Welcome to Incremental Social! Learn more about this project here!
Check out lemmyverse to find more communities to join from here!

TechNerdWizard42

@TechNerdWizard42@lemmy.world

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

TechNerdWizard42 ,

Murderous thugs in blue steal the most. More than any active crime or wage thefts. ACAB

TechNerdWizard42 ,

Exactly. Nobody should be ok with random data being given out "just in case". This should be illegal and never happen. But it is perfectly acceptable in today's subpoena world and that's a scary thing.

The agent could have done the same thing in many different ways to get an ip address. It's also concerning that agents are still using IP address as a vouch of identity in 2024.

TechNerdWizard42 ,

Yeah, and that's also wrong. The shitheads in blue should not get access to any private video feeds.

TechNerdWizard42 ,

The more probable answer is that the NSA asked for the backdoor to be left in. They do all the time, it's public knowledge at this point. AMD and Intel chips have the requisite backdoors by design, and so does Apple. The Chinese and Russian designed chips using the same architecture models, do not. Hmmmm... They have other backdoors of course.

It's all about security theatre for the public but decrypted data for large organizational consumption.

TechNerdWizard42 ,

They do have the power and they do compel US companies to do exactly this. When discovered publicly they usually limit it to the first level of the "vulnerability" until more is discovered later.

It is not conjecture, there is leaked documents that prove it. And anyone who works in semiconductor design (cough cough) is very much aware.

Google Allows Creditors to Brick Your Phone (lemmy.world)

I installed NetGuard about a month ago and blocked all internet to apps, unless they're on a whitelist. No notifications from this particular system app (that can't be disabled) until recently when it started making internet connection requests to google servers. Does anyone know when this became a thing?...

TechNerdWizard42 ,

Love the Chinese phones. None of this crap US stuff is enabled. It's baked into the system ROM so it is there. But on mine it has never transfered any data, not even ever been active. It's just dead code taking up a few megabytes.

TechNerdWizard42 ,

Lower quality? Lol.

I'll give you a chance to look up the Mix Fold 3. And then any other equivalent phone available in the US market.

Even excluding the folding aspect, the screen sizes and overall thickness means it looks and works exactly like a non foldy. 50W wireless, 120W wired charging. 1TB of storage, 16GB of RAM. Leica lenses.

On top of that, zero of my data goes to the US government at it does on carrier branded phones. I will give all my data to the ccp if they want it. I have no interest in what they do with it. I have very high interest in what a five eyes nation does with my data and information.

TechNerdWizard42 ,

Cameras are better than Samsung flagship and on par with iPhone. The newest 14 beats the iPhone 15 in side by side tests according to many media outlets.

The display is Samsung OLED. The exact same display technology.

Educate yourself to the world outside of the USA and you'll find far superior technology.

TechNerdWizard42 ,

Funny how that's not needed when you don't break your phone and the thing works out of the box. No random reboots and resets like every US carrier branded phone where a custom ROM is a necessity.

Also if I need replacement parts all the mobile repair shops stock them in places I routinely visit.

Youre just too taken in by propaganda to admit the shit the US shoves down your throat isn't that great.

TechNerdWizard42 ,

The minute there is a Hindeburg II, I'm booking a ticket and getting on it with my tailed tux and top hat.

America murdered everyone on it by refusing to sell the Germans Helium in the past. I'm sure today it will just be corporate greed because Hydrogen is so much cheaper. Same outcome. Get a picture on Wikipedia forever. Win win.

TechNerdWizard42 ,

So what's your view on the SR71, specifically the titanium sourcing...

Sanctions are good except when I need them?

TechNerdWizard42 ,

Just to connect the dots for you, the US refused to sell Helium to Germany because of war sanctions. A beloved tool of the USA much more powerful today with global banking and the SWIFT network. Even though it was a civilian application, there were obviously some military uses and therefore blocked. That directly led to the deaths of everyone.

The SR71 is built out of titanium. The only supplier of titanium was the USSR. The USSR had sanctions against the USA for the same reasons. The US built fraudulent companies, forged paperwork and entire companies. They smuggled and stole and evaded the sanctions to get enough titanium to build the SR71.

