Dark_Arc

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

Click bait avoided, a prerelease build of Windows suggests some kind of general advertising in the start menu beyond promoting ads.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

Yeah, though … those don’t always work and it is entirely possible to break them if they become overly “pesky” for the corporations.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

Ukraine elects a TV personality … they get Zelensky.

We do it and get Regan and Trump … what the heck man.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

But tiktok the company is?

Yes, among other things they’re also explicitly suppressing pro-Isreal content lemmy.world/post/14643617

Dark_Arc OP , 4 months ago

I think there’s a pretty strong argument that a pro-corporate tilt doesn’t result in a difference in content promotion regarding Tibet, Tiananmen Square, Hong Kong, and/or Uyghur.

You could argue the US military industrial complex might push South China Sea, pro-Taiwan, pro-Ukraine, and pro-Isreal content; that seems distant enough from (e.g.) Facebook, but I’m not sure how we’d tell. We don’t have a major social media platform in a place like (e.g.) Switzerland to study (granted, the way Proton is expanding they might try).

In any case, I do think it’s pretty damning for TikTok’s claims of independence that China’s direct conflicts, Tiananmen Square and Hong Kong are basically suppressed to the point of being nil (EDIT: Tibet is also a direct conflict of sorts but isn’t talked about as much from what I’ve seen on “western social media” and could be conditionally filtered … there’s still probably a fair bit of “Tibet” content that exists outside of the “bad for the CCP” space).

Dark_Arc OP , 4 months ago

Read past the first paragraph…

Dark_Arc OP , 4 months ago

Okay, then yeah; I think we’re in agreement more research would be needed (and difficult!).

I can’t dissuade or dismiss your point … but I am personally less convinced there is a correlation.

Dark_Arc OP , 4 months ago

I largely agree, but when I got the email from the times this morning I went “Why aren’t you guys posting this front page!? People need to know about this research. This isn’t just a hypothetical risk anymore!”

Dark_Arc OP , 4 months ago

And I am not defending Israel here but I wonder if TikTok’s promotion of anti-Israel content is part of why young people have been so visible in demonstrating against Israel.

I’ve been seriously wondering this since this morning as well/I’m in a similar position.

Dark_Arc OP , 4 months ago

There’s a good chance the (current) FTC wouldn’t let that happen.

I could see Microsoft or possibly Apple taking an interest. They’re big players without a social media platform, that have the cash to buy and run one.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

So does this affect English/European keyboards or just Asian keyboards?

It seems like the mechanism is exploiting an insecure connection (or rather a connection using predictable encryption where the same input results in the same packets) to the cloud for translating keystrokes into logographic characters?

Did I understand correctly? I definitely didn’t do a thorough read.

I also think it’s kind of interesting Gboard wasn’t included (?)

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

Well, it can’t just be about that. There are ways to salt the data so that it’s not predictable. I’m not an expert in that area, but I know it’s a technique that’s often employed by cryptography experts when this is a major concern.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

I think that would be far too large of a liability for Google for the minimal amount of data they’d get back.

Google mostly cares about metadata for their advertising business (per my understanding).

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

I used smart launcher right up until they pushed an update one day that made my phone basically unusable. The launcher would just error whenever I went to my home screen, making the launcher (and thus home screen completely unusable).

After that I changed my 5 star review to 1 star, uninstalled, and there is absolutely nothing they can do to ever get me to trust them again.

Failing that hard at QA on something as critical as a phone launcher is completely unacceptable to me.

If you want evidence, look at reviews from Jan 2022 on smart launcher 6.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

Oh this is almost 2 years old then … yeah honestly, I’m not that worried at this point.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

They really don’t though.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

There are plenty of people against the Jews. There have been for a very long time.

Yeah, probably is mostly people that are against genocide and apartheid. That doesn’t mean there’s not a significant number of people that are against the Jews supporting the cause/riding along.

I’m also not particularly inclined to believe this one student over the others that have been reported on in much more reputable news sources.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

Charging patterns can make a big difference FWIW

I don’t think there’s that much variance in lithium battery quality.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

I remembered this where the 101st was sent in to Arkansas:

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Rock_Nine

Turns out that made use of the instruction act to bypass Posse Comitatus. So, it’s theoretically possible, but I wouldn’t recommend him doing so. Especially because it’ll further normalize use of the insurrection act, which I don’t think is a good idea.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

Wow the responses here are really off at the moment. I’m going to try and help.

So, what you’re going to want to do is add all the subdomain A records you need to you DNS (sounds like you’re using cloudflare for that, not required, but that should be fine).

Those DNS records are all going to be the same IP record, that’s fine.

What you need to do after that, so that you don’t have to enter ports is a bit more complicated. For web servers, some kind of reverse proxy like nginx, haproxy, apache, etc is what you need. The term you’re looking for is “virtual host”.

