Dark_Arc

Dark_Arc , 18 hours ago

I can't read it because of the paywall but IIRC (based on a similar article) that was such a nothing-burger issue.

People turned on an entirely optional (I think off by default setting) for some feature that allowed discovery of users by location ... and shocked pikachu they could be tracked or something like that.

Dark_Arc , 18 hours ago

Server-side source code is a red herring. It's meaningless, it can't be verified.

The latter point is fair.

Dark_Arc , 18 hours ago

Cloud source server or open source server, you can't know what server their running.

Pavel's whole argument here is basically the same thing for the client; "you can't verify the build in the app store matches what's in the source code, so you have no way of knowing it's actually what you're auditing."

Dark_Arc , 15 hours ago

I don’t know why Telegram users keep making excuses for that platform.

Honestly? Because the others are just so bad.

• Element has an extremely clunky UX and uses Electron. The other Matrix app implementations are incomplete buggy messes.
• Signal can't sync old messages to the desktop, uses a messy Electron interface, and lacks a bunch of features/polish I've come to expect.
• Discord doesn't even pay lip service to privacy and uses a similarly doesn't invest in native apps.
• Threema has been saying that cross-platform/multi-device connectivity is coming for like 2+ years and has had nothing but the most minor of unexciting features added.
• WhatsApp is run by Meta, has a crappy desktop experience, and has had several serious security vulnerabilities.
• Jami is ... extremely glitchy.
• Session is basically Signal backed by a Crypto platform.

If someone took Telegram's UX and feature set and paired that with Signal's approach of "everything is encrypted", that would be a winner. I kinda hope someday Telegram just does that and moves everything to E2EE. When Telegram was launched E2EE for group chats/at scale wasn't really a thing ... now it's not nearly as novel but nobody has deployed E2EE with a feature set like Telegram's.

It’s not nothing if Telegram makes people believe they only share their location in a limited manner, but instead broadcast it to the whole world.

That's not even what happens by the way. It's just that you can spoof a device into random locations and eventually figure out where someone is.

Dark_Arc , 15 hours ago

That's fair ... especially in the case of something Telegram like where the server is a major portion of the security model (for non-secret chats).

For truly private E2EE chats though the attacks on Telegram's lack of an open source server side (and Signal's presence of one) is fairly meaningless. If the client E2EE is correct and you're using a reproducible build the server, and even any MITM (man in the middle), shouldn't matter.

Dark_Arc , 13 hours ago

A "toot" isn't a very persuasive piece of journalism.

I can verify that it absolutely impacts groups run by queer communities in the Gulf, because I was in one such group that was monitored and shut down by Etidal.

That claim needs a lot more investigation and context. At the very least, it needs investigated by a credible third party.

Also, do you even know what the feature you're criticizing is? A "channel"? Because it's not even really a part of the messaging portion of Telegram. It's basically an in-app blogging platform.

Dark_Arc , 13 hours ago

That news article talks nothing about targeting groups unfairly and only talks about removal of extremist activity from what's a social media platform (which is standard practice for all social media platforms). Specially that article talks about targeting "combating the online propaganda of ISIS, Hay'at Tahrir Al-Sham, and Al-Qaeda" which I believe is uncontroversial for all decent and reasonable people.

Dark_Arc , 2 days ago

No, because it's more about the curation algorithm than it is about the data or privacy.

Regulating curation is a clear violation of free speech laws for citizens, but foreign entity that controls TikTok has no such protections. Giving them this protection could be a dangerous precedent.

• A study about TikTok's pro-China tip and algorithm manipulation
• An article about the history of US regulation regarding limits on who can broadcast directly to US citizens

Dark_Arc , 2 days ago

This is a really good read about how TikTok regulation fits into the historic skew of legal precedence and past regulation https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/03/tiktok-bill-foreign-influence/677806/

Dark_Arc , 4 days ago

Ironically going to use Kagi to summarize the blog post:

Kagi is trying to expand into too many different products and services beyond just their search engine, which is stretching their resources too thin.

Kagi spent a significant portion of their funding (1/3) to set up a t-shirt printing business to give away free t-shirts to their first 20,000 users, which seems like a questionable financial decision.

Kagi was not paying sales tax for two years and had to retroactively pay up, indicating potential financial mismanagement.

