Dark_Arc

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

I wonder if you had a time machine and went to McConnell day 1 as a senator and showed him that video of his future, what his reaction would be.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-jerusalem-post/

This seems to be a legit paper.

Following the anchor’s comments, footage from an Al-Jazeera interview was played which showed a woman in the enclave complaining that “the aid isn’t reaching all the people” because the aid “is all to their [own] homes. Let Hamas catch me and shoot me and do what they want to me.”

Palestinian civilians complained to the IDF that Hamas stole aid, The Jerusalem Post reported in January, alongside recordings of civilian testimonies.

In one recorded call, a Gazan civilian testified that Hamas murdered his cousin because he tried to seek help from UNRWA. In another conversation, a civilian said he does not leave his home because he fears Hamas will seize it and use the property to fire toward Israel and destroy his house.

I want Israel to stop killing civilians as much as the next guy … but can we acknowledge Hamas is not “the good guys” here either?

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

The ONLY time I think this is even remotely appropriate is if the parents are grossly negligent … like those ones that were convinced because they bought their kid with all kinds of issues a gun and didn’t take like any measures to ensure he only had supervised access … and then he went and shot a school up with the gun they bought him.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

Regarding that last one, my last job actually happened because I was made an offer during the first interview

Probably better stated as a red flag not necessarily “they’re not real.” Usually the folks at the company will want at least a little bit of time to think over the interview and discuss.

It’s almost as if technical interviews are extremely important in vetting applicants

It depends, good references and prior work can top “technical interviews” in my book. If someone’s done something interesting a conversation about that interesting thing is often far more useful.

Technical interviews are more important when you’re looking at people fresh out of college or a code bootcamp.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

As a colorblind person … this is a teachable moment for what we go through with all kinds of charts and video games lol

(and yes, it’s this bad, and yes it happens A LOT)

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

I might be the only one that’s kind of optimistic this will improve some of the cheapest call centers.

Some of them … the people have such thick accents, don’t get any local references, the connection is bad, don’t know the first thing about the subject matter, etc.

I called my health insurance company one time because CVS said my vaccine wasn’t covered there; the lady on the other end of the phone I could barely understand and I had to explain to her that CVS is a pharmacy. She still didn’t give me any helpful information. Eventually via poking around the website or something like that, I found out my insurance company doesn’t cover pharmacist administered vaccines … which is just insane to me.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

You are literally extracting the political token of why universal basic income is helpful, and then claiming that it’s “not political”…?

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

I was expecting it to be at least a little subtle. I don’t know how the heck you tape an iPhone to the seat and don’t have the next person to enter the bathroom go “what the heck?”

Evidently he got away with this before though…?! I’m just so confused.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

I’m actually thinking more Michael Hall in Dexter.

resizing.flixster.com/…/p7892396_b_v8_ab.jpg

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

Yeah, honestly … this is just brain dead.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

m.youtube.com/watch?v=wh2spkbaARA

Just … jump to some random parts of that video. Or this…

m.youtube.com/watch?v=3WPNj3IuOOE

Or even this…

m.youtube.com/watch?v=863aE25HQ5M

It’s because plenty of people in the general public lie, take advantage, abuse any angle they can.

I don’t agree with officers delaying CPR and pulse checks, they absolutely should be looking for genuine signs of distress or injury… But, I get why their faith in humanity is trashed to the point they don’t actually expect to find anything.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

They really don’t. My cousin married a cop, my brother is a volunteer fire fighter that regularly has to interact with them, a good friend of mine is an ex-cop turned IT guy, the guy who lives across the street from me is a cop, I’ve also had interactions with random officers at coffee shops here in Akron and at a few events.

My hot take is most of them would rather live and let live unless you’re doing something monumentally stupid or they get a call.

And yeah, I’ve also met some douchebags on power trips, but “ACAB” is a failed and ridiculously confrontational movement. You’re never going to get anywhere near the reforms we need to see in policing with the ACAB or “fuck the police” mentality.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

I hate lynch mobs. ACAB and “fuck the police” are lynch mobs based on broad generalizations.

There is scientific data and statistics to show that black people and others are disproportionately targeted by the police. It’s immediately obvious the police unions protects their own including some folks they likely shouldn’t.

These are problems we should strive to understand and fix.

