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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • Don’t even need that. Meta crosses multiple platforms now - Instagram, FB, WhatsApp, etc. All you need is for someone you know to have you in their contacts list, and the hit the “allow access” a single time. All of that data is then scraped, cataloged, and cross referenced with everyone else. Name, address, phone numbers, birthday, work address - anything your contact felt it convenient to add about you in their phone. From there it’s just a matter of time until data mining of second and third level contact - or outright data leaks - fill in the rest of your profile and demographic information.




  • can’t fuck off from our responsibilities when we can’t be arsed with minimal consequences

    This might be the most (long term) depressing thing about adult life. Having a class for a semester or a year means that the mental overhead of a class builds up but, when you’re done, that demand is gone and you start over without baggage next term. Jobs build up that overhead, but it just never lets off, ever, unless you quit to take a new job. Switching (professional) jobs is similar to a semester/year end and - esp if you can swing a couple weeks in between - gives you that re-zeroing and that little honeymoon period at the beginning like the start of a class when you don’t have homework yet. The difference is that the switch often occurs on a scale of a decade, not a year.



  • I think it doesn’t go far enough. Straight up, no one should be permitted to create or transmit the likeness of anyone [prior to, say, 20 years following their death] without their explicit, written permission. Make the fine $1,000,000 or 10% of the offender’s net worth, whichever is greater; same penalty and corporate revocation for any corporation involved. Everyone involved from the prompt writer to the work-for-hire people should be liable for the full penalty. I can’t think of a valid, non-entertainment (parody/humor), reason for non-consensual impersonation - and using it for humor or parody is a slippery slope to propaganda weaponization. There is no baby in this tub of bathwater.






  • I’m not rich enough to hate Google. I have a couple of domains and several people who use them for email. I have calendars with people across device ecosystems. I don’t have the hours and hours to keep up with fighting spammers or an infinite budget to hire someone else who will guarantee my privacy to do it. What are my options? Is Microsoft or Yahoo any better?

    I’ve been with Google since they were a Do No Evil company. Now that they Do Evil, they already have terabytes of my old data in storage to mine. Adding a few more GB isn’t going to make a hill of beans difference.

    Also, I recognize nuance - Google, well Alphabet, isn’t one company. It’s a huge conglomerate of, sometimes competing, interests. That’s a distinction that often gets lost in online discussions. Whether I hate Youtube’s profit arc or not doesn’t really affect my impression of the Gsuite services I rely on.



  • Sorry, in advance, for the long, descriptive post, but the value of a dedicate, slide mute switch is somewhat nuanced.

    The mute switch on an iPhone is a physical slide switch. Without looking, you can feel if it’s muted (back) or active (front) position. Alternately, you can see the condition as, when it’s in the “mute” position, it has an exposed orange (painted) indicator. Neither of these verifications require that the phone be awake or to light up the screen. It can also be activated with the device off, so that if you turn the phone on in a quiet place you don’t have to wait for the UI to become responsive (usually after start notifications have actuated, which occur before software buttons can be pressed to mute the phone). It is a single action to mute, compared to a 5 gesture sequence to silence the phones primary sounds (which can be ringtone OR playback volume, but not both) and an 6-8 gesture sequence (depending on the wake-status of the last used app) to silence the secondary phone sound. Note: I’m assuming that face unlock is active and you are staring at your phone obtrusively; entry of the unlock code would add 7-9 additional touch gestures.

    While I agree that a button is nice, it still takes at least two actions - press the button and visually confirm its actuation puts it into the desired mode. There are times when you are unsure what mode the phone is in. On an iPhone, that is not visible from any screen until you either a) wake the phone and actuate a volume button (neither visual nor haptic feedback occurs when a volume button is pressed) or are logged into the phone (two minimum gestures plus face authorization) and use the action center (swipe function) to visually verify th volume position.

    Now, you could easily argue that this is fucking terrible UI design, and I would 100% agree with you. I would, likewise agree, that most technical features on an iPhone are certifiably obtuse - ex: you cannot turn on your hotspot without entering the settings app; it’s not even an action center icon option as it is on Android. I would add that it’s also monumental dumbfuckery that your hotspot is the name of your phone and cannot be changed. Or that there is no function to alter the Prompt volume in the phone (ie. for GPS directions) unless the prompt audio is actively playing - difficult if the prompt volume is accidentally (or temporarily) set to zero. In 3rd party apps the prompt volume is several menus deep; for the OEM map application, it doesn’t exist - there is literally no setting.

    But, it remains - if you want to mute the alerts on your phone, the switch requires fewer actions and zero view of the device to actuate, and zero activation of the screen or login to verify it’s condition. You may never need to discretely silence your phone or check that it is in silent mode without taking the phone out and unlocking it, but many of us find it quite useful.






  • Entirely true, but since we’re talking volume, this is only a 25% increase in linear dimensions (for the advertised 2x increase) or 35% (for the 2.5X maximum slurry density). If we are limited to a specific height of retention, that’s 40% and 60% (rounded). Note: for structural capacity, like a tank, retaining a g=2.5 liquid requires substantially higher strength than a g=1 liquid (for a given retention height). Since this is the internet and should source my knowledge: I know this because I happen to be an engineer who designs retaining structures. Anyway…

    For the effective cost of creating and maintaining the slurry, maintaining the integrity of the system (and keeping out wildlife), and the cost of decommissioning the otherwise unusable fluid, you’re likely talking about a reduction in area of 20-38% (1/8) to switch from using plain water to this engineered material. I don’t disagree that there may be some edge cases where the increased risk and expense is justifiable, but it’s hard to see this being viable except as some kind of tech demo.