r00ty Admin

r00ty Admin , 6 months ago

If the situation is that you ban a political party because you're worried the people will vote for a facsist dictatorship (and I'm not saying that's an impossibility these days), this is just a band-aid at best. Because clearly the people will get what they want somehow, some day.

The solution needs to be to educate people better, because no sane and educated turkey votes for Christmas (Thanksgiving I guess for the Americans).

r00ty Admin , 6 months ago

Here in the UK, I don't think I've seen one of those in use for more than 20 years. Maybe it is still in use elsewhere?

r00ty Admin , 6 months ago

If you were over 40, you'd call them opal fruits!

r00ty Admin , 6 months ago

I have a clear memory from the 80s for sure where these were routinely used on pre-sliced bread loaves. I'm sure I have seen them since the 80s. But they became much rarer for certain.

r00ty Admin , 6 months ago

Also going to throw in, it's definitely a dodgy URL. Evri is a common target for this kind of scam and they count on exactly what's happened here. The small %age of people that were actually expecting a parcel by that carrier.

r00ty Admin , 6 months ago

What I came here to say!

r00ty Admin , 6 months ago

Hah, I remember using ksh on an old IBM AIX box.

r00ty Admin , 6 months ago

Here in the UK it's generally the same, but also in a way worse.

Developers are "required" to build a percentage of homes that are "affordable". I put both of these in quotes because, yeah. They dodge it over and over and somehow are still granted permission for their next project.

r00ty Admin , 6 months ago

I've had tinnitus since my earliest memories. Will I get tinnitus on my tinnitus? Tinnitus squared?

r00ty Admin , 6 months ago

I have a general tone (or set of tones I guess) which is around equal in both ears usually. But they will sometimes just change for a while, which is extremely jarring since generally I do get used to the constant sound that suddenly being consciously aware of it generally distracts from whatever else is going on. Sometimes that change only happens in one ear, or at least starts in one ear.

Since I've had this forever, I actually thought it was normal. Until I guess one day my teacher at school ran out of material, or had a hangover and just wanted us quiet. So, asked us all to be quiet and start to talk about the quietest things people could hear. Others heard a few things I could hear. Sounds in the school building. Then people were talking about hearing traffic on the street nearby and other things I just couldn't hear at all. At that point I realised, just me hearing this sound then.

I'm probably quite lucky in that the noise floor for me isn't terrible. Only at night when trying to sleep does it become a problem.

r00ty Admin , 6 months ago

Not how I read it. I read it that of course the other guy wanted him to kill Hitler BEFORE all his deeds. But how I read it was he went to the bunker and it was really him all along that killed Hitler. Just, a little too late.

r00ty Admin , 6 months ago

Well, I'm not a lemmy user. But I generally read the comments to gauge whether it is worth reading the article.

r00ty Admin , 6 months ago

The headline says "near". I'm not sure there's anything suggesting they targetted them. At the same time targetted doesn't matter much. If people were killed in the consulate, the result would probably have been the same as if they were targetted.

r00ty Admin , 6 months ago

I hate self-checkout. It's just annoying and a downgrade from an actual. cashier. I'll use it when I have to. But really it's just terrible.

However, scan as you shop. That's just great. Put your bags in the trolley, scan and put it straight in the bag. Go to checkout machine, pay and your stuff is already bagged.

r00ty Admin , 6 months ago

I generally write a single line summary and then a list of the specifics like:

Did stuff (except more detailed than that)
 - The first thing I did
  - Maybe some more detail about the first thing because there's a rationale to explain
 - The second thing I did
 - Third thing

Etc.

r00ty Admin , 6 months ago

I don't think you understand the problem. The issue is that some of these people might actually believe they did something wrong, or didn't measure up. That is the problem. They should just be honest.

There's no law against laying people off because you hired too many people and need to downsize. They are using performance as a reason because they think (and in many cases, they'll be right) it will subdue the person being laid off from a position of anger or resent, to a position where they're upset with themselves for not measuring up.

It's a really bad way to do this, for the person being laid off.

So, yes. Asking about the fictional performance metrics to at least make them feel a little uncomfortable too is completely fine in my opinion.

r00ty Admin , 6 months ago

Reddit must not, says I.