Kagi is heavily focused on developing AI tools and features, to the point where the author believes it is becoming the main focus over improving the core search functionality.

The author is very critical of Kagi's founder Vlad's dismissive attitude towards privacy concerns and his belief that email addresses are not personally identifiable information.

Vlad has a "my way or the highway" management style and is unwilling to consider feedback or criticism about Kagi's direction.

Kagi's dedication to privacy is questionable, as the founder does not seem to take many privacy concerns seriously.

The author believes Kagi's AI-powered features like "FastGPT" and the "Universal Summarizer" are inaccurate and unreliable.

The author is skeptical about Kagi's long-term sustainability and viability as a business.

Overall, the author has lost faith in Kagi due to the company's questionable financial decisions, overreliance on AI, and the founder's dismissive attitude towards user concerns.

I did actually read the post (and I think this is actually my second time seeing this). I'm majorly unconvinced by the author ... and yes, the criticized AI summarizer is that good. I regularly use it after reading something to share the details with friends (or get a rough idea of what's being discussed and decide if I want to read something non-trivially long).

It also works on YouTube videos (presumably using the transcript) which can be a HUGE time saver.

Ultimately the search is good; it's better than what Google offers me, and I've found their AI tools fairly useful (despite having distrust for GPT-style chat bots/BS generating AI, I think summerization of some specified source is something they might actually do well -- the major concern of piecing together random pieces of random sources of varying integrity is largely mitigated).

Whether the company will stay private / whether it lives on beyond Vlad is the biggest concern I have with using it. However, "what's the other (practical) option to invest in?" I find myself in a similar position with Steam and Proton (at least the latter open sources much of their work). For now anyways, the weather is fair, so I'll stay on board.

Dark_Arc , 4 days ago

I am not that person, but the only way I see YaCy being useful/usable long term is as a web crawler for specific sites that you personally find high value in/regularly pruning irrelevant index data.

Dark_Arc , 4 days ago

I mean it's entirely possible this was for crossplay or cross save ... I doubt this is about the number of accounts created in a given year.

Dark_Arc , 4 days ago

Yes, but presumably you have accounts with those games? If not, you can play with people on those platforms but you can't play with specific people on those platforms (e.g. a friend on the platform -- which is the bigger deal in my mind with crossplay).

Like, the PSN account is the equivalent of a Bungie, Paradox, or Crytek account, something that allows the game developer to maintain a cross platform friends list? No?

I suppose they could use a room code invite system for crossplay but that's way less convenient.

I never got into Hell Divers because it legit would not run on my system so I'm not super up on all the details but that's been my impression of why they might want it.

Either way... With all the negative feedback I'm surprised they're not screaming from the rooftops "we'll do something else!" I understand Sony is tying their hands as well though.

Dark_Arc , 4 days ago

Fanatical and all of the discount sites are basically "you bought it, you own it, no refunds." That's part of why they offer discounts, it's kind of a risk you take.

https://support.fanatical.com/hc/en-us/articles/201027572-Can-I-get-a-refund-cancel-my-order

Issuing a chargeback for a product that was delivered could land you in court even if it works. More realistically will result in Fanatical permanently banning your account.

Never buy a game on these sites if you are at all uncertain about it. There is no refund and the key has been exposed.

Dark_Arc , 4 days ago

Missed that part, but you're right... They might make an exception but I wouldn't count on it.

Dark_Arc , 4 days ago

Yeah, the court thing was more a general thing... I doubt they'd actually do it.

All the same, I completely agree about not buying from these sites if you're uncertain about things like this

💯 I look at them as a gamble/only buy things I'm SURE I want.

Dark_Arc , 4 days ago

I try and inject nuance into what tends to be mono-culture leftist discussions and/or propaganda more often than not. However, it rarely results in anything but my own frustration.

I'm not even remotely a conservative, I'm just a liberal (because that term gets thrown around way too much: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism).

I'm moving in your direction ... but sometimes it's really hard to say nothing.

Dark_Arc , 5 days ago

Yeah, I had one of these in my family as well. I didn't do the DNA test but went on ancestry and kinda pieced stuff together way back to when the majority of the family tree crossed over the Atlantic. There's maybe one or two people that are suspect (orphan like circumstances). I can't follow their trees or place them but I don't have strong confidence either of them were the missing Native American. It's made harder by the common practice of making Native Americans take more English names.

