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Zak

@ Zak @lemmy.world

Posts
7
Comments
870
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • The Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 text mentions the TSA on 2 occasions, 1 of which recommends that "The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) be privatized" (Page 134, Bullet Point 4)

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  • The TSA has little to do with the lack of hijacking since 2001. Secured cockpit doors and the widespread belief that hijacking means death are the main reasons it no longer occurs.

  • Suspect with bong built into his car dashboard is arrested for the 98th time after high speed chase

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  • Under other circumstances, I might agree with you, but the guy built a bong into his dashboard.

    That's an impressive level of commitment to DUI.

  • UnifiedAttestation: European, open source Google Play Integrity alternative on the horizon, could impact banking & government apps.

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  • You're not wrong, and an open option might be an improvement over the current situation. On the other hand, it might encourage broader use of remote attestation.

    I'm mostly disappointed that there's no meaningful organized opposition. When Microsoft first proposed adding remote attestation to Windows, the New York Times called it out as oppressive. Now it seems like only hardcore open source nerds care, and I think the tech community should be doing better.

  • Conflicted on whether to take Plan B after he supposedly came outside during unprotected sex

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  • I agree with all the other comments: pulling out is not a birth control method, and you have a high risk of pregnancy in this situation if you don't take an emergency contraceptive.

    I find myself getting into these situations. What should I be doing differently?

    Carry condoms. Insist on their use the entire time a penis is in contact with your vulva. Most men, even irresponsible ones will pick sex with a condom over no sex, and someone refusing condom use when you have one available is a strong red flag.

    I won't pretend to know what lifestyle choices are right for you, but condoms have a very good track record for preventing STIs and pregnancy.

  • UnifiedAttestation: European, open source Google Play Integrity alternative on the horizon, could impact banking & government apps.

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  • I don't like it. Remote attestation is a violation of the user's right to control over their own devices. We should be pushing to eliminate it, not expand its use.

  • From F-Droid to emulators, here's who's hit hardest by Android's new verification rules

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  • Anyone who was publishing to FDroid already is not going to be annoyed about the 24 hour scare screen for users.

    Bullshit.

    It's hard enough to get people to step outside the Play Store ecosystem. Any additional friction will greatly reduce the number who do, and the combination of a reboot and a long waiting period is a lot of friction for the average person.

  • Was the world always a fucked up place?

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  • All people will die, so does it really matter if its sooner than later?

    I think most people would rather die at the age of 90 from heart failure than at the age of 9 from smallpox.

    Their chances of having food, a stable climate, and freedom are getting reduced every year?

    Those are valid concerns, but the trends were moving in the right direction until recently. I'm concerned about backsliding too, but it's not clear whether we're seeing a long-term reversal or just some turbulence.

    We have breached the boundaries of climate change, freshwater use, ocean acidification, and biological diversity. There has never been a worse time on the planet than right now.

    This is a picture of the Cuyahoga River on fire in 1969. Here's a look at the air in Los Angeles in the 1970s.

    We've come a long way on environmental protection in the past half century. We still have a long way to go, and as with other issues, there has been some backsliding. I'm pretty optimistic about the long-term trend.

  • Was the world always a fucked up place?

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  • Pick a metric of badness like rates of war death, childhood mortality, communicable disease, or extreme poverty.

    They're all low now compared to most points we can estimate in human history. Look at an interval of a decade instead of a year to smooth out spikes from relatively small events.

    Over half a million people have died in the Gaza and Ukraine wars, and that's terrible. It seems like now is pretty bad as far as war goes. World War 1 killed about 20 million. World War 2 killed about 80 million. The perspective is staggering.

    A couple centuries ago, half of all children died before adulthood. Now it's 4.4%. One in 20 children not surviving their childhood is certainly tragic, but far less so than one in two.

  • Can someone help pls?

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  • I had an inverse experience after an adult beverage or two and talking to someone about a third party's script they found unsatisfactory. It went about like this:

    Zak: filename.py sucks

    Claude: What's wrong with it? Bugs? Code quality? Features?

    Zak: yes

    Claude rewrote it, claiming it had "multiple issues". It found and corrected a major bug, added error handling, and improved command line argument handling.

  • Did we win? Google to continue to allow side loading

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  • A lot of network, banking, and telephony protocols historically rely on trusting that there are no bad actors in the chain. Technology has added more links to the chain increasing the opportunities for bad actors to tap into it.

    Their wish to break the first rule of network security (you can't trust the client) shouldn't be everyone else's problem.

  • New computer chip material inspired by the human brain could slash AI energy use

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  • could dramatically cut the energy consumed by artificial intelligence hardware

    Decreasing the cost of using a resource almost always results in more use of that resource.

    Laboratory tests showed the devices could reliably endure tens of thousands of switching cycles

    That's not very many when GPUs perform trillions of operations per second.

  • Has a job ever baited and switched you? Tell me about it!

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  • The actual lesson: get people to pay you for bullshit seminars.

  • Has a job ever baited and switched you? Tell me about it!

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  • That's weird. Titles are free.

  • Google gives Android users a way to install unverified apps if they worked hard for it(including waiting 24 hours)

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  • I've tried it, and only ran into a couple apps that wouldn't work with MicroG. I won't pretend it's painless, but it's workable for someone with sufficient motivation.

  • Google gives Android users a way to install unverified apps if they worked hard for it(including waiting 24 hours)

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  • /e/os is Android without Google proprietary stuff. It runs most Android apps.

  • No Microslop for me

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  • A senior engineer obviously needs (and knows how to handle) considerably more access to their workstation and company IT infrastructure than the average employee. On the other hand, I've occasionally read complaints from IT security types about engineers being way too eager to install sketchy stuff.

    There's some truth to those complaints. I might need to try out several libraries and tools to see what works best for a certain use case. Is that new one with 15 stars on Github actually safe? Are all of its dependencies? How many developers perform a task like that in a sandbox? How many of those perform a thorough audit before taking it out of the sandbox?

  • Removed

    Why does this website feel like the end of FOSS?

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  • I don't know if that service can, but LLM-based workflows can do that. Here's an LLM-based decompiler project which could serve as the first step in such a pipeline.

  • Asus Co-CEO: MacBook Neo Is a 'Shock' to the PC Industry

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  • How much cheaper do you think it should be for not including a 20W power supply? I'd be surprised if Apple's cost for that part is more than 5€.

  • Asus Co-CEO: MacBook Neo Is a 'Shock' to the PC Industry

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  • because they “care about environment 😉” the €99 charger (which is almost mandatory for a new user) is sold separately.

    It's because they're required by law to offer it without a power supply. See Article 3a, section 10.

    Apple's first-party power supply isn't "almost mandatory", and doesn't cost 99€. The 20W model shipped with the Macbook Neo in other markets costs 25€ on Apple's German store, and a generic 8€ power supply from Amazon will work. The power supply most people already have for their phone will usually also work.