Yup. The way I’ve always described it is this:

Http means your employer knows you watched porn on the company WiFi, and they also know which specific videos and what your username for the site is. If site security is particularly lax, they may even know your password.

Https means your employer can see you watched porn on the company WiFi, but they don’t know which video(s) specifically, and they don’t know your login info.

VPN means your employer only knows you connected to a VPN. They may be able to take educated guesses at what type of content you were viewing (streaming video, for example, has a pretty easily identifiable pattern of data transfer,) but they don’t know what video you were watching, or what site it was coming from. The VPN service knows you watched porn, but the aforementioned rules about http and https still apply; If you’re using https, they don’t know specifics.

Tor means even the VPN doesn’t know which specific video(s) you’re watching, because they just see a connection to another Tor node, which sees another tor node, which sees another tor node… Etc. In order to know what you’re watching, they would need to own every node in the chain. If they own both the entry and exit node they may be able to match it to you with a timing attack, (they see packets going into the Tor network at the same time they see packets coming out towards you). Again, they can make educated guesses based on pattern recognition, but they won’t have a clear picture without owning both your entry and exit nodes and performing a timing attack.

Now you can substitute “your employer” for anyone who is trying to get your info. Public WiFi spoofer, your ISP, etc…

Yup, browsing on lemmynsfw is interesting, because redgifs automatically blocks Texas IPs. So it’s a nice handy reminder to enable my VPN, because gifs refuse to load.

Ironically, your link is broken on Voyager because it doesn’t treat anything before the https as a link. It just leads straight to the normal pay walled site.

You need to embed the link for it to actually work. And even then, it may not work on this comment because it’ll try to route to my home instance due to having a Lemmy.world link for my image.

Ding ding ding. I actively refuse to do homework from randos on the internet.

This is also due to a distinct drop in reader comprehension. One of the largest parts of reading comprehension is being able to infer the intended audience for a particular piece of work. You should be able to read a news article, see a commercial, read a comment, etc and infer who it is aimed at. And the answer is usually not “me”.

People have become accustomed to having an algorithm that is laser focused to their specific preferences. So when they see something that’s not aimed at them it is jarring, and they tend to get upset. Instead of going “oh this clearly isn’t aimed at me, but I can infer who the intended audience is. I’ll move on.” Now they tend to jump on the creator with whataboutisms and imagined offense.

Maybe you make a post about the proper way to throw a football. You’ll inevitably get a few “bUT wHaT abOUt WhEElcHaiR uSerS, I hAvE a baD ShoUlDer aNd cAn’T thROW SO wHaT abOUt me, I haTE FoOtbAll wHY aRe yOU SHowiNG tHIs to Me, etc” types of comments. It’s because those users have lost the ability to infer an intended audience. They automatically assume everything they see is aimed at them, and get offended when it isn’t.

I have even noticed this started to affect the way media is written. Creators tend to make it a point to outright state their intended audience, just to avoid the negative comments.

The chocolate thing is because American chocolate manufacturers use butyric acid to preserve the milk. Basically, using fresh milk in chocolate is expensive, because you need to get it shipped directly and be located near enough to the dairy farm. So they intentionally spoil the milk in a controlled manner. This allows them to preserve the milk (as opposed to having it spoil naturally and go completely rancid,) which allows them a much more relaxed manufacturing process. This controlled spoiling method produces butyric acid in the milk.

The issue is that butyric acid tastes like vomit. Americans are used to the sour taste and don’t even really recognize that it’s not what chocolate is supposed to taste like. To them, that sour note is just part of chocolate. But Europeans come to America (and are used to fresh milk in their chocolate), and they are horribly disgusted when they taste American chocolate for the first time. Because Europeans aren’t used to having that sour note in their chocolate.

This is also why so many Americans fawn over foreign chocolate. It is seen as more luxurious, but most Americans can’t really place why it tastes so much better. The reason is the lack of butyric acid.

it’s far easier to start a business than to get a job

Also why so many Koreans run donut shops or nail salons, and why 7-11’s are almost universally franchised by Indians. They’re all relatively easy businesses to start, can be run out of any strip mall near a neighborhood, and all have the potential to hire and train your family members. And if your cousin owns a donut shop (and you’ve worked there enough to know how it works,) you can go open your own across town. Because if you come in on a work visa, your ability to stay in the country is held hostage by your employer. But if you start your own business, that’s not an issue.

a semi-auto (AR-15 like looking weapon) slung over his shoulders, a handgun in a holster on his waist, and a lump on his right ankle above his boots. And two knives on his belt. Dude looked like he was ready for some urban warfare.

Ironically, the lump might have been what gets him into trouble. If he’s concealing a firearm without a permit, it can land him with some pretty hefty penalties. And if he has a permit but is printing (meaning the concealed weapon is visible through his clothes, like a lump) then it can also land him with some penalties.

