On a related note the whole notion extremely prevalent in the UK that all they have to do is decide they want to rejoin and it will happen. No matter which side of that a commentator is on, they almost never mention that they need to present something the EU27 actually want and convince them that the UK is not the ‘break international agreements’ kind of country any more. Overall the British still all seem to think that they are something better than everyone else and others have to do what they want and have no real agency.
The thing I loved about that lie is even as a 20 something who’d never been to that hemisphere I knew it was a lie because weren’t these the people trying to kill the NHS
The idea that they could leave and somehow get better trade deals, especially with European countries. The EU is the deal! It’s a trade agreement that favors the participants, how could they ever get a better deal?? What’s baffling is that a lot of older people voted for it and they can actually remember when the UK joined the EU. That means they realize that the UK joined for the deal but somehow that’s worth nothing.
I think the critical mass for contributions to useabilify is soon, but not quite yet. I was using mint for over a year, but recently changed to popOS. I was surprised that my sister actually wanted me to get rid of windows off her new Asus vivobook… if I had known how many hairs I will have pulled trying to get WiFi working… I probably wouldnt have, and I can only he thankful she didn’t get too bad an impression, she’s seeming to like it now. If I had let being a noob get in my way of trying however, I wouldnt be nearly as satisfied with my workflow and desktop, and its let me dive further into selfhosting than I feel I wouldve on windows. I cant stand to be a Linux evangelist, but also I would love for adoption to increase, as users and contributors make for a fuller experience, Valve getting on the deck and proton is what let me really switch, but it will have holes until developers also change
Had this Bluetooth / wifi problem with manjaro, and killed it twice by trying to get it Working After that I installed openSuse, and everything just worked out of box ☺️ i love openSuse now
Ill take a look sometime, hows the customization as far as the window manager and being able to get nice tiling go? Thats what got me onto pop, I was expecting a learning curve to the keybinds but I havent had to switch them
If you choose GNOME, you can use the gnome extension to customize the behavior of the window manger quite easy with an intuitive designed web based extension manager ( e.g. extensions.gnome.org/extension/1286/tilingnome/ ) Without extensions, you can tile windows, like you do on windows. And use multiple desktops like you do in macOS.
On KDE (a more windows style UI environment) you can install extensions as well, but it seems like those have to be installed through your distro‘s package manager. I use gnome, so I don’t really know this.
No, not really. Distros like Ubuntu work pretty much out of the box. Dead simple to install, and easy enough to use that anyone should be able to handle it.
It’s only tricky and confusing if you try to do more advanced things.
The reason that an average pirate, let alone an average user does not have enough time to keep investigating shit that breaks down frequently.
At some point everyone feels that the time you spend on setting up and getting things to work is better utilised in using a more standardized solution that doesn’t need investigating.
This is an overstatement. I’m by no means a windows fan boy but 20% of the internet is hosted on windows server. Maybe this will change with aspnet core being multiplatform and all but MSSQL is still going strong as well. Not any time soon is my guesstimate.
by “most of the internet” I mean a HUGE majority of the websites you interact with being hosted on servers that run, you guessed it, Linux. Additionally, your WiFi router probably runs linux, almost any non-iPhone runs Linux, IOT devices (say, security cameras) usually run Linux, and Linux is even on Mars.
The person you are replying to is 1000% right. Not so long ago your wanted to play flash files i.e. entirety of YouTube on Linux , you had do this and that and what not… I stopped using Linux even the noob friendliest ones after that one. The ones that are used in “running” internet are specifically made for that purpose only and they are not general purpose ones. So they are more robust than your “working out of the box” Linux versions.
Linux is hard and ABSOLUTE SHIT for a n person who wants things to just work., I mean can you search on Firefox a software like Irfan view or sony Vegas and install it and be fine in 10 minutes max? Nope … You find a relative similar software then you install it via package manager, and you think you are fine but as you run it it throws some error, do you go search for it . Turns out you need xyz dependency for it , then you search how to install dependency , all the forums tells you via terminal it’s just one command. So you try to do that but you forget/a or-s somewhere and …
Linux doesn’t work for general purpose easily. It’s good one for specific purpose. That’s what my personal experience been…
The last time that YouTube used Flash Player, was in 2015. That is about 8 years ago, nearly a decade. I’ve installed Linux Mint on devices by relatives and they have not really had any major issues since, the first instance of that was 2 years ago.