Any US history about the SR71 tells it like a hero's tale. Having to outwit the bad guy for the greater good of the country.

Today, any nation that doesn't play ball with the US is blocked from global trade even if it means millions of deaths. Evasion of those sanctions by third parties is treated just as badly. And they get put on lists. The US is all about sanctions to control and talks about global law and order when it benefits them. But when they don't benefit from the sanctions, they have zero shame to evade them and brag about it.

There's a lot more, but that's a cursory look. If you've never ready the story of the SR71 acquisitions, it is an interesting read no matter what you think of the politics.

TechNerdWizard42 ,

I love how you're being downvoted because the cavemen Muricans can't comprehend modern banking that doesn't involve cheques.

Blows their mind when you talk about tapping to pay in the early 2000's. No Apple didn't invent it.

TechNerdWizard42 ,

US credit cards still don't use a PIN. The rest of the world uses Chip&Pin or nfc contactless. The US uses magnetic strip very often, chip and no pin, and now contactless. The verification if asked, is not a PIN, it's the billing zip code (5 digit postal code of the US). Usually just petrol pumps ask.

It's also why I strongly advise any foreigner visiting Murica to learn the default zip for their card. If you use an international card (any non American card in America) it will still ask you for your zip code and if it fails, no petrol for you. And in the US you must pay BEFORE you pump so you could quite literally be stranded because of their archaic banking system.

Many European cards use 00000 or 12345. I've seen some Asian cards that use the last 5 digits of the card. Even if you have an American card if you aren't the standard boring American household that never moves, it can be a pain. The card may have its billing address (and therefore zip) set to a place you've never been. But you have to remember it.

TechNerdWizard42 ,

One reason I've stopped using reddit entirely. They require fingerprinting you. If you do a good job and they can't fingerprint you, you get that screen. It is NOT blocked by IP of the VPN as some here have said. You can easily see the content through the same VPN while not logged on as long as you have enough identifiable tracking information to reasonably guess who you are.

It's a great test now. If I'm ever let into view reddit now, I must have seriously screwed up somewhere in my security chain.

TechNerdWizard42 ,

I actually really respect their policy. Keep the site active and then forgive stupid bills if there was an error.

To shut down or disconnect a cloud service is terrible as usually it's in error. The errs on the side of the user knowing their stuff better than the hoster which is what I want in a provider.

TechNerdWizard42 ,

RCS a decade ago, cool. RCS today? Dead.

WhatsApp is the defacto messaging over data globally. If you live anywhere outside the Murican bubble, SMSs are not used for anything and iMessage isn't even a thing people with iCrap devices care about. Everyone, on every platform, uses WhatsApp. Governmental services, private companies, and all the people use WhatsApp.

The only text messages SMS I get nowadays are from Americans that don't understand anything else and American businesses that use them for 2FA which is super insecure and equally stupid.

TechNerdWizard42 ,

Anecdotally it's obvious everywhere you go. I travel all over the world often and it's always WhatsApp. The taxi drivers, the hotel people, everyone.

For actual studies I found a handful with a quick google that confirm it. Whatsapp reported 2 billion users in 2020. And then WeChat is the next which is China centric. Nobody uses standard SMS except Americans.

https://engage.sinch.com/blog/most-popular-messaging-apps-in-the-world/

TechNerdWizard42 ,

I'm not saying what is good to use. I'm saying what is used. Everyone from grandma to the local store. If you want to survive communicating, you need to use WhatsApp everywhere in the world except the idiotic USA.

I personally use other apps like signal and telegram, but I also have WhatsApp because I have to and it is convenient enough. I'm ok that Meta gets a bit of data showing the amazon delivery driver and I shared a message at a certain time. It's useless data.

TechNerdWizard42 ,

Not a defense of Meta, just saying what's used. And if the option is completely insecure SMS or RCS vs WhatsApp, WhatsApp is a clear winner. If you could push everyone to a better app like a signal or telegram, sure. But the world is on WhatsApp. And if you look at how hard it is to get Americans off of SMS or iMessage, that's the issue you have with now 2 billion people minimum to get them to use a better more secure platform. And their perceived benefit for that trouble is near zero.

