting to shape policy in Washington, at a time when the Trump administration is looking to justify a broader crackdown on opposition to the war on Gaza.
Spanish government officials have suggested they could pull their national team out of the 2026 World Cup.
World football's biggest tournament will take place once again next summer in Canada, Mexico and the United States, the first time the competition has been hosted by three different nations.
European champions Spain are the bookmakers' early favourites to win and are on course to book their place at the tournament, having taken two wins from two at the start of qualifying.
But there are now suggestions Luis de la Fuente's side could withdraw from the World Cup in protest if Israel also qualify for the tournament.....
No AVB yellow state on most devices (bootloader relock with custom keys), MicroG (while actually a cool project) Isn't a fully functional implementation (no Chromecast if you enjoy self harm, no U2F, FIDO authentication, etc.), you also can't use safetynet (for banking apps) with unlocked bootloader
This is actually incorrect, on almost all devices that Murena sells the bootloader is locked. I think you are confusing their official builds with their community/volunteer builds
I have bad news for you. From the specs on their site it appears to be a 6.5 inch FHD screen with a mid-range MediaTek processor. Really not much different from all the other mid-range phones offered in their site. For flagship price.
Though to be fair to the project, you don't need to buy a phone from them, you can re-inage an existing device bought elsewhere as long as it's one of their supported models.
Correct me if I’m wrong but I thought eOS wasn’t trust worthy? I can’t remember why though but I remember reading something about why it wasn’t good to use
My understanding is that it just redirects all the data collection from Google to Murena. Like you’re just trading one corp for another. That’s why some people have an issue with it anyway. Especially since GrapheneOS exists. I take a slightly more nuanced view that a lot of the conveniences modern smartphone users take for granted rely on this type of backend infrastructure. It’s sort of hard to avoid if you value mainstream features. That may be sort of a controversial viewpoint though.
I think that’s what I saw someone say somewhere the point about data being directed to murena, but I suppose it depends on how murena handles data and what privacy policy’s are in place. That’s what I think many people would look at before deciding whether to use it or not
it just redirects all the data collection from Google to Murena
Where did you see that? My understand is that it's only the case if you explicitly create then use a Murena account.
Also trading one corporation against another, in that case if the user genuinely want to (they are not being coerced), would be technically true but... Google is not "one corp". It's one of the largest corporation ever, one of the only two popular mobile OS. It does not mean automatically picking another corporation is better but it's definitely hard to do worst.
Mostly through hearsay on here and Signal groups. I do agree the Murena-bad circlejerk has gone a little too far. I use an iPhone so I don’t have a dog in this race.
I think that's q bit overblown. You have an option to use a Murena account in place of a Google account. I just said no thanks and everything works perfectly fine with no services affected. In terms of security of privacy of the Murena account itself, no idea. Never used one.
I thought eOS wasn’t trust worthy? I can’t remember why though
...seriously? Why do you even repeat it then? The least you can do if you don't want to fuel rumors is to :
either ask a genuine question, rather than suggest the answer
or, IMHO better, actually
take just few minutes to find the claim, one way or another, so that at least people can clarify, either confirming what you found or rather explain why it's no correct.
I bet you are referring to lemmy.ml/post/35472063 simply because it's relevant recent and (sadly) quite popular... but unfortunately you can read my response, incorrect. OP there has their opinion (they clearly don't like Murena and /e/OS and prefer alternatives, perfectly fine) but unfortunately, and that's what honestly piss me off, make claims that are just not true. You can check the details there. Now is it trust worthy or not, that's up to you, just don't imagine that Murena services are mandatory in /e/OS based on that posts because (as others in this thread also confirmed) it is just a lie.
/e/ OS does a little trolling and sends all your Text to Voice data to OpenAI for processing and Speech generation.
First of all, to anyone downvoting my Comments about /e/ being a piece of shit, because...
they advertise themselves as degoogled, but instead let you connect to Google/Microsoft/etc services
replace all the propriatery not at all Secure Services from Google, with.... Drumroll please.... Propriatery and not at all Secure Services from themselves and actively encourage it.
They are For-profit
and being MORE out of date then even Fairphones stock roms.
... I told you so. Dm your Instance admin, pay them to send the DB entries of your Downvotes on a Thumb drive (or anything else from SSD to 3.5 inchHDD, depending on your preferences), and shove it up your rectum.
But a TL;DR:
/E/ is not Private. They just switch one bad comany to another one.
If it was cheaper than the competition in the googled Android space and was a foldable, I'd consider buying it.
Just be aggressive with pricing and don't be afraid of working with middlemen, since for example in Slovakia, people are used to shop via the green alien shop, because they can have student discounts, volume-based discounts for businesses, drop boxes, and more things that the manufacturer can't afford to do.
I'll never understand why privacy companies do this: sell a thoroughly mid-range phone for a flagship price. The privacy OS market in my experience is largely either tech nerds with enough cash to splash out on a new/second unnecessary device just so they can play around with trying to get the new OS working for themselves, until it eventually becomes their daily driver, or poor students who got a beat up phone from their friend's cousin's neighbor's ex-girlfriend's roommate and are slapping this alternative OS on it to use as their main with all consequences be damned. Obviously there are people in the middle there, but tjoses eem to be the two primary groups. So the bulk of people you're selling to are those who want a higher end phone primarily, and probably would be willing to pay for it. Instead, they make a mid-range device that has low margins, often in small quantities because they throw in some niche feature that costs a ton to add to the existing design like a hardware kill switch, and then charge flagship phone prices for a mid-range device.
I'm willing to settle for having to buy a google pixel for instance (which is always a 2 year old design by the time it's released), and wait a bit before it's supported, but I'm never interested in a mid-range device. I dont care how much I support your mission, I'll throw a couple hundred at you as a donation before I even consider that. And that's assuming I'm buying the device at mid-range price. It's out of the question that I'd ever pay flagship prices for it.
Let me know when you have something that's closer to a 3 year old flagship and we'll talk, otherwise stop throwing your time and money at making a phone for a market that doesn't exist.
To this day I still can't understand what all the "need" for incredibly high-end phones come from. Gaming? That's the answer I've gotten before, and that just leaves me wondering why anyone would want to game on a phone to begin with. Are there other use cases for a phone that actually requires anything top of the line?
My phone was considered "mid-range spec" when it was released 4 years ago and it is still perfectly capable for anything I would want to use a phone for.
As for pricing - remember that there are other things than pure specs baked into a price. A locked down phone (i.e. no way of unlocking bootloader) riddled with spyware is likely cheaper than it otherwise would be from a company that won't be able to keep monetizing you as a product after your purchase. That's not to say that there is no such thing as a price mismatch, but matching price vs specs does not tell the whole story.
For me? Basic functionality. Even the Pixel 9 Pro is laggy as hell just opening apps like Garmin. God forbid I try to use the browser for anything. And that's a flagship phone.
I know it's the crazy badly designed apps, but I can't change that. What I can change is a phone that can run them.
Also, it's nice to be able to occasionally take a picture that's not completely washed out and looks like it was taken with a pre-OG Razer flip phone. No joke, I have pictures from that old flip phone 120x120 pixel screen!) from 20 years ago that look better than what came off the mid range phones I've tried in the last few years. I'm confident it's just poor implementation of much more capable hardware, but it doesnt change the fact that I can't even expect to use it for the most basic of functions.
Strange, I am rarely experiencing any lag on my four year old mid-range model, browser included. Maybe we have a very different perception of what lag is? Or maybe you have an insane amount of background processes running that bogs down your phone?
Camera is not great, but I always have a good time looking back at pictures taken with it and it is certainly much, much better than what I took 10 years, let alone 20. If your flip phone took better pictures, something is wrong and there could be ways to fix that.
In my relentless pursuit of trying to coax more performance out of my Lemmy instance I read that PostgreSQL heavily relies on the OSs disk cache for read performance. I've got 16 GB of RAM and two hdds in RAID 1. I've PostgreSQL configured to use 12 GB of RAM and I've zram swap set up with 8 GB.
But according to htop PostgreSQL ia using only about 4 GB. My swap gets hardly touched. And read performance is awful. Opening my profile regularly times out. Only when it's worked ones does it load quickly until I don't touch it again for half an hour or so.
Now, my theory is that the zram actually takes available RAM away from the disk cache, thus slowing the whole system down. My googling couldn't bring me the answer because it only showed me how to set up zram in the first place.
Lower the postgre to 8GB and see what happens? Also, hard drives, ssds, or nvme ssds? Recent info suggests it is possible memcaching is actually slower than direct access to nvme ssd
You're probably correct, although I have no experience with zram so can't be sure. But you're absolutely right that PostgreSQL depends heavily on the OS disk cache for optimal performance. Lowering the PostgreSQL setting like Blaster M suggests won't improve performance much, since all that setting does is tell PostgreSQL's algorithms how much memory is likely to be allocated to the OS disk cache. Of course it's best if it's accurate, so you're best off seeing how much memory is actually allocated to disk cache under heavy use before setting it, but it shouldn't massively reduce performance if you don't get it right.
Junta troops detained, tortured, and burned six civilians to death in Sagaing Region’s Kantbalu Township on 12 September, according to a report released by the Kyun Hla Activists’ group.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
"Germany will support such a resolution which simply describes the status quo in international law," the spokesman said, adding that Berlin "has always advocated a two-state solution and is asking for that all the time."
"The chancellor just mentioned two days ago again that Germany does not see that the time has come for the recognition of the Palestinian state," the spokesman added.
Patrona concludes “that authoritarian victimhood rhetoric is far from innocuous. It is much more than simple packaging, form devoid of content; rather, it both anticipates and puts to work anti-democratic, coercive, and illiberal governance and policies, once authoritarian populists are granted executive power post-electorally.”
zionizing: a verb which means to gaslight someone with such shameless [narcissistic] [psychopathic] audacity that you deny reality to their faces while...
