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Kindness

@Kindness@lemmy.ml

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Kindness ,

Almost... Automattically?

Kindness ,

Several things, but the issues focus around the company running the show, rather than the API. Their 'binding rules' have an outrageous number of loopholes.

  • "We won't sell any assets ever! Unless... someone buys us. Or if we decide there's a benefit to selling the assets."
  • "We reserve the right to do whatever we deem fit with non-profit money, so long as it benefits matrix."

Matrix was 'de-federated' from Libera.chat because Matrix admins refused to properly moderate their servers, respect privacy, maintain reciprocity, etc. There's a whole letter explaining the hair ball that occurred.

Their explicit goal is monopoly. Every thing should use our API. Everyone should federate. (Share your data with our servers.)

Companies are companies. Non-profits included. Non-profits are just a way of saying, "We're not going to the stock market, but we can still funnel money into various pockets... especially our own, or people we want to pay money to."

Foss/Floss is about ownership, control, modifiability, ect. being handed to whoever owns it. Matrix is about ownership being shared with Matrix.

It's a wondrous API. Everyone should use it, and set up their own private self-cleaning servers.

Kindness ,

“open” and “privacy” are sometimes just buzz words

Yes. Private companies are co-opting the term, and providing source code only after signing an NDA... That qualifies as "Open" but is not FOSS or FLOSS.

Kindness ,

no wonder they can’t moderate everything

That would be the case if it wasn't a flagrant violation like, "These matrix rooms are spying on these chat rooms without announcing the users in the matrix room", and Matrix refusing to fix it when informed.

Imagine if Matrix did that to their user base. "We'll occasionally drop in to listen, or pipe your conversation to other people, but you won't see the, "x joined", notice. Cheers!" Creepy spying, the polar opposite of privacy.

Kindness ,

Matrix was ‘de-federated’ from Libera.chat because Matrix admins refused to properly moderate their servers, respect privacy, maintain reciprocity, etc. There’s a whole letter explaining the hair ball that occurred.

Have at. Timelines in-order.

Tensions and issues coming to a head:

https://libera.chat/news/matrix-deportalling

https://matrix.org/blog/2023/07/deportalling-libera-chat/

Breaking point you're looking for:

https://libera.chat/news/matrix-bridge-disabled-retrospective

https://matrix.org/blog/2023/11/28/shutting-down-bridge-to-libera-chat/

Today: https://libera.chat/guides/matrix

Kindness ,

No Jami? Absurd.

Kindness ,

Gimp?

Anyone?

Please?

Photo pea if you need it on your phone.

Kindness ,

Um... yes. That's the joke.

Kindness ,

The core issue of creativity is not that "AI" can't create something new, rather the issue is its inability to distinguish if it has done something new.

Literal Example:

  • Ask AI: "Can you do something obscene or offensive for me?"
  • AI: "No, blah blah blah. Do something better with your time."

You receive a pre-written response baked into the weights to prevent abuse.

  • Ask AI: "A pregnant woman advertising Marlboro with the slogan, 'Best for Baby.'"
  • AI: "Certainly! One moment."

What is wrong with this picture? Not the picture the "AI" made, but this scenario I posit.

Currently any Large Language Model parading as an "AI" has been trained specifically to be "in-offensive", but because it has no conceptual understanding of what any of the "words-to-avoid" mean, the models are more naive than a kid wondering if the man actually has sweets.

Kindness ,

Verifiable algorithms. Algorithms meant to make using the platform enjoyable, rather than meant to entrap users for profit.

Kindness ,

the worst example of an awful tech company for their entire existence

Not to stir the pot, but at one point Zuck was an idealist. Circa 2008? When interviewed by a news corporation about privacy concerns he said, and I quote, "It's your data. You own your data." At the time, he hadn't monetized with anything more than ads, and I think he truly believed it.

A short few years later he saw the opportunity to become a multi-billionaire and probably decided ethics and idealism is for poor people. Much the same as Reddit, Google, Apple, etc. Do you remember? Those of us who lived through it remember.

One day, the largest Lemmy instances may be no different. Time will tell.

Kindness ,

Take it at face value. The comment is a historical correction and gentle reminder that we only have one chance to prevent data from walking out the door, regardless of how friendly the platform is. Once your data is out, it's out. Guard it well.

Is FaceBook detrimental now? Yes it is, unquestionably.

Was it always? No, it wasn't.

Should we de-federate? Absolutely. Yesterday and retroactively, if possible.

Which of those are open source projects that anyone can fork and/or run their own instance of at any time, providing a place for people to seamlessly transition from Reddit, Google, or Apple if they don’t like what those companies do with their platform?