Since 2015, which seems to me was the last time you tried a Linux Distribution, things have changed dramatically. About 5 years ago, Valve released their first version of Proton - a compatibility layer for windows programs based on Wine, DXVK and other tooling - that has been able to run tons of programs up to this point and has only been improving. In the games department alone about 87% of the top 1000 games have been marked as playable by the community. In terms of other software there’s been a massive shift from trying to run Windows Software to instead looking for alternatives and/or programs which fill your needs, as you should when switching operating systems. After all, when someone switches to macOS from Windows or vice versa, they wouldn’t expect to have the same Windows-Only software, or macOS-Only software.
Last year, the Steam Deck released, which ships with a full, user-facing version of Linux developed in-house by Valve called SteamOS. That marked the moment where another, decently sized development team working on various different aspects of the Linux desktop stack was being paid to continue developing to ensure a better experience, and Valve is known for upstreaming their fixes and changes where possible, contributing back to the experience for the benefit of everyone.
I don’t know when you’ve last tried Linux on the desktop, but in case it really hasn’t been since 2015 I encourage you to give it another try. Things have changed, and whilst - like any software - the experience still isn’t perfect, it has come a long way from the experience you’re describing, even when comparing it to a shorter timespan like from 2019 to now.
Just today in piracy forums, there is person asking for how to play Minecraft on SO EASY LINUX. Just read the comments to know HOW EASY LINUX is to a beloved game available everywhere.
If your linux setups are breaking this often you have a fundamental misunderstanding of something within your operating system. They really don’t break frequently.
Yeah sure, and I don’t want to spend valuable time and resources into understanding a new operating system when I can easily get my work done in windows.
Then why comment at all? You’re obviously biased towards Windows and refuse to learn Linux. Strange you would blame an OS for your refusal to learn how to properly use it.
Bruh all I said was that there is a good reason why people stick to windows. If you want to use Linux, good for you but there is a genuinely good reason for not to switch.
Your “good” reason was no reason at all. Linux just doesn’t break like that anymore. So either argue in good faith or stop spreading misinformation. Everything has an installer now, you don’t have to do much yourself as an “average user”.
I can count on one hand the amount of times I’ve broken either of my Ubuntu desktops. And I’d say 80% of the time, it was my fault. For everything else, there is BTRFS and TimeShift .
No matter how good Proton gets, native will still be better. Also, trying to find support on running pirated games on Linux will get you kicked out of most forums.
No matter how good Proton gets, native will still be better.
If Proton sucks for a game, try a different Proton version (maybe even Proton GE), if it still sucks, try a KVM with PCI passthrough. If you don’t wanna do that shit, dual boot.
Also, trying to find support on running pirated games on Linux will get you kicked out of most forums.
Fuck these tankies man. I’m as leftist as they come and I HATE what these people are doing to the cause. We want healthcare and equal rights, and these loonies are dragging us all down with their fascination for those horrible fascist regimes (it takes 2 braincells to realize the CCP is 1984 incarnate).
Yeah, he was basically warning Socialists off getting in bed with Stalinists and similar regimes just because their causes appeared to align. The cure must not be worse than the disease.
i would argue that he saw the soviets as the bigger threat at the time, considering the Nazis got beat a few years beforehand and a lot of the left in the west were fanboying the Soviet Union at the time (1947-1948)
You are missing the point of the book IMO. The threat is not necessarily external.
It was pretty easy to see totalitarianism as a dangerous global trend at the time, since it was in Germany, Italy, Spain, Soviet Union, China, Eastern Europe. Apart from Eastern Europe, these countries all “chose” it for themselves.
I never said anything about the threat coming from the soviets, after all it was never about Russia invading the UK, but rather he modelled the dystopian government based on the inner workings of the Soviet Union, because he witnessed it during his time in Spain before the Stalin aligned republic and the anarchist split.
No. For one SU did not have oligarchs. Also SU had really good(for its time) healthcare and education, while Putin’s mafia closed or defunded few orders of magnitude more hospitals and clinics, than opened, many schools work in 2 shifts, some even 3. UR has party in it’s name, but it lacks ideology. “Steal money here, spend it in the West, luxury for members, misery and poverty for everyone else” hardly counts as one, it is literally description of mafia.
