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kotaKat

7,602 karma · joined January 9, 2020

SORRY WE MISSED YOU.

that "villain with fistfulls of RSUs" is just a tired, poor field network admin and a pair of underpaid remote hands trying to just live a single fucking day without some new eldritch fucking horror ready to create even more fucking trauma for them to put up with and rot another day.

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kotaKat··on Google Pics is generally available starting today
Oh yeah, they emailed me as a Google Workspace administrator and went "FYI we're launching this and we're leaving it turned on and forced-opt-in by default, byeeeee!". Even with Gemini off across our entire tenant.

Bonus points that they've broken additional bounds and now advertise in Google Workspace products. Now I get ads within all of the products begging me to upgrade our Workspace tiers :\

Opened a support ticket about the advertising and was told to kick rocks.

>>> What you need to do

>>> Action advised before August 18, 2026:

>>> We'll enable access to Google Pics by default. You can manage access to Google Pics depending on your organization's needs:

>>>

>>> To allow access: If you want eligible users to have access to Google Pics, no action is required from you. Google Pics will roll out to users automatically as soon as August 18, 2026.

kotaKat··on FBI Probes Service Selling 153M+ Drivers Licenses
https://www.microptik.eu/product/id-card-verification

Basically swaps the LED illum with an UV LED instead. Makes all the security features pop right out.

kotaKat··on The EU's repair policies are changing the way tech is designed
> Wearables pose a challenge to repairability, mainly because of their size and direct contact with the body. But there too, creativity has already been put into practice. This includes a wireless earbud battery that can be removed by hand in seconds, or a smartwatch that comes with accessible components and repair instructions while maintaining its water-proofness.

And yet Royal Philips got an exemption for shavers and toothbrushes as "wet electronics" to avoid having to make the batteries replaceable in those...

kotaKat··on Play Store blocks AuroraStore, hurting GrapheneOS users
It's the SomethingAwful model: go to the store and find the cheapest Android phone from some prepaid company for :tenbux: then use it to set up your Google account during out-of-box-setup while on the store's free public WiFi (since Google OOBE allows free account creation without a number or existing email), then toss the phone in a drawer afterwards.

"Hope ya got ten bucks!"

(I got a random 5G Moto phone for ~$10 on clearance and it was an absolute shitter of a phone full of garbage packed in malware, but after cleaning and debloating as much as I can, it's at least a nifty toy to poke at Termux or something.)

kotaKat··on Play Store blocks AuroraStore, hurting GrapheneOS users
Didn't Epic get some kind of magic injunction saying that Google had to allow open access to the entire Play Store catalogue or something?
kotaKat··on NASA: Fill in a name, and you can have an exclusive coordinate in the universe
If I adopt a coordinate, does that make me a Space Lord or Space Baron?
kotaKat··on I think the military commissary's freezers were hacked
I'm in the firmware bug camp too. Over/under on "the remote management server went down and a bug on all the freezers decided to put them back into some form of local control where its first action was to do a defrost cycle then put it back into offline service"?
kotaKat··on Transfer files over an Ethernet patch cable
I have been using USB-C dongles like this for a hot minute now paired with a nice retractable travel cable. I have a couple of these, an HDMI male one, a DisplayPort male one - I can plug basically into any hotel TV or monitor in my travels and run a laptop, phone, whatever off of the cables in my bag for charging, data, or video.
kotaKat··on Transfer files over an Ethernet patch cable
https://www.amazon.com/Hagibis-Ethernet-Portable-Thunderbolt...

Carry a couple USB-C to RJ-45 dongles ;)

kotaKat··on Lawmakers added $1 to car insurance policies. That money paid for Flock cameras
you have to go into the actual [dead] comment itself (eg, click on the datestamp) for the vouch button to appear on that post, just like flagging comments several layers deep
kotaKat··on Get up to $175 back for your pre-installed Windows 11 license
Right - but if you buy one with a Windows license, there's a term and condition of general purchase that says if you don't agree to that license, you have to return the whole machine.