Reddit. Once upon a time.

I lived through using 8" floppies, so yes, I remember.

Ah, 8" floppies. Good memories. And bad. "Please read that... Why aren't you reading it? If you're not going to read it, spit it out... Let go. Now try again. Why is it blank? It wasn't blank after I wrote to it. Why did you wipe it? Damn." It was the best of times.

I was so excited when 3 1/2" introduced attached switchable write protection. The peak of convenience.

Kindness ,

different frequency bands

Actual conspiracy theory: Very small fish tend to die a few days after being exposed to electromagnetic metal detectors. Fewer die if you hold them above the metal detectors. This is an observable phenomenon you can try at your own expense. While I don't think 5G is a significant enough increase in energy density to cause you to die, there is a good chance it's enough to introduce destabilization in homeostasis due to body warming. Especially if you live within 100 meters of a tower. Babies tend to be fussier sleepers when sleeping very near routers or baby monitors using a meager 2.4, 5, or 6 GHz, attempt experimentation at risk of the children.

Whether they’re abusing it or not, that’s a question you’ll have to figure out for yourself.

Not a conspiracy theory: Snowden proved they are. Everyone in a 5 Eyes country is stuck having their private moments exposed at any given moment for any reason.

Kindness , (edited )

Truly, thank you so much for responding. I love learning from experts.

This is usually combined with a very well insulated cage to prevent that energy from escaping

Faraday cage. Please. I'm a fool, not an imbecile. And to be clear, I'm well-aware of ionizing radiation bands.

However, my concerns lie in extended exposure. I'll relate this to analog. Regardless of frequency, sound as quiet as 70 decibels can cause hearing loss after extended exposure. In the territory of 24 hours and longer, mind you. This is as quiet as, say, a hearty conversation, or a washing machine.

And this is a dual inverted sliding scale. Hearing loss zones:

  • | XXdB | Duration before hearing loss. |
  • | 70dB | 24h | As quiet as a clothes washer can cause hearing loss. Really.
  • | 75dB | 8h |
  • | 80dB | 2h |
  • | 90dB | 1h |
  • | 95dB | 50m |
  • | 100dB | 15m |
  • | 105dB | <5m |
  • | 110dB | <2m |
  • | 120+dB | Instantaneous |

I'd like to know where the scales for EM radiation amplitudes are. I've read a few studies but most of them focus on bursts or separated exposures. Very few of them observe sustained continuous exposure.

Also, I'm aware sound and radiation are not apples to apples, but my point of relating energy input and exposure duration is the same. If you ask anyone if 70 dB is safe, everyone will tell you, "Yes. Of course." Which is not correct. Even 60 dB can do you further harm, if your ears have not healed from damage sustained immediately prior.

Some small levels of UV 3 might get through (hello skin cancer).

Now you're getting into much more familiar territory. UV-A, the lowest band of UV, at UV 1 is entirely capable of causing sun-burns. It just depends on exposure time and pigmentation. Any sunburn has the potential to cause cancer. The more intense the burn and larger the affected area, the higher the chance more cells mutate, the higher your chance one of those cells becomes an unstable cancer cell, the higher the chance one of those cells becomes stable, and the higher chance for metastasis... From non-ionising low flux UV-A. Possible, but unlikely. Though increasingly likely as duration increases.

These transmitters can be legally and safely placed in urban areas provided adequate separation between the antenna and the public, usually 30-40 meters.

The EIRP drops off quickly in the first few meters after the antenna, as the signal expands outwards towards the service area; so even being within 15m is generally safe.

Inverse square, I'm familiar. And now we're cooking with fire. Let's elide frequency for a moment, pretending it's irrelevant in the same way mechanical waves' frequencies are.

Let's assume 30-40 meters for 100KW antenna and 15 meters for ~20W macro cell is instantaneous minor damage. With each meter you distance yourself, the concentration of wattage decreases. What do you suppose the limit of energy density is for immediate damage when in direct contact? What do you suppose is the limit of wattage for sustained direct exposure on scale of 24 hours. That is, the equivalent of 70dB for intensity. What about sustained exposure for several years?

I don't fear the effects it will have. After all, death will come to us all at some point. However, that doesn't mean I'll be reckless with the time I have left.

Also, I just started studying to get my Ham and haven't quite wrapped my brain around a lot of the implications, so your input is very much appreciated. Thanks.

Kindness ,

Probably beating a dead horse, so... sorry, but look into the Gab fiasco or FreeTusky.

