bassomitron

bassomitron , 19 hours ago

Don’t you know, you can just go live off the grid and become completely self sustaining… Wait, how do you pay for your property taxes… Hm…

bassomitron , 1 day ago

If you’re using a work computer, I strongly advise not putting that on there, especially if it requires installation. At my work, we regularly scan for apps like these, as well as the physical jigglers that connect via USB. We do this for security reasons primarily. There are several built-in ways in Windows to simulate activity, I really don’t see the point in downloading random apps from potentially sketchy sources.

One example off the top of my head: If you have multiple monitors, go into presentation mode with PowerPoint on one of them. This way, you can still have one monitor available to see your email and whatever chat app your org uses. If you have just one monitor, pretty sure you can still push it to the back or minimize it and it’ll still work. Also, watching videos within SharePoint is another way of preventing Windows from detecting inactivity. If you use Teams, you can start a meeting with yourself (though, some orgs monitor activity on Teams, so use this at your own risk). If PowerShell isn’t disabled, there’s also options there.

bassomitron , 11 hours ago

I don’t know how our Cyber and workstation teams are doing it, I work on the server team. I just know they pushed out something a few months ago about it and a few people were caught. They really don’t care that people are using jigglers, they just don’t want people plugging in unauthorized devices to the USB ports. And like you say, it may not actually be catching everything.

bassomitron , 2 days ago

I just like the sensory feedback of feeling buttons clicking downwards. I’ve used solid state buttons before and while they’re far better than pure touch control “buttons,” they still don’t feel like real buttons to me. Haptics help the illusion, for sure, but it can’t match the analog feeling perfectly.

And like the other comment said, how do they get around frozen software and being able to use the buttons to force power cycle a device? Unless the buttons have a completely separate controller outside of the OS?

bassomitron , 4 days ago

An onion popsicle… 🤢🤮

bassomitron , 4 days ago

Gotta start somewhere. Tens of thousands of demonstrators don’t show up at a moment’s notice. Honestly surprised even 3000 showed up that quickly.

bassomitron , 4 days ago

It can be changed, but it absolutely won’t be. These people have enjoyed unfettered lives since the founding of the country and before. They’ll continue to be shitty humans and get away with it until a full on revolution and/or societal collapse.

Edit: For clarification, I refer to these people to mean mega rich, narcissistic, spiteful, bigoted assholes in general.

bassomitron , 6 days ago

Pretty sure they’re being facetious

bassomitron , 7 days ago

Do you mean the Kansas experiment? en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment

If not, I apologize. If so, yeah, it’s been proven time after time after time that trickle down economics is complete bullshit.

bassomitron , 8 days ago

What an insane valuation, lol. I wonder how gullible their seeders/initial investors were when they pitched the company initially. Needing to get that much money to settle bills and debts just blows my mind. Shit like this is why I sold my AMD shares at its peak a few months ago and why it’s probably worth considering selling Nvidia now as it’s peaking. The AI boom may peak a bit higher, but I think the frenzy is going to begin waning within the next ~6 months as more and more investors realize the tech is still very limited outside of backend enterprise use (e.g. using LLMs to ingest all your SOPs, regulations, technical documents, etc. and then make it available for employees to query for random work questions).

But who knows, I’ve been wrong before.

bassomitron , 12 days ago

It’s okay, just accept it man, seize the gay!

bassomitron , 12 days ago

The snapshot feature is only going to be available on certain laptops that have the Snapdragon + AI chip. DoD will likely simply just not buy those laptops and ban any org from purchasing them, like they already do for certain hardware that have been found to be especially vulnerable. Additionally, this feature isn’t turned on by default and costs a subscription fee (i.e. Copilot+), so people will have to consciously enable and pay for it. Lastly, in enterprise versions of Windows, I would bet money that it can be disabled via GPO, as it’s not only the DoD that would have serious issues/concerns with this feature.

bassomitron , 12 days ago

Yeah, that’s why I mentioned in my comment that enterprise/professional versions will almost certainly allow it to be completely disabled via GPO, as this would be a death sentence for Windows. Businesses and governments across the world would immediately begin planning to off board to something else otherwise.

bassomitron , 12 days ago

I mentioned in another comment this would kill all trust in their product if it was found out that Windows was secretly doing all of that in the background in their enterprise products. There are other options, and as painful as transitioning to another OS would be, Microsoft being able to spy on everyone at any time would be worth the pain. This would absolutely destroy MS’s stock within a year as their dozens of multi-billion dollar contracts with governments and corporations evaporated. There’s no way the data they’re spying on would be worth the hundreds of billions they’d lose in sales.

