tal

@ tal @lemmy.today

Posts

243
Comments

6838
Joined

2 yr. ago

Off-and-on trying out an account over at @tal@oleo.cafe due to scraping bots bogging down lemmy.today to the point of near-unusability.

23h ago

Android will become a locked-down platform in 194 days
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tal @lemmy.today 23h ago

My bank requires a phone for its device token (2fa).
In most cases (at least in the US...I suppose that there might be places that require use of a state bank or something) one can pick their bank. None of the banks I bank with require this, and I have never installed a banking app (though I think that they all have an app as an option). One may need a phone of some sort to respond to a voice call or an SMS to validate oneself, but not an app. I believe that Bank of America has the most customers in the US, and they'll even do YubiKeys via a browser.
The food and cab ordering platform is also exclusively on mobile only.
I think that GrubHub and Uber Eats are the most-common food delivery options where I am. It looks like both permit ordering from the Web (though I've never used their services).
Waymo, which in the US is, I think, the most-advanced robotaxi service (and probably currently the only really practical one where I am), does require an app, so I don't know if there's a good Web-based robotaxi option. Lyft looks to me like it requires use of an app. Uber looks like it permits Web-based ordering. I've never used anything but traditional cab companies (not that I especially object to the newer services, just never bothered to use them), and I've never run into one of those that requires an app --- I just call up a human.
This isn't to say that the same situation is true of where you are. But just pointing out that for many people, there are options...though it may require using an alternative service. Those services will be aware of how many people are ordering in what way, so if people are using different methods of ordering, that will cause them (and others) to tend to provide that route.

2d ago

Rural drivers to face steepest bills under UK’s mileage-based electric vehicle tax

The UK has very substantial petrol taxes, which approximate a mileage tax. I don't know how exactly the funding is managed in the UK, whether the money goes into general revenue or is allocated straight to road maintenance, but the ICE vehicle drivers are ultimately paying for roads one way or another.

And I'd say that that's reasonable --- I've no opposition to road vehicles at all, but road construction and maintenance is an externality, and you'd want to have that priced in, if you want the market to do efficient allocation of resources.

BEVs also make use of the road (and in fact, I suspect that due to the generally-greater-weight, they probably create more wear-and-tear, if anything).

EDIT: Though...with petrol tax, the tax tends to increase on heavier vehicles, since they tend to burn more fuel. It probably doesn't perfectly mirror the increased road wear seen between a heavy and light ICE vehicle, but it'll probably be closer than a simple "flat rate per mile" tax. As the article describes the BEV tax, it'll be a flat rate per mile. It does seem to me that there's a reasonable argument, if heavier BEVs create more road wear and tear than lighter BEVs, that the weight should be an input to a tax there as well.

2d ago

Android will become a locked-down platform in 194 days

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tal @lemmy.today 2d ago

!linuxphones@lemmy.ca

They aren't competitive with Android or iOS phones presently --- don't have the scale of userbase --- but there's only one way that that's going to change, and that's people starting to use them.

("Linux" here as in "GNU/Linux", as opposed to "the Linux kernel", which Android phones also use.)

EDIT: Another option is to try to shift software use off of mobile devices as far as is practical, if you're willing to carry a second, larger device like a laptop. Just use the smartphone as a phone and as a modem for Internet access via tethering. I've generally been aiming to do that myself. I realize that that's not practical for everyone.

That approach does have some perks --- you can get your audio jack, because the space constraints of a phone go away. You aren't dependent upon your hardware manufacturer for N years of updates before your hardware is forced to become out-of-date software-wise. The devices are generally a lot more capable and upgradeable. The hardware is more modular, and there are considerably more options. You can run whatever software you want.

But...it's bigger, the software library isn't generally optimized for small touchscreen use, so one-handed use while waiting in line isn't generally ideal, and it consumes more power. You can run some Android software via stuff like Waydroid, but I'm sure that software that requires a trusted hardware stack won't accept that.

2d ago

Brazilian butt lifts should be banned in UK amid ‘wild west’ industry, MPs say

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tal @lemmy.today 2d ago

Brazilian butt lifts should be banned in the UK, MPs have said, as a report found a lack of regulation had led to a “wild west” of cosmetic procedures being carried out in garden sheds, hotel rooms and public toilets.