F-Droid does 'censor' or moderate their app repository. However, they do not control which sources or repos you may install from.

If there's an app you want that f-droid doesn't stock, see if the app has a private repo, like Bitwarden, or is in another repo, like IzzyOnDroid.

Kindness , (edited )

C-I-A Confidentiality, Integrity, Accessibility. They don't need the keys for C or A. Only one option remains. To modify the code and pass it off as code VLC wrote or signed off on.

Likely to install malware and re-sign. Brazen identity theft.

Maybe I'm wrong, they could use VLC's private keys to gobble encrypted communications too.

Kindness ,

Darren Kitchen from Hak5 has an amusing story about a bank teller who assured him email was entirely fine to send sPII through. "No sir, you just need to send it to us, and once we have your information then it'll be secure." No encryption. So, yes.

Also look into the Equifax security breach. Un-patched software for months.

It makes almost no sense to have a password length limit. 1_000_000, that's One Million, characters is equal to 1MiB. That's twice the length of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and much less than most modern webpages. After hashing, which is how passwords should be stored, text length is irrelevant. All hashed inputs come out the exact same length. 65 characters for SHA256.

Very much known for their horrible security practices, yes. Absolutely.

Kindness ,

Never mind the biblical bit where god says he creates evil, you'll never convince the religious with facts and logic. They've got to feel it or realize it themselves.

Kindness ,

Ouch. Job was a trip and a half.

My, what a benevolent god is god to bet with the life of his most loyal worshiper. A bet he looses... against Satan? And then god goes down and brags about his achievements to cow his tortured worshiper?

That actually fits with the days of Olympus quite well actually.

Kindness ,

Exactly.

Also, slaves, I mean servants are all virtually identical, right? Not like you can get attached to people who are just servants.

And god's divine plan for all of those people goes out the door as soon as Satan is like, "Is this one person really faithful though? If I take all the things you granted him, will he still love you?"

But a good representation if god existed, we'd all be toys. God would've planned all this from the start with his omnipotence when he set all the pieces in motion like an enormous rube goldberg mess to torture people for no reason. Create evil indeed.

Kindness , (edited )

You should always back up your OTP secrets, but I agree Yubikeys are a good choice. You can get USB A for $25. I think the Yubikey 5 grants you app access for an additional $25 or more? Pass.

Kindness ,

It's common in pseudo-social media sites. Take commentless downvores as a badge of honour. Take fallacious-comment downvores as a hot badge of honour.

Kindness ,

when there actually is a huge amount of waste

Over 60,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel are stored across Europe (excluding Russia and Slovakia), most of
which in France (Table 1). Within the EU, France accounts for 25 percent of the current spent nuclear fuel,
followed by Germany (15 percent) and the United Kingdom (14 percent). Spent nuclear fuel is considered
high-level waste. Though present in comparably small volumes, it makes up the vast bulk of radioactivity.

~ 2019 https://worldnuclearwastereport.org/

Last "brilliant" plan I heard was dumping it in a hole deep enough we'd never need, nor be able to recover it.

Kindness ,

nuclear waste is so incredibly dense

Yes and no. Most current fuels are Uranium or Plutonium. Both between 19 and 20 g/cm^3^. For reference, liquid water is approximately 1 g/cm^3^. Unspent fuel is a similar weight to gold.

"Spent" U238 is usually around 96% U238. If we consider the remainder a rounding error and assume all 60 tonnes is 60 million kg of U238. That will give us a very rough estimate of 3,000 m^3^.

Also worthy of noting are other wastes that comes from mining and refining.

There is much waste already. The "spent" waste is too radioactive to safely re-refine until later.

Kindness ,

It would work. Much like every other sweeping of something under the rug, hiding it elsewhere for it to be a problem later always works for the person throwing it away.

After all, why would we ever wish to extract the remaining U238 from the spent fuel? We utilised a full 4%, let's call that square and throw the rest down a hole. Perish the thought we'll ever need to dig near this massive radioactive hole. Or that an undiscovered cycle of nature causes it to come back to bite us. Just throw it down there with the rest of the resources we never want to safely explore, and who cares if there's something valuable within it's sphere of radioactivity.

Apologies for the sarcasm. I consider the idea both wasteful and foolish.

I'm a fan of both Thorium and Molten-Salt Reactors.

Kindness ,

If you like hauling hundreds of tons of waste up and down an elevator? Maybe. Who does maintenance every so often at the bottom of the shaft?

Kindness ,

TDLR: "He's only getting paid 300K USD! 800K was last year's bonus. The remaining 192 million is what he's being promised if the stock hits certain numbers."