There is not scientific data showing that all cops (or even more than a minority of cops) are bullies out to treat everyone as a suspect or fetishize their next opportunity to beat the crap out of someone. That is an opinion and one that immediately shuts down any hope of a reasonable discussion about how two parties might move forward. Show me one scientific study where someone went “you’re a bastard and you can go fuck yourself” and then got a constructive response… It doesn’t exist, because people do not like being put into groups and told what their own individual opinions must be.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

I can get behind attacking the police unions and demanding they be reformed (particularly the ones that have a history of protecting abuse of power and excessive force serial offenders). That is more constructive but less catchy (as constructive points usually are).

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

Look at your behavior. There’s nothing constructive here. There’s no constructive talk about reforms. There’s no proposal for what to do better. There’s no new take or new information. There’s literally nothing of value.

It’s just “police bad” and I’m not here for it. I’m talking about lynch mobs because the ACAB crowd is not contributing anything more than a lynch mob would.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

I’d like you and everyone else to stop name calling and start voting. That’s what I’d like.

Here’s the problem, I agree with you on the actual policy you just said you’d like change and I’m pissed off by the name calling. How do you think someone that disagrees with you is going to feel?

Ya’ll aren’t winning anyone over running around generalizing a population of nearly a million police officers as “bastards.” (EDIT: in this case “cowards and bullies”). It’s detrimental to the cause and serious discussions and it’s childish.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

I don’t have time for this nonsense.

I responded to a guy that said police are cowards and bullies because I don’t like generalizations and lynch mobs. Your response was “I agree with the other guy, police are cowards and bullies in my experience.” That’s not constructive, it’s more of your own bias and it’s contributing to the name calling. If you’ve got something constructive to say, go for it. If you don’t, don’t.

Clearly you don’t get that or you don’t actually care.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

And if you’re hiding from a nation state … don’t trust that, smash it to bits and dispose of them at different trash collection locations 🙂

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

Presumably there’s a risk of damaging the microwave?

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

That’s better for prevention than after the fact for the wear leveling reasons others have mentioned.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

I think Elon might just do that based on what I’ve been reading.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/…/677806/

It’s less about communism and more about authoritarianism. Even historically, communism was (IMO) just the trigger word associated with a slide into authoritarianism … which is what seemingly happened in countries that had a communist uprising to overthrow the government and broader “owning class.”

China seemed like they were on course to be a friendly communist country at one point, but they’ve slid back into authoritarianism under Xi.

I fully expect more hostility towards Chinese exports. Part of the reason for that is going to be that China is happy to use government money to subsidize certain industries to help gain dominance (Sherrod Brown - D Ohio) was recently speaking out about the risk Chinese subsidized EVs pose to the US auto industry domestically and internationally.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

A part of me genuinely would like to see communism work.

Another part of my looks at the past century and sees the same pattern of well meaning revolution to communism, that results in a corrupt government that owns and controls everything.

I don’t think the Russian people that got the ball rolling for the USSR were stupid or evil, but I also don’t think it worked out like they wanted… and I think that’s true of every other case of communism that’s been tried in practice.

Part of the problem is without ownership, you don’t own the situation. Which house is taken better care of, the one that’s rented or the one that’s owned?

Another social mind game, are you better off getting into an accident with 1 person around to call for help or 20? It’s been shown that when people can put off responsibility/assume someone else is going to “own” the situation, they do.

I think capitalism with regulation to keep money out of politics, mixed with more social programs (particularly socializing the insurance industry) makes the most sense.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

I agree with your last paragraph in particular, I think if we ever want to have a hope of capitalism, communism, or socialism it starts with teaching people “the cheapest option isn’t the best.”

I am fortunate to have a well paying job. I do not buy cheap third world or authoritarian made products unless I absolutely have to. I go out of my way to find products made in democracies that have stronger labor and environmental laws. A recent example, I could’ve gotten cheap placemats for my table or a cheap table off of Amazon or at a department store.

Instead, I paid local Amish carpenters to build me a table and bought placemats from a company in Indiana. I also encourage anyone and everyone who has the means to do the same. Try and look at the product beyond “what it does” and “what it costs you.” If nobody was willing to buy an iPhone made with slave labor, the gears at Apple would turn very very quickly.

Edit: And yes, it’s awful how we’ve treated our neighbors to the south.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

I think these are image based static ads, not video ads

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

The mad part is based on a comparison of my grandpa’s cable and unpaid YouTube, unpaid YouTube is still less loaded up with ads.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

I pay for it. It gets rid of the ads when I need a video of how to do XYZ thing. It lets me watch channels that I care about without interruptions. The main thing for me though is when a friend or family member sends me a YouTube video, I don’t have to watch ads.

