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batat

340 karma · joined November 27, 2015

I'm a sweet potato.
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batat··on ChatGPT Images 2.0
I think they do, and it's even scarier than SynthID. Look closely at the generated images and you'll start to notice some diamond-shaped high-frequency patterns in different parts of the image (tree crowns, vegetation, hair, textures, clouds). May be just a random bug, but for me it looks like the watermark is baked into the image details themselves and all the details follow this pattern. But it leads to unnatural results somewhere, i.e.:

https://x.com/rrnld_y/status/2047070630802006211/photo/1

https://x.com/Melothemyth777/status/2046963312357679540/phot...

https://x.com/kuroinu_ni/status/2047118826920440287/photo/1

https://x.com/jahflyx/status/2047109303140536703/photo/1

https://x.com/2016Suha/status/2047096528309760501/photo/3

batat··on Nvidia DLSS 5 Delivers AI-Powered Breakthrough in Visual Fidelity for Games
So far AI did a terrible job there: https://imgur.com/a/CJ7NU5w

Original scene was far from perfect, but it was somewhat more consistent: a sunny spring day, warm tones, noon, some sun rays casting deep shadows on the face (traditionally the worst time for outdoor portrait photography, hehe).

With "DLSS ON" it's something like an overcast sky; there are some flat shadows on the building in the background but the shadows on the building on the right are still just as sharp as before; the overall tone of the scene became colder; sun rays on clothes disappeared but there still deep shadows on man's face as if the sun was still shining from above, and the tone of his face is basically the same, despite the new color balance.

batat··on System76 on Age Verification Laws
So it’s neither "yes" nor "no", but some kind of philosophical note somewhere in-between a "Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS Released" and "CodeWeavers tests their ARM64 compatibility on System76" that isn’t even linked to noticeable on the main page.

I mean Wikipedia hung some huge banners to raise awareness, the German wiki even had a "blackout" because of "Directive 2019/790", there was something similar on Reddit etc. I don't expect them to leave the US market or anything like that, but also I don’t even know what to say, as if everyone has already resigned.

batat··on Notepad++ hijacked by state-sponsored actors
> A "Core Isolation: Memory Integrity" feature of Windows 10+ prevents creating such memory area (leading to BSOD).

> We tried to attestation sign the driver via new EV certificate by MS to fix the driver's limitation, but failed (see #108).

> So for now users have to disable the "Core Isolation: Memory Integrity" feature

Disabling HVCI doesn't sound like a good idea honestly. I mean they abuse kernel memory protection to bypass EV Certificate restrictions leaving the system in a state where another driver can mess with FW's internal structures using the same trick.

batat··on Notepad++ hijacked by state-sponsored actors
It doesn't matter really because nowadays all of them are just a front-ends to Windows Firewall.

Also legitimate software (i.e. firewall/AV) cannot use "oldschool" tricks like system service descriptor table hooks to obtain godlike privileges these days, while malware sometimes can do this by exploiting vulnerabilities, so in such cases it may be an unequal fight.

batat··on Protestware: “peacenotwar” NPM package drops anti-war message on user's desktop
Yet another manifest found in es5-ext: https://github.com/medikoo/es5-ext/issues/116
batat··on Protestware: “peacenotwar” NPM package drops anti-war message on user's desktop
Right now it's included as a dependency only in node-ipc package [1] from the same author (1M weekly downloads/355 dependents).

[1] https://www.npmjs.com/package/node-ipc

batat··on Mighty Makes Google Chrome Faster
Madness, this should not exist at all, it's broken in so many ways.
batat··on RMS Support Letter
You are right, good catch.
batat··on RMS Support Letter
Yeah, dead-on. Like "The right to be rude"[0], a year old events when Eric S. Raymond - co-founder of OSI - was kicked off from the OSI mailing list.

(Back then someone suggested adding a "we-don't-like-them" clause to Free licenses which prohibits the use of Free software by "bad people or bad companies" (e.g. the US Migration Service for its policy towards migrants). ESR pointed out a violation of paragraphs 5 and 6 of the Open Source Definition: "No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups", "No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor" in his usual way of communicating and... Well, you know how it's ended up)

[0] http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8609

batat··on RMS Support Letter
Yes, silent-majority, exactly.

Because we (or this is me only?) were taught that expressing point of view which differs from current "course of the party", while may not be a subject of criminal prosecution (therefore, your freedom of speech is not formally violated), but leads to "deplatforming", you may lose your contracts, your job etc. "Cancel culture" instructs us that instant breakdown of all relations is normal, and many of those who break off relations with you do this not because they disagree with your point of view, but "just in case" to avoid consequences for themself.