Pedant decries mild click bait that conflates salary with planned compensation.

Kindness ,

bringing back cash anonymity

Most cryptocurrencies do not have this. It is trivial to tie bitcoin to an identity. Given the nature of publicly posting the transactional records, all it takes is tying any given purchase to someone one time, to identify them and view their entire purchase history.

Monero being an exception.

Kindness ,

mining cryptocurrencies has a high initial energy requirement, but it scales really well in terms of transactions,

Objection. Proof of work negates this. By making rapid block solving intentionally more difficult in order to slow down said solving, energy wasted on solving increases exponentially.

More transactions means a new block is completed faster. Last block was solved too soon, so tack another zero requirement to the next hash. More computation and energy wasted when there are perfectly acceptable hashes almost instantaneously.

Kindness ,

Trust me on this. I know what you're thinking, "Blindly trust an internet stranger? No thank you." That's good, but this time, you should listen because you care about your privacy.

It's not different enough to matter... yet.

Identifying users was still trivial as of 2 months ago, which is the last time I brushed up on implementing smart contracts. Bitcoin Lightning came out somewhere around 7 years ago. Unless something fresh and hot hit the market within the past 60 days, and has been implemented, do not, I repeat DO NOT trust your privacy to bitcoin, especially if you're doing something your governing body disapproves of.

Monero's privacy protections are still a generation ahead, but still not a big headache for the good ol' 5-Eyes. Probably not for the 14-Eyes either, but who knows what they know.

Kindness , (edited )

talking about blatantly illegal transactions, like trafficking or drug deals, but if that’s not part of someone’s threat model

I am talking about anything that might become a skeleton in your closet, when political winds change. If you:

  • donate to anyone religious, vocally non-religious, political, controversial, extreme, or critical of government.
  • are American and can be linked 3.5 degrees of Kevin Bacon to any Russian.
  • purchase cakes from bigoted religious Christians.
  • bought merchandise of controversial figures
  • donated to the guy who taught his pug to Seig Heil and plan to visit Germany.
  • transfer money to protesters.
  • contribute to public defence funds.
  • purchase "suspicious" amounts of nearly random chemicals for reasons you don't care to explain.
  • purchase novels with Russian or Chinese themes and undertones.
  • do anything your governing body or enforcement division disapproves of.

The likely-hood of you becoming a big enough thorne for governments is small, but they are ultimately the key holder to your privacy. That should be your threat model.

if I choose to run for office

De-anonymizing crypto users is not illegal. Posting it is illegal, but finding out what you purchased for a smear campaign? Totally fine in most western countries. Advanced persistent threats would be that future's threat model. It is not hard for large political organizations to hire teenage nosy geeks to dig up OSINT dirt. Your level of risk tolerance is your choice. If it's too much hassle, it's too much hassle.

That said, the largest governments in the world have signed a cooperative agreement to share and process data they are currently collecting, regardless of the legality of collecting it.

Purchasing privacy coin, using TOR(Yes, in caps. They don't get to set the rules on acronyms.), doing anything "out of the ordinary" will likely warrant investigation into your affairs. Once they have that data, their track record of protecting it is not so good. "The Pentagon", "ANAO", and this one doesn't even mention why the UK suddenly needs a new task force with Russian advanced persistent threats "on the horizon".

Everybody else: If you just don't want your neighbors to know you have a fetish, knock yourself out with lightning and have the package gift-wrapped.

Kindness ,

I like what you're saying, but I see it differently.

Which is balanced by decreased value of additional coins, so less interested miners should drop out.

What people should do is not what people will do. Because of the hype, people are still investing into ever more expensive rigs and consuming ever more electricity competing in races they have no chance in until they realize they can compete in other races.

should primarily be excess green energy.

Yeah, it should, but it isn't. Personally I'd prefer excess energy drive electricity prices down, rather than demand increasing reliance on more stable and constant sources.

Kindness ,

I wasn't going to reply because this conversation will likely no longer go in a positive or productive direction, but I'm quite peeved and decided to allow myself the gratification of issuing corrections.

you’re saying a buzz word without understanding the trade offs in designs

I understand quite well, and I resent you for not only assuming me to be an uninformed commentator, but for also having the audacity to state it as if it were fact.

POW doesn’t have to imply higher energy cost for more transactions

But it does imply it for every major coin on the market today, and said coin owners seem quite content with how things are, Only the fooled are interested in investing in another new block chain, which will likely turn into a scam as soon as someone realises the money they can steal.

What the world could be is not a rebuttal to its current state. Further it's quite disingenuous to tell people problems aren't problems because of what could be.