We’re back this week with a powerful episode featuring political commentator Joy Reid: she talks us through the issues MSNBC didn’t want her to cover, what political convictions inspired her to take on her media role and informed her decision to spea…
All of these photos are available under a Creative Commons license, free for you to use as long as you give me photography credit. South Park High School 2025 Norwin Band Festival Photo Credit: Kevin Gamin You can find all of the edited photos from this and other events on my Flickr site. South Park High School 2025 Norwin Band Festival Photo Credit: Kevin Gamin You can find all of my photos on my Smugmug site. South Park High School 2025 Norwin Band Festival Photo Credit: Kevin Gamin
The US is moving to reclaim the Bagram airbase from the Taliban after losing it during the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, Donald Trump announced.
“We’re trying to get it back, by the way,” Mr Trump told reporters during a joint press conference with Sir Keir Starmer in Aylesbury on Thursday.
The Bagram base was the largest operated by the US in Afghanistan and is strategically important in countering China’s growing influence in the region.
Mr Trump suggested that he was negotiating with the Taliban to retake ownership, adding: “We’re trying to get it back because they need things from us. We want that base back.”
I have never been to the USA and know too little about inner naunces to propose anything. But revolution is always a good way to explain to politicians who the people are, who the politicians are, and how it all works.
Here’s the thing: I’m with you. I agree as an American that the only thing that can stop this train is a wholehearted, full-throated rejection of everything this administration represents. That comes with a couple of issues, though, and the first is that the body politic here is intensely complacent; much too comfortable to be driven to action. The fact of the matter is that disapproval of Trump is the majority view, and even at the beginning of his second term that was still about a dead even split, but not even Trump’s atrocious performance in his first term was enough to galvanize a large portion of the US voter base in the 2024 election, despite it clearly being a critical inflection point. Unfortunately, if it doesn’t affect their life immediately and directly, a large portion of America simply doesn’t give a shit. Overcoming that apathy is likely going to require something large, noticeable, bombastic, demonstrably wrong, and personally painful, and by that point there’s a good chance it’ll be too late. Additionally, any revolution or unrest is likely to be heavily suppressed by the second issue: the US police state and its willingness to use deadly force, regardless of the severity of the situation. Between police forces, riot police, swat teams, the national guard, domestic surveillance, and now the might of the US military turned on its own populace, the Trump administration has all the tools to make any true resistance deeply costly and incredibly painful. Talk of resistance, of revolution, of taking up arms against this fascist takeover is easy, but the feasibility of a clean revolution in the face of the US police, military, and intelligence apparatus is doubtful. More likely we would end up with either civil war or insurgency, fighting an asymmetric campaign against an overwhelming force. We know that the US is vulnerable to such tactics (see: US expeditionary wars in Vietnam and the Middle East), but we also know that those tactics are incredibly costly, and require a populace that is highly motivated by what they perceive to be an existential threat.
The key here, in my opinion, is the military. Historically, he who controls the military, controls the state. The victors of coups and revolutions practically always have the military on their side, and for good reason; very few things are as persuasive as the threat of a bullet. Morale in the US military right now seems to be low, and if we can manage to break the trained obedience to hierarchy, we might just have a chance, but without them, I don’t see a way forward. Even every citizen striking and causing a complete shutdown of the US economy would just be likely to lead to threats being made to and examples being made of them, and getting people onboard for that is unlikely to be feasible from a fundamental level, given that the majority of America lives paycheck to paycheck.
I don’t want to be fatalistic or claim that this can’t be done or that we shouldn’t be doing anything about it; we should, and have a moral obligation to act, but the reality of the situation is that the time to act while avoiding discomfort was last November, and the viable options available to us now are going to hurt, and will likely only get more painful as time goes on. That makes people hesitant to act, and until such a time as they have more to lose from inaction than they do from action, I don’t expect that to change.
Nothing like letting the Taliban know "Oh yeah we are trying to take that back" on public channels so they can get everything nice and reinforced and ready for you and make it as much of a pain in the ass as possible.
I feel I should I comment on the title a bit. It's a genocide. And the 'Our Genocide' part is not a representation of Israeli sentiment, nor what the interviews showed, but a report of a specific group. The last part becomes clear in the video though.
Reporter Matthew Cassel speaks to Israelis in Tel Aviv, to see what they think of the war, famine and genocide happening next door, and the growing international condemnation against it
Rather than act to end Israel's genocide in Gaza, western leaders rally behind a French-Saudi scheme for fictive statehood that entrenches Israeli supremacy and props up the PA
Five hours after Charlie Kirk was shot this week, an Atlanta man got a phone call from an Illinois police officer asking about a photo he shared with a couple of close friends on a private Discord chat. The Atlanta man, who asked not to be identified, says the post was merely a confirmation that he had purchased the same T-shirt that the accused killer wore (from an Illinois-based online shop).
Social media companies are generally forbidden by law from divulging users’ private communications to the government without a traditional legal process (e.g., court order). But there’s an exception: in perceived emergencies, social media platforms can proactively and “voluntarily” hand over private messages in response to what’s called an “emergency disclosure request” (EDR).
Discord, I am told, did not respond to any EDR here; but when I asked them directly if they’d provided law enforcement with information to traditional legal process, they declined to respond on-record.
The FBI, or the intelligence community, evidently is monitoring Discord private messaging, even from people who have broken no law.
Full blown Orwellian world. Run for local government and stop this shit.
The largest populated areas are left leaning. If they ae controlled by democratic socialist, we can restrict this shit. Just by pure numbers.
I saw this coming in 1999 when Scott McNealy inadvertantly spilled the beans on what his hateful industry was up to, and I have been extremely cautious about what I've been posting ever since. People have called me a paranoid crackpot for decades. I guess I hate to tell you I told you so...
At the Monday night launch of Sun Microsystems' new Jini technology, CEO Scott McNealy calls consumer privacy a non-issue. The Federal Trade Commission has another view. By Polly Sprenger.
De-google and open source has been my push this year. I'm not the most knowledgeable but I don't trust these companies.
I stopped using social media for almost 20 years. Only anonymous chats like this are used. Everything goes through a VPN and I always think that someone else is reading my stuff.
Ask yourself: can you say or post absolutely everything that falls under free speech - i.e. not calls to violence of civil disturbance? Do you feel like you can safely talk about all subjects without being cancelled or sued?
As soon as you start thinking twice about whether you can say something safely, that's censorship. Censorship isn't someone breathing over your neck saying "Be careful what you say", it's you self-censoring so you don't get into trouble.
not a single person gives a shit about charlie kirk; the whole crackdown is because politicians got a glimpse ofhow people will react when they die and they don't like it.
They don't give a shit about that either. Trump has been trying to goat people into violence and he final got his wish (possibly by his own people). They are seizing on that. That is why he moved the national guard into memphis TN. He wants marshall law to hold power forever.
Since we're making corrections, the word is "goad," not "goat." You try to "goad" people into behavior or choices they wouldn't normally make.
I try not to correct people much anymore if their message is still pretty obvious. I realized that offering too many corrections could cause people to post less, and I didn't want to be the cause of that. But the fact that you were already willing to edit goaded me into suggesting another correction.
Using ICE and the national guard to overthrow the people. Well you always need a secret police force and military to tale over. He just picked the dumbest ones.
Todays news outlets if sent back to 1945: Underrated painter shot in the head by maniacal racist in Berlin. German outrage over frantic celebrations across Europe.
Ken Klippenstein has done amazing work and broke multiple stories.
This is not a smear against discord but a reveal of how the government is operating. If you don't think it is a privacy issue then you don't know what privacy is. Being a fan boy doesn't change what is happening.
Use discord all you want but your point is baseless about the story.
Apologies, I wasn't criticizing the article, or you for sharing it. It's a tricky sentence, especially if English isn't your first language - the "but" changes the subject. Article is definitely privacy related.
What isn't privacy related is my opinion about subtack. I don't mean to derail, so will let anyone reading this look up why ss sucks and make their own decision.
Gotcha. SS has a troubling history. One could argue journalist have a open door policy.
How do you say one is a journalist while another isn't? Today, anyone can be a journalist and a lot of traditional journalist are doing their own thing.
Even credible outlets are changing. The New Your Times was considered top tier but now..... lord have mercy. Billionaires are buying up and interfering with the companies. And then we have private equity firms, the lice found on the flies that eat shit.
Yes, I wonder what journalists ("professional" and otherwise) are supposed to do. Everyone going their own way and splintering off into many little voices doesn't feel like the right answer, but publishers are beholden to investors and can be bought out by billionaires. I suppose there are publishers/agencies that have maintained their integrity like 404 Media, or Al Jazeera.
Maybe this is just the burden of anyone in a democracy: to constantly weigh the quality of the sources of information you're using to form opinions which spawn action.
Getting funding from South Korea might be an option. They probably want the Trump Regime to go away, so that they can carry on business without a toddler doing stupid shit.
If a civil war happens, I suspect the Blue States would get a great deal of foreign support. "Fuck that guy", would be a big part of that. The other part being "I want a reliable business partner." Kinda like how the Confederates were boned internationally when it came to trade. Plus, it would be an easy way to earn favors with whatever institution that displaces Trumpkins.
I used to subscribe to several SS newsletters that switched to Ghost, which is how I found out about it. But I wouldn't have even noticed if they hadn't told me.
You may as well assume that anything done on public social media is being read, searched and filtered in real-time by law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
Given the trajectory of this administration in persecuting people for their political affiliation, dumping commercial social media should be an imperative for everyone who isn't goose stepping.
That's been the case for 10 years. Unless it's e2ee, it's public record and can be tied to your real name with a minimal amount of paperwork.
Before I comment anything anywhere, I imagine it being read in a court room in a monotone voice. Bip bop dippity dop, the judge in this case is a swell person and I hope they have a lovely day!
Sounds like a CSAM case for a motivated partisan prosecutor.
People break the law, as it is written, way more than they think. Selective enforcement to target political rival groups is very much in the playbook here.
It is less safe to speak in public today than it was 2 years ago, and it is only getting worse. Protecting your privacy also means protecting yourself from mob justice when they decide you're the new target group.
