5,213 karma · joined June 18, 2013
https://github.com/libarchive/libarchive/commit/e37efc16c866...
https://medium.com/vision-zero-cities-journal/the-unique-saf...
Key point from the article: "Public safety is facilitated by a culture of compliance."
A few years ago I was driving my son somewhere, and a cyclist blew through a red light and slammed into the side of my car. Fortunately the only injuries were the ones that the cyclist inflicted on himself through his reckless disregard for the law. Judging how much damage he did to my car, if my son and I had been on our e-bikes instead then I think that guy could have easily killed my kid.
Knowing that there are too many cyclists and motorists who behave with complete disregard for the law makes me feel like I really have no choice but to put my child in a big steel cage with airbags and crumple zones if we're going to travel anywhere on American roads. And before you ask, this was not in a big city, so public transportation was not a viable option for us that day.
My personal experience seeing peoples' general behavior and attitudes on roads in both Japan and Amsterdam makes me wish we could find a way to adopt some of that culture.
Obligatory Rick and Morty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xerLPWdyX-M
I've switched companies 4 times so far in my career. Let's call entry-level "entry." The first one came with a double-level promotion (entry+2). The next one came with a demotion (entry+1), although they paid me more. I went on to get promoted twice at the new company (entry+3) working on-site. After that I stayed at the same level moving to the next company (entry+3) working remote. Then going to the next company I got another promotion coming in (entry+4). So I've only been promoted within the company twice, and my other two promotions were from switching companies.
I'm getting good performance reviews, but it's looking like entry+5 may be a ways away for me at my current company. I've already been contacted by a recruiter offering me a chance at landing an entry+5 position with another company, but I value the culture and the type of work I'm doing at my current company more than the level-up. In particular I can work from home most of the week and come in for meetings here and there.
Early in your career "N+1" is important, but at some point there's a lot more to your overall quality of life than simply chasing the next "N+1." I know some truly miserable people who constantly obsess over getting promotions, and getting those promotions often doesn't seem to make their lives any better. Some of them have just ended up getting bigger mortgages, and now they're under constant pressure to keep performing at the level they clawed their way up to just so they can make their payments.
Having taken every reasonable measure I can to stop being spied on, I can concur that it does take a lot of willpower. As in, being willing to come across as a total ass to those trying to spy on you on behalf of their employers and also willing to literally walk away from the register leaving the stuff you've collected in the hopes of buying. ("But we require your name and phone number or we won't honor any of the warranties for what you're buying.") Paying cash for everything. Avoiding specific restaurants and shops that don't accept cash. Foregoing "members discounts" at the grocery market. Buying a specific phone just to install a third-party privacy-centric ROM. Buying a specific car just to be able to pull the fuse that powers the transmitter.
You can drastically reduce the amount of information that the data brokers collect on you, but I've found it's almost as if you need to adopt a new lifestyle in a lot of ways.
I'm more confident in effectiveness of pulling the DCM fuse.
It's different for different cars. Search for "DCM fuse" (Data Communications Module) for your model year.
The ability to prevent the car from spying on me was near the top of my list of desired features when I was shopping for a new car. This is one of the main things keeping me from buying another EV. So far as I'm aware there is nothing on the market where I live that won't constantly spy on you with no option to disable.
This article from Mozilla is worth a read: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/article...
After a couple of decades in industry, I've formed so many professional relationships that it's hard for me to imagine that I might have any real trouble finding another job if I lost my current one. I mean, I guess I could be delusional and find it to be really tough at some point, but it hasn't happened so far. People I've worked with have gone on to start their own companies or have risen to senior director roles. In fact for the job before the one I have now a senior director practically yanked me out of my previous company and shoved me into his current company.
I don't think about recruiters sticking their noses up at me because of my age or buzzwords on my resume and such at all. If I want in somewhere, I just email someone I've worked with previously and ask if they think there might be something at their current company for me. It usually doesn't take long for their hiring manager to be asking me for an intro meeting. Only then does a recruiter get involved, and they're not screening me. They're setting up an interview loop. Often with people hand-picked by the hiring manager.
