My bet is on it never getting completed. It's going to be a running grift over the next few years. There will be delay after delay after delay with multiple "independent" contractors rolling through to deal with whatever the current delay is. Those contractors will be chosen via a competitive bid process,. The company bidding the highest kickbacks to Trump being awarded the contract. At the end of the Trump administration, anything actually constructed on the grounds will need to be torn down due to engineering failures, and multitudes of bugs planted by foreign spy agencies.
- Posts
- 5
- Comments
- 682
- Joined
- 2 yr. ago
- Posts
- 5
- Comments
- 682
- Joined
- 2 yr. ago
It's not just speed, CGNAT is a near complete "fuck you" to self-hosting. You can work around it with a VPN endpoint "in the cloud", but that still means you are reliant on someone else's computer.
If the goal is stability, I would have likely started with an immutable OS. This creates certain assurances for the base OS to be in a known good state.With that base, I'd tend towards:Flatpak > Container > AppImage
My reasoning for this being:
- Installing software should not effect the base OS (nor can it with an immutable OS). Changes to the base OS and system libraries are a major source of instability and dependency hell. So, everything should be self contained.
- Installing one software package should not effect another software package. This is basically pushing software towards being immutable as well. The install of Software Package 1, should have no way to bork Software Package 2. Hence the need for isolating those packages as flatpaks, AppImages or containers.
- Software should be updated (even on Linux, install your fucking updates). This is why I have Flatpak at the top of the list, it has a built in mechanism for updating. Container images can be made to update reasonably automatically, but have risks. By using something like docker-compose and having services tied to the ":latest" tag, images would auto-update. However, its possible to have stacks where a breaking change is made in one service before another service is able to deal with it. So, I tend to tag things to specific versions and update those manually. Finally, while I really like AppImages, updating them is 100% manual.
This leaves the question of apt packages or doing installs via make. And the answer is: don't do that. If there is not a flatpak, appimage, or pre-made container, make your own container. Docker files are really simple. Sure, they can get super complex and do some amazing stuff. You don't need that for a single software package. Make simple, reasonable choices and keep all the craziness of that software package walled off from everything else.
An economy is really just a way to distribute finite resources in a world with infinite wants. Even the most egalitarian of systems is going to require deciding who gets something and who doesn't (winner and losers). It's perfectly valid to be frustrated by being on the "doesn't" end of that equation. And we (US and other Western Democracies) could certainly do a lot more to shift some of the resources away from the few who are hording a lot of them, even without a radical "tear the system down" approach. The difficulty is the political will to do so.
Unfortunately, mustering political will for a collective good, which may come with some individual losses can be a tough sell. Especially when large parts of a population are comfortable. Not only do you have to convince people that the collective good is an overall good for them, you also have to convince them that the individual losses either won't effect them or will be mitigated by the upsides of the collective good. And given peoples' tendency to over emphasize the short term risks over the long term risks, this can be especially hard. But, that doesn't mean you should give up, just that you need to sharpen your arguments and find ways to convince more people that things can be better for them, if they are willing to take that step.
Traditions exist to pass on learned knowledge and for social cohesion. Prior to widespread education, many local groups had to learn the same lessons and find a way to pass those on from person to person and generation to generation. Given that this also tended to coincide with societies not having the best grasp on reality (germ theory is not that old), the knowledge being passed on was often specious. But, it might also contain useful bits which worked.
For example some early societies would pack honey into a wound. Why? Fuck if they knew, but that was what the wise men said to do. It turns out that honey is a natural anti-septic and helps to prevent infection. They had no knowledge of this, but had built up a tradition around it, probably because it seemed to work. And so that got passed on.
The other aspect of traditions is social. When people do a thing together, they tend to bond and become willing to engage in more pro-social behaviors. It isn't all that important what the activity it, so long as people do it together. The more people feel like they are part of the in-group, the more they will work to protect and sacrifice for that in-group.