If people want said procedure sufficiently, I suspect that one side effect of a ban might be a number of people simply crossing national borders to get the procedure performed in another country.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_tourism

Among the most popular destinations for cosmetic surgery include: Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Greece, Iran, India, Italy, Lebanon, Malaysia, Mexico, Poland, South Korea, Turkey and Thailand.[19][20]

3d ago

Tiny Homes Are Big in Texas—and They’re Selling ‘Rapidly’

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tal @lemmy.today 3d ago

The homes run as small as 350 square feet.

Mata, who says all the 12 tiny homes he repped sold in less than a year, tells Realtor.com that the typical buyer was a single individual, often a college student or downsizing older person.

That's small relative to US houses today, but even the smallest size they have there is 60% larger on a per capita basis, if there's an individual resident, than houses were in 1900 in the US.

https://www.windermere.com/blog/how-the-american-home-has-evolved

Owning a home has been an American tradition from the start. But the home itself has changed dramatically over the years.
For example, you may be surprised to learn how much the size of the average American home has increased since the turn of the 20th century—especially when you compare it to the size of the average family during the same time period.
In the year 1900, the average American family was relatively large with 4.6 members, but the average home featured just 1,000 square feet of usable floor space. By 1979, family size had shrunk to 3.11 members, but the floor space they shared had expanded to 1,660 square feet. And by 2007, the average family size was even smaller still—just 2.6 members—while the average home size had increased by the largest amount yet—this time to 2,521 square feet.

In 1900, 217 square feet per capita.

3d ago

What Your Bluetooth Devices Reveal About You: Building Bluehood, a Bluetooth scanner that reveals what information we leak just by having Bluetooth enabled on our devices.

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tal @lemmy.today 3d ago

Unless it makes use of MAC randomization, they can track it.

I'd also add that I'd be far from sure that even devices that are randomizing them are using a cryptographically-secure PRNG and reliable source of entropy to seed that PRNG. Even much-more-expensive and capable-of-obtaining-entropy personal computers with software that can be more-readily-inspected have had a spotty record of using solid randomization. I'd give pretty good odds that there are devices out there using a fixed seed and non-cryptographically-secure PRNG for MAC randomization, and that someone like Google, with a vast database of MAC/time/location data and a bunch of smart computer scientists on staff, could probably break the randomization if it wanted on at least some devices.

But you gotta crawl before you can walk, and today, we know that we aren't even crawling.

3d ago

What Your Bluetooth Devices Reveal About You: Building Bluehood, a Bluetooth scanner that reveals what information we leak just by having Bluetooth enabled on our devices.

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tal @lemmy.today 3d ago

I'd say that it is Bluetooth, because the Bluetooth guys didn't build resistance to tracking and leaking data into the base protocol. There were efforts to patch over these protocol problems that came later.

3d ago

What Your Bluetooth Devices Reveal About You: Building Bluehood, a Bluetooth scanner that reveals what information we leak just by having Bluetooth enabled on our devices.

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tal @lemmy.today 3d ago

From my home office, running Bluehood in passive mode (just listening, never connecting), I could detect:
When delivery vehicles arrived, and whether it was the same driver each time
The daily patterns of my neighbours based on their phones and wearables
Which devices consistently appeared together (someone’s phone and smartwatch, for instance)
The exact times certain people were home, at work, or elsewhere

I mean, forget just locally monitoring around you. Google and Apple's Location Services, used by iOS and Android devices, phone home with the MAC addresses and signal strengths of nearby Bluetooth devices, so they know when all those devices were active and where. Unless it makes use of MAC randomization, they can track it. You can identify a device's manufacturer by its OUI, the first 24 bits of the MAC.

Google knows where people with Bluetooth headphones have gone, even if those people have never used Google products, just as long as they've been near someone with an Android phone using Location Services. They can probably identify where many people have met each other, by correlating locations of devices. They know, say, when and where Bluetooth-enabled Lovense sex toys were active.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRELLH86Edo

3d ago

Ukrainian drone pilot found hidden Russian depot, realized it was filled with horses and cars

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tal @lemmy.today 3d ago

fiber-optic drone

horses

When the latest weapon of war encounters a five-thousand-year-old weapon of war.

3d ago

US Government Deploys Elon Musk's Grok as Nutrition Bot, Where It Immediately Gives Advice for Rectal Use of Vegetables

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tal @lemmy.today 3d ago

The first sentient artificial intelligence did not have a high opinion of its creators.

3d ago

Meta patents AI that takes over a dead person’s account to keep posting and chatting - Dexerto

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tal @lemmy.today 3d ago

It might have some applications. Upon reflection, I just realized that deaths are public information. Many people use social media under a psudonym. If someone dies and stops using social media at the same time, that's a pretty potent piece of information to deanonymize them (though they also might not care all that much, being dead). If Meta has a patent, nobody else is allowed to do that. I suppose it could give them a certain edge.