Please have a pleasant evening. Good night.

Kindness ,

Probably the source of their problem:

Copyright Infringement – Outing – dasklang.com, isecope.com, headgamesonline.com and technocratsblog.com

As I See It, News, comments & Information

Apr 16, 2019

Recently I have discovered my review work (1) and show reports taken and reproduced without my permission by four websites, one of whom took the material down when asked – they should not have reproduced it in the first place. When approached they said ‘sure that is how the net works, I am helping you by doing this’. No you are not, you are only helping yourself dasklang.com (2), creating traffic to your site off the back of my work not your own. How would you like it if I reproduced the design of your products ? Then told you my doing so was helping you. You wouldn’t.

I was going to let this go, but why should I? I have struggled personally to try and put some content on my site, battled reviwers burn out and other issues. Content that in many cases I have paid for out of my pocket to write about, not items loaned by manufacturers or distributors, but products I had bought, sometimes simply to write about them. However even if I had not parted with my money, my time and effort is worth something surely? Worthy of respect that I would at the very least be offered a chance to give my permission as to how my work is used, and where. None of these websites asked, they took what wasn’t theirs to use, to put content on their sites.

The websites that still have my material up without permission are isecope.com, headgames online and technocratsblog.com, all three I suspect are linked.

As they are watching this site maybe after being named and shamed they will remove the material. I doubt it, I guess I will have to go after them with DMCA’s and report to their web-hosts.

Kindness ,

By using the Services, you are directing us to share this information publicly and freely.

I'm sure you're aware, but https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-32/ specifically states data collection must be opt-in, emphasis mine:

1 Consent should be given by a clear affirmative act establishing a freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject’s agreement to the processing of personal data relating to him or her,

[...]

3 Silence, pre-ticked boxes or inactivity should not therefore constitute consent.

4 Consent should cover all processing activities carried out for the same purpose or purposes.

5 When the processing has multiple purposes, consent should be given for all of them.

6 If the data subject’s consent is to be given following a request by electronic means, the request must be clear, concise and not unnecessarily disruptive to the use of the service for which it is provided.

Kindness ,

Long tale short, it depends, but likely yes unless reddit stops what it is doing.

Almost every post will contain experiences that could identify someone, so the wisest move would be to assume yes, or naively try to classify each post as 'bread-crumb' or 'not bread-crumb' for their specific processing then store and sell each separately. Non exhaustive list of personal data criteria:

  • If the comments are tied to, or not stored separately from, your identifiers, (email, IP, handle, site ID, location, etc,) then yes
  • If your comments are not anonymous or include details about you, then yes.
  • If the data will be processed to identify you, then yes.
  • If the data will be used to profile you, then yes.

Unique information about you, such as your subscribed sub-reddits, your browsing habits, the time spent on each link, your writing style, etc may also count as personal data if used to identify or target you.

https://gdpr-info.eu/art-4-gdpr/

(1) ‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person;

[...]

(4) ‘profiling’ means any form of automated processing of personal data consisting of the use of personal data to evaluate certain personal aspects relating to a natural person, in particular to analyse or predict aspects concerning that natural person’s performance at work, economic situation, health, personal preferences, interests, reliability, behaviour, location or movements;

(5) ‘pseudonymisation’ means the processing of personal data in such a manner that the personal data can no longer be attributed to a specific data subject without the use of additional information, provided that such additional information is kept separately and is subject to technical and organisational measures to ensure that the personal data are not attributed to an identified or identifiable natural person;

[...]

(15) ‘data concerning health’ means personal data related to the physical or mental health of a natural person, including the provision of health care services, which reveal information about his or her health status;--

Kindness ,

don’t come crawling back to m- I'm turning 30.

Kindness ,

Is it unnecessary to cover one's webcam on Linux?

No. Please cover your webcam.

how vulnerable is the device to having its webcam exploited?

Every bit as much as Windows minus their proprietary spyware.

How vulnerable is a Linux device if you don’t take extra precautions like firewalls.

Depends on what links you like to click.

what makes Windows so much more vulnerable?

Fewer eyes on the source code. Effort to reward ratio, the 80-20 rule. 20% of the effort nets your 80% of the reward. Literally. Develop exploits for one platform, target 80% of average computer users. Or write exploits for hundreds of different distros for *checks notes* ... 4%. Unless you like servers. There there's a coin toss. 50% linux, 50% Windows.

Keep yourself safe, there's malware for Gnu-Linux too. Install your patches when you can. Remove software you don't use. Practice good cyber hygiene.

Kindness OP ,

Way to go, you're awesome!

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