Sure, a lot of traditions are complete crap. They are superstition wrapped in a "that's the way we've always done it" attitude. But it's important not to overlook their significance to a population. The Christian Church ran headlong into this time and again through European history as they sought to convert various groups. Those groups tended to hold on to old traditions and just blended them into Christianity. This resulted in a fairly fractured religious landscape, but the Church generally tolerated it, because trying to quash it led to too many problems. While stories of various Easter and Christmas traditions being Pagan in origin are likely apocryphal, there are echos of older religious beliefs hanging about.
It's best to be careful when looking at a particular group's traditions and calling them "backwards" or some other epitaph. Yes, they almost certainly have no basis in the scientific method. But, the value of those traditions to a people are very real. And so long as they are not harmful to others, you're likely to do more harm trying to remove them than by simply allowing folks to just enjoy them.
If everyone bought the dip, the dip would end. Stock prices are only loosely tied to reality. They are more strongly tied to the perception that a stock's price will increase. So, if people started pouring money into stocks (or other assets) the price of those stocks would naturally rise as they become more scarce and sellers demand a higher price for them. Assuming the reasons for the dip remain, it would just result in the inflation of another bubble.
Take a look back at the whole GameStop (GME) rollercoster. Large investors expected the stock to crater and began taking short positions. Retail investors saw the dip this was causing and bought the stock in droves, forcing the price up beyond anything it had any business being. Eventually, that bubble popped and the stock has settled to a more reasonable (if still higher) level.
The AWS outage was primarily due to an "operational issue" related to DNS resolution of the DynamoDB API endpoint in the US-EAST-1 region.
It’s not DNSThere’s no way it’s DNSIt was DNS.
Proving yet again that even large
cloudbutt providers have the same problems as everyone else.It's going to depend on what types of data you are looking to protect, how you have your wifi configured, what type of sites you are accessing and whom you are willing to trust.
To start with, if you are accessing unencypted websites (HTTP) at least part of the communications will be in the clear and open to inspection. You can mitigate this somewhat with a VPN. However, this means that you need to implicitly trust the VPN provider with a lot of data. Your communications to the VPN provider would be encrypted, though anyone observing your connection (e.g. your ISP) would be able to see that you are communicating with that VPN provider. And any communications from the VPN provider to/from the unencrypted website would also be in the clear and could be read by someone sniffing the VPN exit node's traffic (e.g. the ISP used by the VPN exit node) Lastly, the VPN provider would have a very clear view of the traffic and be able to associate it with you.
For encrypted websites (HTTPS), the data portion of the communications will usually be well encrypted and safe from spying (more on this in a sec). However, it may be possible for someone (e.g. your ISP) to snoop on what domains you are visiting. There are two common ways to do this. The first is via DNS requests. Any time you visit a website, your browser will need to translate the domain name to an IP address. This is what DNS does and it is not encrypted by default. Also, unless you have taken steps to avoid it, it likely your ISP is providing DNS for you. This means that they can just log all your requests, giving them a good view of the domains you are visiting. You can use something like DNS Over Https (DOH), which does encrypt DNS requests and goes to specific servers; but, this usually requires extra setup and will work regardless of using your local WiFi or a 5g/4g network. The second way to track HTTPS connections is via a process called Server Name Identification (SNI). In short, when you first connect to a web server your browser needs to tell that server which domain it wants to connect to, so that the server can send back the correct TLS certificate. This is all unencrypted and anyone inbetween (e.g. your ISP) can simply read that SNI request to know what domains you are connecting to. There are mitigations for this, specifically Encrypted Server Name Identification (ESNI), but that requires the web server to implement it, and it's not widely used. This is also where a VPN can be useful, as the SNI request is encrypted between your system and the VPN exit node. Though again, it puts a lot of trust in the VPN provider and the VPN provider's ISP could still see the SNI request as it leaves the VPN network. Though, associating it with you specifically might be hard.
