Spyke

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Someone Forked Systemd to Strip Out Its Age Verification Support

I find that move extremely funny, since it's purely made for sensationalism and nothing else. I mean, if you hate how systems implemented age verification, then why don't you remove its identity verification too, i.e. also optional fields for stuff like your address an e-mail that most users don't even fill out.

There is no mechanism verifying what birth date you type in - you can type whatever date you want and systems doesn't care.

I'd say no matter where you stand with age verification, this is the best solution to handle the situation. After all, any and all age checks we have nowadays are a black box anyways. There is no real knowing how other systems are checking ages, and there is AFAIK no real government mandated rules on how it is verified. They could make you scan your ID's front, back, nuclear composition and dietary preferences and give you a result that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike a proper age verification procedure.

If the government wants to introduce age verification, they have to do it themselves - build an API that handles the age verification, similar to how the digital ID in Germany works, as an example. If they want proper age verification, they also have to take the blame themselves if things go wrong.

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🐧> 🪟

I had this problem at work a week ago or so, at least with Fujitsu PCs. For them, the main cause isn't an empty CMOS battery, but rather that Fujitsu generally had too little BIOS cache, since there is nothing about it in the UEFI standard. The update basically overfilled that cache, rendering the BIOS completely unusable. The POST doesn't even go through fully.

The PC are sort of bricked, you gotta put the mainboard into recovery mode, put the ROM file on a freeBSD formatted stick and wait until you see instructions on the screen. Follow them, restart the PC. I recommend setting the BIOS to the optimized default settings, as not doing that might make the boot of Windows pretty slow in some cases. I did hear that it can delete the keys from the TPM, but I haven't seen that with my PCs at work.

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How do I explain my reluctance to use generative AI in good faith?

Maybe trying to be objective is the wrong choice here? After all, it might sound preachy to those who are ignorant to the dangers of AI. Instead, it could be better to stay subjective in hopes to trigger self-reflection.

Here are some arguments I would use for my own personal 'defense':

  • I like to do the work by myself because the challenge of doing it by my own is part of the fun, especially when I finally get that 'Eureka!' moment after especially tough ones. When I use AI, it just feels halfhearted because I just handed it to someone else, which doesn't sit right with me.
  • when I work without AI, I tend to stumble over things that aren't really relevant to what I'm doing, but are still fun to learn about and might be helpful sometimes else. With AI, I'm way too focused on the end result to even notice that stuff, which makes the work feel even more annoying.
  • when I decide to give up or realize I can't be arsed with it, I usually seek out communities or professionals, because that way it's either done professionally or I get a better sense of community, but overall feel like I'm supporting someone. With AI, I don't get that feeling, but rather I only feel either inferior for not coming up with a result as fast as the AI does or frustrated because it either spews out bullshit or doesn't get the point I'm aiming for.

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Lemmy today

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And insurances provide monetary compensation until you become a common liability, too high to be covered by any sort of fee. DDOS protection is just the same. It's only feasible if it happens rarely, like they usually happen. However if it's a common occurrence it will just eat up the profits made by the fees and then some, which just is stupid to do in any case.

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Switching to OCaml bois

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I think the main problem is that people try to shoehorn OOP mechanics into everything, leading to code that is hard to understand. Not to mention that this is basically encouraged by companies as well, to look "futuristic". A great example of this approach going horribly wrong is FizzBuzz Enterprise Edition.

OOP can be great to abstract complex concepts into a more human readable format, especially when it comes to states. But overall it should be used rarely, as it creates a giant code overhead, and only as far as actually needed.

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Programming starter-pack rule

What's up with the sink plug thing?

Also, if anyone wants to learn writing code, they should first ask themselves what engine they want to use. C# and python seem to be the most sensible stuff. If someone's interested in Godot, then I can recommend the free course by GDQuest. It does teach some few basics for scripting, and their paid courses are very good thanks to their inbuilt practices and encouragement for experimentation. It does cost quite a bit and is still in Beta however.

If understanding the logic of programming is a struggle, then Scratch is a great tool for understanding it.

