mirkules

The good, old “If you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide” argument.

Just drop “US” in that statement and then reevaluate it. Then ask yourself why the US should be special in regard to (not) protecting people’s privacy.

About 10 years ago, I worked for a Toyota supplier. My job as, the only software guy in a house full of hardware people, was to find out every single Toyota and Lexus dealership in America, and then find out what kind of cell phone reception they had (3G, Edge or none) for each of the major carriers (AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon, IIRC). They imagined this would be done manually so they estimated a few weeks to do the job.

Within 3 days, I wrote a script to locate the dealerships, load each of the carriers' web pages, enter the address/coordinates into their coverage map, then take a screenshot of the results. Each of the carriers, of course, had their own way of displaying the coverage information, but it was mostly a color-coded map (example: green area = 3G, blue area = edge, gray area = no reception). So, I wrote another script to process the screenshots and deduce what kind of reception they had at the dealership (some 3500 in total, if I remember right).

Unfortunately, this feat was met with the proverbial "great, while you're fixing things can you also fix the printer" kind of response, but damn if I wasn't proud to compress a few weeks into 3 days in a clever way, even if I had no one to appreciate it.

By the way, the reason we needed this information is because we were rolling out Lexus RES+ (an early version of the remote engine starter) and they wanted to make sure that every single one of the dealerships could demo the service to potential customers.

I use Musi on iOS. Ability to play in the background, save playlists locally, no YouTube ads (just ads on screen in the app while music plays in the background, for non-paid versions), and no link to your YouTube account.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/musi-simple-music-streaming/id...

What deterred me from becoming a professional musician was this (paraphrased) quote:

“Your job is not to sell music. Your job is to sell merchandise, and your music is just advertising for your merchandise.”

If I were to rationalize it, I would say “stealing music” is essentially “stealing advertising”.

(By the way, I don’t think you should be downvoted so much. I believe in good-faith discussion, even if I disagree)

It's also exactly like when people on the right started leaving twitter and all these alternatives popped up.

And in the end, people (who left willingly) ended up back on twitter anyway just because people kept sharing things from there. But also because the alternative services could not keep up with the momentum, resulting in degraded service. So everyone seemed to collectively go "meh" and returned to twitter.

I predict everyone will be back on twitter once all this blows over, and especially if alternatives can't keep up. Uptime and reliability seem to be more important than features, freedom, or just about anything else.

The absolute nerve of that guy.

We always sacrifice liberty for these "noble" goals, don't we? But once you do, there is never getting them back. See: PATRIOT Act. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

There are several ways I can think of.

First, people were willingly installing COVID-19 contact apps to alert them if they were in contact with a confirmed-positive case. Despite all of “us” (security-paranoid people) shouting at the top of our lungs that This Is A Bad Idea.

Second, your phone is constantly listening to a list of SSIDs and bluetooth identifiers to connect to and broadcasts a small amount of info - like your MAC address -, which can uniquely fingerprint your device. Supermarkets, for example, have used this for years to track shoppers. They can easily track your phone without GPS just by listening what it broadcasts and where from. And it is also then not a surprise when Apple decided to remove the functionality to turn off WiFi and Bluetooth from the “drawer” and instead of for it to only “disconnect from nearby networks until tomorrow.”

Here is the article about WiFi and retail stores https://lifehacker.com/how-retail-stores-track-you-using-you...

Personally, I use SSH to poke around. 99% of the time, I look at the directory structure, maybe learn something and then shrug with a “that was cool” and never look at it again. But there’s always that 1% where I find something truly interesting…

I’m kind of at a loss that these propositions would be taken at face value. Imagine for a moment that these “talented web developer groups” whom you are essentially representing with your name attached to them are bad foreign state actors in disguise. Imagine what would happen to you if some malicious piece of code made it on some website processing personal information, payments, or worse. It’s eye-opening and really terrifying people don’t even consider this possibility, in 2022.

I cannot believe this IDE is still alive, 22 years after I last touched it. I would rather use vim to code in Java.

It would be cheaper for Starbucks to open a cafe in every office instead. And we've come full circle!

What are some examples of this?

E.g. if a website is free but requires an account to access (i.e. valid email address), is it still considered publicly accessible or not?

Microsoft Teams developed a feature when if you’re using a background and turn sideways, your nose and the back of your head are automatically cut off.

Bug closed, no longer an issue, overcome by events.

I would like to know the camera too, because he takes the shot at 1/6000. What kind of camera lets in enough light at that shutter speed in the night sky to get that kind of photo at an apparently-low ISO (not a lot of grain apparent in the photo)?

As a Logic Pro user, I find the Logic Remote on both the iPad and the iPhone to be an absolute dream to use. Low latency, (mostly) intuitive, clutter-free and customizable interface, and lets you focus on creating music instead of fiddling with the mouse with a guitar in hand.