…Then again, we’ve seen corporations kill themselves in dumber ways before… I guess we’ll see.

bassomitron , 12 days ago

In my opinion, mass immigration is a symptom. We’re not going to solve the problem by treating the symptoms. The better long-term plan would be to build a coalition among their home and neighboring countries to try and help them figure out how to address the stability issues at home. That’s way easier said than done, and it may not even be possible, but I just don’t see the current situation as being sustainable for decades on end.

That being said, for the interim, we desperately need some major reforms with how we handle asylum seekers and immigrants in general. I don’t have enough expertise on the matter to suggest how to go about that, I just know that the current system isn’t working well at all and is actively killing people.

bassomitron , 15 days ago

I definitely had a keyboard for my Dreamcast. It was my first internet enabled console, as well as my first exposure to online gaming with strangers (previously I had only done direct TCP/IP connections with friends on games like Diablo 1 and Starcraft). Phantasy Star Online was so damn addictive.

bassomitron , 15 days ago

When the hell is season 2 of that going to arrive? I know a few months ago they confirmed it was in production, so hopefully soon! Such a great show, Nathan Fielder is the king of dead pan comedy.

bassomitron , 16 days ago

Why the hostility towards common folk buying EVs? I know EVs aren’t actually very green, but if you have the choice and ability to choose between an ICE or EV, I’d rather they do the latter. Of course, I think many Hybrids have proven to be more carbon efficient over the lifetime of the vehicle than both ICE and EVs, but that’s another discussion. And if you live in a situation where you don’t actually need a car, that’s also the most ideal.

Also, vegan isn’t a viable option for many people. Hell, half the world doesn’t even have access to reliable grocers or live in climates that aren’t very capable of growing enough plants to live off of alone without supplementing with eggs or milk or some other animal product. A lot of people that have severe diet restrictions (e.g. Low FODMAP) are allergic to a shit ton of plants and fruits (I personally think some of the chemicals and/or GMOs used on/in our crops are what’s triggering the sudden rise in people who are becoming gluten and/or FODMAP sensitive, but again, another discussion).

The hostility should be directed towards these corporations and those who are actively or aggressively working against solutions for climate change.

bassomitron , 17 days ago

I doubt it’d fix the housing crisis here, but it would certainly help. I’m not sure how many people would warm up to it, though. A large part of our problem is that there isn’t any affordable housing. The fact the average house cost in 2023 was around $450,000 is insane, especially given the median income in the US was roughly $75,000 in 2022.

So yes, being able to buy back our mortgage’s bonds at their market value may be a boon, but the fact that the Dane’s require at least 20% down for their system to work would be a nonstarter for so many people. Roughly 65% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. A small minority of people are going to have the ~$80,000 to required to put down on a $450,000 house. Ultimately, turning housing into such a profitable investment option has led us to this situation, as having fewer houses means the existing houses are worth more and will only increase in value, making it a much more attractive investment than building new housing en masse.

bassomitron , 17 days ago

I was going off of the article, which stated that 20% is required in Denmark. Seems that they didn’t specify that well, so I apologize for the ignorance.

bassomitron , 17 days ago

Hmm… You might be onto something here

bassomitron , 17 days ago

Unfortunately, without anyone of note calling him out on that platform, it turns into pure echo chamber cult activity. There are so, so many people that are like lemmings, that will just follow that flow without doing any personal reflection or critical thinking. It’s healthy to have voices of dissent, even if it’s indirectly helping/enabling someone that’s cultivating mindlessness among the masses. Hell, just look at how his idiotic response has over 2 million “likes”. Granted, I’m sure 70-80% of those are fake, but that’s still a frightening number of people who support someone like him.

bassomitron , 17 days ago

I’m not arguing that it’s a W. I’m saying that much of the reason we’re in this hyper polarized society now is due to echo chambers. If we refuse to engage with those we disagree with, then you’re falling into the exact same trap. The entire platform isn’t only Musk/MAGA supporters. It’s toxic and awful, but so is TikTok and Facebook yet millions still use them every day.

bassomitron , 18 days ago

I feel like these will be useless in all but limited circumstances. A modern battlefield in urban centers will be rife with small and large rubble, making these things unreliable in real world practice when you factor its ability to balance navigating obstacles and dealing with recoil. How does it reload? How long does its battery last? What happens when its weapon jams? Additionally, tricking current AI is fairly simple when you have the resources of a modern military.