Discord is private social media, and most users think their messages aren't shared with government without a warrant. Of course it's possible in this case Discord didn't even provide the messages "to police", but that the police just subscribe to their commercial data-sharing and enjoy the same real-time access that way.
It was said in a Discord chat. Discord chats are not private, you agree to that in the TOS when you sign up.
There are always people monitoring the chats, voice and video, looking for illegal activities. Something was said in that conversation that their algorithm flagged for human review and that person sent it to law enforcement.
You have zero privacy on any social media. Everything that you write is viewable by the service owner and they actively look for things to report to law enforcement.
Companies pay lip service to your privacy, but at the end of the day they’ll turn you in the instant it suits them. If you want privacy, you use encryption so that your privacy is guaranteed by mathematics.
Sad fact that we live in a world that his death accomplished more then his life. We all knew he was a Trump asset but I never thought it would be like this.
I really do worry tools like whatever the naperville pd using here are going result in a lot of damage and upturned lives once their use becomes more casual, like god knows what's going to happen with the president declaring random political views terrorism
no real court orders were involved, the article mentions a EDR wasn't invoked, no push back from discord over what sounds like some sort of dump or access to all images uploaded to the service
Lol, okay. As the vast majority of people have no clue and no interest in utilizing those tools. No interest in understanding threat vectors and cryptography. Cooked was a bit glibb, but the general "we", I do not see your optimism.
"Privacy is a right"... sure, so is healthcare and shelter... I am sure those policies are going global really soon.
As the vast majority of people have no clue and no interest in utilizing those tools.
I can't agree more. A few family members got really paranoid about their communications being monitored after Trump was elected again, so I offered to show them Signal or Element. Nah, no interest, "too hard". They still text even with the fucking US government itself warning people it's a very insecure medium.
I'm hoping that disinterest changes after a few people get locked up based on social media PMs, but don't have all that much hope.
With words, you dopy twat. You can watch Kirk right now, getting his ass handed to him in debate on youtube. Stop acting like murder is the only option you have.
Americans are weird dude, even their leftists are gun happy and to the rest of us around the world it’s baffling. But they were born and steeped in this lunacy so they don’t see the problem
Yes, so just the capitalist states and mercenaries should have guns. . . before you say "total disarmament," not gonna happen, arms are how the capitalists enforce property domination. It's impossible to abolish class without guns because they're going to forever wield guns to protect their class positions. Thus, under no pretext.
You guys are all talk, if you had guns to oppose tyranny then wtf are you waiting for!? Get to it, Americans are being thrown in gulags and free speech is being surpressed, so grab your guns and get to work ffs!
Words are sufficient only in a system that prioritizes broad wellbeing (as opposed to prioritizing the billionaires), when such a system works well, is healthy, is valued by most, etc.
We don't have it. We have a "every man for himself" and "got mine, fuck you" system.
I hate to say it, if anyone wants something in our system now, they have to take it by fiat and force. The fascists get it. They use the methods that work, it's just that their desired end state is intolerable shit for most. If their end state had freedom and human rights for everyone, most would forgive the methods.
Stop saying fascists, youve all used that word to fucking much and it now means fuck all.
People are still going on holidays, people are still buying houses, people are still getting jobs and paying rent and every thing else people have always done. Youre just spreading nonsense to play your part in the dumb as fuck culture wars. YOU and people like you, are why Trump is a thing. Yes, thats right, YOU. You, who plays the dumb games of culture wars, who calls a person who dont like star wars a fucking nazi. You created this nightmare world were extremism is everywhere.
Ofc you are an enlightened centrist-libtard-to be gefreiter @ einsatzgruppen. Go on, blame the left, suck up the narrative, surely history started yesterday and nothing similar to this ever happened. Grow a fucking brain or follow your leader, either way gtfo
No, the spreading of hate was the talking heads who told you he said things he never said. All the grifters and influencers and main stream news outlets who cherry picked the things he said, to make him look much worse than he is.
Like when he said that people accept that people die so they can have the 2A. You think thats extremism, yet dont ever bother to repeat the rest of what he said, when talking about the shit that society puts up with to have things. Like cars, we accept that 50k people a year will die because we want to drive cars. Its the same argument, but you take it away and all of sudden hes some nutjob claiming kids dying is a good thing.
Take away the 2A and you are at the mercy of a tyrannical government. The price of that safe guard is that some people will die. Exact same thing with cars, and knives, and whatever else. Everything has a cost. EVERYTHING. That was his point. And youd be dumb to disagree with it.
You can argue that we dont need guns, theres nothing wrong with that. But the logic is there.
You don't seem to understand that we are already using words, and it's getting us nowhere. These people understand that we want to use words, and they have weaponized our need for peaceful discussion against us.
Peaceful negotiations only work when both sides are operating in good faith. Not only are the MAGAs not operating in good faith, they view that as an enormous weakness to be exploited. So they tease us along, offering opportunities to negotiate, but they are just distractions, to keep their grift and oppression going longer, and deepening.
Hopefully, we will eventually negotiate our way out of this, but it is looking more and more unlikely by the day. Anyone who has read any history knows that sooner or later, it will almost certainly take some level of violence to unseat the MAGA disease that is afflicting the world.
We should start getting used to that idea now, before we need it for real.
So, dopey twat was being kind? Its fucking scary how radicalised you are. Absolute nutjobs. But hey, at least you didnt wish I would die... I guess youve got that going for you...
You guys are all talk, you just want guns to shoot at stuff cause it’s cool. You keep saying you need guns to stand up to tyrants, well get the fuck to it! What are you waiting for??? Hes literally cancelling free speech and throwing Americans into gulags, what the fuck are you waiting for???
Socialist Democrates whant's to destroy e2ee in sweden to both parties is anti encryption and pro mass surveillance. They are fighting against eachother of "who can introduce most surveillance and police state laws first"
Tjis is really the only thing anyone should pay attention to. Assassinating Peter Theil is a good first step to stopping this surveillance state. He wants to destroy humans to make way for transhumans. The war has begun.
That's what happens when you let billionaires operate unchecked. Billionaires have the ability to operate like an independent nation of one, fucking up the works for real nations who are trying to take care of their people.
Billionaires should either be prohibited, or their expenditures should be tightly regulated. Make them get permission from a regulatory panel before they can spend their money.
"No, you already have a yacht, you don't need another. Just for being shitty enough to request a SECOND yacht, that money will be earmarked to build homeless shelters instead. Anything else?"
Kurds have been Erdoğan'a greatest friends over the years. When Erdoğan called for a referendum in 2010 to abolish the independent judiciary (the infamous "yetmez ama evet" referandum), support from Kurdish nationalists was critical for Erdoğan's victory.
One thing that happened was that the Turkish leader Erdogan, visited Trump during his first administration, and after the meeting, Erdogan's security force attacked people who were legally protesting. A visiting head-of-state's private security came to America and beat-up legal protesters on American soil - and the Trump administration did nothing.
Denmark did not invite the United States to take part in a large-scale international military exercise on Greenland this week, as it had previously, as tensions remain high over President Donald Trump’s intention to acquire the Danish territory.
The exercise, the largest in Greenland’s modern history, comes amid increased interest in the Arctic region and its vast natural resources from other large powers, such as Russia and China.
It included contributions from the militaries of several European NATO allies, according to the Danish military. More than 550 people and soldiers took part, including more than 70 from France, Germany, Norway and Sweden.
It comes as the Arctic region is becoming more of a priority to various superpowers, friend and foe. Greenland is the world's largest island that is not a continent, and beyond its strategic potential, the island is rich in natural resources, home to 25 of the 34 minerals categorized as “critical raw materials” by the European Commission. Some of these minerals include those essential to the production of phones and computer chips.
Anderson emphasized the potential threat of Russia and China to reporters.
“We need Greenland for national security and even international security,” Trump said during an address to Congress in March, pointing to the influence of other global powers in the Arctic, specifically Russia and China. “And I think we’re going to get it one way or the other,” he added. Trump is trying to boost production of computer chips in the United States, which rely on minerals present in Greenland for production
Danish officials have made it clear that Trump’s interest in the region is not welcome.
Lavrov is just pissed that Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and set off the chain of events that led to the US entering WWII, defeating the Nazis, and getting The Bomb first.
The Soviets had promised at Yalta to enter the war in the Pacific within 3 months of the war ending in Europe. And they did launch an attack on Manchuria at 3 months to the day. Hardly feet dragging.
In fact, them being about to launch the attack, was one of the deciding factors on Truman dropping the nukes on Japan. He wanted to prevent the Soviets fron capturing territory that they would be reluctant to give up in the end. And he also knew that the USSR entering the war in the pacific would be what really pushed Japan to surrender. He didn't want to lose the opportunity to show off the new toys to scare the Soviets.
So not doing something until being forced into a commitment and then waiting until the last possible moment to Honor that commitment is somehow not feet dragging to you?
I don't really get the point of this comment... I'm no fan of the USSR, but am I supposed to be mad at them about this? They weren't at war with Japan. They were a little busy defending their homeland, and I don't believe Japan ever directly attacked them (someone will probably prove me wrong about this).
"Curse those lazy Soviets for not immediately starting a two front war after losing 11 million people to the Nazis. Respecting the agreements made at the Yalta conference regarding an invasion of Japan, to the letter, was ACTUALLY mendacious."
You realize that after losing 11 million people in a enduring and cataclysmic war, it may take some time to prepare for a war on the totally opposite front?
I dont even know why I'm engaging with this whitewashing. This isn't even what the OP is about.
The fact of the matter is that Japan has not handled the outcome of WWII well at all. Namely the Nanjing Massacre.
By this i mean, grandma checking her email and the IT pro with 10 NAS setup are the perfect linux users.
But us in the middle who pretend we're smart...its a damn hard road. And then helping others to switch when youre not yet a pro is even harder, though a good learning experience.
Getting games to work perfectly, audio issues, Bluetooth issues, vr setups are far harder to do, running older obscure software, hooking up obscure hardware, using external drives, music production, these are some examples of things that will be extremely hard on linux vs windows for the majority of middle users.