A virtual host setup is basically one where a reverse proxy looks at the domain name that was used to access the server over HTTP and then uses that to decide what server running on the machine you actually talk to.

It’s HTTP that actually is passing along the domain name you used, so if the service isn’t HTTP you may or may not be able to do anything depending on the underlying protocol.

So to recap:

1. Set up your DNS records
2. Set up an HTTP reverse proxy
3. Add virtual hosts for each service you added a DNS record for to the reverse proxy (so that the reverse proxy can turn foo.example.com into example.com:xyz – localhost:xyz in practice, morally example.com:xyz though – behind the scenes)

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

I’ve never used wildcard DNS, I’m not even sure that Namecheap DNS supports wildcard. But I’ve also never been in a situation where there’s a dominate single machine I want my DNS to resolve to.

After searching … I’m not entirely sure I would use wildcard DNS serverfault.com/a/483625

My preferred strategy is actually alias records and then one primary address record the alias records point to so if I change IPs I can move the machine. I forgot about that last night.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

Interesting; well it’s good info/good to know it exist … though, I’m probably going to stick to explicit listing. I like to be able to look at my DNS records and know what connects to what.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

github.com/TryGhost/Ghost

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

Yeah… For battle royal and extraction shooters I think it would also be pretty hard to come close to the experience on private servers.

Granted, I wouldn’t mind being able to play e.g. Hunt Showdown with some friends on a private server/in a private match. It wouldn’t be what it is today, but it could still be fun.

It’s not like games with large populations are really getting shut down anyways. The games that are killed are already dead for most people. I really only am bothered by it when it’s a clearly single player/offline friendly game.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

The thing about them is you need people to be at close to the same skill level or they’re just not fun.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

Well, it’s considered “okay” because the search is invisible/not physically invasive or disruptive and none of the data gathered against citizens via these means is admissible in court (at least in theory).

I do think there’s a much more serious argument that what citizens are subjected to at airports and at the border is a violation of the 4th though.

For those unfamiliar, the US fourth amendment text:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

This is the wrong answer lol

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

Gee, I don’t know, because you can fly a drone around security?

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

youtu.be/a_TSR_v07m0?si=P7jdUMD8MwKqsCcJ

10:18 timestamp.

Maybe it’s distasteful, but I didn’t see anything majorly wrong with what he did there. Someone stole something he worked quite a bit on, so he pranked the guy.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

I mean what’s being shown here is effectively “how do you stop something like a slaughter bot or a ‘terrorist bomb bot’?”

I thought it was a neat video … We need people thinking about these problems.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

This kind of thing happens a lot. Something “negative” comes up about a popular person and everyone comes crawling out of the wood work about how they “knew all along” and “this person really is such a horrible person” and “on my god how could they do this?”

I’m probably going to regret the few comments I’ve made in this thread … but yeah, I really don’t think that video was that bad. It shows off how engineering can be applied to defending from possible future attacks. Maybe someone could use this offensively and “promotes the military industrial complex” but I think a bullet or a bomb is a lot more economical than “anvil” and “anvil” is something folks could potentially see in real life in civilian defense applications.

I’d personally love to see more people taking an interest and inspiration from counter weapons systems rather than the mentality of “the best defense is a good offense.” Not because I want to see more war, but because I think we’ve created some really nasty weapons and the shield and castle have long been out classed… People should be able to protect themselves.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

It takes people at the school caring and then truancy officers having time and funding to investigate.

Same thing with calling family services if the kid is going to school but clearly not well; someone actually has to let the people in charge of family services in the area know… they have to have enough to clearly prove there’s a problem that the parents aren’t addressing… it has to be a problem they have authority over… etc

It’s not unheard of for these things to happen unfortunately.

Also sounds like they’re really overwhelmed in WV this year

wvnstv.com/…/solving-west-virginias-truancy-probl…

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

They’re owned by the CCP (and before you say they’re not, the ByteDance C-suite is basically all current Chinese citizens and the headquarters is in Beijing).

Businesses and people do not have rights in the way most westerners are used to. Assume anything out of China or generally owned by Chinese companies is a direct arm of the CCP … because even if it isn’t today, the CCP can unilaterally throw down an order from the top and take control of the company/have them do whatever they want or the leaders replaced.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

So are American companies that are basically all Americans in the C-Suite owned by the US Government?

Ultimately, yes. The US government can tell Google to report all searches of “I’m a goofy goober!” to them to collect a list of SpongeBob fans.

The same is true of a company like Proton and Swiss law.

The difference is that in the US/Switzerland/Western Democracy there are rights, laws, and courts that limit and check government power and action + open ended elections. Biden cannot just go to Elon Musk and tell him “this is my company now, you WILL report all the goofy goobers.” There are a lot of roadblocks to that kind of behavior.