Seems we're at an impasse

r00ty Admin , 6 months ago

It was just self defense! No, wait I read it wrong. Self defenestration.

r00ty Admin , 6 months ago

It's not poorly written software if it's is old. Likewise the y2k bug is often declared as bad programming, but at the time the software with the y2k bug was written memory was measured in kilobytes and a lot of accounting software and banking software was written in a time when 64k was the norm. Oh, and I'll tell you now I know of at least some accounting software that is based on code written for the 8088 and has been wrapped and cross compiled so many times now it's unrecognisable. But I know that 40 year old code is still there.

So 2 digits for year was best practice at the time and at the time software vulnerable to the 2038 bug 32bit epoch dates was the best practice.

Now, software written today doing the same, could of course be considered bad, but it's not a good blanket statement.

r00ty Admin , 6 months ago

I mean, technically you could use unsigned 32bit if you don't need to handle dates before 1970. But yes, the best course of action now is to use 64bits. The cost is pretty much nothing on modern systems.

I'm just cautious of people judging software from a time with different constraints and expectations, with the current yardstick.

I also wonder what the problem will be. People playing ghost recon in 2038 are going to be "retro" gaming it. There should be an expectation of such problems. Would it prevent you loading or saving the file is the question?

r00ty Admin , 6 months ago

Yeah, that's my point. It'll be a retro game by 2038 and anyone playing it will know it's "one of those quirks"

The bigger problem is software where the date really matters.

r00ty Admin , 6 months ago

Except it's not the same, yet. Currently in the space you can have a fuel station cars can refuel in 5 minutes to full and be on their way making that pump available.

EVs need at least 30 minutes with the fastest charger to get from say 20 to 60 right? In either case they take up the bay. So you need to be able to handle many more at once.

If all bays are fast charge, that's a lot of power infrastructure required.

Now, all isn't lost. There's more ways to charge an EV. For example people can mostly charge at home, there could be ways to charge on the move (I don't wonder what kind of drag would be applied charging with induction) and then, yes charging points which we'd hope are used less often.

But the issue is the promises of X things done by Y year. Since there's just not been enough work done until now.

r00ty Admin , 6 months ago

It's what I covered later in that message. That we'll need some mix of home charging, fast charging but ultimately if we can get some kind of charging on trunk roads at least, it could just make EVs better than fuel driven cars.

r00ty Admin , 6 months ago

This generation of 737 seems cursed. The MCAS scandal (and it was a scandal), just before the new year there were warnings to operators to check for loose nuts and now this.

Boeing are not having a good time.

r00ty Admin , 6 months ago

I entirely agree, But I also kinda understand it. Without the new engines they could not compete with the A32x product line. But they wouldn't fit without the tricks they pulled. It should have been a new airframe designed to take those engines.

That re-design and certification would take too long though, and they'd lose huge market share to airbus.

Now, I say I understand their actions, this does not mean I agree with them!

r00ty Admin , 6 months ago

The Boeing MCAS story and the fact they were not held accountable at all terrifies me. Not the idea of the augmentation, I kinda understand they needed to fit bigger engines onto their existing frame until they can make and certify a new one. It's not a good solution, but I can understand the business thinking behind it.

Here's where it goes wrong for me.

• Not documenting the MCAS system, in order to cheat the system to not require recertification for the plane. Adding a system that can make trim changes without informing the pilots and that there isn't a documented way to override was an accident waiting to happen.
• Worse to me, is the fact that while the aircraft has two AoA sensors, the MCAS system only takes input from one of them. This is terrifying. There's no way the software can know the inputs could be wrong. So the software would effectively try to kill people all the while thinking it's actually doing you a favour.

It was a debacle that should have been investigated further. Now, it's not fair (although it probably is) to compare Boeing putting their toes into more flight automation against airbus. But the modern airbus jets use multiple sensor sources, and when there is a disagreement, they will reduce flight protections and inform the pilots about it, pilots that will be trained on the various flight modes that can come out of this. Just using one sensor was just a crazy decision, and I bet it was based on cost.

What's going on now though is more a general QC/QA situation. Where I think it overlaps with the MCAS situation is that both the lack of redundancy in MCAS sensor input and the lack of QC in general just reeks of ruthless cost-cutting.

r00ty Admin , 6 months ago

Yeah, it's a race to the bottom. But we have strict aviation rules across the west for this very reason.