However id say it is worth it if you like learning thousands of weird terms and phrases and putting in many hours of frustration to solve a problem. (Have you tried using floop to Docker the peeble?). It is very satisfying fixing an issue and figuring out why it happened!
Still, when im forced to use windows I see how bad its become, so im sticking with linux!
I had a crisis too some years ago, when Windows 7 was the shit, I heard Windows 7 was very good (for Windows). So I tried to dual boot Windows 7, goddam a load of crap!! I'll never believe anyone claiming Windows is good again. The structure of security is a bloody mess, providing worse security, while taking control away from the owner of the system. And lack of package manager makes it ask for updates at the most inopportune moments. Just a tiny program like Adobe reader was super invasive, and was a major pain in the ass.
Windows is not in any way user friendly, it's just what most people are used to.
Window XP was probably the best and last good Windows version... 10 was kinda okay without all the telemetry shit and bloatware.
Windows 11 feels like macOS with extra steps + spyware on every move, click, clipboard copylpast.... Wouldn't go near that stuff even with full protection and debloat ^^ Just remove that shit and install linux instead.
Yeah I feel you... Sorry about that :/ ! At work you probably don't have a choice, however at home, you are free to choose whatever makes you comfortable.
A few months ago I wrote out some recommendations around the same theme here. Extracts:
A good start is to install tldr. You use it like man, but it gives you shorter explanations – or rather, a short list of illustrative examples.
Going further, check out Fish instead of Bash. I haven’t use Fish yet, but it’s said to be much better for learning Linux commands as a beginner. Later on, you may switch to Zsh. In any case, hitting Tab once or twice will often give you a list of possible completions to the command you are typing.
Also, I hugely recommend reading at least one book about Linux. I'm now almost through with the O’Reilly book “Classic Shell Scripting” by Robbins and Beebe (ISBN 9780596005955). Despite the fact that it's 20 years old, it helped me hugely – primarily with the shell and its commands, but also with understanding things like file structure.
It presupposes some familiarity with Unix-like systems and with the shell, so if one’s just starting out, the book “Learning the Unix Operating System” may be better.
External drives? Usually on most distros and file managers, it’s just one click.
I have had a bit of a horrid time with Bluetooth, though, especially when it comes to audio. However, I will say Linux allows you to do some nuts things with Bluetooth like emulate a Nintendo Switch controller with NXBT, allowing you to use a PlayStation controller on a Switch with a spare laptop.
As for audio, I feel like life has gotten much better for the layman since Pipewire.
I don’t think VR setups are that common, and the Venn diagram of VR owners and Linux users has to be even smaller. I’ve probably only known 2 people who actually own a headset, and both of them were standalone Oculus affairs.
Overall, I feel like it’s possible to conceptually understand Linux and which config file is while, while Windows registry is an incomprehensible beast. Also, it feels like Linux tends to have better errors that correlate to a specific problem, whereas the same Windows error could be caused by many different things and lead you on a wild goose chase through forum posts filled with generic advice and dead ends.
Not to say you are wrong in general, just a personal anecdote: i run Debian, everytime i need to upgrade from one major Version to the next I work for a day, dont get it done, cry, and then setup all my 3 PCs from scratch. (And NO a rolling release like arch or tumbleweed is not the solution, as I am not smart enough to manage different versions of dependencies and everything breaks at somepoint, Debian is at least stable between the major releases) My vive wireless will not work under Linux so I need to keep a dual boot windows on the workhorse which is difficult to maintain itself sometimes. And on my low spec PC audio is never synched with video and no matter what I do I don't get it fixed
I love Linux for its philosophy and hate Microsoft for theirs, I will go back under no circumstances and agree that Linux gives better error messages and docs to fix things, but I never needed to do that with Microsoft. I never needed to open the registry apart from escaping out of box setup...
User experience for someone with high technical expectations for what should be possible (vr, games, hi-fi cinema, CAD, DAW) but only moderate technical skills (I can navigate GUIs and make basic use of the terminal (grep, nano, apt) but if I try to understand English primary source docs I don't get it as after ~7 years of Linux I still only know about 30% of the necessary concepts and vocabulary just isn't that good.... Like, Damm, its hard for someone without any technical training who only has a few hours a month to work on his PC (meaning having time to fix and learn stuff, not just using the PC) to get the stuff done which is a no brainer on win
I mostly say so because I recently upgraded from 12 to 13 with almost no issues; the only issue was something with Apache that ended up being a quick fix. I followed the official Debian guide and temporarily remove third party repos and packages.
Havent brought myself to upgrade to 13 yet, but from 11 to 12 i followed to official guidlines, and when trying to reinstall my packages after kernel upgrade stuff got messed up. Packages didnt recognize their own config files anymore, wine completley behaved random, apt was flooded with error messages, the blzrry glassy Theme in I had in KDE plasma didn't reinstall properly leaving my desktop looking horrible, half programs not working and some weird driver(?) behavior ( hanging Indefinitly when trying to shut down the system and stuff like that)
Maybe all would have been fixable for someone smart enough, for me it was easier to start again from scratch.
Did you restart the computer after the upgrade and before reinstalling third party repo packages?
The “half the programs not working” kind of sounds like you had packages compiled for a newer libc and the like but the newer libc wasn’t in memory yet because you hadn’t restarted.
Was a while ago, i think i did. All I know is I worked trough the whole doc to upgrade start to finish because I didn't know which sections apply to me and which don't, it was like ten hours of work trying t o understand everything which, holly shit, wasn't easy and when I finally got completely through it didn't work as expected.
Not that I think the docs were wrong, I am aware that I was the problem there, but it sometimes bothers me when people act like Linux is super easy and even grandma can understand and use it while I, the most techy persons in my peer group, give it my all and still dont even manage a simple upgrade, which would be absolutely no problem on the corporate OSs
Huh. I guess 3 years of Debian usage has just gotten me used to stuff like that.
I can see where one might go wrong; there’s a lot of sections in that guide with contingencies only meant for specific situations, like upgrading from a USB or optical disc.
My nvidia drivers used to break sometimes but I just switched to dkms drivers and I have had a stable experience for years. Only downside is the upgrade takes a bit longer.
Gonna be real, I haven't had to bother with my OS for the past two months, so I disagree with a lot of this post. The take I disagree with the most is that things that would be difficult regardless of OS are somehow "harder" in Linux though. Getting old games to run on Windows is also a massive PITA, and oftentimes can be easier on Linux since you can always just run a WINE instance using whatever version of Windows the game was originally intended for. Same for old obscure software, anything from like the XP era does not play nice with Windows 11 in my experience. It sounds like the bigger issue is that you have learned a lot about Windows, and haven't learned a lot about Linux, so your knowledge base for Windows is better.
The actual issue I think is huge for your hypothetical "middle user" is hardware based. Some hardware is just better for running high performance applications on Linux than others. In my fancy, shiny, top of the line rig, my experience in getting games to work is I download them and run them with Proton. I've done no troubleshooting, barely use any applications other than Steam for gaming, and so far have not found a game I wanna play that doesn't work. On my old Nvidia-based rig that I replaced, however, it was the exact opposite story. Nothing ever worked, I was constantly looking through error logs and trying to troubleshoot, and most of the time the answer was hardware that wasn't properly supported.
Thats not what i experienced.... Trying to run sketchup with wine, 3 days trial and error, doesn't work even though winehq says its possible Using vive wireless? Not possible at all! or playing league, hard before vanguard, impossible after... Updating between major versions? Always breaks my setup and makes me start from scratch Using zoom for work with sharing desktop? Huge pita and u need to deepdive in Wayland to get I running (I didn't so I switched back to x)! Install a non native daw like ableton and get it running without crashes and usable latency? Impossible! Using your rack audio interface? Not possible as there is no Linux driver and pipewire only recognizes half of the functions
I have a ryzen 5 12 core and a Vega 64, so hardware is decent and clearly not the problem here.
I am aware that those problems often stem from programs not being designed for Linux, not Linux itself being bad, but the effect is sadly the same: using halfbacked freeware or study IT to get it running, nothing apart from Mozilla "just works"
Still, when im forced to use windows I see how bad its become, so im sticking with linux!
That's the right attitude. A lot of the comfort of Windows comes down to habit and mere exposure. Every Windows user who dives beyond the surface also spends a lot of time learning, but with the added burden of having to sift through every forum post suggesting sFc /ScAnNoW. And if you keep the same hardware for a few years, the Linux experience ages like a fine wine as drivers improve and features get some subtle polish.
Sometimes I wonder if my health takes a toll each time I help someone set up Windows. I can literally feel my heart rate increase as I go through the privacy-related settings.
I had that very experience somewhat recently. I had to set up Windows 10 on a laptop for a friend. I had been using Linux on my main PC for probably five years at that point, so I was “un-used to” Windows. Oh boy that was a dreadful experience. It was a lot like “no, no, no, no, don’t want that, stop it, turn that off, be quiet”, and then logging in and getting the final pieces finished? Headache-inducing. “Try this!”, “try that!”, “did you know you could do THIS?”, “subscribe to this product you should use!”
And then the preloaded “suggested software”, the search bar with “suggested/trending” garbage I did NOT want to see? Yeah it was not pleasant. I think unless I’m doing it professionally? I’m not going to accept that task again. I’m glad I do not have to use that software on my main PC anymore. It seemed to have gotten worse since I stopped using it five years ago.
You've used Windows for so long that you don't remember how it was when you first started using it.
This isn't different than what you are doing with Linux. The flow gets better and better and you will acquire the experience needed to navigate the issues. It takes time, that's all.
True, but there's a lot of stuff in the free software ecosystem that is just jank.
I expect things not to work at this point and don't get surprised when they don't. It's part of how we pour way more resources into abusive technologies over ethical ones. We can continue to be part of the problem (like a useful idiot), or pick our heads up and work towards the solution.
If you stick to popular free software, the jank is limited.
The Linux userspaces have a lot of enthusiastic people that create their own software and share it, and thus it seems like there is lot of janky stuff (because there is).