It’s dependent on where you were, as each state has their own concealed carry laws. But in general, you’re not allowed to conceal a firearm without a permit. And if you do have a permit, you’re not allowed to have that concealed firearm be visible (even indirectly, like printing.)

Plus if you’re open carrying, Walmart internally bans them anyways. They’re a private business, and have the authority to dictate what people are or are not allowed to do while in their stores. The company has a blanket policy against open carrying, and (assuming they’re not barred from doing so by state law) the dude should have been told to leave his guns outside (like in his car) or be trespassed.

Yeah, N64 speedrunners even went as far as replacing their aging analog sticks with machined steel sticks. Because as the console ages, so do the controllers. And stick drift became a major problem for speed runners who used genuine consoles. There was even a case where an aging controller led to the discovery of a new glitch, when a speedrunner’s NES controller had gotten so old that it allowed him to press button combos that wouldn’t have been possible with a new controller. And that button combo allowed him to perform glitches that would have been otherwise impossible on a console.

The larger issue is accessibility. If speed running requires a genuine console, it severely limits the number of people who can afford to participate. There would be a big financial barrier just to buy the console and game(s), and since no new consoles are being made it will inevitably lead to the death of speedruns as consoles die out and nobody can continue playing.

One of the original goals of emulation was data preservation, since it quickly became evident that game companies wouldn’t bother preserving their own games. And as consoles age, that will only become more and more important. I personally have backups of all of my legitimately purchased Nintendo games. But that’s only because I enjoy data hoarding and have a NAS that can actually store all of it. Not everyone has that luxury, and it means that (again) there will be a big financial barrier to anyone wanting to be able to play the games that they legally purchased and have the right to play.

They’re probably talking about the BMG rootkit from the early 2000’s. Basically, when you inserted a Sony CD into your computer, it would automatically and silently install a rootkit on your PC, which introduced a backdoor on your PC that was being actively exploited. It was also notoriously difficult to remove, as it would reinstall itself even if you deleted every visible trace of it (and improperly installing it could disable access to your CD drive entirely.)

Then when shit hit the fan and Sony was making headlines for it, they released a “fix” for it. The fix didn’t actually remove the rootkit, and simply hid files with specific names (the rootkit files) from the users. This only introduced another vulnerability, where hackers could just name any virus the same as the rootkit, and it would automatically be hidden.

It led to several very large lawsuits and state investigations. Sony was raked over the coals by multiple state attorneys general, and the FTC even published warnings urging consumers not to buy Sony CDs.

All in the name of DRM. The rootkit was initially meant to stop you from ripping and copying the CD. Oh, and the rootkit contained sections of improperly credited open source code. So Sony stole from OSS programmers while claiming that they were trying to prevent IP theft.

Which is the exact same behavior that caused the dot com bubble. VC funding was throwing money at any and every dot com business, in the hopes that it would explode and lead to profits.

All it did was massively overvalue the dot com companies, which caused a bubble when people finally realized they were overvalued and VC investors turned off the spigot of free money.

You don’t need to run it on a pi. In fact, I’d actually argue against it; A pi will be underpowered if you’re ever needing to transcode anything. Transcoding is what Plex/Jellyfin does if your watching device can’t natively play the video. Maybe you have a 4k video, but you’re playing it on a 1080p screen. That video will need to be transcoded from 4k into 1080p for the screen to be able to display it. Or maybe the file is encoded using ACC (a fairly recent encoding method) which isn’t widely supported by older devices. This often happens with things like smart TVs (which often don’t support modern encoding and need to be transcoded even if the resolution is correct.)

Basically, if you’re 100% positive that every device you’re watching it on will never need transcoding, then a pi is acceptable. But for anything else, I’d recommend a small PC instead. You can even use an old PC if you have one laying around.

Or if you want to use a new machine, maybe something like an HP Elitedesk. They’re basically what you see in every single cubicle in every single office building. They’re extremely popular in corporate settings, which means there are a ton of used/refurbished systems available for cheap, because IT destroys the drives and sends the rest to refurb when they upgrade their fleet of PCs. So for the refurb you’re basically just paying the cost of an SSD they added in (to replace the one IT pulled out), plus whatever labor is associated with dusting it out and checking the connections to make sure they all work. You can pick up a modern one for like $250 on Amazon (or your preferred electronics store).

Worth noting that the elitedesk generations are marked by a G-number, so google the model (like an EliteDesk G9, G7, etc) to see what kind of processor it has; Avoid anything with an intel 13th or 14th generation CPU, (they have major reliability issues) and check with Plex/Jellyfin’s CPU requirements list to see if it supports hardware accelerated transcoding. For Intel chips, look for QuickSync support.