I do wonder if the DNA testing could get it wrong in any case. There are so few Native Americans still alive to collect the DNA and really get a picture of "this is what Native American DNA looks like." There were a lot of Native American nations before Europeans showed up ... and a lot were driven to near extinction between smallpox and war.

I'm also the only man I know that's got an effectively hairless chest naturally despite a lot of hairy European lineage... That's been linked to Native Americans (or was at least more common) so maybe there is something to the stories. I don't particularly want to take a DNA test to see what it would say.

Dark_Arc , 7 days ago

Assuming you're in the LGBT spectrum ... sorry to say even there you might not be safe if Trump gets a second term. Things have softened for the LGB so those folks might be okay, but trans folks ... I'd be worried.

It also weakens purple states and national power when blue voters move out of purple states... Personally, I'd highly encourage folks moving to purple states to turn them more blue.

Michigan or Pennsylvania might be a good choice. I keep holding out for Ohio, but we need to give the gerrymandering issues (hopefully we finally will this year).

Dark_Arc , 7 days ago

I'll miss your vote, but I totally get it. Stay safe!

Dark_Arc , 8 days ago

The problem with something like that is Biden has no way to speak to the people without Israel also hearing.

Dark_Arc , 8 days ago

It's not that simple though; Israel wants to eliminate Hamas (and they have plenty of reason for that -- if Mexico attacked the US like Hamas attacked Israel, there would simply put no longer be a Mexico).

It would be tone deaf to Israel to say "leave Gaza" without that mission accomplished. They claim they don't even want the area, they just want Hamas gone.

Furthermore, Hamas is fighting with guerilla tactics. They're intentionally trying to provoke war crimes. Israel doesn't have to be so dang willing to fall for the trap. However, Hamas is making it exceptionally hard to fight a clean war from what I've read. Citizens in the Gaza strip are not just being abused by the IDF but by Hamas.

I wouldn't be surprised if Biden has his own Intel to back that all up. If it were as obvious as people want it to be, I'm pretty sure we would've stopped sending aid by now.

Dark_Arc , 7 days ago

No nation disputes it's sovereignty over it's lands.

That's not true, see Ukraine and plenty of other nations over history.

Mexico is also the closest to "has a terrorist organization capable of carrying out an attack near the scale of 9-11 living right next door and running the government."

You're right it isn't even close because the US government would never let it get that close.

Israel geographically surrounds Palestine.

Neither the Gaza strip (where all the fighting is going on AFAIK) or the west bank are "geographically surrounded." I checked a map because you legit made me question my geography.

One actor has the power to improve conditions in Gaza

I don't think that's entirely fair either. Israel can't "fix" Palestine anymore than the US can fix the problems in Mexico ... unless they take over Palestine. Nobody wants that...

They could definitely do more to let aid in. They could definitely do better about not hitting civilian targets... But this is not a "just do nothing and everything will get better silly Israel" situation. I think that's a pretty absurd take as popular it seems here.

Dark_Arc , 5 days ago

You do understand Hamas, the same Hamas that attacked Israel, is effectively the government of the Gaza strip right? The Palestinian authority had no recognized authority there.

So that's also a "terrible metaphor" because "it would be like the government of Mexico was the drug cartels, the drug cartels (which are the government) attacked the US and we in retaliation started bombing Mexico out of existence."

There's no perfect metaphor.

Dark_Arc , 8 days ago

Wait what? Like an outdoor reservoir/lake like thing or something else?

Dark_Arc , 7 days ago

That just seems like a bad call to me in ways ... Maybe this is more normal than I think, but ... what if fish get in there, ducks, other animals, some runoff, etc?

Part of that is mitigated by the size I imagine but that should also apply to human urine... I would think anyways?

Dark_Arc , 9 days ago (edited 9 days ago)

I'm mildly annoyed the recent thread is on the left not the right, but this is super interesting so thanks for sharing! 🤖

Dark_Arc , 10 days ago (edited 10 days ago)

My problem with communist views is they're unproven and have only lead to authoritarian governments when put into play.