Look, I know ageism is real and it does happen and has a real impact on people. But on the other hand, if you've been working for 20+ years in industry and have generally left a good impression on your co-workers, how can you not have contacts sprinkled around in your industry who can give you a leg up on the job-finding process?
For my third jog I went to Google, where I was in open seating for about 10 years until the pandemic. The open seating was a big adjustment, but my brain was still young enough to filter out distractions well enough to get things done. My most productive work was accomplished as an individual task outside of any team effort.
My job after Google was with a company that had cubicles with low walls, but this was before the vaccines and so nobody was going in. I struggled to really integrate with any other teams as there was literally no face-to-face interaction. I never even met my boss in person. Again, I did accomplish some significant technical work, but they were lone projects.
My job after that again has open seating, Google-style. They've also started hot desking, so I have to reserve a desk for the days I go in. I get whatever monitor and chair are at that desk. Let's just say that the condition of the equipment is about what you would expect if it were rented on a day-to-day basis.
As I've gotten older I've found my ability to filter out distractions has suffered. I've read about some studies that suggest that this is common, perhaps even normal as the brain ages. In order to get into a deep state of concentration in an open office I need to put in noise-canceling headphones, turn on a film score, and pull the monitor close to my face so as to minimize movement in my peripheral vision. Whatever spontaneous collaboration is supposed to happen in the office isn't happening, and I consider interrupting me while I have headphones in and am zeroed-in on a task to be actually pretty rude. That doesn't stop some people (usually TPMs putting together a status report) from interrupting me anyway.
So I'm only happy coming into the office when I have a cluster of in-person meetings scheduled. I'll jump into meeting rooms and catch people in the hallway or the micro-kitchen to sync up on one or two things that I may not get as much traction on via random Slack messages. Then I GTFO of there and back to my private office that I customized at home during the pandemic to get any real heads-down work done. Even then I am only really productive when I close Slack and email for a couple of hours.
Meanwhile everyone is always complaining about lack of conference or phone rooms, and so they're trying to set up a bunch of pods throughout the office for people who need some degree of isolation for uninterrupted coding sessions or Zoom meetings. This whole thing seems really farcical to me. I joked with a co-worker, "Oh, I know! We could build 'pods' into the structure of the building with rectangular panes of glass and planks of wood mounted on hinges with a latch. That would make it more easy to get HVAC and sprinklers set up in the 'pods' too!"
I'd definitely come into the office for more full days if I had a private office again. As it stands I'll come into the office as infrequently as I can and for as little time as possible. It's just miserable compared to my workspace at home.
That said, if it's at all feasible, I will refuse to take another job ever again that has mandatory office attendance policies unless they can provide me a private office.
I wish my cooking stove worked out of the box. After the control panel died a technician who didn't know what they were doing replaced it and then neglected to push a new firmware version into the Linux box running in my stove. That messed up the communications between the control unit and the power board, and my oven was perpetually 25F cooler than what I had set it to until I called another tech back to figure that out.
That was actually a food safety issue, as one might assume that if you cook your meat at a particular temperature and time then it will be safe to consume. The cook top also seemed to only be able to cook at settings 6 or 7; the lower settings seemed to be way too weak.
Fortunately I had the sense to buy an oven thermometer just to make sure.
By the way, the dimmers are working great. And I finally found BR30s that don't sing. It's amazing to me how many of them do. Have you tried Syncthing yet?
Of course I have no idea what this opt-out does. The skeptical part of me suspects that the system still collects and transmits my location and such, but then they simply don't trivially attach that telemetry to my account.
I'm also going to try pulling the DCM fuse that's supposed to cut the cut the gateway/telematics antenna. I also plan to wrap the transmitter in a Faraday cage.