Anyway, it’s interesting to experiment with, but I just don’t think the technology is quite there yet. I think it’d probably be more effective to create self-destructing bomber robot dogs than gun toting ones with our current tech.

bassomitron , 19 days ago

You can almost be certain other countries’ intel agencies were watching the entire time.

bassomitron , 22 days ago

Quoting the 59% drop is dumb. They chose the peak in 2021 to be able to get that number. Damn near everything was peaking in 2021/2022 due to rock bottom interest rates, so the stock market was insanely inflated. If you look at their pre-2021 valuation, it’s roughly the same as it is now. While VW may indeed be failing, them using their valuation as their main argument in the headline is misleading at best.

bassomitron , 22 days ago

I always said way back in the early 2000s that once corporations figured out the internet, it and society in general would be very screwed. Their early attempts at trying to make things go viral and create engagement were laughably bad. Then they hired a bunch of psychologists and sociologists, bought up everything, and the rest is history.

bassomitron , 23 days ago

It’s like the third season of Westworld where the AI is telling everyone what to do (e.g. assigns them jobs, determines if they’re going to be criminals, etc) and people just blindly accept it.

bassomitron , 23 days ago

That post on mastodon claiming that it strictly came from a reddit post could purely be coincidental. If you Google “how common is glue in food,” you’ll find a ton of links talking about commercials using stuff other than food in food commercials/ads to make the food/drink look more “vivid/full/whatever.”

bassomitron , 23 days ago

You’re right, I somehow missed that it mentioned the exact same amount, heh

bassomitron , 23 days ago

What solution are you looking towards? I work in a massive organization with 20,000+ VMs and we’ve been having weekly virtual working groups across the country (our overseas depts have been doing their own) to try and discuss finding other solutions. We haven’t been very successful, as the biggest pitfall we’ve seen is no one offers lifetime licenses so if we don’t renew a yearly maintenance our VMs won’t stop functioning properly. That’s one of the main reasons we’re looking to off board from VMware.

bassomitron , 24 days ago

I feel like this could be a lame drinking game when bored: Is it AI generated or just bad/lazy writers?

bassomitron , 25 days ago

This has nothing to do with their newer malfunctioning planes. The 777 has been in service for over 30 years at this point.

bassomitron , 25 days ago

From my understanding, companies that use open software in paid products are charging for their services and support and not the software itself. Correct me if I’m wrong, as I may well be. I just know that’s how companies like Elastic and what not get away with primarily using OSS in their products.

bassomitron , 25 days ago

I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a mixture of the two. It’s kind of like if you surround yourself with criminals regularly, you’re more likely to become one yourself. Not to say it’s a 100% given, just more probable.

bassomitron , 25 days ago

I’m not hoping anything, haha wtf? The comment above me asked if it was a proven statement or common sense and I said I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s both. I felt confident that if I googled it, there would more than likely be studies backing up a common sense statement like that, as I’ve read in the past how sending innocent people or people who committed minor misdemeanors to prison has influenced them negatively to commit crimes they might not have otherwise.

And look at that, there are academic articles that do back it up:

waldenu.edu/…/what-influences-criminal-behavior

Negative Social Environment

Who we’re around can influence who we are. Just being in a high-crime neighborhood can increase our chances of turning to crime ourselves.4 But being in the presence of criminals is not the only way our environment can affect our behaviors. Research reveals that simply living in poverty increases our likelihood of being incarcerated. When we’re having trouble making ends meet, we’re under intense stress and more likely to resort to crime.

www.law.ac.uk/resources/…/is-prison-effective/

Time in prison can actually make someone more likely to commit crime — by further exposing them to all sorts of criminal elements.

Etc, etc.

Turns out that your dominant social group and environment influences your behavior, what a shocking statement.

bassomitron , 25 days ago

Because it’s a casual discussion, I think it’s obnoxious when people constantly demand sources to be cited in online comments section when they could easily look it up themselves. This isn’t some academic or formal setting.

