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DomeGuy

@ DomeGuy @lemmy.world

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474
Joined
1 yr. ago

  • Discord walks back age verification fears for most users

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  • A better question is what sort of legislation should apply to every website on the planet, without exception.

    Off the top of my head:

    • Do not store user information in an unsecure or identifiable mechanism.
    • Be transparent as to what parts of the page are ads and which aren't.
    • Follow best-practices for accessibility.
    • Give @DomeGuy a lollipop if he asks.

  • Ping! The WhatsApps that should have been an email

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  • Just because they are a distasteful company, doesn't give us free reign to spread lies about them.

    To be pedantic, I'm spreading alarmist rumors at worst. In English a "lie" has to be something the speaker doesn't actually believe. And I honestly believe that users of WhatsApp should assume that Meta can read their messages.

    The signal protocol and encryption explicitly prevents the transit server decrypting messages. That a theoretical hidden third person ... in the chat doesn't change that is e2e encrypted.

    You're splitting a hair that's not even worth curling.

    If I ship you a locked box via courier, and the courier can get a copy of the key without talking to either of us, we should presume that the courier may have looked inside and take appropriate measures. Like, inventorying the contents of said box before and after, and not shipping things we don't want the courier to know about.

    It doesn't matter if the courier keeps the box locks, doesn't habitually carry a key, or even promises that they won't get a key. We don't even have to assume that they actually looked in the box, or use a slower or more-expensive courier.

    If there's a plausible way they can open the box, we should start with the presumption that they did and then go from there.

  • Is browser preference a personality flaw? AI job interview evaluation raises questions— AI said applicant's 'habitual' Chrome use could indicate a 'lack of adaptability' after screening interview

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  • Websites that break in Firefox are websites that should not be used.

  • Discord walks back age verification fears for most users

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  • Words don't have meanings. Meanings have words.

    Amazon the internet megastore allows non-employees of Amazon to add content to their store. Both as supposed vendors offering goods for services and as customers giving reviews and ratings to such store listings. And Amazon chooses what listings to show to users through opaque algorithms.

    Can you give an example of the sort of regulation a social media site should need to follow which Amazon should be exempt from? Or the sort of rule that should bind reddit and Facebook but not Amazon?

  • Ping! The WhatsApps that should have been an email

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  • If you don't like meta any more than I do, why are you arguing so strongly that they deserve the benefit of the doubt?

    And, more interestingly, what precisely do you mean that Meta including themselves as a recipient in every WhatsApp chat would not render their E2E encryption equivalent to HTTPS?

    AFAIK both are in-transit encryption that prevents casual monitoring by other entries along the network path between you and the person you're chatting with, but expose you to undetectable monitoring on the part of the service provider.

  • Ping! The WhatsApps that should have been an email

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  • You are assuming good behavior on the part of a corporate giant grown out of a social media site literally founded to spy on its users. A company who is literally being sued for their claims that their chat app is meaningfully encrypted

    https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-law/whatsapp-lawsuit-encrypted-messages-10504837/

    Even if Meta isn't currently including themselves as a hidden participant in every WhatsApp chat, you should assume that they can do so and act as if they will do so.

    Odds are pretty good that their encryption usage is good enough for any lawful behavior you may engage in, but you shouldn't trust Meta or any software they provide with anything that would destroy your life if it was revealed.

  • Ping! The WhatsApps that should have been an email

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  • Meta using the name of a formerly independent company for their current pseudo-private messaging app does not mean said app meaningfully predates the one whose tech they use.

    https://signal.org/blog/whatsapp-complete/

    (Please share if you have a link arguing the opposite.)

    More importantly, the encryption in Whatsapp is closer to HTTPS than it is to PGP. It keeps anyone except Meta or the recipients from keeping a record of what you say, but you should absolutely assume Meta is recording what you say on WhatsApp.

    (And you should also assume anyone you talk to is keeping a record as well.)

  • Ping! The WhatsApps that should have been an email

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  • Most of the people I know have largely abandoned personal email. Way back before everyone had a personal number it made sense to share your email with your friends, but nowadays 'contact that goes directly to them' is good enough for casual purposes.

    (And as understand it, WhatsApp is a cancerous fork of Signal created by Meta as a response to people abandoning their social media site for private communication or discord. Plain carrier messages for casual communication, signal for avoiding third-party interception, and social media for folk you don't trust with your phone number.)