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EU considers calculating X fines by including revenue from Musk’s other firms

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While I have no idea about legality, it is quite obvious that X/Twitter is not really run as a company run as a public communications platform, but rather as a fever dream of Musk.

Especially the Eli Lily Co. disaster should've been a wake up call for X of how much harm the fake checkmarks can bring, yet nothing was done. Most likely because Elon Musk didn't care. He basically runs it like it's how little service that he fully owns and controls with full disregard to anything but his own vision.

Therefore including his other businesses makes sense, as the fine that is only based on X's income would probably be negligible in his opinion, as he runs it on a loss anyways. Only bigger fines would actually have any effect in my opinion.

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X launches E2E encrypted Chat

The question is whether this actually is E2EE, as it's easy to fake by using a man in the middle attack and hard to prove. The only real way to prove it for sure is to run a third party security audit, like Signal does.

Taking down the old system doesn't inspire confidence either, as this downtime could easily been used to interrupt old conversations in order to implement a way to decrypt the messages on the servers before passing it on to the actual recipient, as all keys would have to be re-issued.

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Android will become a locked-down platform in 194 days

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I'm sceptical with Windows, considering that most programs are installed via EXE files, so the outcry will be huge. But I'm not saying it can't be a possibility.

With Ubuntu there would only be a chance of it happening if they also make their distro immutable. That way the user could not as easily install packages the traditional way. But even then there might be ways to disable this immutable mode for troubleshooting. However, this, in my opinion, would cause a mass exodus as Canonical does not have the same advantage as Microsoft or Google have: Windows and android are, to an extent, closed off ecosystems. Thus switching to another system is very hard, as not every software is available on every other system, so potentially subpar alternatives and comparability layers, whose functionality mostly depends on whether the company behind the original system is actively fighting against these tools or not. Ubuntu on the other hand, is a Linux distro, so you cab make it like Theseus and recreate this distro more or less with the sum of its parts, if need be.

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Every god damn time

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I do like the hooks on Display Port, honestly. There were quite a few times where HDMI cables came loose while adjusting my screen due to the cable being tied together with other cables for organisational purposes. Putting it back in always a chore then.

I don't think it is even much of a hassle when unplugging it from a machine, such as a PC. I do agree it's a pain for monitors however, as the ports usually are in a more indented position.

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Still booting after all these years: The people stuck using ancient Windows computers

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You are forgetting targeted attacks. A blind attack would pretty much not have much of an effect indeed, however if the attacker knows the machine, then it's easy for the attackers to exploit these vulnerability if left "out in the open", and cause havoc, possibly create a lot of damages or leech informations pumped into those machines via old Windows installations.

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X launches E2E encrypted Chat

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I'm not the one who you asked, but I'd still give some feedback of my own. Musk as a person is a difficult character. I would even go as far as calling him narcissistic.

  • He got thrown out of PayPal for his incessant micromanagement and disruptions to the flow of the company
  • he bought himself into Tesla to replace the CEO with himself
  • he tends to depict himself as one of the greatest tech geniuses out there, yet often the plans he presents to the public are often poorly thought out and serve no other purpose than to show his "talents"
  • when his proposal to build a tiny submarine for the Than Luang cave rescue was shot down and a British diver was chosen instead he resorted to call the diver a "pedo guy"
  • his latest attempts in politics, especially concerning DOGE feel completely half baked and, again, how he presents himself in his position feels more like an ego trip than something more reasonable
  • he publicly had talks with the controversial German political party "Alternative für Deutschland", which are currently legally considered "assured right-wing extremists" and have had a history of having Nazis and Nazi sympathisers in their ranks

I generally can't trust someone who seems to put himself first at everything to handle anything related to security when the role allows him to exploit it for his own gains. And I do not trust someone who supports political groups known for trying to oppress minorities to defend actual rights for free speech.

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*Permanently Deleted*

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If memory serves right, one of Germany's datacenters went up in flames a few years ago because they had wooden flooring and no adequate fire suppression systems.

EDIT: it was in France, and Europe's biggest datacenter.