Capitalism has regularly gone off the rails ... but not to the degree communism has. Capitalism has been defending democracy for the last few centuries, not communism.

These are the nations that identify as communist:

• China (PRC)
• Cuba
• Laos
• North Korea (DPRK)
• Vietnam

These countries were previously communist and (of that has that) have pretty much only improved since transitioning to democracy with capitalist economic systems:

• Afghanistan
• Albania
• Angola
• Benin
• Bulgaria
• Congo
• Czechoslovakia
• Ethiopia
• Germany (GDR)
• Grenada
• Hungary
• Kampuchea
• Mongolia
• Mozambique
• Poland
• Romania
• Somalia
• Soviet Union
• Tuva
• Yemen (PDRY)
• Yugoslavia

That's not to say that capitalism doesn't have its problems, people here aren't angry with it over nothing. However, if you really look at the problems it's had, they all come down to voter manipulation and/or apathy "things are going good, why do I need to worry about politics?".

We didn't just wake up with weakened labor unions, weakened voter rights, weakened infrastructure, etc; we got their because of generations of apathy and frankly electing the wrong people. People that cut taxes, asked "are you better off today than you were four years ago?" (short term gain), allowed our unions to be broken up, allowed jobs to be exported over seas to communist China (which is now one of the greatest international threats), bought the cheapest products (from mom and dad at the store to the executives running major corporations) without asking why they're cheap, etc.

The "common people" cast the votes that ultimately lead to corporations being people. The "middle class" cost votes that ultimately lead to the middle class shrinking.

I think it's naive that communism somehow automatically makes those problems go away/means we'll never end up with similar problems. Especially when communist countries are consistently doing worse/falling into authoritarian rule.

We need to expand our social programs, reign in our billionaires, and reign in our corporations and we'd be a lot better off. Capitalism works so long as you don't let anyone or anything get "too big to fail." Capitalism doesn't have to be capitalism without limits. The reigns of power will always be challenged no matter what system we find ourselves under, only an educated vigilant population can stop that.

Dark_Arc , 10 days ago

So I’m a “capitalism works, but only if we work to make it work” kind of person. I think at the moment, Reddit and many other social networks are falling into the well known and well studied failures of raw capitalism, but somehow today’s society has forgotten all the 1910s era solutions that we did (ex: Jungle, etc. etc.) where we regulated the hell out of the shitty behavior and fixed the most blatant problems, for the better of America.

Right there with you.

We just gotta do the same thing today.

We also HAVE to teach the kids how to protect it better than people did 100 years ago. Most of our problems today stem from people voting to remove "useless red tape" (that was put there for damn good reasons).

Dark_Arc , 9 days ago (edited 9 days ago)

The history of the last 500 years is soaked in the blood of the capitalism.

That's a pretty hot take to blame all the conflict that's happened in the last 500 years on capitalism. I think it's likely a significant oversimplification at best. For instance, you can argue many things caused (just) WW2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_II

Voter apathy has nothing to do with it. Enthusiastic voters gave us genocide of indigenous peoples of North America, the nuclear bombing of Japan, and currently a 75 year genocide of Palestinians.

That's provably wrong. The voter turn out as a percentage of population is abysmal historically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_United_States_presidential_elections#/media/File:USA_Presidential_Elections_Turnout_by_Share_of_Population.png

I also find some of your examples, e.g., the Native Americans similarly a red herring. The plight of the Native American peoples is far more complicated than "blame capitalism."

Not to mention things that voters do not have even the semblance of a choice, such as CIA activities in the 20th century which led to bloody coups in Indonesia, Chile, and Iran, just to name 3.

Voters control who is elected. Those that are elected control whether or not the CIA exists. The CIA would disappear tomorrow if only folks that believed the CIA shouldn't exist were in congress.

You need to incorporate class analysis or else nothing makes sense.

No you don't, it makes plenty of sense without "class analysis."

Why do American voters get shitty choices that reduce their power to the advantage of the wealthy oligarch class?

Because of the people who vote a fraction of them bother with primaries and because it's hard to find good people to run for office that want to do the job (for a myriad of reasons)?

Why are there oligarchs if capitalism doesn’t tend to monopoly?

It's not an objective thing that "there are oligarchs."