  • UN is waiting to see how much the US intends to pay of the nearly $4 billion it owes

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  • Depositing a $2 trillion dollar coin to reduce the nominal debt would itself have relatively little impact on the.value of the dollar, since it's just in the essentially fake books of the US national government. Dollars, after all, are just coupons for "I am worth $1 towards any US government debt or court judgement."

    Depositing a $2 billion coin with the UN, in contrast, would have exactly the same inflationary pressure as giving 200,000,000 Americans 2000 $1 coins.

  • it's a long distance relationship

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  • schroedinger's cat is an intentionally absurd metaphor from when QM dorks were still arguing about spooky action at a distance.

    Both the cat, the box, the vial of poison, and the cesium atom itself are all observers as far as a real QM wavefunction would care. But as i understand it, getting any utility out of the idea of real collapsing wave-functions requires treating at least the atom as if it wasn't, and once we start including atomic scale things we might as well just include everything up to and including the cat.

  • How are locks and keys mass produced?

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  • While I certainly don't want to argue about the wisdom of preventive measures towards petty crime or dangerous outcomes, i think it's worth knowing that even trivially surpassed barriers can alter what recompense or punishment can be provided from a court of law.

    For example: There was a big copyright infringement case against an AI company recently, which ended in a settlement of a few thousand dollars per registered work so infringed. Authors whose work wasn't registered were not eligible for the same amount, because the law limits how much they can recover if a work's copyright wasn't registered.

  • Trump has a plan to steal the midterms. It will probably fail. The nightmare scenario for American democracy is no longer unthinkable.

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  • I think it's a rhetorical distinction, but an important one to be aware of.

    It would be terrible for us to waste time arguing over whether or not "Trump can succeed!" when we both agree that any such success is likely to be short lived, lead to immediate violence, and most probably result in a violent removal of his administration from power.

    (Not to say that we necessarily agree on those things -- just that it'd be a waste of time arguing if we do.)

  • How are locks and keys mass produced?

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  • Mass produced items are not all the same. They are merely similar, and can have whatever variations the bulk manufacturing process requires or allows.

    Not every car made on the same assembly line on the same day had the same options, and near every cake baked in a mass bakery will have a distinct internal structure.

  • How are locks and keys mass produced?

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  • The utility of a lock is that it's a clear permission barrier. If you don't have the key and bypass the lock, it's clear at least to you that you aren't using a key. Which can be the difference between ordinary trespass and burglary.

  • Trump has a plan to steal the midterms. It will probably fail. The nightmare scenario for American democracy is no longer unthinkable.

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  • We are far from being confident that Trump won't succeed in another coup attempt.

    This entirely depends on what you mean by "succeed".

    Would you consider the Confederate States of America (nominally founded during and extinguished by the 19th century US civil war) a "success"?

  • Who to follow for what's going on in China?

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  • it's a long distance relationship

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  • "it can't be hidden variables because they're not as even as this math says they should be!" really just seems to be the whole QM field agreeing to stop arguing about spooky action at a distance.

    The distinction between wave-functions as real things that collapse at superluminal speed and the same as mere mathematical placeholders for deterministic local effects which occur without subjective time seems to be a semantic and philosophical one, similar to the "multiple realities" explanation of quantum uncertainty or the "11 dimensions" explanation for why gravity is weaker.

    As a practical matter, the only thing that students and non-physicts should remember is that wavefunction collapse allows superluminal coordination but not superluminal communication.

  • Trump has a plan to steal the midterms. It will probably fail. The nightmare scenario for American democracy is no longer unthinkable.

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  • What isn't mentioned are other ways Trump could attempt a coup or election interference that might ignore the constitution

    There really aren't any other ways which don't fall into either "entirely protected speech" or "instigation of civil war".

    Trump is free to claim his party won the midterms, and even file nuisance suits in the courts. And we shouldn't assume he wouldn't try to just declare who won or try and interfere with the formation of the much-bluer 120th Congress. But all permutations are either things he's as free as anyone to do, things that likely won't work, or things that would start a civil war.

  • AI gold rush sees tech firms embracing 72-hour weeks

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  • If we ignore setting and presume an international audience, then it makes sense to also ignore the minimums in laws and reduce it to base principles. Which makes grind culture even worse.

    If you regularly work more than 40 hours a week you are being exploited. Regardless of your profession, wage, ownership stake, or what claims your local laws would let you pursue.

    This extends very nicely to monthly and annual labor statistics. 72 hour weeks for certain irregular situations like "bringing in the harvest" may not be exploitive, so long as the ratio of hours worked to hours elapsed drops beneath 24%. (5/7/3).