If you don't get the option of "no OS/freeDOS" you'll be stuck accepting the license to keep the physical product (technically) as a term of the sale...

kotaKat··on Get up to $175 back for your pre-installed Windows 11 license
Unless you bought HP (who ignores customers) or Dell (who has an explicit term of purchase saying you bought it with the license and must return it on license rejection). And eons more unlikely if you're in the US.
kotaKat··on California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law
Walk into Lowes and buy some steel pipe and a nail.

Congrats, you built a zipgun.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-63198715

There's now much more of a debate that's to be more sophisticated than "3D PRINTED GUNS BAD".

kotaKat··on Ask HN: Is .org now Trump-controlled?
I'd be worried about any domain in US territory because it doesn't have to be Trump killing domains.

https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/attorney-...

Ken Paxton caused Verisign to nerf a .com. Irrespective of the content, Texas as the state level is apparently powerful enough to be an Internet censorship tool.

kotaKat··on Aptera announces a $44M to design and build a solar electric vehicle
Is this so Aptera can pass the buck when it flops again (“it’s Launch’s fault, we swear”)?

This really doesn’t answer any questions. $44 million (and worthless paper stock warrants) is also immensely low for new vehicle tooling as a whole.

(I'll point out that an article about Slate's frugality[1] still shows some massive costs involved here. They scored a $200 million assembly line component originally from GM for $12 million. Uh, if that kind of seven/eight-figure investment is required for a single component of an assembly line, how far does this $44 million go for Aptera?)

[1] https://www.autoline.tv/automotive-insight/slate-a-mastercla...

kotaKat··on 9th Circuit sides with states in Kalshi gambling fight
Quite a few people (and countries) subscribe to the “it isn’t a war crime the first time” model.
kotaKat··on Overcooked? Why robotic pizza makers are failing
It seems like the companies building it all put it into place then go "Ah, crap, now we have to deal with the part of the product lifecycle where it's actually being used" then suddenly cut rope and run after installing in hundreds of customers at once instead of dealing with their piling up queue of service issues.

At least the pizza vending machines still seem to be working fine.

And at the end of the day: we have frozen food vending machines that automatically re-microwave crap in them, so there's not real much left on that front to innovate.

kotaKat··on USDA recalls 30k pounds of Argentine beef sold in Texas and Florida
So there's some context as well with Argentina beef.

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/ra...

Argentina's been paying Huawei for 5G gear and services with beef direct to China, who's been selling it via Huawei stores (see https://www.huaweimossel.com/).

Earlier in March a shipment of ~22 tons of beef was rejected by China for having antibiotics in it and was 'contaminated'.

Follow the trail...

kotaKat··on Two German airport workers die of malaria after 'mosquito arrives on plane'
It's not quite PE (yet); doctors are getting annoyed themselves at how healthcare is playing out. Picture things like electronically messaging your doctor now has convoluted billing behind each conversation now based on the level of effort the doctor has to put in. They're getting annoyed now that they've been bought out by hospital systems and been working underneath them for a while doing family practices and other healthcare services. The paychecks were good, but the red tape got annoying over the years.

So they exit the whole system and go to a direct "you pay me monthly for access" model. Hundred bucks a person or so per month, factor a ~25% discount for families. Doc gets to keep a cap on the limit of incoming patients to manage their own day pretty nicely while getting a recurring stream of cash paid direct to him.

Even better if your wife's also a doctor (hey, healthcare partners run together a lot!), you just band together, see 5-600 patients a month as a couple, and pull in a decent $million or so on a fairly light workload and selling extra things like GLP-1s and wellness programs for a year's work. Triple-points if you're doing this in rural America - that million might not be a lot to the big techies out there, but that's big bucks that go far in some really nice places tucked away in the trees and forests.

You still need insurance for the rest of the 'stuff' they don't do, but some of these DPCs are doing everything they can in house (like prescribing and dispensing generics at the office directly in a single visit to lower your extra out of pocket costs).

If you're on a high deductible healthcare plan with an HSA and an employer contributing healthily into it, these direct-patient-care clinics may be an attractive option if you're reasonably healthy and young.

kotaKat··on Did Meta's Big Settlement Actually Help It?
The point was for ignorant Americans (whom I believe Mark once called "dumb fucks") to just see "states win big Billions number from Facebook" and shut up and "trust it" at that point once they saw a headline they thought meant they won.
kotaKat··on Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 7.2
> If you think about it, m1n1 is almost like our own firmware for Apple Silicon.