TechNerdWizard42 ,

You can try but rarely is it successful unless you're a super popular influencer. If Mr. Beast came out with a platform and said use it, he'd get a million users in a day, all of them evangelizing to their friend groups and maybe it would take off. Otherwise you're just going to get ignored unless it's easy enough.

WhatsApp is easy enough and good enough. It is not the best solution, but part of its allure is that it is owned by a big corporation. Governments and billion dollar companies use WhatsApp as their backbone because it is big. They aren't going to roll their own.

And when someone is completely against WhatsApp... Why? If it's because you hate Zuck and Meta, then fine. Personal grudges are fine with me, but not a valid reason to dislike the platform for everyone, just yourself. The data that they get is who you are sending messages to, when, and the overall size. Everything else can be blocked. The content of the messages is secure unless you decrypt and backup elsewhere. One of my WhatsApp numbers is on a number from a VoIP line not even tied to my name or ID in any way. Meta collects information that I am talking to hundreds of delivery drivers arranging my deliveries. I'm ok with that.

They don't have any of my info. I don't have any social media accounts apart from Lemmy and a now retired reddit. Works well enough. And the older people can use it easily enough. Getting my mother to switch to telegram? Isn't happening. But WhatsApp... She's down for that.

TechNerdWizard42 ,

Failure. Just as the Japanese one that was labeled a failure by the western news just weeks before that did the exact same thing. Articles were even published saying after japan's failure, the US could be the first to land successfully on the moon in so many decades. And it didn't so its a failure.

TechNerdWizard42 ,

I would agree that the Japanese lander was a success. But I refuse to enable western hypocrisy that labels the exact same actions by two different stages in opposing viewpoints just for propaganda.

TechNerdWizard42 ,

If you hop jobs, I'm not hiring you*. Yes I make those decisions. No I do not expect you to stay forever, but 1yr at a time I can barely get productivity out of you. Some of these people do 6 months. To everyone that knows, all that looks like is grifting your probationary period. Get hired, assigned tasks, fail spectacularly, get booted out or leave before they find out you're incompetent.

*Except one guy. He was a brilliant weirdo that job hopped because no other company would bend their policies to fit weirdo's requirements about work and life. He was exceptionally brilliant, like dozens of patents under his name, and literally invented novel ways of doing things. He got a try. His weirdness evolved into even weirder, we let him do his thing and whatever because again, absolutely brilliant. And he's still there and happy enough.

TechNerdWizard42 ,

I desire the browser to work as well as it did a decade ago. It worked perfectly all the time. Now I'm task closing it once every days because an entire window just goes blank white and never context updates. The CPU usage randomly spikes super high. It eats RAM uncontrollably and seemingly never releases what it should and holds on to what it doesn't need forever.

I don't need AI. I need a good browser. And many of these issues are Chromium and why I switched from Chrome long ago (which I had switched to after FF broke all the extensions 20 years ago in the first place). This really shouldn't be that hard.

TechNerdWizard42 ,

Unfortunately the majority of people are idiots who just do this in real life, parroting populous ideology without understanding anything more than the proper catchphrase du jour. And there are many employed professionals who are paid to read a script, or output mundane marketing content, or any "content". And for that, LLMs are great.

It's the elevator operator of technology as applied to creative writers. Instead of "hey intern, write the next article about 25 things these idiots need to buy and make sure 90% of them are from our sponsors" it goes to AI. The writer was never going to purchase a few different types of each product category, blindly test them and write a real article. They are just shilling crap they are paid to shill making it look "organic" because many humans are too stupid to not know it's a giant paid for ad.

TechNerdWizard42 ,

Headlines like this should be illegal.

Apple is forced by the EU to stop being a dick and open up their ecosystem. Apple is also purposefully making the experience so terrible that nobody will dare use it.

I hope the EU sues and bankrupts them.

TechNerdWizard42 ,

Very few who read the headline will even know the EU exists. So yes it's needed.

And the EU should sue as they have before for anticompetitive practices against many corporations for doing the very same thing. That's how the EU works and it actually produces change unlike the shitty USA.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • random
  • incremental_games
  • meta
  • All magazines
    •