It’s weird to me that folks are so hostile towards paying for things they use on the Internet. I mean, I get that venture capital fueled a seemingly endless “free lunch” of new services with small amounts of advertising… but it had to end at some point. It costs a lot of money to run a “YouTube.”

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

There are plenty of other platforms where you can express whatever speech you want however you want. These Chinese authors are not prevented from presenting their opinion.

The Chinese government is however prevented from controlling what information gets broadcasts in the US. That’s why this ban comes with an “or sell” option. They don’t object to the platform, its users, or its content, they object to CCP control over how the platform prioritizes content within the United States. There is no way to protect from political influence of a foreign government while that government has its hands all over the platform without outright policing speech.

This is not new, it’s an update to existing restrictions on foreign countries broadcasting to US citizens. Laws of this nature have been on the books for decades, they just haven’t applied to the Internet (similar to how common sense utility law has struggled to be applied to the Internet).

I am very much for a ban or sale. I think most people (myself included) are far less objective/are more subject to propaganda than we’d like to believe. The fact that China cares so much about a platform that’s losing money speaks volumes. Well, that and this networkcontagion.us/…/A-Tik-Tok-ing-Timebomb_12.2…

They’ve already banned US controlled promotional algorithms within their own country. They know exactly what they’re doing and all this “the US government is undermining its citizens choice!” talk is China trying to use western values against the west in a sort of “malicious compliance” only they stand to benefit from.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

It’s not about data. It’s about broadcast content curation (i.e. the TikTok algorithm and how it might be used to change US policy by presenting a very pro-China narrative).

Citizens of the United States have a right to free speech and curation of speech within the United States. Foreign governments do not have this right and having foreign governments directly control the dissemination of information poses a real and active risk (networkcontagion.us/…/A-Tik-Tok-ing-Timebomb_12.2…).

This is a principle that’s been applied to traditional broadcast media for decades. It just hasn’t applied to the Internet.

Data privacy laws would be great and we should be worried about how data is being used but, writing good data privacy laws wouldn’t resolve the major issue here.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

You should read this www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/…/677806/

Again, this is not a new concept. The Montana ban was stopped but even in that case, AFAIK the appeal isn’t settled. This was also not something heard by the Montana supreme court or the US supreme court.

The national ban has also presumably been crafted by much more experienced lawyers and lawmakers than the Montana ban. Presumably folks that understand the law better than either of us.

IMO comparing a TikTok ban to some major infringement even remotely close to an authoritarian country … it’s just wrong. Freedom of association has its limits and always has. Associating with a hostile foreign power, for instance the confederate states, was not ever to my knowledge protected. The only entity that folks are being prevented from associating with here is the Chinese government.

Calling a TikTok ban an assault on the right of association is like calling Twitter moderation an assault on the right of free speech. There are other options available. Your argument would be much stronger if TikTok was a truly unique technology or platform, but it isn’t. It’s not even an original idea, it’s a ripoff of vine that (originally) added music to the videos, made them a bit longer, and generally suffers from a lot of the same issues in terms of monetization.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

If you can’t separate the CCP from the Chinese people, there’s something very wrong with your moral compass.

It’s right up there with calling someone antisemitic for criticizing Israel.

I’m done with this conversation. I can’t take you seriously after that xenophobia comment.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

Or Proton.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

Nord had a very bad incident a few years ago techcrunch.com/…/nordvpn-confirms-it-was-hacked/

They were also REALLY late to the disclosure and tried to play it off as “them being responsible”:

NordVPN said it found out about the breach a “few months ago,” but the spokesperson said the breach was not disclosed until today because the company wanted to be “100% sure that each component within our infrastructure is secure.”

They (at least were) also very aggressive about advertising (all over YouTube at one point sponsoring all kinds of stuff)… Which is typically the opposite of what you want.

Proton has had write ups in the past about the VPN review market as well and how a lot of reviews are “whoever pays us the most money is the top VPN.” Proton has a strong enough track record in their other software for doing the right thing and truly valuing security, privacy, and open standards, so I’m inclined to believe them. VPN was one of the first spinoff products they launched when it was still mail, and they did so because some of their more sensitive customers (think journalists in some bad parts of the world) were having to rely on third party VPNs of questionable integrity.

I trust Mullvad and Proton at this point for VPNs, nobody else.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

PIA was good until they got bought out. That’s when my friend and I switched our VPNs (me to proton, him to express).