It happened just last week when I was buying a car. The sales rep kept insisting that I install the car company's app while I was trying to just write a check, grab the keys, and drive off the lot. "You can use your Google or Facebook identity to make signup quicker!" Not only can I not actually install the app, I don't even have a Google or Facebook account. Eventually he relented and showed me "his wife's" car -- which happens to be the most expensive car on the lot -- on his own phone so I could see how the app worked. (His wife's car had an odometer reading of 6 miles per what I saw in the app running on his phone, but I'm sure she just hasn't had a chance to drive it yet anywhere except home from the dealership yet.)
For situations like that I usually have to tell them, "I don't have a phone with me that can do that." Then they get really confused, convinced that I have no idea what I'm talking about that that all I have to do is open the App Store and search for the app. The problem is my "App Store" is F-Droid. Why on earth I wouldn't be cool with just handing over my privacy to Google or Apple is completely lost to them, and most of the time I have neither the time nor desire to try to explain it to them. So I just end up coming across as some weirdo asshole by refusing to "just install the app."
We need more people using phones that respect their privacy and that don't have an umbilical cord to Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
For me to return to the EV market I would require that I be able to source a third-party battery pack, at the very least. I'd be fine with government regulations to block the cheap packs that catch fire. I just want the option of swapping out the pack on my own terms if I want in the future, including getting next-gen battery tech that can increase range with less volume and weight. I'd also insist that they have a "do not phone home" mode of operation, along with buttons and knobs and a small screen. And a pull-brake. And a charging infrastructure that works. And that I can use with cash.
My phone is a Pixel 7a running GrapheneOS. My laptop is a Thinkpad T80s running Debian Stable, and I'm waiting for my Framework 16 to ship. My vehicle for out-of-town trips is a GR Corolla, but for around-town stuff I use a custom steel frame e-bike.
When I have the time and energy I try to protect my privacy. For the GR Corolla I followed some steps* that might have done the job, but I can't say for sure. This summer I hope I have time to play with the hardware, up to and including replacing the headunit with something OSS-based.
* https://www.grcorollaforum.com/threads/sos-call-disable.2357...
If a crank-based mechanism would have made that less likely to happen, or at least if it would be easier for me to get the window back up with simple tools, I would have been all for that at the time!
For a computer, I want something with SeaBIOS, a stripped-down kernel, and a handful of packages from the Debian Stable repository. I want it hackable and repairable -- something like a Framework. Nothing like a MacBook. For a phone, I want something that can run Signal, Fastmail, a music/audiobook player, Syncthing, and Organic Maps, more or less. Minimal connectivity to Cloud services, and nothing about it vying for my attention. Nothing like an iPhone.
For a car I want hackable and repairable. Again with minimal complexity. I don't want it spying on me. I don't want computer glitches rendering the car unusable. I want the parking brake attached to a cable that I engage with a lever. I want to be able to shift it into neutral by pressing down on a clutch pedal and pushing a stick. If my 12v battery dies I want the car to be fully functional after a jump. I want a spare tire in the rear hatch with a jack I can use on the roadside. I want to be able to easily fix most things that can go wrong with the car with parts I can find at a common automotive shop or junkyard. Nothing like what an Apple car would have been.
Given the number of people on HN with iPhones and Teslas I guess I might be running counter to hacker culture. I don't know. But I'm thinking I might not be the only person around thinking this way about technology these days.
So it costs between 3,167kg and 21,112kg of additional CO2 to build a 150kWh EV than it does to build a gas car. At .35kg of CO2 per mile to drive a gas car and .2kg of CO2 per mile to drive an EV, it takes between 21,113 miles and 140,746 miles of driving before your typical gas car pollutes less than a 150kWh EV.