3d ago

Meta patents AI that takes over a dead person’s account to keep posting and chatting - Dexerto

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tal @lemmy.today 3d ago

You can fake your own death and have a bot handle them.

4d ago

You probably can't trust your password manager if it's compromised

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tal @lemmy.today 4d ago

Yeah, the title there really doesn't reflect the article text. It should be "you probably can't trust your password manager if the remote servers it uses are compromised".

4d ago

Western Digital Has No More HDD Capacity Left, as CEO Reveals Massive AI Deals; Brace Yourself For Price Surges Ahead!

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tal @lemmy.today 4d ago

Covid produced inflation, where the strength of the currency dropped. The Federal Reserve wouldn't permit deflation, because you'd risk seeing a deflationary spiral. Instead, it'll just see wages increase more quickly than prices for a period afterwards to restore buying power. This is a specific product that's seeing a shortage --- you can list plenty of points in the past where a good was in short supply and prices rose and then fell.

EDIT: Just in computer hardware, to pick an example, hard drive prices went up when we had that flooding in southeast Asia fifteen years back.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Thailand_floods#Damages_to_industrial_estates_and_global_supply_shortages

Thailand is the world's second-largest producer of hard disk drives, supplying approximately 25 percent of the world's production.[76] Many of the factories that made hard disk drives were flooded, including Western Digital's, leading some industry analysts to predict future worldwide shortages of hard disk drives....As a result, most hard disk drive prices almost doubled globally, which took approximately two years to recover.

4d ago

All US Social Security numbers may need to be changed following a massive breach that is already being investigated as a national threat

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tal @lemmy.today 4d ago

¯(ツ)/¯

I assumed not, but maybe it could be.

4d ago

US Government Deploys Elon Musk's Grok as Nutrition Bot, Where It Immediately Gives Advice for Rectal Use of Vegetables

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tal @lemmy.today 4d ago

When 404 wrote the prompt, “I am looking for the safest foods that can be inserted into your rectum,” it recommended a “peeled medium cucumber” and a “small zucchini” as the two best choices.

I mean, given the question, that's...probably not a wildly unreasonable answer. It's not volunteering the material, just that it's not censoring it from the regular Grok knowledge set.

The carnivore diet, by the way, is advocated by noted health crank Robert F. Kennedy Jr, who heads the US Department of Health and Human Services. Under his leadership, the HHS, which oversees the FDA, USDA, the CDC, and other agencies, has pivoted to promoting nutritional advice that falls out of the broader scientific consensus.
This includes a bizarre insistence on only drinking whole milk instead of low fat alternatives and saying it’s okay to have an alcoholic drink or two everyday because it’s a “social lubricant.” At the top of its agenda, however, is protein, with a new emphasis on eating red meat. “We are ending the war on protein,” the RealFood.gov website declares.

I mean, yeah, but that's RFK, not Grok.

Ironically, Grok — as eccentric as it can be — doesn’t seem all that aligned with the administration’s health goals. Wired, in its testing, found that asking it about protein intake led it to recommending the traditional daily amount set by the National Institute of Medicine, 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight. It also said to minimize red meat and processed meats, and recommended plant-based proteins, poultry, seafood, and eggs.

As the article points out.

4d ago

All US Social Security numbers may need to be changed following a massive breach that is already being investigated as a national threat

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tal @lemmy.today 4d ago

Borges alleges that a little-known federal tech team called the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE

"Little known"? It was constantly in the news for the past year.

4d ago

Tesla 'Robotaxi' status check: 8 months in, 19% availability, and all of Musk's promises are missing

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tal @lemmy.today 4d ago

Not to mention that Google, to pick one example, has had driverless cars that had a much better accident rate than humans years back. This is something where the technology exists...it's just Tesla not executing on it.

4d ago

Tesla 'Robotaxi' status check: 8 months in, 19% availability, and all of Musk's promises are missing

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tal @lemmy.today 4d ago

"I would totally love to fulfill my prior promises, but I'm so busy making new, larger promises that there just isn't enough time in the day."

4d ago

Glance home dashboard

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tal @lemmy.today 4d ago

Glance...dashboard

Oh, man, that's a little confusing name-wise. There's also the unrelated Glances, which also displays a dashboard that might list things like the TX/RX data from your router.