A shady parent company isn’t what you want in a VPN.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

It wasn’t at the time he switched … I think he looked at some other options after that, but might have just stayed.

For whatever reason he wasn’t getting the performance he wanted from Proton.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

Yup, protonvpn.com/support/port-forwarding/

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

I do not know anything about AirVPN specifically.

Proton does provide port forwarding these days FYI.

I think “run by nerds not marketers” is a good thing … though I don’t know if a site looking old really means it’s run by nerds lol

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

Yeah that’s fair. It can definitely go both ways though. Like your sign over your shop can look old because you’re still getting growth/a really nice cash flow without updating the sign or it can look old because you stopped caring a long time ago and you’re just milking what you can from the remaining customers.

I had a friend who’s ISP was very much in the latter category about a decade ago, charging like $90/mo for 10Mbps (IIRC with a data cap).

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

Thanks for pointing that out! That’s … truly special 😂

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

This comment is the worst misrepresentation of penguins I’ve ever seen. It sounds like a red herring. It makes me want to vomit. People get away with this because nobody actually knows what penguins are. They just take what the media writes and accepts it as truth.

On a serious note, plenty of people here surely know what net neutrality is. Net neutrality is the guarantee that your ISP doesn’t (de-)prioritize traffic or outright block traffic, all packets are treated equally. In other words it means you don’t have to pay $5 extra for high speed access to Lemmy because Reddit and your ISP (say Comcast) would prefer Lemmy not exist.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

If I implement my service to use the same underlying IP address for the primary service/critical access that I use for advertising services (e.g., I put a load balancer and have Windows Advertising integrated with Windows Update via the same IP addresses), you can’t block the IP without breaking Windows Update.

That’s worse for other ingrained systems, e.g., a news app that actually has to send you content could do this instead of using separate IPs for the advertising service, and then if you want to use their service you have to accept the advertising packets.

If you’re relying on DNS for your blocking as well, it’s entirely possible to distribute the IP address information without ever involving DNS by syncing up the appropriate IPs out of band on some built in IP addresses hard coded in the binary (plenty of things do this sort of thing already for security purposes, they want to minimize the risk of a local DHCP server handing out some garbage DNS record and sending you a virus via their update mechanism).

I could go on.

Do yourself a favor and learn a bit more about how this shit works lest you look like an idiot.

Don’t be a dick; especially if you don’t know what you’re talking about. Thanks.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

One would hope… We would have to get them here first though which seems very unlikely :/

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

That one I can see! Can’t see the ape

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

That one genuinely made me laugh out loud; thanks, haha.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

Hm… I agree that Instagram is not a neutral source. I also agree that there are going to be some biases imposed by the user base.

I don’t believe the US government plays a major role in Meta’s content moderation behavior. Meta if anything has shown a reluctance towards any political or news content in recent years. That’s not to say the US government doesn’t have influence but their influence is (from what I’ve seen) oriented around fighting disinformation and threats of violence … not cherry-picking the discussion of subject matter. I think there would’ve been a pretty significant leak out of Meta by now if there really was a strong political bias or government influence in content moderation.

I don’t think any of these lines particularly fall along political lines within the US either. There are people on the left and right taking different sides on virtually all of the topics with statistical divergence.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

So, I took another look at the report, they did do this sort of statistical bias correction. See “U.S. Politics” page 8 networkcontagion.us/…/A-Tik-Tok-ing-Timebomb_12.2…

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

The US is trying to prevent both China and Russia from:

• Spewing propaganda to its citizens by posing as citizens or manipulating social media algorithms
• Taking advantage of the work it and other countries have done to advance computing
• Stealing designs and advancing them without giving back
• Stealing designs and using state money to undercut the competition’s pricing
• Buying up the world while refusing to let the world buy any of China
• Expanding their borders by violence

Among many many other things. I think this RISC-V thing will go no where but I get why they’re looking at it.

There’s plenty the US is getting wrong… But I don’t think trying to limit China’s growth and power on the backs of western technology is one.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

• It’s perfectly legal. These things have been done throughout the US and European history.
• I’m unaware of any instance of the US getting upset over an ally taking similar action.
• I doubt it. They’re doing a lot of this because next generation warfare depends on advanced chips. They want the west to have the chips and technologies it invented and to keep them away from China and Russia so long as they continue to act hostile. It’s all to minimize the risk of global conflict by minimizing access to the “materials of war.” They’re not doing this because they’re worried about Chinese and Russian gamers having too much fun.