For one SU did not have oligarchs. where did the Oligarchs come from? the first wave of oligarchs came from the Russian political elite, basically claiming what was “theirs” during the communist government, now sure, most subsequent Oligarchs came about because Yeltsin and later Putin wanted to strengthen their own supporter base among the oligarchs, but all we are seeing here is what used to happen totally inside the government (because the government was the primary economic power) is now happening in a hybrid approach of government+“market”.
I’m at the same time horrified and fascinated by them. I saw a comment that accused NATO of causing he war to “drag on”. When I brought up that Russia could just leave, I got people unironically replying that Ukraine was the aggressor in the war and that it was Ukraine committing genocide and attacks on civilians. I understand that I could be trapped in a western bubble… but really? I didn’t bother asking for a source because I’m sure the only source for that misinformation is the Kremlin. What’s crazy is that you would think the Russian shills would be spread out trying to infect other communities with disinformation, instead they all flock to this echo chamber apparently, so it seems likely that they genuinely believe this stuff.
They know it’s bullshit. The United States in this instance is doing the largely correct thing. However historically that hasn’t always been the case. Were usually the ones attacking and destabilizing other countries. South America, Hawaii, the middle east, Korea, Vietnam and on and on. Anyone that opposed US homogene as pushed by wealthy oligarchic fascist throughout American history. Has historically met and unfortunate end.
Realistically in this instance Russia is much closer to what the United States has been historically. Than they are any Ally of leninist regimes. But to leninists. They are the enemy of their enemy and an ally of convenience. Because overall outside of World War II etc. The United States has been the biggest constant enemy to much the rest of the world.
You ironically have a post saying that Muslims are culturally terrorists and all Muslims need to fall in line with French cultural authoritarianism. Totally not tankie behavior, just regular normal, “leftist as they come” behavior, right?
You sound like another run of the mill racist, bigoted liberal who wants to smear the leftist label by LARP’ing as one for the sole purpose of attacking leftists.
this thread is just you stalking people and copying their comments. can you do me? maybe the one where i enjoy watching mobiks getting blown up in drone videos, that seemed to upset a few tankies
I’m a progressive who thought I was moderate for the longest time because tankie rhetoric on the left. I fully recognize now though that the tankies are a laughable minority. They’re just a bunch of loud people on the Internet.
Trackpads and touchscreens get the phone way of scrolling.
These feel like you are interacting with a piece of paper, so you move the paper around.
Mousewheels get the traditional way of scrolling.
Mice are more like controlling something.
It just is. Like F1-F12 keys are always F1-F12 keys, not the alt-function (like media/brightness etc).
I hate that Apple has called it “natural” Vs “reverse” in some psychological reconfiguring that you are going against the grain if you don’t agree with them (as opposed to them changing the established standard).
Yes, the correct answer is that “net zero” Is a greenwashed lie to placate the masses into inaction while the oligarchy continues business as usual until collapse.
I thought net zero meant there was no net co2 being emitted at any time? This is saying countries can claim net zero by just promising to remove co2 in the future. I’ve never seen it used that way, is that the common understanding?
The way people get to net zero is stupid accounting tricks. I burned a whole bunch of coal, but i paid a buddy of mine to plant trees. So now Im celebrating net zero with my buddy in his brand new tesla roadster. Who knew planting trees was so lucrative.
So we need good regulation to make sure the carbon is being sequestered. If planting trees and then burying them actually gets carbon permanently out of the atmosphere, I’m all for it. I would love planting trees to be lucrative, we could use more forests, they’re great!
Oh I just remembered, someone who worked at an arboretum who I met a while ago mentioned that trees actually diffuse carbon dioxide directly into the soil. I think he said it was about one third of the weight of the tree? That amount would still be sequestered even if the tree wasn’t buried. But I don’t know how stable that is over the long term.
For offsets to work, they’d need to be based on the actual science of how much carbon they trap over what period of time. Different methods would need to have offset values published by the government. But I agree, offsets with algie or similar look much more feasible than trees.
It’s actually worse than that they are paying people to not cut down trees. It’s the same logic when my GF says she saved $200 because the dress was half price.
