7heo

7heo , 3 months ago to 196 in definitely socially well adjusted rule

Dieser Comic hätte für optimalen Realismus auf Deutsch geschrieben werden sollen.

7heo , 3 months ago to Technology in Why I love Big Pharma (and why you should too)

Umbrella corp. That has to be satire. Right? Right??

7heo , 3 months ago to Technology in Users shocked to find Instagram limits political content by default

If they are shocked by this, wait until they understand what meta does with their PII and behavioural information... I'm sure they will understand any day now. Any day...

7heo , 3 months ago to linuxmemes in Don't worry guys it's sandboxed

Ancient Aliens meme saying "sandbox"

7heo , 3 months ago to Memes in How does anybody think this is a solid plan

Oh, no, we totally can. We just need to buy local. What? It is "too expensive!!"? Yeah, well, tell me about being part of the problem...

7heo , 3 months ago to Technology in Qualcomm's Powerful PC Chip Is Worse for AMD Than for Intel

The ARM architecture does apparently (I'm no expert) have some inherent power-efficiency advantages over x86

Well, the R from ARM means RISC, and x86 (so, by extension, x86_64) is a CISC architecture, so they are not even in the same "family" of designs.

Originally, CISC architectures were more popular, because it meant less instructions to write, read, store, etc. Which is beneficial when hardware is limited and developers write in assembly directly.

Over time, the need for assembly programming faltered, and in the 90s, the debate for CISC vs RISC resurfaced. Most developers then wrote code in C and C++, and the underlaying architecture was losing relevance. It is also worth noting that due to a higher number of instructions, the machine code is more granular, and as a result, RISC code can inherently be further optimised. It also means that the processor design is simpler than for CISC architectures, which in turn leaves more room for innovation.

So, all else being equal, you'd expect Qualcomm to have an advantage in laptops with this chip, but all else isn't equal because the software isn't there yet, and no one in the PC market is quite in a position to kickstart the software development like Apple is with Macs.

Now, a key consideration here is that the x86 architecture has been dominating the personal computer market for close to half a century at this point, meaning that a lot of the hardware and software is accommodating (wrt functionality, optimisation, etc) for it specifically.

Therefore, RISC architectures find themselves at a disadvantage: the choice in Operating Systems is limited, firmware and drivers are missing, etc. Additionally, switching to RISC means breaking legacy support, or going through emulation (like the Apple M3 does).

However, in our modern ecosystem, the potential gain from switching to a RISC architecture is considerable (storage is cheaper than ever, RAM is cheap and fast, and seldom anyone is writing assembly anymore. Plus, those who do might enjoy the higher degree of control the additional granularity affords them, without having to do everything by hand, given the degree of assistance modern IDEs offer), and it will gradually become a necessity for every vendor.

For now however, the most popular computer Operating System worldwide has poor performance on ARM, and no support for other RISC architectures (such as RISC-V) that I know of.

The challenge here is in breaking a decades long dominance that originated from a monopoly: if you have paid attention to what Apple has been doing, they initially used large parts of FreeBSD to build a new Operating System that could run on their custom processors (Motorola 68k), and then built the rest of their Operating System (Darwin and Aqua) on top of it. This afforded them the possibility to switch to Intel CPUs in 2005, and back to ARM in 2020 with their M series CPUs.

The quality of their software (in large parts derived from the quality of free software and of staggering design work) has allowed them to grow from a virtually negligible share of computer users to the second place behind windows.

Now, other Operating Systems (such as Linux) have the same portability characteristics as FreeBSD, and can feasibly lead to such a viable commercial OS offering with support for several hardware architectures.

"All" that is needed is a consistent operating system, based on whichever kernel fits, to supplement MacOS in the alternative offering to windows.

Most software would be available, and a lot of firmware would too, thanks to ARM being used nearly exclusively in mobile phones, and most mobile phones running a Linux kernel.

Once we have a (or better, a few) Linux or BSD based operating system(s) with commercial support, consistent design, and acceptable UX for "normies", such CPUs will become a very valid offering.

7heo , 3 months ago to Memes in It would simply be too good for this universe to handle

If Diablo 3 and Duke Nukem Forever have taught me anything, it is that the more you wait, the better the game is.

Also, if you want HL3, here is the closest we ever got.

7heo , 3 months ago to Technology in The platform era is ending. Rather than build new Twitters and Facebooks, we can create a stuff-posting system that works better for everybody.

Yeah, getting old sucks. I'm still 25 in my head, but my body constantly reminds me that I'm over 30, and that it is slowly falling apart like a decrepit abandoned car.