Point is, I’m using it as a periphery device and it absolutely kicks ass in that regard. I wish they would do more of that.

(and also, my use case is also an edge case)

That is bizarre. The watch I bought in 2020, lasts me two full days. I go running between 30-60 minutes every day. Battery life has never been an issue for me, and it almost even feels like an old nokia in terms of battery life.

However, I turned off almost all notifications on my watch because they are mostly annoying, except text messages and protonmail. I turned off the “always on” watch face. I keep a very small subset of apps on the watch.

I also don’t have a cellular version of it, wifi only.

IMO, CGI is no different than any other effects: the purpose is to enhance “suspension of belief” to advance some plot line.

For example, look at the original Star Trek. The effects were very unrealistic, everyone knew they filmed planet scenes in the desert (not on a different planet), etc. But nobody cared, it’s still a cult classic.

Star Trek TNG is pretty much the same. Despite more advanced effects, everyone knows Data is just a guy with makeup, but it was much harder to think the Enterprise was not a real ship.

At the end of the day, suspension of belief depends on delivery of lines, acting, etc, and much less on CGI or “classic” effects. CGI just makes (arguably) easier to achieve the effects.

What does “yellow press” mean in this context? I know the usage of the word “yellow” means “cowardly,” but I suspect there is some other connotation/well-known phrase

One of my favorite college professors got nabbed for secretly collaborating with the Japanese government: https://voiceofoc.org/2014/02/former-uci-professor-pleads-gu...

It does happen, even at university level.

I know nothing about luggage transit, and any idea of a solution for lost luggage I could come up with is more likely naive than not.

Could you define why lost luggage is an unsolvable problem? What makes it so difficult?

I still have a working 2007 16” MacBook Pro (fully loaded 4GB of RAM, yeah!). It’s not just the software that was better but the hardware too. That keyboard has so much travel compared to these newer ones, it’s crazy. It actually feels like a real keyboard.

I started using DDG around 2011. The progress they made is nothing short of incredible. I've completely switched to them around 2015 or so. I've used Google exactly twice last year. I'm curious what kind of queries yield you 30% garbage results?

What’s more is that the author is wrong. Free Software is libertarianism, not communism.

“Free” refers to the freedom to modify the software, the liberty of one person to (legally) do whatever they want with the thing they own. Common ownership, or community control of means of production has nothing to do with Free Software. Nobody owns free software and nobody controls it.

Same here. I needed a larger car that can seat my family of five (3 kids). Everyone was cramped, the visibility was poor, especially with everyone in the car and I just can’t get over having the dashboard in the center. It’s a shame because I really love the acceleration, I love the technology, and I would love having an electric car. Model X would be a great fit, but not for a 6 figure price.

In the end I got a Subaru Ascent, which is a better overall fit for my family than the Y, but I’m not excited about it like I am a Tesla. It’s basically a glorified minivan (actually, it’s even a little less utilitarian than our Odyssey).

But there are some exciting new electric cars and vans coming, and I’m really looking forward to the next generation of electrics!

Completely agree with what everyone else has said about working at a large company, and how past a certain point your changes are not just your changes - they affect the organization as a whole.

The good news is, you can fix it diplomatically (I used to see red, too, when I got stonewalled like this).

The magic words are “risk” and “escalate”. If your project will be at risk, you bring it up to your direct manager and PM and ask him to escalate the issue. Once a request goes up and comes back down, I find there is usually extra motivation and bandwidth on another team to help with the issue. And if it doesn’t get escalated? Well, then, that work might not be important enough to address at this moment, which means there are higher priorities. So, ask your manager for other work since you’re blocked on this one piece.

For me, it’s very specific. I can visualize a generic elephant, a generic apple or other generic or static object. However, I could never visualize a person’s face for more than a split second. I can describe the person’s features, but never maintain an image of a person’s face for any length of time. If I think of their picture, I can imagine that picture. I’m not sure how else to describe it. It’s kind of weird, but I never really think about it.

What do you mean by FB/Twitter proxies? Is it what it sounds like, service to access FB/Twitter in some kind of anonymous mode? And could you name a few?

I don’t understand how it is legal to eavesdrop without a warrant, even if you are target bad-faith actors and have probable cause - that’s how you get warrants in the first place.

Furthermore, everyone on this thread is talking about more secure communication. But my mind always goes to assuming every communication channel is compromised by default, and then flooding it with many, many false messages and wasting adversary resources chasing them.

Unfortunately, you can't just erect 4 walls and a door, and call it a day. The problem you quickly run into are building codes.

You need to think about electrical codes, HVAC, accessibility, fire codes (sprinklers, flammability of materials, etc), evacuation planning, etc. In California, there's even a rule that at least half the outlets in an office area must be motion controlled.

Not saying I don't agree with you, just more things to consider about the complexity and, ofc, the cost of doing things like that.