If you really think about it, it's kinda amusing how far we came from https://wiibrew.org/wiki/MINI being used to bootstrap homebrew on the Nintendo Wii on PPC to being used to fire up our Macs daily running Asahi on ARM.

kotaKat··on YouTube Format IDs
no, I assume they're asking if this is tangically a related post towards the recent effort of yt-dlp 403s; the 403s are happening on specific format IDs because youtube is now starting to block and control access to different format IDs based on cookies, clients, and a few other things to try to limit how you can download videos and audio streams.
kotaKat··on Wiped out: US faces surging toilet paper prices amid trade war with Canada
Canadian duty is insane on some items. When I was a pimply-faced youth at the Duty Free, the going rate we used to tell people was "a dollar an ounce".

I saw some spirits that were quoted at $40-80+ a bottle, depending on a bunch of factors, when you go over the relatively small limit. Bringing home a case of Kentucky sipping burbon to Toronto will hurt you right in the wallet a few times over.

kotaKat··on Wiped out: US faces surging toilet paper prices amid trade war with Canada
And if you really wanted... buy washable toilet paper towels. https://www.marleysmonsters.com/collections/toilet-unpaper-a...

As someone on the border, the tariffs do screw over individual folks on both sides of it.

Canadian grocery prices are awfully high and they've been known for various price-fixing scandals (the Loblaws bread-fixing apology gift cards come to mind) so there's often a lot of Canadian Walmart/Sams Club/Local Grocery shoppers.

One of the odd things is that Americans had it better coming back to the US from Canada after a day out shopping - we could bring back $800, but the Canadians going home could only bring back $50 or so, unless they were out for more than 48 hours then got $800. US Customs was also hilariously lax on actually enforcing things ("anything to declare?" "ah, I spent $200 at IKEA" gets a handwave) compared to the Canadians that'll fine-tooth comb the vehicle to pull every penny of duty they can coming home to Canada.

kotaKat··on The Mormon Church Is Quietly Expanding Its Real Estate Empire Across the US
I'm waiting for a tribe to try the Restasis patent gag again in the current administration. Being First Nations myself I have a lot to say about this (extremely negative) but I'll bite my tongue in the audience.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_St._Regis_Mohawk_Tribe_and...

kotaKat··on Nitter and XCancel receive cease and desist notices
You know what, I'll throw my hat into the ring on Shitter censorship:

Once enough 'big' accounts block you for any arbitrary reason they like, your account is heavily downweighted enough to send your replies, posts, and everything into yet another class of shadowban that isn't a shadowban.

I've never interacted with the ilks of people like a16z and yet their Twitter block definitely causes a heavier algo downrank impact just 'being' there.

kotaKat··on Nitter and XCancel receive cease and desist notices
That's the magic of A/B testing. You get to send an entire "B" group into paranoia and upset about the change they didn't want/like while everyone in "A" gets to gaslight B that B isn't experiencing what they're getting and that it would never happen to A...
kotaKat··on FDA authorizes first wearable device that monitors ketone and blood sugar levels
You can read the Stelo out into XDrip with some settings adjustments, last I checked, so it is just some “light” software tweaks between sensors.

https://navid200.github.io/xDrip/docs/Dexcom/G7.html

kotaKat··on New Mac mini, featuring M6 and M5 Pro
Not really. It's Gurman, once again throwing darts at the wall to see what sticks like a desperate roach begging for subscribers to his bullshit newsletter of guesses and predictions he'll flip in a month the opposite direction for even more clicks and bait.
kotaKat··on How credit card rewards became a $9.2B wealth transfer
I assume you've somehow gotten access to stable housing though via that bank account (possibly a home loan, or something else), or accessed a large line of credit before 'modern' credit scoring came into play (FICO scores and the Big Three).

I see many commercials for local banking up here that pulls out 30-40+ year members of the banks boasting about the prosperity the bank provided them, but at the same time, when they'd walked into the bank back in the day A Guy just said "yeah he's good for it" and wrote out the loans they needed.

You can't opt out of the modern credit scoring system and if you fuck it up even once with a bad line item you're out of the running for quite a few things and become virtually poor.

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