It’s a lie because several of the dependent solutions are essentially impossible to achieve (given time, technology, resources, investment, economics, etc), as well as being the bare minimum necessary to avert disaster, with a deadline decades after it’s required to avert disaster.
I’ve defended lemmy.ml in the past when people have blamed the entire instance for the actions of a solitary, overzealous moderator, but this genuinely concerns me:
I would imagine that if an admin is doing this the modlog could simply be faked, you wouldn't be able to trust anything that the instance is reporting to the outside world.
Perfectly reasonable to ban someone from completely unrelated communities like mechanical keyboard and arch Linux? Come on. It’s not like they’re throwing out toxic terms or criticizing on a personal level. They’re questioning the way things are being modded. Those aren’t even attacks.
I can’t see those, specifically, but a similar pattern of mass community bans after even remotely criticizing an authoritarian regime is completely on brand for Dessalines.
I don’t have record of the comment that triggered these, but when it’s something like civility, it’s usually just a comment removal and maybe a single community ban.
Really stupid. Dont forget the Che hated homosexuals as well and he wrote a letter to one of his family members saying he found a meaning for his life “Killing people”
This is actually more evidence that the Lemmy devs run a modified version of the code which gives them the ability to, eg do things like dole out mass community bans. There is also some evidence that they selectively federate the mod log as well. It all points to the obvious conclusion that these people can and will abuse their power in any way they can.
Yes, an admin probably has access to community level moderation rights and the lemmy API is not difficult to figure out.
It would be trivial to come up with a script to go through the community page, get all the current communities and iterate through them banning a user in each of them.
Gonna put this out there. Ended up in a thread on ML the other day. The poster/admin got a little unhinged, over 4 down votes. 4. Took to the admin panel to see who dared down vote him. Convinced he had been the victim of the tiniest not swarm ever.
You gotta admit, it’s very suspicious to be massively downvoted (25, not 4) over an inconspicuous comment that merely highlights a few paragraphs of the linked article.
I know I would also be wondering if there was a pattern in the origin of those downvotes.
Tbh, also harass a mod. People get quite worked out when being moderated, and being a mod is enough work without people chasing you to argue with you or straight up harass you, I suppose. At least, I can see plenty of good reasons to hide the moderator name.
If they act on a post or comment, there’s no way to ask why or see what their actual reasoning was. So it allows blanket censorship without a paper trail.
It does, but it’s an online forum, not an essential service, and easy to replace. On the other hand, being there with your name or nickname exposes you to harassment from those pissed at you for your decision.
I would say it’s an acceptable evil given the circumstances.
As a side note: asking why after a mod action is almost universally pointless. Moderating is free work and a level of subjectivity is implied. I think not having the ability to argue is infuriating but understandable.
My experience with them is you can’t even find the modlog if you look when they remove comments. I guess they don’t federate it and/or it only shows if you’re logged in?
Only admins can do site bans. What you’re seeing is a hacky/temporary feature of the upcoming Lemmy v19.4, of which lemmy.ml is running the pre-release: when an admin bans someone from the site (temp or otherwise), it also automatically bans them from any community they have ever participated in. Lemmy.ml has always been the “beta” instance for new releases.
Displaying the price you will pay at the counter is my personal benchmark for civilized society. No price tags? You’re a medieval backwater. Wrong price tags? Go see a shrink, USA. Correct price tags is the way to go.
Would it change your assessment if they have dynamic price tags that you can only see with the aid of some network-connected augmented reality solution or an online catalog (that you access with a QR code you scan, geotagged software, or something along those lines)?
It’s weird here too because states set sales taxes. I live in Oregon, and we don’t have a standard sales tax here. That means what you see is what you pay at the register for most things, and it’s so freaking nice.
About the only thing I regularly see is the bottle tax (0.10/can added at the register). That’s refundable too, at least theoretically, so it’s not that bad.
Yes! As a die hard Grim Dawn fan I can say Last Epoch is awesome. Grim Dawn is still better imho, but Last Epoch comes close. Both are excellent games one could easily put 100+ hours in and have a blast.
I just wish that I could start at a higher difficulty on Grim Dawn with the appropriate scaling. I don’t want to do the campaign 3 times just like old days.
