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toby-

304 karma · joined April 2, 2019

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toby-··on Half of Black High School Students in the Bay Area Can Barely Read
frfr ong

(Anecdotally, almost everyone I know who texts like this is very well educated and absolutely capable of writing in full, grammatical sentences — they just choose not to in these situations.)

toby-··on Half of Black High School Students in the Bay Area Can Barely Read
Unless you're texting friends who, themselves, can barely read and write...

Plus, texting has always featured slang, abbreviations, lack of punctuation, shortened spelling, etc. Not the best to learn from, perhaps.

toby-··on WiFi Routers Used to Produce 3D Images of Humans
Thank you very much. The PDF link in this article wasn't even working; your link works. Thanks!
toby-··on WiFi Routers Used to Produce 3D Images of Humans
Is there a better source than a random VPN comparison website that exists to promote affiliate links?
toby-··on Why “OpenBSD Mastery: Filesystems” Is Not in Amazon’s Kindle Store
The kind of life that, in 2012, most 'real people' genuinely lived. (A world quite divorced from the average HN user.)
toby-··on Earth Is Spinning Faster Than Usual, Leading to the Shortest Day Ever Recorded
I'm in the UK and could read the article. Sorry, I didn't realise there was a paywall at all.
toby-··on Earth Is Spinning Faster Than Usual, Leading to the Shortest Day Ever Recorded
Ah, really? I'm sorry. It lets me read the full article and I'm unregistered (from the UK).
toby-··on UK telecom EE blocks archive.org
The title sounds rather alarming. In reality, this is one mobile ISP blocking archive.org as part of its parental controls. I can't help but wonder if this is the author's first exposure to ISPs' content blocking?

Still, I'm curious as to the logic (if any) behind targeting archive.org - is it because it allows filters to be bypassed, or was it in error? Or something else?

toby-··on Worldometer – real time world statistics
I also see ads.

To be fair, I seem to recall them having no ads on their Covid pages - but I see ads there now, too.

toby-··on Telegram founder says over 70M new users joined during Facebook outage
Source re 'old accounts'?

I have an account as old as you can get, and had no problems, so I'd be interested in proof of a disproportionate impact on older accounts.

toby-··on YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content
It did use to overwhelmingly recommend videos from channels you were subscribed to. Such videos made up a major portion of your recommendations.

And yes, there is the subscriptions feed, but it only shows new videos from subscribed-to channels; it doesn't function as a 'recommended' list for your subscriptions, which is what I miss and want.

toby-··on YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content
I'm of the same opinion. A user's subscriptions seemingly matter very little nowadays, I've noticed. The focus on recommendations is so heavy I'm very often recommended videos I've already watched, some of them multiple times; very few recommendations are videos (old or new) from channels I'm subscribed to.

I've also noticed that many content creators are now offering email newsletters (such as Tom Scott) and encouraging subscribers to connect outside of YouTube, presumably as a response to this.

toby-··on IMGZ – Paid image sharing
I purchased one based on this exchange alone. I'm an impressionable sod!
toby-··on IMGZ – Paid image sharing
Now to seduce you further into expanding my 2GB/month limit. ;)

Nah, in all seriousness - looks like a good service. Happy to be aboard!

toby-··on IMGZ – Paid image sharing
Oh wow, quick response & fix haha. Thank you! You might've just convinced me to pay for the service. Looks good.
toby-··on IMGZ – Paid image sharing
I was so confused by the absence of a login form, below "Already have an account? No you don't. Try to log in below if you think you do anyway."

Turns out uBlock was hiding the form; possibly one of my 'social' blocklists. Just in case anybody else runs into that problem!

toby-··on Prefer the British Style of Quotation Mark Punctuation over the American
This is true. You can find the 'American style' in the UK occasionally, especially in fiction – it's not exceptionally rare.

But regardless, the styles have come to be known as 'American' and 'British' because they generally are preferred in American and British English respectively, even if it's not absolute: Americans tend to be taught US style, and Brits tend to be taught British style.

toby-··on ImageNet contains naturally occurring Apple NeuralHash collisions
Examples of on-device scanning via PhotoDNA?
toby-··on Few people know that Google voluntarily removes some search results
If people don't know about this, they haven't been paying attention. I find the idea that 'even experts' (haha) don't know about this rather hilarious.
toby-··on No, Cellebrite Cannot “Break Signal Encryption”
And the original blog post by Cellebrite does claim to have 'cracked' the encryption, doesn't it? So the BBC's headline isn't exactly inaccurate.
toby-··on Germany's State Distance-Learning University
I studied with the OU too, though only a Diploma of Higher Education (equivalent of 2/3rds of a Bachelor's; I think Americans would call it an 'Associate's Degree'?).

I found the material of good quality, and the tutorials/lectures I attended were fantastic. I did, admittedly, feel that the level of support could've been greater, but for a predominantly distance learning education that's par for the course, IMO.

The debt is indeed a bummer! Still, their fees are lower than most other UK universities right now, and my study landed me my current DevOps position, so I'm very happy.

toby-··on Postcard stamped in 1920 delivered 100 years later
Can it not have multiple postmarks? The stamp at the top (which says 1920) and the modern barcode underneath?
toby-··on Twitter to be fined $250M for using 2FA numbers for ads
Aha! I'm an idiot; I thought this referred to social engineering of the person who owns the handset/SIM, not phone company staff.

That makes a lot more sense. Thanks!

toby-··on Twitter to be fined $250M for using 2FA numbers for ads
>(SIM card transfer via social engineering)

How exactly does this happen?

toby-··on You download the app and it doesn’t work
Could somebody please explain this to me? I'm uncertain what this website is trying to demonstrate?

Apps asking for signup first?

I feel out of the loop. Apologies.

toby-··on Do not Draw a Penis
>my fursona

The Internet was a mistake.

:p But yeah, I agree the prompts are irritating. I was confused as to the 'objective', to be honest.

toby-··on United Kingdom to introduce security labelling on connected devices
It's a start of sorts; I seriously hope it develops into a wider set of reasonable policies and practices. The UK gov't does a lot right when it comes to IT and security, but it also gets a lot wrong — I'm hoping this develops sensibly.
toby-··on How to Exit Vim
>Zee-zee

Only if you're American. Otherwise: "zed-zed". :)

toby-··on Gov.uk content should be published in HTML and not PDF (2018)
Yeah -- look into Francis Maude, he's broadly responsible for the current gov't focus on (good) IT practices.
toby-··on Gov.uk content should be published in HTML and not PDF (2018)
Me too. Focusing on digital services was, and remains, one of the few things the UK government has got right in recent years, IMHO - and excelled at.
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