It feels like Windows has been captured by corporations and so the market is competitive. There isn't much space for enthusiast developpers to tackle a different vision of a popular software.
So yeah, I agree with you, lots of janky software in Linux, but that's the beauty of it IMO. If you stick to popular softwares, the jank is somewhat equivalent to Windows.
True, but there’s a lot of stuff in the free software ecosystem that is just jank.
A lot of free software is built to scratch the authors itch. If you choose to use it as well, that's on you. There's nothing stopping you from forking it and making it work how you want it... except time.
Yeah, my linux experience usually seems like its hanging on a thin thread at all times. If stuff is actually working, im super grateful and hope it doesn't break itself on the next reboot.
Im not sure why everyone else seems to have a perfect error free experience except for me xD or they are just lying. And I dont use Intel or Nvidia so I should have it easy!
This is very true. Linux is great if you just want to check email, or if you want to compile your kernel or dig into incredibly esoteric config files. But if you want to do something between those 2 extremes, the learning curve is extremely steep. My Windows box and Mac Mini both do all the things I want them to, but my Linux box keeps breaking and I don't trust it with anything important. I usually try to do things on Linux first, but when it inevitably breaks I switch over to Mac and get it done in a tenth of the time.
I'm sure I could get my Linux box to do everything I want. I'm busy and I don't want to fight with it and spend all my time learning about its eccentricities. I want to point and click and occasionally modify a text file.
and the IT pro with 10 NAS setup are the perfect linux users.
Well I'm closer to that. I'm an "IT pro" (I pay my bills by writing software) and I did learn CS at uni... and yet it's STILL damn hard!
I think that might be the part that "grandma" (bit sexist and ageist there but going with the example) finds it hard is a given but that professionals are struggling daily is somehow hidden away.
I can give you examples from just yesterday :
my deGoogled Android phone rejected my SIM card yesterday "SIM 1 not allowed"
my home IoT server stopped working
and few others smaller problems. So... I had to find ways to fix that which lead me to learn that :
some bug into HomeAssistant (my IoT server gateway) led me to restart its container, without having to restart the device itself
my Android ROM has a "Reset Network Settings" within the "Reset Options" menu
The irony is that some people who are not professional might even know about the later one but I didn't. So... my whole point :
TL;DR: IT is hard for everyone because it's complex (lots of moving parts) and always changing ("updates" are not just "better" but different) so we ALL must keep on learning.
I know ZFS is not the same as raid. but for most folk it services the same purpose. ZFS is a file system with raid like functionality hence i said for a software raid option it is good. meaning using RAIDZ and not hardware RAID. And yes ZFS can do so much more then raid which is amazing.
I was moving plex from my NAS to a dedicated box this weekend and spend 3 hours going crazy on why my movie library wasn't showing up. After a break and looking through fstab, I realized "novie" wasn't a share....
Remember kids, always work from the simplest solution up
the “grandma”/casual users never try anything complicated or different so nothing goes wrong.
the “pro” users either know what they are doing well enough to not make a mistake or to fix it when it goes wrong.
the middle users will always have it harder, they are trying things beyond the margins of “easy” so of course things go wrong and they don’t know how to fix it.
Anecdotal example: just yesterday I found out that I broke my file picker function in five out of six web browsers, by loading an Xcompose file with some definitions that GTK apparently doesn’t like. It took me about 5 hours of poking at things to figure out that a change I did a week ago, broke a function I hardly ever use. So I did fix it eventually but I it took me a week to notice and then hours to track down what was going on.
Is there any chance at all that the casual users would be using a compose key, let alone loading a custom definition file for it? Hell no!
But here’s the secret: there is nobody out there who is the perfect expert who never makes a mistake and knows all things. We’re all out here pushing boundaries; the only difference is where those boundaries are.
Yeah when you're in the middle you kind of know enough to be able to get around the safeguards and properly break things, but not always how to fix them again necessarily.
As a more advanced user, I have to say, the problems don't stop. Computers will never be "solved". They just keep making new puzzles forever. That's whats fun.
The more advanced you get, well you can solve the easy problems off the top of your head, but now you have new problems and there are zero search results for your error message. If you can't figure it out from the docs or irc you just have to read source code.
I try to document stuff as I find it, even if it means resurrecting an ancient thread. I often search for things and get one result, and it's me answering my own question a few years ago.
I've done that before too! Last year I was having a very specific issue and I was googling it, found someone who had the exact problem I had like 5 years ago, and it turned out to be me from my old account back when I used to use reddit lol.
This is strictly my personal experience and is not meant to negate someone else's experience.
I disagree, as a middle user myself, I've had much less problems since the switch to Linux. I don't own a VR setup, so can't speak to that, but I have used basically everything else you've mentioned since switching without issues. Older software seems to work better on Linux than windows 11 in my experience. The rare stumble I've had was easily remedied by searching forums and wikis.
Most windows problems I've had to search for solutions in the last several years led to either blind registry changes, following some useless wizard that rarely fixes the problem, or a nothing-burger circle where the OP ended up either giving up entirely or re-installing windows to avoid the problem. I've very much had better luck actually fixing a problem in Linux than just avoiding it.
I’ve found Linux easier and a much better user experience than windows 10 or 11.
If you use a straightforward distro that doesn’t let you do stupid stuff (like Bazzite or Fedora Kinoite or any other atomic distro), Linux becomes easy.
I’m on the opposite end with Nixos. Hard as fuck to use but god is it stable. Especially when you start leaning into things like impermanence and flakes. Crazy learning curve / upfront effort
Atomic distros made my coming back to Linux a dream. I don't want the hassle and I don't want to break shit. That was fun in my youth, now I want shit that works.
The nice thing is that Linux is always improving and Windows is always in retrograde. The more users Linux has, the faster it will improve. If the current state of Linux is acceptable enough for you as a user, then it should be possible to get your foot in the door and ride the wave upwards. If not, wait for the wave to reach your comfort level. People always say is the year of the Linux desktop but IMO the real year of the Linux desktop was like 4 or 5 years ago now, and hopefully that captured momentum will keep going until critical mass is achieved (optimistically, I think we're basically already there).
This is so true. It's been good enough for me for so many years at this point, and yet it just keeps getting better. The whole experience is so much nicer now than it was years ago, which was better than years before that, etc.
It sometimes is, but then sometimes Linux is not to blame.
Yesterday I was installing CachyOS on my son's laptop, because that's what he chose to use instead of Windows 10. The desktop came up fine, but no wifi adaptor was detected. I could try another more mainstream distro, but I wanted my kid to have what he chose. So we went troubleshooting. Googled the laptop model, found the adaptor, found the matching kernel module, checked the logs... and there it was, a cryptic error -110. Googled that and there was an answer: disable Windows Fast Boot.
It turns out that Windows locks the wifi adaptor when shutting down in Fast Boot mode. So after disabling it and a couple of reboots later, CachyOS was installing flawlessly.
It served as a lesson for me and an example for my kid to persevere and learn more.
Linux IS a lot of work to keep up with. But it's also way better to use after that work is done. And won't be enshittified against your will with every update, unlike Windows.
That's half the fun though isn't? I'll tinker on my arch or nixos machines all the time just changing things, playing around with customization, trying out repos and what have you. I love just trying out new stuff people have made and seeing if I can use it for my workflow.
That love of tinkering is why I've landed on not using an immutable distro for my first time installing Linux since the 00s. CachyOS is what I landed on; now I just need to catch up on work so I can take a day to tinker with my setup.
For context, I semi-broke my current Windows 11 install by trying to manually edit the registry to remove all traces of a piece of invasive, uninstallable bloatware (that comes direct from ASRock... the bastards) I accidentally installed. Turns out my sound drivers are from the same company, so when I deleted all entries with that company in the search terms, I FUBARed my Bluetooth audio and 3.5mm microphone. And didn't backup the registry.
I like to tinker, and if I need to reinstall my OS anyway, so now is the time to finally switch!
I got a new laptop with Windows 11 at work yesterday. This is the first time I've used 11. I must say, it's not really that bad. Once you cut out all the enshittification, which our IT department does, it's pretty decent. I would never dream of putting it in any of my own machines, of course.
Yeah, I installed Enterprise edition on my desktop, which allows you to cut out all the bloat and spyware. But it takes a long time to do, and I'm not sure I got everything since Windows Updates can change anything.
Ive been having a good time with PopOS/Linux made for a specific machine. Its my daily driver.
I know its cheating a bit, but having something completely supported is so nice when I just want to sit down and compute. Ive had the same system76 machine for 6 years now and its still VERY fast. No issues with drivers (cause they fully support it) and made of generic parts.
I use an easy out of the box linux so its not much work even before comparing to windows. This is why my advice for people talking about dual booting to install linux on their old laptop if they still have it as I find linux on your last machine is faster than windows on your current. It also makes it easier to always have linux available for people used to windows who need to use the linux enough to realize how nice it is nowadays.
I was raised in the xp/windows 7 era. I switched to Arch Linux this year and have never been more satisfied with my computer. If i get stuck, the wiki and other nerds are happy to come to the rescue.
I loved XP, but i havent used it since i was like 13. I kept it well into the vista era. That pc finally died right before windows 8. That one pissed me off. It was so clearly meant for tablets and still being crammed into non-touch screens
Sure is. I have to change my display driver from one version to another, to be able to play different games. Otherwise, some games freeze my system within few seconds of launching the game (also happens during local video full-screen playback). The linux guys will tell me, "oh, it's just because your distro install was corrupt", or "definitely a hardware issue", "PSU failing / GPU failing", etc. but no, that's just how linux works. there will always be some system configurations that are bound to have these problems. this is similar to linux users "choosing" not to play the games that don't work on linux distributions.
I was troubleshooting some audio hardware and decided that I should try it on windows, to make sure it was hardware and not software. So I tried to download an install disc image that I could put on my thumb drive and it was surprisingly hard, then I got driver failures, then I lost count of all the boxes I had to uncheck, then finally after like 2 hours I was greeted by ads on my desktop. Just a really bad experience overall. I cannot fathom why anyone uses that piece of crap.