Does voting actually do anything?

Yes, voting matters. See policies under Trump vs policies under Biden. See Net Neutrality. See Climate Change Policy. See EPA Policy.

It's frankly anti-intellectual to claim that "voting doesn't do anything" or even imply as much.

Why does the electoral college still exist?

Because people vote for representatives that don't want to get rid of it?

Why did Americans support the Iraq War?

Because people vote for representatives that supported it? Because the general population was not adequately educated and engaged in politics to understand the facts of the situation and was mislead?

What role did the media serve?

What role didn't the media serve? What role should it have served?

You're asking leading questions to argue your point similar to a flat-earth or giant-ism conspiracy theorist. Like, these questions do have answers and those answers go far beyond people's economic classes and dive into a number of cultural, period, regional, and global factors. There isn't one answer, and the one answer certainly isn't "because the rich people made us do it."

I’m not sure what is your criteria for authoritarian rule.

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

Literally, the criteria for authoritarian rule.

Capitalist countries are authoritarian too

No, they are not. Some may be, but the vast majority of western capitalistic societies are nowhere near authoritarian rule. The US is creeping towards it and (as elections do matter) may creep closer this year; time will tell.

it’s basically a meaningless signifier coming out of cold war propaganda that said communism = dictatorship and capitalism = muh freedom

That is provably false. Look at the governance models of the countries above. They were not "communism = dictatorship" they were "communism and authoritarianism." For some reason people can't explain away, those two things go hand and hand.

My personal take is that when you take away ownership, ownership doesn't disappear, it just means the state is the owner. So you go from "the rich people and the government officials own the means of production" to "the government officials (that are the rich people) own the means of production" (which is exactly what happened in China).

The democratic processes in China and Cuba of example are lightyears ahead of what you can find in the US or European parliamentary so-called democracies.

That's straight up bull shit. A mono-party rule is not under any circumstance democratic.

Dark_Arc , 9 days ago

Would it change any of your opinion if I did?

But yes, I can (for China), I can explain the important part ... which is that the CCP required to rubber stamp any nomination to run for office. There is no democracy when your rule can not be meaningfully challenged.

This is furthered by the infringement of rights that is the great firewall.

EDIT: For anyone who actually is reading this and wants a source instead of "he (I) said, the other person said" here's some information fairly well compiled: https://decodingchina.eu/democracy/

Dark_Arc , 10 days ago

What’s the bet that the shooters were also police?

What does that mean...?

Dark_Arc , 10 days ago

I don't believe there's any issue actually building the app. However, the app store policies forbid them from shipping it or offering it as a side-loadable option.

Dark_Arc , 10 days ago

They do remember common words that you use

Sometimes your own peril... I keep getting my ex's name randomly when I'm swiping for another word 🤦‍♂️

Dark_Arc , 10 days ago

a bucket full of any small species of saltwater fish you can find.

LOL

Dark_Arc , 10 days ago

Always buy the best stuff you can get for your money, don't give a fuck about the companies.

I'd add to this but just performance per dollar ... but also things like:

• performance per watt
• how it works as part of the overall system you're building (e.g. if you're going to run Linux does it run well there)
• will this decision hurt my ability to reuse other hardware in a timeframe I care about (a compelling point for AMD to me is you can reuse the motherboard much much longer than Intel)
• what does warranty/repair look like for this? Is that something I need to worry about?

You can (if you're in a comfortable position to ask this) also ask:

• Where is it made?
• Does that country have strong labor laws?
• Does that country have strong environmental laws?
• How does the company treat its employees?
• How does this compare to the competitors?

If we collectively decide to punish bad companies by not buying their product just because they made their product a slightly better deal ... I think we're all a bit better off.

Dark_Arc , 10 days ago

No, it's literally a different app in China.

Dark_Arc , 10 days ago

Yup, vine ripoff with some tweaks and the same monetization issue

Dark_Arc , 10 days ago

Douyin begs to differ.

Dark_Arc , 11 days ago

I think one of the most surprisingly venomous reactions I ever got personally was on "the other site" for destiny 2. I made some suggestions that basically were "allow people to hide t-bagging, here's how it could work, and also allow people to disable emotes on their client."