For storage, I’d recommend running a NAS with however many hard drives you can afford, and one that has extra ports for future expandability. Some NAS systems support Plex and/or Jellyfin directly, but the requirements for full support are tricky and you’ll almost always have better luck just running a dedicated PC for Plex. Then for playing, one of two things will happen. Either the device is capable of directly playing the file, or it will need to be transcoded. If it’s directly playing, the plex server basically just points the player to the NAS, and the player handles the rest. If it’s transcoding, the PC will access the NAS, then stream it to the player.

As for deciding on Plex vs Jellyfin, that’s really a matter of personal preference. If you’re using Plex, I’d highly suggest a PlexPass sub/lifetime purchase; Wait until Black Friday, because they historically do a (~25% off) discount on their lifetime pass. Plex is definitely easier to set up, especially if you plan on streaming outside of your LAN.

Jellyfin currently struggles from a lack of native app support; Lots of smart TVs don’t have a native Jellyfin app, for instance. But some people have issues and complaints (many of them justified!) with Plex, so if the FOSS sounds appealing, then consider Jellyfin instead. Jellyfin is also rapidly being developed, and many people expect it to have feature parity with Plex within a few years.

And if you’re having trouble deciding, you can actually set up both (they can run in tandem on the same machine) and then see which one you prefer.

And the nice part about using a mini PC is that you can also use it for more than just Plex/Jellyfin. I have the *arr suite running on mine, alongside a Factorio server, a Palworld server, and a few other things.

Most of the episodes aired before at-home VHS was common, and TV stations weren’t in the habit of archiving their old footage for nightly broadcasts; The show was viewed as transient since it dealt with current events, and nobody expected people to want to re-watch old episodes. It’s likely that a lot of them aren’t available simply because nobody (including the tv station) has recordings.

Cold water and dish soap is the way to go. Hot water runs the risk of delaminating the coating layer, and hand soap tends to have moisturizers that will stick to the lens. Microfibers are too abrasive, and don’t adequately lift debris away from the lens. Just lather a drop of soap to cut the oils, then rinse. If your oleophobic coating is still good and water slicks off the lens, you can even turn the faucet low and just run a trickle across the lens to dry them. So you literally never need to touch the lens with a towel or microfiber cloth.

If you only ever use soap and cold water, your oleophobic coating will last for literal years. I’ve had my current pair for almost two years now, with no scratches and my oleophobic coating is still just fine. Lens cleaners, glass cleaners, etc all strip that coating away. And microfibers are bad about causing tiny scratches that build up over time, since they drag dust and debris across the lens as you wipe them. In contrast, water gently carries dust and debris away without scratching, then the soap removes the oily fingerprints and smudges without damaging the coating.

Yeah, it’s a statement that is spoken from a position of extreme privilege. Being able to “not care” about politics means politics has never directly impacted your day to day life, your health, your wellbeing…

The “Methodist” part really depends on which side of the schism your church landed on. There are absolutely bigoted Methodists.

Baptist is spot on though. Especially southern baptists, which tend to be the most fire-and-brimstone with their preaching.

As the old joke goes: “What’s the biggest difference between Methodists and baptists? Baptists won’t wave at each other in the liquor store.”

Nah, they don’t get the benefit of the doubt anymore. “I smelled weed” has been used for decades to skirt probable cause requirements. Because it’s transient evidence that can’t be saved or replicated, and you can’t prove that they’re lying. You can be 100% clean, but a cop claims he smelled weed and now your car’s interior paneling is getting ripped out on the side of the highway.

The cop lied to get the search approved. No more, no less.

Job postings like yours are extremely common when the applicant has been pre-selected but the company still requires an external posting. Your applicant likes off-grid hiking, is a hobbyist drone pilot, and enjoys grilling?

Now the job posting for a IT position requires an applicant who is capable of accurate pathfinding using a paper map and compass, two years of drone pilot experience, and four years of culinary experience.

If you’re referring to the wavy pattern along the cutting edge, that’s not from the folding process. The hamon is added to the blade during the quenching process, by adding clay to the steel. The clay causes the covered steel to heat differently than the uncovered steel. That differential heating is what is visible as the hamon.

It’s largely decorative, but does have function as it determines what part of the blade can be sharpened to an edge.

Yeah, Japanese steel wasn’t great, but they were working with what they had available at the time. Katanas were basically made out of iron dust, which had been melted into slag by filtering through charcoal. The resulting chunks of steel were basically straight up slag, not nice even ingots. So the steel they got was actually extremely high carbon in places, but that also meant it was brittle as hell, because those carbon pockets were prone to shattering.

So the folding was invented, to even out the steel’s carbon content (just like how a Damascus steel blade has visible stripes, Japanese steel had invisible stripes of high and low carbon steel) and to lower the carbon content overall; Every time you heat for another fold, you’re evaporating some carbon. So the folding process took the steel from extremely high carbon pockets to a more evenly distributed carbon content.

Now that modern steel processing exists, the only real reason to stick to the folding method is tradition. There’s no need to fold modern steel ingots because they’re already homogenous and can be produced at whatever carbon level you want.