As for the encrypted data of an HTTPS connection, it is generally safe. So, someone might know you are visiting
lemmy.ml, but they wouldn't be able to see what communities you are reading or what you are posting. That is, unless either your device or the server are compromised. This is why mobile device malware is a common attack vector for the State level threat actors. If they have malware on your device, then all the encryption in the world ain't helping you. There are also some attacks around forcing your browser to use weaker encryption or even the attacker compromising the server's certificate. Though these are likely in the realm of targeted attacks and unlikely to be used on a mass scale.So ya, not exactly an ELI5 answer, as there isn't a simple answer. To try and simplify, if you are visiting encrypted websites (HTTPS) and you don't mind your mobile carrier knowing what domains you are visiting, and your device isn't compromised, then mobile data is fine. If you would prefer your home ISP being the one tracking you, then use your home wifi. If you don't like either of them tracking you, then you'll need to pick a VPN provider you feel comfortable with knowing what sites you are visiting and use their software on your device. And if your device is compromised, well you're fucked anyway and it doesn't matter what network you are using.
No, a game should be what the devs decide to make. That said, it can cut off a part of the market. I'm another one of those folks who tends to avoid PvPvE games, without a dedicated PvE only side. This weekend's Arc Raiders playtest was a good example. I read through the description on Steam and just decided, "na, I have better things to do with my time." Unfortunately, those sorts of games tend to have a problem with griefers running about directly trying to ruin other peoples' enjoyment. I'll freely admit that I will never be as good as someone who is willing to put the hours into gear grinding, practice and map memorization in such a game. I just don't enjoy that and that means I will always be at a severe disadvantage. So, why sped my time and money on such a game?
This can lead to problem for such games, unless they have a very large player base. The Dark Souls series was a good example, which has the in-built forced PvP system, though you can kinda avoid it for solo play. And it still has a large player base. But, I'd also point out some of the the controversy around the Seamless Co-op mod for Elden Ring. When it released, the PvP players were howling from the walls about how long it made invasion queues. Since Seamless Co-op meant that the players using it were removed from the official servers, the number of easy targets to invade went way, way down. It seemed like a lot of folks like to have co-op, without the risks of invasion.
As a longer answer to this, let me recommend two videos from Extra Credits:
These videos provide a way to think about players and how they interact with games and each other.
Because languages change over time and every once in a while someone comes along who insists they can "fix" the language by making a bunch of changes. They are probably right and the changes, if widely adopted, will probably make the language more sensible. However, since one of the common features of a living language is that it changes over time due to usage, oddities will start creeping back in. And the whole thing will need to start all over again.
Why can’t the U.S do the same, if Donald Trump is so bad?
We don't have a legal mechanism for it. In the US Constitution, the people do not have a direct power of impeachment. As a Federalist system, the US Federal Government was designed as a government of governments. So, the power to impeaching the US President is given to Congress, not the people.
Impeachment is a two step process in the US. The House of Representatives (the larger of the two houses) is required to pass Articles of Impeachment which list the reasons for removal. Those are then taken up by the Senate (the smaller house) which tries the President and requires a 2/3 majority to convict the President.
While it's easy to get a sense that everyone hates the US President, especially here on Lemmy, his popularity isn't all that far behind previous US Presidents. Yes, he is net unpopular, but not so much that his removal is politically possible. His own party (Republicans) still supports him, and they hold majorities in both houses. As such, they are neither going to pass Articles of Impeachment, nor would they convict him (and most certainly not at the 2/3 level needed in the Senate).
Why are some Americans even supporting him?
The US is rather starkly divided, politically speaking, at the moment. And people will overlook a lot from the leaders of their own party, if it means keeping the other party out of power. Trump is the latest, and one of the more extreme examples of this. His claims that he could shoot someone and not lose any votes may be close to true. There was a special election in 2017 where the Republican candidate had credible allegations of sexual misconduct with a minor. This was for a Senate seat from Alabama, which one would normally expect to vote overwhelmingly Republican. Moore did end up losing, but is was closer than one would expect, when one of the candidates is likely a pedophile.
Again, if your only source of information about US politics comes from Lemmy, you're getting a very skewed view. Yes, he's not popular at the moment, but there is a large segment of the US population which agrees with him. And that means we're kinda stuck with him until 2018.
Noting that EA had to take on nearly $20 billion in debt to finance the deal
A leveraged buyout, with the bought out company taking on all the debt, ya this is the death knell of EA. It's going to suck for all the people who are employed by EA, but in the long term it is a way to get the company broken up.