I'm an anti-fun Nazi cry baby evidently that just isn't on their level and can't take the heat. I just don't get their amazing side game of getting up in my head. I have no business playing a "competitive" game, taunts and being rude are "just part of the game." Their fun depends on other people being angry and any suggestion that their taunts might be disabled/the other person doesn't see their taunting is going to ruin the game.

I was mostly posting that because a friend kept getting ticked every time I tried to get him into destiny PVP. So of course they attacked me as if "my friend" is imaginary.

The best part was when the mods removed the post for "not having enough to do with Destiny 2" because I bothered to make reference to I think it was what other games were doing or something like that.

Madness to me. Absolute madness.

Dark_Arc , 10 days ago

It might be worth you or your friend to introspect on why that behaviour makes you feel the way it does.

I don't really think the onus is on us.

A lot of multiplayer games have become very toxic, tons of cheaters (okay I don't actually believe this but it's a very common perception; I mostly blame smurfing and bad MMR systems), rude people, etc. It can transform a fun evening into dealing with "TotallyNotANazi" and his buddy "TotallyNotARapist" calling you names, t-bagging your bodies, screaming obscenities, and in some cases, likely using cheats, to make nearly impossible shots.

The other fun one (that's not quite as bad) is when you've been having a clean match with someone, you're clearly winning, you haven't been rude to them at all, then they get one kill on you and it's time to run up a t-bag and get on the microphones or text chat about how you're shit at the game.

The better strategy would be to improve moderation and kick these people out of the games. However, multiplayer gaming has moved from server owners that can ban bad actors to "someone at the studio has to do it" (and frankly, the studios are not holding trolls, jerks, and cheaters accountable).

Games like CSGO have added options like hiding usernames, hiding profile pictures, etc. I just see this as part of cleaning up the rest of it. If you're not going to moderate the multiplayer game to get rid of the most unruly jerks in your community, there should be options for "I don't want to see their nonsense."

Personally, I play shooters to relax, not to be some jerk-wad's punching bag. I don't really mind it if the enemy team is joking around and just being playful about it, but some people are clearly out to just put people down and I don't think they should be the priority; I think they actively keep some spaces of gaming as this cringe elitist thing a lot of people just don't want to interact with.

Dark_Arc , 10 days ago

I've always been a bit skeptical of the "dog temperament" being closely related to the dog breed.

The only real trend I've noticed is that bigger dogs tend to be way more chill and happy to engage in petting and cuddling

Dark_Arc , 11 days ago

The ONLY time I think this is even remotely appropriate is if the parents are grossly negligent ... like those ones that were convinced because they bought their kid with all kinds of issues a gun and didn't take like any measures to ensure he only had supervised access ... and then he went and shot a school up with the gun they bought him.

Dark_Arc , 7 days ago

What if a kid murders one of their parents? Should the other parent be jailed for bad parenting? Should the parent's parents be jailed (if still living) for parenting a bad parent?

I think it's an extremely flawed world view that parents have ultimate control over their child. A child is a person and a person can do some bad things no matter what the parents may have taught them.

Dark_Arc , 10 days ago

I wouldn't be so sure ... contributors are hard to come by. You need people with time AND the experience or strong desire to learn.

There are a lot more people that have ideas about making contributions than actually make contributions.

Dark_Arc , 11 days ago

As a colorblind person ... this is a teachable moment for what we go through with all kinds of charts and video games lol

(and yes, it's this bad, and yes it happens A LOT)

Dark_Arc , 11 days ago

I might be the only one that's kind of optimistic this will improve some of the cheapest call centers.

Some of them ... the people have such thick accents, don't get any local references, the connection is bad, don't know the first thing about the subject matter, etc.

I called my health insurance company one time because CVS said my vaccine wasn't covered there; the lady on the other end of the phone I could barely understand and I had to explain to her that CVS is a pharmacy. She still didn't give me any helpful information. Eventually via poking around the website or something like that, I found out my insurance company doesn't cover pharmacist administered vaccines
... which is just insane to me.

Dark_Arc , 11 days ago

Helping people via the government is political.

Political isn't some word for "government action that's controversial" or "government action that you don't like." It's just the discussion of government actions.

It's inherently political to discuss universal basic income and acting as if it isn't, is intellectually dishonest.