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Otter

@ otter @lemmy.ca

Posts
305
Comments
743
Joined
3 yr. ago

I waddled onto the beach and stole found a computer to use.

🍁⚕️ 💽

Note: I'm moderating a handful of communities in more of a caretaker role. If you want to take one on, send me a message and I'll share more info :)

  • Brave is charging $60 to remove features it added in the first place

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  • I don't use Brave, and don't recommend it to people, but it seems like the $60 is intended as a donation/"vote-with-your-wallet on how we monetize" type product rather than something that is actually worth that much.

    It doesn't change all of the OTHER problems with Brave, but it might be a step in the right direction when it comes to monetization? Pay once vs. LLM/crypto/injected ads

    https://account.brave.com/?intent=checkout&product=origin

    Brave Origin is a paid version of the browser for users who don't need all the features that support Brave as a business, but still want the privacy that only Brave offers. Origin users will continue to benefit from our industry-leading privacy, adblock, and speed (via Shields), as well as regular software updates, Chromium patches, and security and privacy improvements. Origin is available on desktop and mobile versions 1.91.x and above.

    • Support our mission & open-source work
    • Minimalist browser UI centered on Brave Shields
    • Maintain core adblock, privacy, & speed
    • One-time purchase can be activated multiple times across all your devices

  • Seattle poised to ban new datacenters, the largest city yet in the US to consider such a moratorium

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  • Pwnd Blaster: Hacking your PC using your speaker without ever touching it

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  • The way BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) works is that each device has various registers (called GATT characteristics) that, if you're connected to the device, you can write to, read, subscribe to notifications for, and so on. What's important to note is that to connect to a device, you don't need to (necessarily) pair with it. You can often just connect with a device and immediately start reading and writing data to characteristics. Pairing establishes encryption, but a connection can be made without it.

    To my surprise, upon reading the characteristic 9e9daaeb-3a10-4fe8-b69f-7397aff77886, I was greeted with the full version string. This means anyone can just connect to any Katana V2X over Bluetooth and start sending CTP commands to it, reading information, changing settings, etc.

    I thought of the implications for a bit. The speaker has a microphone. An attacker could, theoretically, upload a custom firmware that effectively turns the speaker into a covert monitoring device, listening in on conversations and forwarding them to a receiver over Bluetooth.

    What was more interesting to me was the fact that the speaker is, in a standard setup, connected to a PC over USB. It's by all means a trusted USB device.

    What if we wrote custom firmware that forced the speaker into acting as a keyboard, sending keystrokes for opening up the terminal and executing arbitrary commands? We would turn the speaker into a Rubber Ducky, but remotely, without ever having to plug anything into either the speaker or the PC.

  • Acceptable Use Pawlicy [TrueNuff]

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  • At a previous job, they used to send them fairly often, using various tricks to keep people on their toes. I found it fun

  • Acceptable Use Pawlicy [TrueNuff]

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  • What would that be testing, whether the users are psychic? If the email sender is legitimate, then what else would users need to do?

  • The LanguageTool extension will now be paid

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  • It's still FOSS, and you can either download it offline or selfhost the server if you want to use it without paying. Services cost money to run, I'm not going to ask for them to run that for free indefinitely 🤷

  • Human proof for FOSS contributions

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  • This makes a lot of sense, but it might take some getting used to. I think people are more self-critical and embarrassed about their coding ability and mistakes than they should be, and they might worry about all that being public.

  • DuckDuckGo installs are up 30% as users reject being ‘force-fed’ Google’s AI Search

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  • Assuming this is about duck.ai, I didn't know they got shit for it. People I've talked to generally enjoy having that option available. It's free and about as private as you can get with the current LLM chatbots, unless you self host one yourself.

    At least until Confer gets off the ground. Once that happens, I'm hoping DDG switches to a similar model

    https://confer.to/blog/2026/01/private-inference/

  • DuckDuckGo installs are up 30% as users reject being ‘force-fed’ Google’s AI Search

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  • That's a bit of a stretch?