The crash in Japan is actually an example of a failure that fits the Swiss Cheese model. I think ultimately most of the blame will fall on the surviving coastguard captain, but everyone involved had a chance to stop that crash. The coastguard messed up and joined the runway when he shouldn't have. Mistake 1. ATC didn't notice the warning on the monitor that would have drawn attention to this. Mistake 2. The pilots didn't see the coastguard plane on the runway. Now, this one, is a tough one. With all the bigger planes with beacon/nav/interior lights, the runway lights, the airport lighting. It may well have been hard to see the small plane on the runway, but it had beacon lights on, and they had the opportunity to see it and abort the landing.

So essentially there were three chances to stop that accident and all three were missed.

I completely agree, designing a feature on a plane that doesn't respect this way of thinking is not the behaviour of a responsible aviation company.

r00ty Admin , 6 months ago

Yeah, it's the same with USB cables. Technically they should all be equal. But after having all 3 cables in a pack of 3 fail within a few months of buying I only get one of the at least recognised brands now. Considering some of the higher power charging modes available now, you want a cable that really can handle the currents it says it can.

HDMI it's generally the case, you want a decent brand for build quality. But when you see the "audiophile" rated stuff for digital signalling cables, then it's time to move on.

r00ty Admin , 6 months ago

I'd say for the oxymeter it depends on what you want it for. If your health depends on it, yes spend more for a good one. If it's just for general interest the cheaper ones will likely be "good enough".

For batteries, generally true. Except the Kirkland non-rechargeable packs are very good batteries and good value too. Not that I often need non-rechargable. Just for those few devices that are not happy with the lower voltage of rechargeable batteries.

Otherwise, definitely a good list. I'd also say in general for electronics, be very wary of Chinese brands you've totally never heard of selling items for less than half the price a reputable brand sells the same thing for. They are generally putting fake CE/FCC labels onto devices that are definitely not certified and will almost certainly be underrated for the requirement in a best case scenario. I am currently especially suspicious of the 100w+ PD supplies that are ridiculously cheap compared to known brands for the same rating.

r00ty Admin , 6 months ago

Yes, kinda. That is use a brand that is certified by your country's health service. But use generics not the named brand drugs once available.

r00ty Admin , 6 months ago

Yeah it's why I qualified it with the "too good to be true" prices and names you don't recognise. The odds are far greater that a brand name you've never heard of undercutting at more than half the price of a brand you do recognise is very likely cutting corners somewhere and stamping invalid certifications. With electronics that can end pretty badly.

Not writing off all Chinese companies. Just the ones that have a new name every month and are selling at too good to be true prices. I think they're suffering the same as Japanese electronics did in the 80s. There were enough bad examples to make people assume it was the same for all (you'll see it in movies of the era, with people referring to "jap-crap"). But as we know, some very big companies today rose from that situation to be extremely trusted today. I suspect over time the same will be true in China.

r00ty Admin , 6 months ago

I'll be honest. When I upgraded my PC I finally moved to one without any bays. So my rewriter that I've not used for probably 10+ years came out of my setup.

Funny story, I did some work on my old setup some 5 years or so ago. I must have unplugged the rewriter to get at some cabling and never re-connected it. I never noticed in those 5 years, until I was taking the parts out I was moving to my new system and saw it was just not connected.

Now, when I DID make CDs around 10+ years ago or more, I used CD-Rs.

r00ty Admin , 6 months ago

I had an IOMega ZIP (the original 100MB one) back in the 90s, connected to my Amiga 1200. Those were definitely not a waste when they first came out. I used to run a BBS back then, and had a drive crash and yeah backup wasn't quite so easy or affordable back then. So I had to rebuild my file library.

I went to a local fellow Sysop with a few zip disks and had a file library back up and running in no time.

r00ty Admin , 6 months ago

Fuck all of that. Linux desktop really could use a benevolent dictator that has some vision and understanding what the average user wants.

It already has these. They're called Linux Distros. They decide the combination of packages that make up the end to end experience. And they're all aimed at different types of user.

Why are none explicitly aimed at the average Windows user? I suspect there's one major reason. The average Windows user is incapable of installing an operating system at all, and new PCs invariably come with Windows pre-installed. This isn't a sleight on them by the way, it's just that most computer users don't want or need to know how anything works. They just want to turn it on, and post some crap on Twitter/X then watch cat videos. They don't have an interest in learning how to install another operating system.

Also, a distro aimed at an average Windows user would need to be locked down hard. No choice of window manager, no choice of X11/Wayland. No ability to install applications not in the distro's carefully curated repository, plus MAYBE independently installed flatpak/other pre-packaged things. The risk of allowing otherwise creates a real risk of the system breaking on the next big upgrade. I don't think most existing Linux users would want to use such a limiting distro.