And I disagree, only the second source mentioned prisons explicitly. The first source mentions social environments as well. So it’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation. Additionally, even if you consider the second source, that source mentions punishment reforms to prevent that undesirable side effect from occuring.

I find it ironic that you criticized me for not citing sources and then didn’t read the sources. But, whatever. Typical social media comments section moment.

bassomitron , 25 days ago

Again, in casual conversation where no one was really debating, it’s obnoxious. When you’re talking to friends in real life and they say something, do you request sources from them? No, because it’d be rude and annoying. If you were debating them in earnest and you both disagreed on something, sure, that would be expected.

But that wasn’t the case here, the initial statement was common sense: If pedophiles are allowed to meet up and trade AI generated child sex abuse material, would that cause some of them to be more likely to commit crimes against real kids? And I think the answer is pretty obvious. The more you hang around people who agree with you, the more an echo chamber is cultivated. It’s like an alcoholic going into a bar without anyone there to support them in staying sober.

Anyway, it’s your opinion to think asking for sources from strangers in casual conversation is okay, and it’s mine to say it can be annoying in a lot of circumstances. We all have the Internet at our fingertips, look it up in the future if you’re unsure of someone’s assertion.

bassomitron , 26 days ago

Wage won’t entirely fix this. As long as artificial inflation (and yes, the majority of these price hikes are due to simple greed: fortune.com/europe/2023/12/…/greedflation-study/ ) keeps going up in such a short span of time, the majority smaller businesses will not be able to afford to keep giving their employees raises. The core issue is monopolies/duopolies and/or price collusion in the industries where a very small handful of corps own everything. Yes, it’s illegal for companies to get together and agree on prices for their own profit, but that’s never stopped them from doing it before as it’s incredibly difficult for the government to prove they’re doing it without breaking laws to spy on them.

We’re essentially reliving the Robber Baron Era from US history. Unfortunately, I don’t see us exiting it anytime soon, as people are way too divided and angry at each other to turn that fury towards the ones sowing it in the first place while they rob us blind. Eat the fucking billionaires, because they’re already eating us.

bassomitron , 26 days ago

Not entirely true in my anecdotal experience. Most of the original deniers I know personally now say that climate change is real, just that it’s not man-made and there’s nothing we can do about it. I remember around a few years ago I even convinced my boss that climate change is in fact real (he couldn’t come up with a valid reason to explain picture and video evidence), but he refuses to accept humans are causing it. It’s still equally frustrating, nonetheless.

bassomitron , 26 days ago

Right, I was just pointing out that there are plenty who do believe in climate change, but are still missing/refusing to see the underlying cause and support reform.

bassomitron , 27 days ago

Nobody can be excited for anything. Whether or not it’s possible in even the next century or two, I still think it’s awesome that there are dreamers out there trying to make at least a solid theoretical plan on how to accomplish stuff like this. I also think people are discounting the exponential rate of knowledge we accumulate every generation. It might be awhile, but unless society collapses, I wouldn’t be surprised if we have interstellar propulsion like this in the next couple centuries. Hell, I expect to see a thriving commercial space industry in the next 50-some-odd years within our solar system.

bassomitron , 30 days ago

That would be Russia, is my guess:

The memoranda, signed in Patria Hall at the Budapest Convention Center with US Ambassador Donald M. Blinken amongst others in attendance, prohibited Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom from threatening or using military force or economic coercion against Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, “except in self-defence or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.” As a result of other agreements and the memorandum, between 1993 and 1996, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons.

bassomitron , 1 month ago

Pen drives are cheap as dirt nowadays, especially small ones that are like 16GB. I’d just buy a new one.

bassomitron , 1 month ago

It’s true that you’re often playing the lottery with them, that’s why I just buy a few at a time. Like right now in the US, you can buy 16GB USBs for $4. The last three I’ve bought have lasted over 5 years each, thankfully. But I’ve had ones that have been bad right out of the package. That’s why I just buy from places that have at least 30-day return policies.

bassomitron , 1 month ago

The US still has an enormous manufacturing footprint. Yes, a lot was moved overseas, but hardly all of them.

bassomitron , 1 month ago

Isn’t that a Black Mirror episode?