Anyway so I figured out it was a Linux problem because of course it was just plug-and-play on Windows, and I found my misconfiguration and fixed it in 10 seconds, and I thought about the tech literacy of the average person, and realized that is why people use windows. They don't care about shit except least resistance. That was the first time I've booted windows since 2020 though, so here's hoping it was the last time.
I grew up with DOS and used Windows 1 (barely, DOS was better), 3.1, 95, 98, etc... But curiosity made me try a bunch of OS in the beginning of the 2000s, like BeOS, QNX, and Linux (Kheops, Mandrake, SuSE). I dual booted for many years, keeping Linux as my main OS but having to boot Windows for games. I preferred Linux but I was pretty much OS agnostic for a while. I even worked as level 1 tech support for many years, helping people with Windows and Office products.
But then came Windows 8, 10, and now 11, + Office 365 + OneDrive. It's very difficult to stand any of those new versions, with the ads, the constant peddling for Microsoft products, the "forced" login with a Microsoft account, the updates whenever they feel like it if you don't pay enough for Windows, if the updates are not breaking something. A few years ago I was helping a friend and discovered a version of Windows 7 where you can't even change the wallpaper.
TBF, I knew it was coming. Anyone in IT knew for years that Microsoft planned of having everything subscription based. To me, every new versions of Windows or Office, or Teams, is now more intolerable than the previous one.
Anyway, at some point I stopped gaming/dual booting and pretty much kept exclusively on Linux. My workplace used Windows, and I use Linux at home. I've been using Debian for 15 years now and despite minor issues with sound recently, since pipewire, every time I use Windows, I'm reminded of how much worse it could be.
Recently I quit my job as a level 1 tech. I can't help people with Microsoft products anymore. Having calls from people telling me they cannot delete files from their OneDrive when it tells them it's full, then discover it's a bug and users with their drives full cannot delete anything, is just disconcerting. Before all that, I could at least see/understand the reason why things were working like they did; I could help and explain it to the users. Now, I'm as frustrated as they are when I use Microsoft products.
Today on my win11 work system, the windows menu stopped producing output when I typed into it and webpages stopped loading. Had to perform a full system restart to get it to work again.
I have to use a windows machine at work and without fail I have to restart it by early afternoon because it has nearly ground to a halt. Usually right when a client turns up and wants to see their work.
Still windows but if you remove the bloatware, its "a turd" but it smells less. If that helps. Windows is terrible, I agree, but for those who need to use it, any software like startallback, or something like the chris titus tool should be recommended.
I build cross platform desktop software professionally.
Because of this I have to use and pretty deeply understand the inner workings of every OS.
I can state as absolute fact that every major operating system including Linux is an absolute pile of hot garbage.
The difference is that macOS and windows are garbage on purpose. There were deliberate decisions to enshitify them for profit. They spent time and money making the OS worse on purpose.
On Linux most of the shitty parts were designed with good intentions but just kinda suck (Wayland for example).
Oh come on X11 is hot garbage the reason it was abandoned. It is so stupid that people think something designed in the 70s and patches to hell is still secure in the modern world.
There is a good chance that it was also designed this way on purpose. Almost everything I have heard people complain about on Wayland boils down to “it does not do that on purpose for security reasons”. In order to get around the purposeful constraints, you need to design extension protocols to create desired functionality and not all of those have been built. It is still on purpose though.
You may simply disagree with the priorities. Which is what enshitification for profit is as well of course.
IDK I think Wayland will be great some day. But right now we're between x11 and Wayland an both options suck.
I'm just over here trying to record my desktop and take screenshots haha.
“it does not do that on purpose for security reasons”.
I understand the motivations here but my priorities do not align with this. Not once in my life has someone recorded my desktop without my permission. I support the idea of having a secure environment but its just a pretty bad UX in the meantime.
Dont take this the wrong way. I think Wayland is a good idea in general. I just wish there was something else to hold us over in the meantime and x11 isnt really that.
I also feel the same about wayland... I think wayland is designed for good purpose but its architecture kinda sucks. I'm curious what do you think should be done to improve unix windowing systems.
... but as you mention the alternative is ALSO a lot of work PLUS frustrations.
So between learned helplessness and tiring empowerment the choice remains obvious.
FWIW whenever it feels like it's "too much" I reminder myself how I browse through obscure man pages decades ago... to still find them useful today! It's crazy that so long after learning about tools like more or grep is useful on :
a desktop
a console (SteamDeck)
a mobile phone (which basically didn't exist back then)
depends what you do, tbh. If you try to get a 3D program (that works well in Windows) to work on Linux, or try to get a game running as smooth as it is on Windows, then you are in for a lot of work.
But if your usage involves: simple web browser / email, codes, file operations. Then Linux is just plug and play, even much simpler than Windows. No ads, no constant updates nagging.
Linux just leaves you alone, if you mess some thing up it is you fault. On my Win 11 laptop, I got logged off by the damn OS just for it to display a popup with something bullshit like "Sign in to OneDrive to protect your PC"
You’re wrong about the games part. Most of us have no issues with that because of proton. As long as the game doesn’t require kernel level anti-cheat malware.
And yeah, 3D program written for windows is not going to run on Linux natively without issues. That’s common sense. It’s up to the developers to support more platforms, and that will happen with market share.
I use Garuda, which is an Arch-based distribution. Regressions are inevitable, though in my experience any actual issues arising from updates are quite infrequent. I’ve only once ever had to use Snapper to restore my system after a borked update in the some three and a half years I’ve used it. Keep in mind that this is a rolling release distribution, so new code isn’t always thoroughly tested before it’s sent out. I generally prefer new software, because I like playing games so new features and enhancements are important to me (on my main PC. I often install Arch for fun on other computers, but I thought for my ThinkPad? It’s older, maybe I’d like it to run Debian).
But any time I have a minor hiccup (that usually gets resolved after an update or reboot), I remember how much worse it could be. I’d much prefer the rare slight complication to the ads, telemetry, nags, intrusive updates, excessive bloat, and lack of control.
I’ve said before, that after using Linux on my main PC and not touching Windows? Windows really does feel like I’m not using my PC, something I never really noticed before I made the switch five years ago. I used to have no problems with modern Windows, but now it’s hard for me to tolerate. Old Windows is generally okay. I collect old computers, so versions like Windows 95, 98, 2000, and XP are fun.
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Ogni tanto, per risolvere problemi pratici merdosi, mi invento soluzioni tecniche complesse e cursate… del tipo di reimplementare la API di WordPress dentro HTMLy per poter gestire il blog basato su quello con la app di WordPress… ma, questo è uno spoiler che non dovrei fare, almeno fintanto che non finisco di lavorarci, cazzarolina. Tuttavia, […]
sistemazioni contro il malore in HTMLy per scrivere decente (nuova funzione per editor Markdown a schermo intero)
Ogni tanto, per risolvere problemi pratici merdosi, mi invento soluzioni tecniche complesse e cursate… del tipo di reimplementare la API di WordPress dentro HTMLy per poter gestire il blog basato su quello con la app di WordPress… ma, questo è uno spoiler che non dovrei fare, almeno fintanto che non finisco di lavorarci, cazzarolina. Tuttavia, qualche altra volta, se il caso vuole, mi escono piuttosto soluzioni tecniche semplici ed eleganti… come, in questo caso, aggiustare l’editor di post già presente in HTMLy, senza sostituirlo, per risolvere i problemi pratici merdosi in un modo banalissimo: aggiungere una modalità fullscreen. 🤯
L’editor Markdown base dentro quel coso, fatto di una semplice <textarea> con una barra degli strumenti bonus (e scorciatoie da tastiera) per la formattazione, con un’anteprima a parte (che, tra l’altro, non è accurata rispetto a come il Markdown viene poi renderizzato dal frontend del sito, ma questa è un’altra rogna), per qualche motivo infatti non mi ha mai completamente convinto, ma non mi sono mai messa a riflettere abbastanza da capire come mai ciò fosse il caso… Almeno fino a prima di adesso (cioè, di qualche giorno fa), quando ho capito che il problema è il layout assoluto della pagina admin; non l’editor intrinsecamente, insomma, ma il contesto in cui questo è inserito. 👌
In breve, pensandoci, tutti gli editor di testo normali e i programmi di videoscrittura, e le interfacce di blogging di conseguenza, non hanno ‘sta cosa dove la pagina è un form classico con tremila campi, che scrolla pure verticalmente perché ovviamente è bella grande, e il contenuto sta in una delle tante scatoline… bensì è circa tutto il contrario, cioè che il contenuto è al primo posto e tutto il resto sta attorno. In qualcosa come il Blocco note di Windows, questo “attorno” è solo barra dei menu + barra di stato, mentre in WordPress è una serie di tasti importanti sopra e campi misti di lato (o in un menu a parte nella app Android), su Word è la barra gigante in alto, e così via… 🎐
Ma quindi, la soluzione a questo apparentemente insignificante dettaglio di UI/UX, che però mi causa (e penso a molti causerebbe) dei mal di testa (o, almeno, uno stato di controvoglianza nell’uso), — come sempre, perché le interfacce fatte per bene sono invisibili, mentre quelle che non lo sono causano sempre dolore — potrebbe sintetizzarsi in, semplicemente, aggiungere una funzione per cui il campo di testo dell’editor possa andare a finestra intera, prendendo precisamente tutto lo spazio, e non di più o di meno (più la barra degli strumenti fissata). ⚗️
Ora, ovviamente l’ideale massimo sarebbe in ogni caso solo rifare da capo l’intera pagina per farle avere alla base una struttura decente, ma significherebbe appunto ricostruire tutto; e sicuramente con JavaScript potrei riuscirci senza dover rompere ogni cosa, ma per ora chiaramente non c’ho voglia. Già questa piccola modifica tanto basterà per alleviare tantissimo il mal di capa causato da quello che spesso è un doppio scrolling (specialmente su mobile, dove la sofferenza viene credo triplicata), della pagina + l’area di testo (che non si ridimensiona mai automaticamente), o in alternativa il dover scrollare troppo la pagina per raggiungere altri campi se l’area fosse alta quanto il contenuto… e le controindicazioni sono assolutamente zero, quindi ho fatto subito una pull request al capo del progetto, fiduciosa che verrà accettata (quando si sveglia domani, che lui è indonesiano, quindi ora starà nel lettino). 🔧
Pure a livello di codice, ribadisco, non è stato difficile; è bastato un po’ di puro CSS per dichiarare il layout, e del JavaScript integrato nell’editor già esistente per attivare e disattivare l’ambaradan a necessità, col bottoncino o con la combinazione da tastiera che ho registrato (CTRL+P). Per mobile ho in realtà aggiunto anche una proprietà del meta viewport che ho scoperto letteralmente stasera, cioè interactive-widget=resizes-content, per indicare al browser (almeno, per Chromium e Safari si, su Firefox chi lo sa) di ridurre il l’area della pagina quando la tastiera virtuale è aperta, così da evitare un altro doppio scrolling che altrimenti ci sarebbe… e ora si che è comodo lì, pare nativo! 👄
Va detto comunque che l’idea di base non l’ho inventata io, anche se mi è dovuta comunque arrivare come intuizione personale perché io potessi considerarla (poiché non arriva mai nessuno da me a suggerirmi le cose in anticipo e semplificarmi così le missioni, mannaggia alla polvere). Infatti, pensandoci lo fa anche un plugin di cui non ricordo il nome che ho sulla mia DokuWiki, che aggiunge un tasto al campo di editing anch’esso semplice vecchio stile da <textarea>buttata in una pagina alla bene e meglio, per mandare a schermo intero… ma quell’implementazione è mezza rotta e meno elegante di cosa ho fatto io qui, che ho riutilizzato gli elementi già presenti nel DOM, senza duplicare il campo di testo o fare strane scemenze. Detto questo, però, è proprio strano che questa idea non solo non sia mai venuta al grande capo di HTMLy, ma nemmeno ad altri contributori… non esistono issue o pull request al riguardo, a parte qualcuno che vorrebbe sostituire l’intero editor Markdown con altri più avanzati (che no, non risolverebbe direttamente questo specifico mal di cervello, e lo so perché sulla mia installazione ci ho provato; non è la mancanza di WYSIWYG che mi uccide, è il layout che scrolla e fa cose che bleh… ma ora grazie al cielo non più). 🙌
Since I started to use HTMLy, the Markdown editor has always felt kind of strange to me for long posts. After a bit of reflecting, I noticed that this is because any other normal text or blog edito...