That's not fair, Trump's FTC is constantly on the lookout for shady deals.How else is he supposed to get in on the grift?
Ultimately, it's going to be down to your risk profile. What do you have on your machine which would wouldn't want to lose or have released publicly? For many folks, we have things like pictures and personal documents which we would be rather upset about if they ended up ransomed. And sadly, ransomware exists for Linux. Lockbit, for example is known to have a Linux variant. And this is something which does not require root access to do damage. Most of the stuff you care about as a user exists in user space and is therefore susceptible to malware running in a user context.
The upshot is that due care can prevent a lot of malware. Don't download pirated software, don't run random scripts/binaries you find on the internet, watch for scam sites trying to convince you to paste random bash commands into the console (Clickfix is after Linux now). But, people make mistakes and it's entirely possible you'll make one and get nailed. If you feel the need to pull stuff down from the internet regularly, you might want to have something running as a last line of defense.
That said, ClamAV is probably sufficient. It has a real-time scanning daemon and you can run regular, scheduled scans. For most home users, that's enough. It won't catch anything truly novel, but most people don't get hit by the truly novel stuff. It's more likely you'll be browsing for porn/pirated movies and either get served a Clickfix/Fake AV page or you'll get tricked into running a binary you thought was a movie. Most of these will be known attacks and should be caught by A/V. Of course, nothing is perfect. So, have good backups as well.
Oh look, it's an air mouse. But, you can't change the battery, the licensing is all kinds of "fuck you", and with all those gestures, I'm expecting a frustrating experience with the device constantly interpreting unrelated motions into inputs.
A number of years ago, the cybersecurity office I worked for had a case come through where a 3.5" floppy was found in a drawer in an area which should not have contained any writable media. The investigator on the case had a hell of a time tracking down a drive to read the disk. He got lucky that someone in the organization just happened to have a USB based 3.5" floppy drive which worked. I can't imagine what we would have done with a 5.25" or 8" floppy. And such disks were known to exist at the site.
The other thing they don't mention in the article is tapes. A couple decades back I was a sysadmin at a site where we were required to store data archives for 10 years. Given the age of some of the data, it had been archived to DAT tapes and put in storage. The problem was the drive to read those tapes was just as old and had a SCSI interface from about the same time period. So, we also had a vintage SCSI controller for the drive. That controller was for an ISA bus slot. And this was at a time where ISA was just about fully phased out. By the time I left, I don't think we had a motherboard which could have accepted the controller. We might have been able to source a SCSI controller which used PCI and was the right generation of SCSI to interface with the drive. Then we would have had to hope that Symantec's Backup Exec would still be able to read the tapes. Given Backup Exec's propensity to just silently declare, "fuck your backups" this was not something I was hopeful for.
It's really cool that these folks are doing this work. There are a lot of hidden difficulties but saving that data can be very important.
immediately lost my $20, never entered a casino again.
You didn't lose it, you paid $20 for an education in why gambling in a casino is a bad idea. It could have been much, much worse.
As a species, homo sapiens have managed to adapt to every environment on Earth. We are the first species to have any measure of control over the natural forces which have wiped out countless other species. Diseases which once ravaged our populations are now gone or minor inconveniences and we continue to find new ways to mitigate the worst effect of many diseases. Should a large asteroid be heading our way, we are the only species which may stand any chance of diverting it or mitigating the long term impacts when it does hit us. While it was certainly not a "choice", the evolution of higher cognition, problem solving and intra-species communications has put our species in a unique position of having a high degree of control over out fate. Sure, it has its downsides (we are the only species which might be able to end all life on Earth), but it's been a pretty amazing run for us. On the balance, I think we're in a much better position to keep going as a species than our ancestors or cousins (homo erectus, homo hablis, neanderthal, great apes, chimpanzees, etc).
So, was it a "mistake", I think the current state of evidence is against that. While it may result in a really shit deal for individuals of the species from time to time, as a species I think it would be silly to consider it a mistake.
How long until someone figures out how to hack Samsung's ad service and starts showing porn ?