Didn’t they just change the game with the last patch (still being updated, my God the devs are GOATed) so they you can play to 100 in any difficulty? I still imagine you get pasted in elite and ultimate if that’s your issue though.
Path of exile charges for inventory QoL and with the ludicrous amount of different stuff that drops, it’s arguably kind of mandatory if you’re trying to complete seasonal objectives
For PoE you consider 30gb installed (on PS5 mind you) a large file size? Yes it has mtx, but it is not once pushed or advertised to you, and none of it is required for anything. They does improve the QoL of the game however.
CoD + WZ is around 240gb I think. Most modern AAA games are usually 90gb minimum.
Some years ago they pretty much rewrote the entire base game code (or some parts of it) and tidied it up, reducing the overall size. It may be larger installed on PC (I’m on PS5) but I can’t imagine there being too much of a difference.
The MTX for PoE are within the “nice” ones. There’s extra stash tabs, but you don’t need to consider that until after the campaign. And then there’s cosmetics. No pay to win. And the MTX are on your account, so they will be on PoE2 as well.
But don’t you know condoms burst at the sight of my shlong? It has nothing to do with the fact that the sight of naked me dries up a pussy quicker than a fucking hairdryer.
Yeah. OP’s overly complicated explanation doesn’t convey the reason why this happens, which is really kinda just human psychology. People are probably thinking it’s like observability in quantum mechanics or some shit.
Goodhart’s Law Example:
App has poor testing and low quality. New bugs are introduced weekly. Customers complain.
Management sets a test coverage KPI of 90% for the apps codebase.
Dev team focuses on tests that hit as many lines of code as possible; NOT on requirements, business logic, or anything that would improve quality, or prevent bugs.
Quality does not improve because KPI was an arbitrary statistic that holds no value in isolation. Productivity drops because dev team wasted hundreds of hours writing useless tests to achieve KPI. Codebase worse, abd less maintainable. Company wasted millions of dollars. Customers still not happy. Devs hate their lives.
Thanks but I only joined when the companies several dozen codebases were already at step 4, and that example wasn’t even in the top 5 of their worst problems. I completed a small greenfield project to high praise. They wanted me to fix other codebases. I handed them a laundry list of problems (with suggested solutions), told them their problems are due to incompetent management, and left.
Actually this is a pretty common thing in software development. It’s become a bit of a trope. So much so that when management proposed things like KPIs tied to code (which they often do!) the devs are like, “can we get bonuses based on these KPIs? 🤑”
“If they’re such a good measure clearly we should be compensated when we do fantastic job! How about $5k extra for exceeding KPIs!”
“Oh, you don’t have enough trust in the system for that? Then why would you trust it for improving quality? I mean, you’re the one that made them…”
A big part of it seems to be manipulation of the results? So, like, devs writing tests for more parts of the code base, but ones that are written to always pass.
Yes, of course. Fundamentally the end goal is to improve the app’s quality. However “quality” is not a measurable thing. Therefore, someone observed that as test coverage goes up, bugs tend to decrease, and as bugs decrease app quality tends to go up. So they make code coverage a KPI, and start putting pressure on developers to increase it.
The problem is that once people are pressured into optimizing a certain number, they will get very creative at doing so. And this creativity often breaks the measure’s relationship with the actual underlying quality we were trying to improve.
Test coverage is defined as the percentage of your application’s functionality that is being covered by the automated tests.
Usually this is measured in lines of code. You run the automated tests, then for every line of code, you track whether it’s executed or not. If 20% of lines were never executed during the test run, your test coverage is 80%.
Software teams will often aspire to reach high coverage, because lines that are never executed during testing are a good place where bugs can hide. However it’s generally acknowledged that this isn’t a foolproof method to get rid of bugs, and reaching 100% coverage can be more effort than it’s worth. Often you have critical code sections that should be covered by multiple tests, and unimportant sections that are unlikely to fail.
I never heard of this before, but I now know the word to describe exercise problems!
Body builders who are judged by how bulging their muscles are feel like garbage despite supposedly being “peak”.
People with high muscle mass or tall being screwed over by BMI targets.
People who are told weight indicates health ignore everything else in exchange for lowering calories.