Israel's culture minister has threatened to axe funding for the country's national film awards after The Sea, a story about a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, won its top award.
Yea I wouldn't bother. I think the reply to the top comment says "if you don't support our cultural genocide movement you're a white supremacist. In general I have just stopped rooting for the human species.
Tens of thousands of Argentines filled the streets of downtown Buenos Aires on Wednesday to demand increased funding for universities and pediatric care, which have suffered cuts under libertarian President Javier Milei's austerity measures.
Milei's popularity has declined following his deep budget cuts, and he is dealing with the fallout from a corruption scandal and a legislative defeat in Buenos Aires provincial elections earlier this month.
Milei faces high-stakes midterm elections in October, in which his party aims to secure enough seats to keep the opposition-controlled Congress from overriding his vetoes.
Tens of thousands of Argentines flooded the streets of Buenos Aires on Wednesday, demanding increased funding for public universities and pediatric hospitals, sectors hit hard by President Javier Milei’s sweeping austerity measures.
Yes, in the sense that printing less money reduces inflation. This isn't exactly a shock.
The big issue is what he has sacrificed to get there. Poverty rates initially spiked, causing a lot of people to burn through their savings. Now the poverty rate has fallen, but people below the poverty line report having even less to spend than before.
And of course he slashed the budgets of a lot of services, so people are feeling that too.
They are, if your definition of working is that inflation is down. No question inflation is way down. Unfortunately employment rates are also way down, and poverty is way up.
So are they working? Depends on the metric you look at. Reducing inflation is, in a vacuum, a significant success; though taken in combination with the secondary harms of austerity, it’s probably a net negative for many people, if not most people.
That is particularly unfitting in this case though. Because the people that voted Milei are still in favour and the people that didnt are still against him. The people protesting are not the ones who voted him.
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China's steel exports are set to hit an all-time high this year, defying predictions that unprecedented trade barriers would drive down shipments
Exports will grow 4% to 9% this year to hit between 115 million and 120 million metric tons, according to forecasts from 11 analysts
Rising exports of semi-finished products are also drawing opposition from the Chinese government. Beijing wants steelmakers to add value and is weighing higher export taxes to discourage shipments of lower-value steel.
The vast majority of students rely on laptops – and increasingly AI – to help with their university work. But a small number are going analogue and eschewing tech almost entirely in a bid to re-engage their brains
"He goes to the library with nothing but his “pen and paper,” and stays there until his essay is done. “Then I’m free to doomscroll Instagram on my phone without any guilt"
He doesn't seem very opposed to technology if he just goes straight home and doomscrolls
Are laptops really new technology to this kid if they've existed for his entire life?
$5 says it's the "what's a computer" kid from like a decade ago
"'laptop'? it's like a foldable but with half a screen??? and why is this keyboard broken, all the keys move?? how do I get an overwatch skin for it?? this is awful"
What a pedantic (and incorrect) take. Luddite can absolutely mean a person who purposefully avoids technology.
I’m sure I’ll get downvoted, but words can have multiple meanings and take on new meanings over time. Luddite is one of them. This article used it properly.
And anyone who disagrees with me can kiss my linguistics-degree-holding ass.
Yeah, there's this stereotype that professional/qualified linguistics are like super prescriptive but in reality most either don't give a shit or are interested in informal language
In your defense, the statement specifies "modern-day Luddite" which compares it to the historical Luddite bands and excludes the first meaning of the Oxford dictionary.
As “someone who gets distracted very easily,” he made the change to reclaim his attention span. Ditching his laptop gave him an environment where “YouTube isn’t around the corner” and he can focus on his reading.
This is just avoiding the issue of having a short attention span.
Reminds me a lot of fellow classmates at my college who I discovered hate online classes because they say they can't stay focused. So I don't know how these "luddite" students plan to not get distracted when their job will most likely involve sitting in front of a computer.
This is just avoiding the issue of having a short attention span.
I used to be easily distracted during online lectures yet had little difficulty following live lectures. It's a fundamentally different experience, for whatever reason.
Also, the attention span has to be trained. And training it by working without a distracting computer sounds like a good idea.
I had the opposite experience, in person lectures drove me crazy as an unmedicated adhder, I'd be constantly chiming in and answering every question, my legs would be going wild under the table and I'd usually be just doing something else most of the time on the laptop. Online is much much easier to listen to and get invested in at your own time and pace because you can be eating or vaping while watching at 3AM or whatever and nobody gives a fuck
Nah, that shit woulda never helped me and I wouldn't even know where to start and I never have, we had laptops open on lectures so I just wrote small programs about whatever concepts the lecturer talked about but to sit in the same place for 2 hours it was borderline impossible.
After entering the workforce it was just pure torture sitting in the office waiting to die 8 hours a day, I went through like a full character arc from arrogant to humble to desperate to hate at others to hate at self to finally worldly and gradually radicalized against the onslaught of alienation.
I came back for my masters in 2020 and it was fairly sweet all online.
Thankfully now many years later I WFH. Uni is far behind. Haven't handwritten anything in years, I'm almost curious to try it
sitting in the office waiting to die 8 hours a day
That is exactly why I absolutely thrived in manufacturing. Well, the right type of manufacturing. I'd rather die than work in an office. I lasted exactly one month at my one and only desk job before I had to quit and find something different.
I don't write often anymore either, but recently tried to write a letter to someone, wow after a few sentences could I notice how out of practice I was. I 'jot things down' all the time, but a letter, paragraphs, whew.
I think it's tough, because many degree jobs are all desk jobs, so it's like, you want the degree and good money, but the work, doesn't sound fun. Im glad wfh has helped though, thats great
That sounds like he's just not going to be well adjusted for the modern world where distractions will always be available. You don't get over a love for a drug by making it unavailable, you get over it by having it everywhere, yet refusing it.
Attention span is cultivated, so is discipline. Reading about it is theory. Forcing oneself to do it, in increasingly sizable chunks, is praxis. I'm talking to myself here, too.
I absolutely love doing everything on the computer and can’t stand writing things by hand anymore. I’ve always learned simply by listening — instructors that force students to take notes were the worst because I would be too busy scrambling to write things down than actually listening and learning.
All of this goes out the window when it comes to foreign language though. I have to do everything old school: textbooks, pencil and paper, and if it’s a non-Latin character set I have to write the same characters over and over for hours.
For me I always wrote as i listened, still do often. I rarely read the notes back.
'Revision' was just writing a whole new set of notes either from memory or from sources. Then, never reading that set of notes.
Massive waste of paper and ink, but it's part of how i pay attention. Most of my lecturers did provide printouts of all the slides, but I'd scribble all over them anyway.
I always take notes, listening shmistening it's in one ear out the other, reading and writing helps me absorb information much easier, but I never did take notes when we were forced to use pen and paper, once we switched to laptops in high school, I could note down every word because typing is so much easier and faster.
I realized that when i tried to cheat on a test in school, that when i prepared a cheat sheet, i didn't actually need it afterwards - that only applies when writing the sheet by hand.
I really like this idea, but its difficult. when I used to attend uni it was more feasible but in 2025 all of my courses require online submissions, discussion, and materials. I can rent a laptop from the library, but only for 4 hours at a time. Of course there are desktops, but realistically if you want work from home you need a computer/tablet. That said I still just borrow my partners and haven't bothered to buy one.
I got myself a remarkable after seeing a colleague use one and thinking they were cool. An astonishing price for what is essentially a kindle that you can write on, but that is essentially the entirety of its functionality right there. No web browser, no ebook integration, no keyboard, just a thing for scribbling notes with a big battery life. No distractions.