Splitting that range down the middle, if both a 150kWh EV and a typical gas car both don't make it to about 81,000 miles before they become scrap metal one way or another, then a EV will have ended up polluting more than the gas car. By point of reference, my current BEV with a 100kWh battery has only made it to 24k miles in 4 years. It will take maybe 6 more years before it starts being better for the environment than an efficient gas car would have been.
I'd say that if you're going to buy an EV for environmental reasons, you should get one with the smallest battery you can get by with. A LEAF will cross the "better for the environment" threshold much more quickly. A 150kWh battery seems, well, a bit extravagant.
Sources:
- https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-much-co2-emitted-manufac...
- https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/are-electric-vehicles-defini...
Yeah, I get that there can also be a bit of a sunk cost thing along with regret minimization going on too. I think game theory suggests that you should switch routes the instant you hit significant congestion though, because P(congestion on the current route)=1 as soon as you hit it.
One of the biggest weaknesses with TOTP apps I've tried using is that you have to remember to transfer them to a new phone before you get rid of your old phone. I once got locked out of a domain registrar because I set up TOTP on an old phone many years back. That was long gone by the time I wanted to do something with my domain.
TOTP is fine, but always give me recovery codes I can print and out and keep with my other important documents. Too many services don't do that.
You can also install Organic Maps on your phone.
This might explain a huge random traffic jam I hit in the middle of my town this morning.
I had no idea any kind of an outage was happening because I've intentionally scaled back my dependence on my phone. I always used to automatically pull up Google Maps to navigate no matter how short the trip. At some point I realized I was losing my ability to travel without being completely dependent on some company tracking my location and telling me what to do, so as part of my phone de-Googlification I switched to Organic Maps. And even then I try to navigate on my own without any GPS assistance as often as possible. I feel like navigating is a skill you can actually lose if you don't practice doing it.
After running an errand across town this morning, I decided to try getting back home via the biggest arterial through the city that I know about, and I immediately hit a huge westbound backup stretching at least a mile. It was a total standstill. I peeked ahead trying to see if there was some kind of accident or something and didn't see anything. Everyone was just sitting in this traffic jam, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why.
I immediately flipped a u-turn and went 3/4 of a mile north to another westbound road I knew about. That one was completely clear of any traffic at all, and I was able to drive the speed limit all the way back.
The most-used navigation apps I know of suggest alternate routes when there's congestion, so why were all those people just sitting there in that jam while a parallel road less than a mile away was clear? Maybe it was this cascading effect of too many people conditioned into being told what to do by their phones while their phones couldn't tell them to take the other route.
I never said I didn't want updates. What I said is that I want to understand what the updates are and then choose to upgrade or downgrade when and how I see fit. Or better yet make the updates OSS and then let me do my own builds with the features and functionality I prefer as they are developed.
One thing that is right is that a Rivian is not for me, for a lot of additional reasons.
For example:
apt-listchanges: Changelogs
---------------------------
bind9 (1:9.16.48-1) bullseye-security; urgency=high
* New upstream version 9.16.48
- CVE-2023-4408: Parsing large DNS messages may cause excessive CPU
load
- CVE-2023-5517: Querying RFC 1918 reverse zones may cause an assertion
failure when "nxdomain-redirect" is enabled
glibc (2.31-13+deb11u8) bullseye; urgency=medium
* debian/patches/any/local-qsort-memory-corruption.patch: Fix a memory
corruption in qsort() when using nontransitive comparison functions.
imagemagick (8:6.9.11.60+dfsg-1.3+deb11u2) bullseye; urgency=medium
* Fix CVE-2021-3574: memory leak was found in TIFF coder
* Fix CVE-2021-4219: a special crafted file could lead to a DOS.
* Fix CVE-2021-20241 / CVE-2021-20243: divide by zero in
some coders (Closes: #1013282)
For the install I would rather download a signed image onto a USB drive and flash from that versus letting my car communicate with the mothership indiscriminately. I also want to downgrade at any time with a previous known-good image when there's something about the update that I don't like. For example, if it sends my car's console unit into a bootloop.