Even in high school I remember how they would judge you based on like how many push ups you could do… no one who did a ton did proper push ups. Which led to them not helping at all as actual exercise, and even possibly leading to injury.
Heck, we can even use this for stupid Dog Shows, where because they measure specific things for the “goodness” of the dog, they screw over the dog in every way imaginable that isn’t being judged.
This is a good law to know. I like knowing this law. It’s sad how often it’s used, but it’s good to know.
Body builders who are judged by how bulging their muscles are feel like garbage despite supposedly being “peak”.
Plenty of good examples listed in your post, but I disagree with the bodybuilding one. The point isn’t to make you feel good. It’s to play this game where you compete against others to best accomplish a specific task. Just like any other sport, when you compete at the elite level, it’s never going to feel good, and it’s never going to be good for your health.
Hmm okay I just am not a fan of sports that destroy people’s bodies.
“Cut” diets that focus on looking great by not eating/drinking water before showing off just sound awful and not a fan of them. But you’re right, it’s not much worse than any other sport which damages athlete’s body.
Ok I’m going to answer my own question because I’m too curious to wait lol
Goodhart’s Law states that “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” In other words, when we use a measure to reward performance, we provide an incentive to manipulate the measure in order to receive the reward. This can sometimes result in actions that actually reduce the effectiveness of the measured system while paradoxically improving the measurement of system performance. … The manipulation of measures resulting from Goodhart’s Law is pervasive because direct measures of effectiveness (MOEs), which are more difficult to manipulate, are also more difficult to measure, and sometimes simply impossible to define and quantify. As a result, analysts must often settle for measures of performance (MOPs) that correlate to the desired effect of the MOE. … These negative effects can sometimes be avoided. When they cannot, they can be identified, mitigated, and even reversed.
Use MOEs instead of MOPs whenever practicable and possible
Use the scientific method to generate new measurement data, rather than harvesting existing and possibly compromised data
Help customers establish authoritative and difficult-to-manipulate definitions for measures
Identify and avoid the use of manipulated data and data prone to manipulation
Use measurement data not generated by the organization being measured
Collect data secretly or after a measurable activity has already occurred
Measure all relevant system characteristics rather than just a representative few
Randomize the measures used over time
Wargame or red team potential measures
This report recommends that the organizations that employ analysts should do the following:
Return to the roots of operational research to focus more on direct measurements in the field
Answer the questions that should be answered, rather than the questions that can be answered simply because the required data are already available
Train analysts on MOEs, MOPs, and Goodhart’s Law and how they are interrelated
Make recognition of Goodhart’s Law part of the internal peer review process and part of all delivered analytical products
It’s pretty well established academically that basically the only way KPIs can actually work toward their intended purpose is if they are changed often and determined by the people doing the work that is ultimately measured. Ongoing measurements should only ever be used as indicators - hence the term *key performance indicators_ - and should never be used as targets. What that means in practice is that you should generally ignore all the individual metrics, and look across all of them instead to see if you can spot trends and anomalies, then investigate these qualitatively with the workers who ultimately produce those data to figure out what is happening and if any intervention is necessary.
The problem is that the higher up you get in the hierarchy, the less of that kind of work there is to do and you end up chasing the people below you for nice numbers to plot into your presentations to make it look like there’s a point to your job’s existence.
“Our customers hate us. We will make our employees get a 10 on their surveys for each customer or we’ll punish them” makes the measure a target.
“Our customers hate us, so we’re going to change our shitty policies to be more consumer friendly and see how our customers respond” keeps the measure as a measure.
So the difference is who decides what changes to make when interacting with the subject of the measure: workers vs management. Making the measure a target is basically a shitty management technique that abdicates responsibility.
Thanks, yes, I saw that one, too, but I liked the emphasis on relationships. The shorter version is easier to get but it does not explain why this happens. E.g., you can observe some relationship (e.g., test results and a student’s intelligence) and then you target grades. But then you have an incentive to teach to the test, which breaks down the relationship between test results and intelligence. Other people here gave great examples of relationships that can fail.
Imagine an antivirus program that looks at a piece of code and outputs either “Yes, this is malware” or “No, this is not malware.” It is not perfect, but it is pretty good.
If the malware authors have access to this program, they can test their malware with it. They can keep modifying their malware until it passes the antivirus program.