The CCP is a monoculture based around the “National People’s Congress”. The NPC is effectively the CCP because the CCP picks who is eligible to be part of the NPC en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_China

The CCP is currently effectively controlled by Xi who has claimed increasing amounts of control over the party: journalofdemocracy.org/…/china-in-xis-new-era-the…

For all intents and purposes, what Xi wants is what happens. There is no court to check him, there is no opposition party to hold him back, and anyone that tries to stand in his way will more than likely be “punished.”

This is not racist bull shit. It has nothing to do with Chinese people and everything to do with the CCP.

The trading of data also has very little to do with anything. It’s about cutting off a hostile, authoritarian, foreign power from having a direct line to millions of US citizens to push whatever message they want with minimal oversight. The data is surely just icing on the cake for the CCP because they might be able to find some blackmail worthy piece of information in their hoard of metrics and videos for a current or future public figure.

I don’t think you understand either … “Banning” something only works if they care about the law and the CCP does not care at all about US laws. If they want to break them, they will, and they will either get the people that did the job for them back to China or use people that don’t know anything/any better as scapegoats. It’s the exact same stuff any government would do, international law is imaginary because ultimately nations do not answer to nations except by diplomacy and war.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

You’re just naive if you honestly think companies are somehow “above” the nations of their owners or that government power has some real limit beyond what other nations are willing (and able) to punish them over.

It’s also pretty naive to assert there’s nothing of value in that data, particularly of the blackmail variety. That stupid distasteful video you uploaded and then “deleted” at a teen … there’s no guarantee they don’t have it. The location ping your phone made when you were cheating on your spouse and opened TikTok while waiting for your mistress, there’s no guarantee they don’t have it.

You could even use popular political videos as the basis for evaluating who’s more likely to cooperate or believe you following an attack and mix that with geographic data to figure out how to minimize the risk of guerilla fighters. Similarly, you could use the social network graph to figure out how to put pressure on someone.

I mean, social media is honestly nasty in terms of what it can tell you about a society.

That doesn’t even begin to touch on the ability to directly manipulate a proprietary content promotion algorithm. You think they can effectively manipulate Facebook? There are no limits to the manipulation they can perform on TikTok and there is no framework for overseeing social media algorithm performance.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

Just because a nation chooses to let things go unnoticed, it does not mean the nation does not have the power.

If the US Govt decides to break up Apple or Google, they are no longer whole; that’s the end of it.

Just because the principal at your school let kids break a few rules and some teachers use sick days like vacation days doesn’t mean the principal doesn’t have power over the kids and teachers.

You’re incredibly naive to think the most powerful entities in the world, nation states, are some toothless, harmless play thing that large corporations can “just subvert.” That’s the video game perspective.

To be clear, China understands this whole thing very well. There’s a reason they’re trying to kick US tech companies out and it isn’t because they’re afraid of the tech company itself.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

They have to go to court because the western government itself has checks and balances, as I previously stated.

It’s entirely within congress’s authority to change the law to make it the press of a button. It’s not a matter of “whether or not they have the power.” It’s where or not they allow themselves to exercise the power.

China doesn’t have all these roadblocks, especially in the Xi error; it’s much closer to an outright dictatorship than it’s been in many years.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

Pray tell, how do you think monopoly law works? What do you think due process is?

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

I give up, you’re unreachable.

Yes, cite exactly what I said happens and ignore literally everything I’m saying once again … because “governments are subservient to corporations” and China is a benevolent government no worse than the US except when it doesn’t suit your argument.

So sick of CCP shills.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

PLEASE, tell me where I said “they just do it.” Give me a quote.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

“They just do it” is not in there.

Perhaps the confusion stems from that fact that the US Court System is part of the US Government. Explicitly “If the United States congress gives power to the executive branch to break up a company, the executive branch decides to break up a company, and the company is unable to successfully appeal the decision in the courts, they are no longer whole; that’s the end of it.”

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

K.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

I also found it pretty ridiculous there isn’t a close button in the escape menu.

You have to hit tab to bring up the quick menu, then hit the return to menu button from there.

Hitting escape and being about to exit out of the game is the paradigm for PC games. It’s absurd to hide that functionality on a non-standard key and place.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

Phone apps are already fairly sandboxed.

Use your phone’s permission system, look at the app’s permissions, and set them as strict as the app will allow you to while continuing to function. I don’t see any particularly scary permissions that aren’t optional (looking in Google Play/the Android permissions set).

Pretty much anything beyond that you’re wasting your time unless you want to carry two phones.

Edit: I see you went with Shelter; hadn’t heard of that either. Probably overkill, but as long as it doesn’t cause problems/the app works for you, go for it.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

Not sure how wechat works. I vaguely recall being able to restrict apps to pick photos only through the gallery app on recent versions of Android.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

Ah, then yeah probably best to do what you’re doing … it may very well scan for things or do who knows what.

Dark_Arc , 4 months ago

I’d recommend deleting those when you get the chance … no real reason to tempt fate regardless of what apps are on your phone 😉