    People who pay for Kagi likely tried the trial and found the results to be far enough better than google/microslop that they are willing to pay for the ongoing service. Or they want to support a business model that isn't based around the advertising industry, so that someday Kagi can realistically compete with the incumbents. I don't need to search for things often enough to justify the cost, but I know people who use it for work and consider it to be worth the cost.

    Meanwhile people who bought NFTs thought that they could sell a copy of a digital image for lots of money.

  • DuckDuckGo installs are up 30% as users reject being ‘force-fed’ Google’s AI Search

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  • I think they're talking about DDG, not google

  • Spain blocks Polymarket, Kalshi over gambling licences

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  • I'm surprised it took this long. The skill argument makes no sense, since you could just as easily try to apply it to any form of traditional gambling.

  • Created the android app I wanted for Frigate, want to test?

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  • My bad, I missed that 😄

  • Created the android app I wanted for Frigate, want to test?

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  • The links are dead for me, maybe it's set to private? The first one doesn't open anything, and the second one takes me to a login page

  • Flatpak’s Future May Leave Non-systemd Distros Behind

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  • They're somewhat sandboxed, likely to be up to date, and it behaves similarly across different machines. It's nice for GUI programs that don't need access to the wider system, and it won't mess with anything else that I already have installed. I guess it would have similar pros and cons as containerization with Podman/Docker?

    I get the vast majority of my GUI programs from Flathub. I didn't know there was a controversy with it, other than just wanting a different way of doing things.

  • What addiction medicine can teach us about depending on AI

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  • When people hear the word "addiction" they often assume it implies catastrophe intoxication, loss of control, destruction. But addiction medicine describes a process long before those outcomes appear: the gradual shift from optional use to psychological reliance.

  • Wayland Comes To Minecraft

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  • With everything running, you’ll be able to launch arbitrary programs and have the windows placed within the Minecraft world as if they were in-game. Users can place the windows in any orientation and can interact with them like any other desktop environment. [EVVIE] has released all of the code under the GPL for anyone wanting to try it out or build on the project itself.

    Oh, that's not what I was expecting 😄

  • If I have some spare compute, are there ways I can use it to help an existing fediverse instance?

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  • That might be interesting! If you build on this idea, it would be cool to see ping times with location data, so instance operators can see what the performance is like with real world data. That was something we were concerned about when trying out different alternatives when leaving CloudFlare.

  • X announces significant restrictions to free accounts; 50 posts and 200 replies per day

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  • This is enshitification, but it might be indirectly helping people who are on Twitter too much 😄

    It doesn't do much to bot farms since they can keep spinning up more accounts

  • Removed

    China says 'world's first' offshore wind-powered underwater data center has entered full operation, houses 2,000 servers — 24 megawatt subsea AI facility uses ocean water for passive cooling and offs…

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  • That's true, but I still don't think we can raise ocean temperatures through direct cooling and renewable sources the way that the greenhouse effect can. Water can absorb a lot of heat energy without changing temperature, and that is why regions close to oceans have a more temperate climate.

    While I don't have enough knowledge in this field to be making any definitive statements, my logic is as follows:

    • outside of nuclear fission/fusion reactions, heat energy on the earth's surface comes from either the sun or molten rock in the core
    • that energy is responsible for everything that happens on earth, including wind energy

    So we would need to get energy from off planet, use nuclear fission/fusion, or cover enough of the land area in wind and solar farms in order to redirect the sun's energy over to the oceans.

    I think the bigger concern, when it comes to heating the ocean, is that manufacturing, construction, and transport related to the data centers still releases a lot of greenhouse gases. Those gases trap the sun's energy within our atmosphere and that WILL heat up the earth. Way more than direct cooling using ocean water.

  • Removed

    China says 'world's first' offshore wind-powered underwater data center has entered full operation, houses 2,000 servers — 24 megawatt subsea AI facility uses ocean water for passive cooling and offs…

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  • It would probably take more energy than we can harvest on earth, considering the sunlight and geothermal energy doesn't boil it currently.

    I could see it affecting the temperature on local scales, such as the area immediately around the data center.