Once the antivirus people publish a function AV(code)→boolean, the malware people can use that function to make malware that the function mistakes for non-malware.
If you publish the exact metric that you promise to use to make a decision, then people who want to control your decision can use that metric to test their methods of manipulating you.
That’s what’s happening with Google and Instagram search algorithms. People figure out how to manipulate them and start spamming. Then the search results deteriorate and you have to modify the algorithm.
Partly, yeah. But eventually the fake news people write a narrative that looks prosodically identical to real news; a bot can’t tell it me isn’t because the bot doesn’t interact with the real world, only with text on the web.
Ultimately, fact-checkers and anti-spam systems have to touch grass too.
I am learning lockpicking for fun. It helps me relax. I used a practice lock at first, then a cheap real lock. I’ve just learned that my firearms lock…yup, can be picked open in about 10 seconds. Equal parts cool and terrifying. Locks are waaay less secure than people think.
It has the same “internet hacker” stigma so I avoid talking about it.
So got a question for you. I have wanted to get in to this - just as a curiosity. Is there an inexpensive set of picks a person can buy to get started with to play around with?
I tried googling and ran across about a hundred different suggestions and Amazon was the usual (no help).
I’m not getting any sort of kickbacks from the link. I picked one of these bundles up and I like it. The lock it comes with is super handy because it’s designed to be re-pinned. You can change the pins without disassembling the entire lock.
I’ve had this small 5 piece set in my backpack since before instructions for anything could be easily found on the internet. It had to have been $10 or less.
I miss lockpicking, it’s so cathartic. I used to have a small set of picks and folks near my desk at the office would often try to pop a padlock I kept around when we were bored. I liked how everyone seemed so interested in the ease with which you can pop many locks.
This right here is why electronic locks could be way more secure than mechanical ones, if only their manufacturers would hire well-trained programmers and not boot camp graduates to write the firmware.
I got into it a bit during COVID and practiced a bit on a practice lock that I could repin myself. After being able to regularly open it without too much trouble, I decided to try my front door lock - thinking it would be a much harder challenge since it was a real lock.
Nope. Shit popped open almost instantly. It blew my mind! After watching Lock Picking Lawyer, I figured that a skilled attacker could get into most locks eventually, but I didn’t realize that most house locks require virtually no skill to open. And it’s literally easier (and significantly less attention grabbing) than breaking a window!
Sorry police officer, but the door was open ajar so hrem I just wanted to check if everything was alright you see?
Had a guy just being mind blown for the whole evening lock picking my way into my apartment, and then open some lock he had on his luggage (all very basic).
Saw him a year later when I had forgot about it and he still was startled about the evening 😁😅
Lol that just reminded me of something only vaguely related. Back in the day I used to play a lot of World of Warcraft with a friend. One day in the middle of a gaming session, he went “HOLY SHIT! There’s a naked guy sleeping on my couch!”
A couple things to note:
His couch and his gaming setup were both in his living room, barely 3 feet apart.
We had been playing for at least 2 hours at this point.
My friend woke naked guy up, who was very drunk and confused. Apparently my friend kept his apartment door unlocked and naked guy stumbled in at some point, thinking it was his apartment, stripped down, and then passed out on the couch. Still don’t know how long he was there for, but probably several hours before my friend noticed
So yeah, lock your doors people. They might not keep out a thief, but at least you won’t have a random naked dude pass out on your furniture.
I love lockpicking! It’s got a really nice tactile click when the lock opens. Too bad there’s not a lot of locks to practice on (legally, anyways)
And yeah, I agree - locks are really more of a psychological hindrance rather than an actual hindrance. Although, for what it’s worth, I don’t know of that many people who can lockpick, so in that sense, a lock at least decreases the number of people who can get through
That’s forbidden knowledge among the mechanics in my union local, lol. One of the shop mechanics at my training center was teaching some of my peers how to pick locks when we had completed our training and were just killing time helping the shop guys out. Had some downtime and he brought out a couple sets and some locks.
Apparently it’s sort of an unspoken tool of the mechanic trade when you work around machinery like that. Never know what you’ll have to get access to and you never know if anyone will have the right key. You’d think the ignition key would suffice to open, say, an access panel or storage cabinet, but some of these machines use a different key entirely for such a thing.
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