I guess what I was trying to say is: we have crossposting between communities, what prevents us from crossposting between years as well? :)

7heo , 3 months ago to Technology in The platform era is ending. Rather than build new Twitters and Facebooks, we can create a stuff-posting system that works better for everybody.

This repost is so old that it is the very first tab in my browser. For the record, I have [] tabs open. I have had [] tabs open from some time in 2023. That's how old it is.

7heo , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago) to Privacy in Does ProtonVPN no longer offer the option to pay in crypto?

njal.la does.

Edit: gosh, people do not like njal.la... 😳

7heo , 3 months ago to Mildly Infuriating in Someone gets killed by a car, so they restrict e-bikes.

Screenshot

...

Actual link.

7heo , 3 months ago to Technology in File over App Philosophy

And they must be local rather than remote (cloud).

Also, always prioritise a common format served through filters (for example having all your data in postgres and minio, and serve that on demand as ICS, XML, etc) so that you don't need to duplicate or lose data due to formats.

7heo , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago) to Technology in is this the moment spez became Heisenberg? Reddit CEO warns users: "We know your dark secrets'

Spez could learn a thing or two from russia. That is not how one uses kompromat...

7heo , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago) to 196 in rule

AN UNCOMMITTED MOVEMENT WILL NOT BE CALLED FOR THE GENERAL ELECTION, REGARDLESS OF THE RESULT OF THE PRIMARY.

First off, it better not. If you think "Genocide Joe" is bad for palestine, try "Bloodbath drumpf"... I mean, maybe it is better to die violently and fast than slowly? But either way, whatever the pro-palestine movement is after, the democrats are their best choice, and by far. The alternative not only got stronger ties with the netanyahu government, but also a much lower overall IQ, zero consideration for legislation, international agreements, humanitarian matters, and democracy in general (which they have literally confused with the opposition party, for decades by now). You might not like biden, but from a humanitarian PoV, he is orders of magnitude better than anyone the GoP might select (and especially more so if it is drumpf).

Second off, I get that people are trying to "send a message", but if it changes nothing aside from vanity numbers, it will have absolutely zero impact. The impact was "voting for Bernie", and that is about 8 years too late now.

7heo , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago) to Technology in Desperate TikTok lobbying effort backfires on Capitol Hill

AFAIU - but that is a veeeeeery "skimmed" take on the issue, so please check what I wrote before taking it at face value:

There were legitimate concerns about tiktok (hugely popular platform distributed as a "black box", with very concerning permissions and behaviours, and owned by a foreign actor - tiktok is "unavailable" domestically - that demonstrably uses technology in an extremely dystopian way on their own population), so there was quite a lot of public pressure to "do something about it", and of course politicians jumped on the opportunity to make a (very) broadly fitting legislation targeting it, coincidentally also having utterly damaging and immensely concerning side-effects for the end users privacy and sovereignty of all applications.

Following that, some of the people got (rightly) concerned about the legislation's effect on their rights and privacy, but the vast majority just saw that their digital crack cocaine was being attacked, and started whining with arguments of varying relevance. At the end of the day, though, a given platform is irrelevant. What is, is the abilities given to the users, and the possibilities that those create. But now, we have a deeply concerning platform, still being immensely popular and uncontrolled; a totally unfitting legislation with incredibly wild "side effects"; and a growing, misguided popular movement to "save tiktok" that will only make a legitimate attempt at mitigating it much harder. Yay.

Edit: after quite some digging, I found the bill here (PDF) - source.

Edit 2: to answer your question more directly:

Can anyone get me up to speed what claims the bill gave to justify TikTok must be either sold or remove from app stores?

The justification is "America’s foremost adversary has no business controlling a dominant media platform in the United States".

Which is IMHO fair. It isn't like the CCP would let American corporations, let alone government controlled ones, run services in China, let alone psychiatrically alienate their citizens, instigate discord and radicalization, potentially manipulate the public opinion, have the capacity to covertly do psyops, and actively, aggressively collect any and all data.

The potential problem I see (and probably what concerns most of the privacy advocates out there) however, is that while the bill is aiming at tiktok in particular (fine), it also targets any "foreign adversary". Meaning that, AFAIU (but IANAL), all the US would have to do to completely and entirely nuke an app (or an entire federated platform!) in the US would be to declare any foreign entity (country, state, corporation, person, etc) their "adversary". Effectively giving them a single "button" to directly nuke any app and services they don't see fit. No matter how legitimate.