  • Selfhosted @lemmy.world
    Otter @lemmy.ca
    Discussion

    What would it take to selfhost some of the backend that Tesla's connect to?

  • Opensource @programming.dev
    Otter @lemmy.ca

    Zen Browser v1.10.1b - Passkey support for MacOS, and a media player controller that's fully integrated with Picture-in-Picture mode

  • Tech @programming.dev
    Otter @lemmy.ca

    We hacked into a bowling alley computer | The Serial Port

  • Selfhosted @lemmy.world
    Otter @lemmy.ca

    ArchiveBox/good-karma-kit: A Docker Compose bundle to run on servers with spare CPU, RAM, disk, and bandwidth to help the world. Includes Tor, ArchiveWarrior, BOINC, and more...

    github.com /ArchiveBox/good-karma-kit
  • Technology @lemmy.world
    Otter @lemmy.ca

    Volkswagen reintroducing physical controls for vital functions | Autocar

    www.autocar.co.uk /car-news/new-cars/volkswagen-reintroducing-physical-controls-vital-functions
  • Technology @lemmy.world
    Otter @lemmy.ca

    Nearly 1 million Windows devices targeted in advanced “malvertising” spree

    arstechnica.com /security/2025/03/nearly-1-million-windows-devices-targeted-in-advanced-malvertising-spree/
  • Programming @programming.dev
    Otter @lemmy.ca

    The implementation details for XenonRecomp, a tool for recompiling Xbox 360 games to native executables

    github.com /hedge-dev/XenonRecomp
  • Opensource @programming.dev
    Otter @lemmy.ca

    Thunderbird "won't be adopting the firefox terms of use"

    mastodon.online /@thunderbird/114112105485771954
  • Comic Strips @lemmy.world
    Otter @lemmy.ca

    Don't look in the grate

  • Selfhosted @lemmy.world
    Otter @lemmy.ca

    Release FreshRSS 1.26.0

    github.com /FreshRSS/FreshRSS/releases/tag/1.26.0
  • Opensource @programming.dev
    Otter @lemmy.ca

    Release FreshRSS 1.26.0

    github.com /FreshRSS/FreshRSS/releases/tag/1.26.0
  • Lemmy.ca's Main Community @lemmy.ca
    Otter @lemmy.ca

    Stats from the first week after the launch of Pixelfed.ca

  • Fediverse @lemmy.world
    Otter @lemmy.ca

    John Oliver promoted alternatives to big tech in last night's episode, including Mastodon and Pixelfed

  • Programming @programming.dev
    Otter @lemmy.ca

    When Your Last Name Is Null, Nothing Works

    www.wsj.com /lifestyle/null-last-name-computer-scientists-forms-f0a43b08
  • Fediverse @lemmy.world
    Otter @lemmy.ca
    edited

    We are excited to announce pixelfed.ca, a new Pixelfed instance run by Canadians and hosted in Canada

    pixelfed.ca
  • Lemmy.ca's Main Community @lemmy.ca
    Otter @lemmy.ca
    edited see comments

    We are excited to announce pixelfed.ca, a new Pixelfed instance run by Canadians and hosted in Canada

    pixelfed.ca
  • Offbeat @lemmy.ca
    Otter @lemmy.ca

    Underweight baby seal is rescued from Connecticut streets and recovering at an aquarium

    www.independent.co.uk /news/new-haven-connecticut-yale-university-national-oceanic-and-atmospheric-administration-b2700561.html
  • Technology @lemmy.world
    Otter @lemmy.ca

    Why Is a Government Contractor Trying to Buy iPhone Hacking Tech From Us?

    www.404media.co /why-is-a-government-contractor-trying-to-buy-iphone-hacking-tech-from-us/
  • Technology @lemmy.world
    Otter @lemmy.ca

    Netflix wants programming for distracted viewers

    theconversation.com /too-distracted-to-watch-netflix-has-the-perfect-second-screen-show-for-you-249012
  • Opensource @programming.dev
    Otter @lemmy.ca

    Release Flashpoint Launcher 14.0.0 · FlashpointProject/launcher

    github.com /FlashpointProject/launcher/releases/tag/14.0.0