As such, it's completely ideal for my work diary, meeting notes, D'n'D notes, maps for games that I've been playing, random scribbles, all sorts. Quite a lot lighter than the thousands of sheets of paper that would be required otherwise. Also not as rude as popping open a laptop when you're meeting someone - they can see you're just making notes and writing to-dos.
When I was in undergrad I had to write lots of essays by hand. I’d say about every other course in one of my majors had midterms and finals that were a single question essay to be completed in class during the testing period. I figured that was pretty typical.
Nick, a philosophy student at the University of Cambridge, stopped using his laptop for university work in the last year of his undergraduate degree. He still types his essays, but lecture notes, revision, and essay planning are all done by hand.
The second sentence contradicts the first:
stopped using his laptop for university work
then
He still types his essays
So basically he's not taking a laptop in to the lecture hall to take notes etc but is still using a computer to complete his work. Which makes sense as pen & paper in that environment is way more practical anyway.
All assignments are submitted electronically now, and if he's in philosophy, he will also have to follow formatting requirements like font, font size, margins, and spacing. Practically, he's doing as much as he is allowed off-computer.
They're still using computers to do their university work and submit it though. It's more about them not using a laptop in a lecture hall and using pen and paper instead. That's not really a big deal considering that's probably what most people were doing anyway up until relatively recently.
Yeah, the way he does it is basically how everyone did it even 10 years ago. The tools were mostly the same then as they are now, with the exception of AI and the fact that handwriting wasn't as big a thing anymore when today's undergrads were in school. If you have a fluid and moderately quick handwriting, paper notes will typically be easier to take and more useful for revising the material later on.
Social media erupted with bewildered reactions from attendees. Some praised the band for forcing a conversation about surveillance that most people avoid, while others expressed discomfort with the unexpected data capture.
Unlike typical concert technology that enhances your experience, this facial recognition system explicitly confronted attendees with the reality of data capture. The band made visible what usually happens invisibly—your face being recorded, analyzed, and potentially stored by systems you never explicitly agreed to interact with.
The audience split predictably along ideological lines. Privacy advocates called it a boundary violation disguised as art. Others viewed it as necessary shock therapy for our sleepwalking acceptance of facial recognition in everyday spaces. Both reactions prove the intervention achieved its disruptive goal.
Your relationship with facial recognition technology just got more complicated. Every venue, every event, every public space potentially captures your likeness. Massive Attack simply made the invisible visible—and deeply uncomfortable. The question now isn’t whether this was art or privacy violation, but whether you’re ready to confront how normalized surveillance has become in your daily life.
The singer has always been about exposing problems the media won’t cover. I think it actually led to a schism and a few of the members leaving about two decades ago.
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I wonder how long they can run this before their backend database vendor cuts them off with some flimsy pretext because this kind of thing is bad for business.
No backend database needed for what they did. It was just highlighting where the faces are in a shot of the crowd, same as modern smartphone cameras do, but with a surveillance-type UI around it.
Thanks, I just watched the video linked by @spizzat2@lemmy.zip and I see that now. It’s actually a little disappointing and I’d love to see the same kind of public spectacle on hard mode with real-time doxxing from a commercial backend. That would be far more provocative.
I think the article hugely understated that nuance.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
Most people don't know the difference, as made clear by the reactions of the public, comments on other social platforms, and the wording of the articles. So it's just as powerful as it was.
I will agree that it was still powerful. All of the phone videos would memorialize any real doxxing so it’s maybe just as well that they didn’t do it.
I think it would be better with minor obfuscation like F***e L***e for Firstname Lastname. Something instantly recognizable to the victims/participants but not for the entire audience.
At first I was imagining it was picking out faces from the crowd and matching them with social media pictures which it was then broadcasting to the crowd. THAT would get people's attention!
Yes, but depending on the country that could be (public + illegal) if it lists [what is legally considered] personal sensitive information or accidentally reveals someone's secret like the Coldplay incident.
It would be fascinating, but IMO unnecessary and unethical.
Perfectly legal for “event security” to deploy facial recognition and watch live movement tracking annotated with real names and possibly other information purchased from a data broker, as long as it’s all done in secret. But illegal to let large numbers of people see the screen (maybe by mirroring it to the jumbotron). What a world.
Yeah, it should at least try to get their name. If it could include their job, income, family members, etc. that'd be great. It's pretty trivially possible. Maybe don't include address, because they could turn out poorly, but they should show how easy it is to get data on people.
To be clear, the system picked out faces in the crowd, in the "yes, this is a face" sense. They were labeled in what appears to be random terms like positive, kind, nostalgic, bee keeper, gif animator, extreme ironer. No personal identification.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
Yeah this article is hot garbage. What "biometric data" are they talking about??? Just images of people's faces? My understanding is that it's super commonplace in public locations, are people really that surprised?
Yes, while its generally common on this platform, we are early adopters for tech so we understand it first. The general public gets exposure much slower, especially when there is efforts to subvert it for profit.
Attention and time are limited, those that focus on tech know things first. Its the same as a chef knowing about food more than the average person.
An image is a quantization of reality. An image alone is biometric data if it's a picture of a face, fingerprint, or any other identifiable feature of a person.
Ah, i have it set to block 3rd party frames (anywhere, since almost only ad stuff uses this) and 3rd-party scripts (on mobile, breaks some things), probably that's why.
I managed to work around it by unchecking "wait with pageload until all the blocklist are loaded" in ublock origin. Seems to work like normal now, though I'm unsure if that is actually a fix. I guess it might have some negative side effects like some ads coming through.
The only people offended by this are the ones who dont yet understand that this is happening constantly all over the place without your consent already.
No of course not. But in order to be able to not accept it, you have to know about it in the first place. Thats what this is perfect for. No harm done, lots of eyes opened.
The point is that, if you're going to a concert of that size, this technology is being used whether you like it (or know about it) or not. Massive Attack was never going to be able to play venues the size that they do without at least tacitly allowing this to happen. Like literally, the venues would likely not allow them to play.
So I think doing this is better than just letting it happen and staying quiet.
Nah, not anymore. These tools are starting to be used by police without any remorse, so an ever increasing amount of people are aware. Its being used against immigrants, journalists, activists, etc. so the normie and privacy nerd worlds are starting to overlap.
But don't the people who get caught, disappear in the gullet of the prison slavery system and never heard from again ? And if allowed the walk the streets again, they know talking about it puts a target on their back and the police will come smash the cardboard box they're sleeping in at night. And that's until they start with the involuntary lethals injections for those who "refuse ressources" as Fox & Friends put it
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
It’s a great way to showcase that these things are in use and will be in use in places with bad privacy laws (and by those that ignore such laws). Most people don’t want to think that this happens on a daily basis, it’s logical for them when you tell them, but they’re busy with their lives and they don’t actually see it being done with their own eyes.
Now tell them how this data is connected to your ticket and your face/video being analyzed after the fact, which is then sold off to become what is basically an quantification of you as a person to judge you and determine what your addictions, views and flaws are, in order to expoit it to make you as miserable as possible. And people won’t really believe it since it’s uncomfortable to believe in. Showing someone’s face makes it more believable and difficult to ignore.
The public were just nice to them while they were being evaluated for termination....... What is wrong with the populace of ipswitch ? Are they all cattle already ?
This article gives me vibes that someone wrote a few lines outlining the situation and asked the AI to write the article itself. Interestingly though, I think most people would just rather read the outline, less time wasted and less llm.
A part that screams AI would be:
This wasn’t subtle venue security—your biometric data became part of the artistic statement, whether you consented or not.
"This isn't this--it's that" is an extremely common AI sentence structure, further exposed by the fact that the part before the em-dash doesn't even make sense to begin with. No one was asking themselves whether it was part of subtle venue security.
As a sidenote, sometimes I read sentences like this and I wonder "could this ever even have been written by a human?" I think that there's a very low chance that this article didn't have at least some amount of AI involved, but I know that somewhere out there there must be some people who actually write like this. And that's kind of sad.
tbh I don't even know why I even wrote this, the entire article appears to be one big example of generic AI writing
Citizen, this is the warm embrace of Father State and Mother Country taking care of you. Everywhere. All the time. We care about you. We worry about you. And if we feel like you need help, we will help.
Citizen, we have detected Bad Thought, as well as sarcasm. Have no fear, re-education drones as well as Correct Thought beams are headed your way! Please take this time to make sure the correct flags and slogans are on prominent display.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
I definitely parsed the headline wrong at first! But c'mon, even if you've never heard of the band, the second sentence of the article links to their webpage...
Good. People don't understand implications until it happens to them. Suddenly they don't like this security features anymore because it became personal.
If you live in a city (not only) anywhere, you are on at least 5-10 security cams when you leave your home on the way to work or the store, more counting those in your workplace and the store. Unknown how much are with face recognition soft. Think of it, you are tagget.
Senior independent rights investigators appointed by the Human Rights Council alleged on Tuesday that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide, a charge flatly rejected by Tel Aviv.
No Merzie. If politicians can’t separate Israel from Jews and criticize the former yet protect the latter, then don’t be surprised Pikachu if other people don’t either. It is you who’s equating the two, making Jews vulnerable to accusations of genocide, even if they loath Israel themselves.
Other way around. The thing Israel is being criticized for is causing hatred of Jews. Want to protect Jews? Stop the genocide. But Germany has a blind spot for this big enough to drive a whole second holocaust through.
European Union measures on the war in Gaza should focus on changing the situation on the ground rather than punishing Israel, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys said Wednesday.
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just_another_person
in reply to iturnedintoanewt • • •Luke
in reply to iturnedintoanewt • • •This sounds like a perfect use-case for setting Junction as your default "browser": flathub.org/en/apps/re.sonny.J…
It shows a dialog when you open a URL, allowing you to specify which browser you want to use each time.
In theory, you could then open links in your host OS browser usually, but still be able to select the VM browser easily sometimes.
Install Junction on Linux | Flathub
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