Unless Microsoft really cross a line to the extent that normal users actually don't want anything to do with windows, I cannot imagine things changing too much.

r00ty Admin , 6 months ago

When I reached the essentially "I use arch btw" I assumed it was just badly written satire.

r00ty Admin , 6 months ago

And this is why I'm unlikely to change isp. I have a /29 ipv4 block and /48 ipv6 block. No extra charge. Grandfathered features from over a decade ago.

r00ty Admin , 6 months ago

Yep. The ISP doesn't offer it any more. They stopped, I think when RIPE officially "ran out" of new net blocks. But I've moved address twice so far and have kept the allocation. Well, on the last move they messed up and gave new a new single IP. I complained, and they asked why it matters so much to have my old IP. I pointed out I had a netblock, and they fixed it up pretty quickly.

Pretty soon, full fibre will be in my area and available on the same ISP. So, hoping for a smooth transition to keep it for a bit longer.

r00ty Admin , 7 months ago

Personally, sometimes I'm going to say things that are against the industry or specifically the actions of the company I work for. If my real name was shown someone could connect me to the actual business and they'd see me as some disloyal employee and not only would I not have a job, I could be blackballed by the industry because most businesses follow the same practices.

With this level of anonymity I can post my opinion about these subjects and not be calling out an individual company or connect the comment to myself in order to alienate myself from other potential employers.

r00ty Admin , 7 months ago

The problem there is that once you're doxed in one place, you'd be doxed everywhere. Also how do you prove you're the same person? Whatever info they hold to prove that is in one single location, which for security isn't great if they get hacked.

r00ty Admin , 7 months ago

I think in terms of gdpr, if you notify a site that is providing service (allows users to register from I guess) to EU countries you want something deleted, they need to comply.

But I think in terms of federated content, you cannot be expected to do more than send information about the deletion out. If other instances don't respect it, it's not the originating instance's job to police it.

Now the user could go to these other instances and chase it up. But I wonder if a third party instance doesn't allow users from EU countries, if they'd be required to comply? Federated content opens up a an interesting set of scenarios that will surely test privacy laws.

I also wonder what the EU powers are to sites in non EU countries that allow EU users but don't respect GDPR. what can they even do? Companies like twitter, Facebook, reddit etc have presences in EU countries that can be pursued, but John Smith running a lemmy instance on a $5 vps might be out of reach.

r00ty Admin , 7 months ago

It's not really as simple as that. Businesses in countries outside the EU have to follow the gdpr rules if they have or want customers from the EU because the EU can hit them financially in their EU operations.

Normal people offering a free service that are not based in the EU probably cannot be pursued at all. I doubt the EU considered people that might not be some business wanting to profit from EU citizens.

r00ty Admin , 7 months ago

No. I think we mostly want federating instances to respect delete requests. But only the instance actually contacted has any onus to delete on their own instance and maybe, maybe try to send requests to delete elsewhere.

There's no way there's an expectation that the originating instance has a legal requirement to remove it from anywhere else.

r00ty Admin , 7 months ago

But pii isn't being sent. A user's nickname and the domain of their instance plus any content they create is. If they choose to put their pii in public posts or user info, that's their choice but is not pii solicited in order to operate the service, it was volunteered.

It's a crucial difference. I considered this when writing the terms and data retention information for my own instance. Federation is very frugal about the information shared.

r00ty Admin , 7 months ago

Yep, in the UK we have both abv and units of alcohol on most drinks. So you can go by whichever makes most sense for you.

r00ty Admin , 7 months ago

How about freaking nooo.

r00ty Admin , 7 months ago

I know it's a few days later now. But I'm agnostic and not explicitly atheist and the reason is that, one of the few scenarios that made sense to me, I never thought of as simulation theory.

It was that the big bang doesn't remove the possibility of a God. That God could just be an alien that exists outside our concept of time and created this universe with the concept of time as an experiment.

I suppose this could be a simulation too. That is, that alien outside our concept of time creates a simulation of a universe with a linear time.

But, you know it's all thought experiments.

r00ty Admin , 7 months ago

I'm using God as a generic term for creator. I do realise it's a loaded term though.

r00ty Admin , 7 months ago

I think the problem is that once institutionalised, it can be very hard to get out.

But also it's quite important to remember they've determined he's a danger to society because he won't stop hacking. If that's the bar they're testing for, maybe it's a long wait in store.