Brendan Eich? Eric Steven Raymond? Media personalities like Johnny Depp, Joanne Rowling, James Gunn... All these people didn't break the law, they are not criminals, but they suffered for saying something. This is not "normal"! These cases are well-known and people will now may think twice before saying a word in defense of RMS because they are afraid! This is where "spiral of silence" comes from.

batat··on RMS Support Letter
People who are against bullying of Richard Stallman exists too! And there are lot of them - quiet developers, incapable of social interaction. We are not reading Twitter 24/7, we are not speakers nor evangelists. We write commit messages, not tweets. We are doing things, not loud manifestos.

And all powers currently is seized by a loud crowd who believe that person should be judged by his words, not his deeds. They believe that "enough words, show me the code" is a meritocracy.

If you fear that your signature in RMS Support letter open letter may have negative consequences for your career, then just write some support words to info@fsf.org and directors@fsf.org, this is fine too!

batat··on Pantone 448 C
Looks pretty much like "fixed price logos" made by russian designer Artemy Lebedev[1]. People keeps buying them for 100,000 RUB (~1600 USD).

[1] https://www.artlebedev.ru/express-design/projects/

batat··on JetBrains Mono: A free and open-source typeface for developers
Not sure about zeros and ones, but there were some interesting copyright violation cases with long primes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_prime
batat··on Who Killed the Scrollbar?
I was forced to use web interface after app reinstall because Dropbox free account now supports only 3 linked devices (and I have 7).
batat··on My Favourite Git Commit
SQL Server prior to 2019 stores unicode data in UCS-2 (UTF-16 analog, rougly). SQL Server 2019 supports UTF-8.
batat··on Telegram moves to protect identity of Hong Kong protesters
Also there are no secret chats on desktop client at all.
batat··on What happens when you launch Google Chrome for the first time?
> The browser is the OS. The website is the application.

No, that's wrong.

batat··on The GitHub registry public beta is live
Depends, also WinSxS[1] helps.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Side-by-side_assembly

batat··on Why ElementaryOS Left Medium
I quit using Imgur because of agressive promotion of their app. Actually you can't even upload an image, neither view a full-size image on mobile version now.
batat··on Steam Windows Client Local Privilege Escalation 0day
Through Steam service running as NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM? Like "Mozilla Maintenance Service" for Firefox.
batat··on 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service
> once-reasonable people to be deeply and irredeemably terrible in many other ways

Like otaku. Or furries. Can't imagine anything more terribly dangerous than furry otaku spreading GNU Manifesto and forcing you to install Gentoo. Awful place!

batat··on Terminating Service for 8Chan
A lot of the plot, but my guess the main reason is upcoming Cloudflare IPO[1]. Сan't blame them for for doing that.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/cloudflare-plans-to-ipo-in-s...

batat··on 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service
Oh yes, there indeed will be no more mass shooting if you close down %SITE_NAME%.
batat··on GitHub confirms it has blocked developers in Iran, Syria and Crimea
Even further. Wondered why there are no single Stallman reference here and in the previous discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20531039
batat··on GitHub confirms it has blocked developers in Iran, Syria and Crimea
IIRC the whole point of economic restrictions on the occupied territories is to increase number of unsatisfied people which could oppose the occupation from inside.
batat··on Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 pilots 'could not stop nosedive'
MCAS can be disabled, but pilots says this may not help in some situations:

> On the simulator when the stabilizer was "on a dive" at maximum angle, me and my colleagues weren't able to recover a plane.

> If you follow Boeing bulletin, but start the procedure too late, it will only make things worse. Simpler solution (in case of problems right after takeoff) is to release the flaps at least to the first position. This will disable MCAS and give you an additional time.

Source: https://denokan.livejournal.com/204046.html (Russian)

Google translate: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&u=https%3...

batat··on Australian telcos block access to 4chan, other sites
Just found out that Reddit banned /r/watchpeople for the same reason [1]. I believe all these censorship attempts only makes it worse - we're experiencing the Streisand Effect at its best now.

[1] http://fortune.com/2019/03/15/reddit-banned-watch-people-die...

batat··on Australian telcos block access to 4chan, other sites
I'm wondering if it's legal to block sites in Australia simply because "we feel this is the right thing to do"?
batat··on Explaining Code Using ASCII Art
Not that easy to keep these kind of "docstrings" up to date though.
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