beauHD

1TB favicons dumped in the root is an interesting problem for crawlers. Did they make the effort of dropping the connection in a timeout or proceed to gobble up the entire thing?

I really wish fullscreen windows weren't so easy to open. On latest Firefox desktop, I click a button, and a fullscreen windows gets opened. No confirmation dialog, it just puts the browser in kiosk mode without my permission. This could be used to phish people since you could create a plausible looking browser interface with fake address bars etc The savvy among us probably won't fall for it, but the non-savvy could get duped easily.

Can we really use Stoicism to make our lives better, or is it just a ruse to sell more books?

A few takeaways from reading about the Stoic philosophy:

- Focus on what you can control.

- Amor Fati. The love of fate. Transmute everything into a lesson to be learned and something to grow from.

- If it's bearable, endure it with wisdom and grace.

- Does it agree with natural law? Is something in line with nature? If it's an abomination, leave it immediately.

- Memento mori. Remember you will die. Live every day as if it's your last. Don't postpone.

He thinks it is just like making a wird document

Frontend used to be just HTML, CSS, and a sprinkling of JS. Then the engineers took over and JS is no longer a sprinkling. It means build steps, web components, React, integrating best practices, learning new frameworks every month, performance, and a panoply of other things.

I signed up for OpenAI's ChatGPT tool, and entered a query, like 'What does the notation 1e100 mean?' (just to try it out). And then when displaying the output it would start outputting the reply in a slow way, like, it was dripfeeded to me, and I was like: 'what? surely this could be faster?'

Maybe I'm missing something crucial here, but why does it dripfeed answers like this? Does it have to think really hard about the meaning of 1e100? Why can't it just spit it out instantly without such a delay/drip, like with the near-instant Wolfram Alpha?

Firstly the board is completely wireless

What are people's thoughts on wireless keyboards? For me they're potentially leaky and it's trivial to intercept the keystrokes via EMF capture. My threat model is such that any bad actor can do an EMF capture and glean master passphrases and other sensitive data. So I avoid them. No radios, wired only.

However, the worst case situation is that they lie about not tracking users and then they get hit with a LEO request they bow down to.

That's within reason though. A VPN is another ISP afterall, so they have to 'bow down' to law enforcement requests. What LEAs can get depends on how zero knowledge the VPN setup is. OVPN[0] for example has been 'court tested' and Mullvad had nothing to give to authorities[1] since they don't collect it in the first place (apart from payment metadata).

I'm not affiliated with OVPN or Mullvad, just a happy paying customer.

[0] https://www.ovpn.com/en/blog/ovpn-wins-court-order

[1] https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2023/4/20/mullvad-vpn-was-subjec...

After a time, habitual or frequent users become desensitized to positive feedback, such as likes and comments, from other users.

I've noticed this personally. In my early social media days circa 2012, going viral with a post of mine evoked genuine gratefulness for the post and appreciation for how much reach it got. Now, going viral is just a habit. 10,000 likes, 1000 shares on Facebook is my new normal. It's not 'special' like it used to be. I still appreciate my viral posts, just not to the extent of my early social media days (this is probably because fewer people were on it in 2012).

I don't know where I read it, but apparently older people use emojis to feel 'with it' and cool, whereas the younger crowd barely use them. (I could be wrong, and I have no source, so don't quote me on this).

Also emojis are yet another data point to do things like sentiment analysis, and have been weaponized by social media companies to target more relevant ADs at you. Tweeted/X'd the beer emoji? Get ready for Heineken ADs.

I've turned my phone into a pull medium instead of a push medium (they're called 'push notifications' for a reason). Notifications jolt you out of whatever you're doing. I'm not in Vegas playing slot machines either. Those little red dot 'badges' are what gamblers enjoy, and I'm not some addict. I've turned them all off in iOS. Look for 'badges' in settings and turn them all off, including push notifications, for your own sanity.

https://github.com/lorien/awesome-pastebin

Two things I use:

https://obsidian.md/

https://www.rewind.ai/

Great, I can be both NEET[0] and NEAT

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEET

All solid and I have accounts with all of them. I threw in NJAL.LA if you want some privacy.

https://www.ovhcloud.com/en/domains/

https://njal.la/

https://www.sav.com/

https://sumi.news/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events

Alternatives like Lemmy still have their limitations[0]

[0] https://raddle.me/f/lobby/155371/warning-lemmy-doesn-t-care-...

Federated services have always had privacy issues but I expected Lemmy would have the fewest, but it's visibly worse for privacy than even Reddit.

Deleted comments remain on the server but hidden to non-admins, the username remains visible

Deleted account usernames remain visible too

Anything remains visible on federated servers!

When you delete your account, media does not get deleted on any server

Since the operator and developer of lemmy has very problematic politics (defending genocide and homophobia for example), and is demonstrably incredibly hostile to non-authoritarians, giving him permanent access to your data (even if you delete your account) is a very bad idea.

The 48 Laws of Power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_48_Laws_of_Power

I know they're hoping that people will give up after a point out of weariness

This is just yet another attempt at Lawful Interception[0], only this time, on steroids. They will continue to try and erode privacy, and therefore, erode democracy. But we do have tools to combat this at our disposal. My only worry is the outright banning of such tools, then we're royally fucked.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawful_interception

I found that when you seek good ideas, they never come, but they come when you're idle, or doing a casual stroll, or in the shower, hence the phenomenon on Reddit r/ShowerThoughts[0]

In other words, to hit the target, you have to miss it.

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/

How much do you need to commit to a subscription though?

If it's a few weeks just to watch Ozark, then fine. Just be careful to abandon your account and never renew if you wanna watch just one show.

I don't have insider data, but I guess many people only watch Netflix merely because they are paying for it. It's this psychological mechanism that has people watching just because they pay for a sub.

Once you research the best shows to watch, you can watch them all in succession, then destroy your account and carry on with other duties.

You have that choice.

Mastodon just recently reached a 10 million user milestone[0]. Say what you want about it, but it's the future. If it scales exponentially over the next few years, we're looking at a true contender to Twitter. It is "for the public good" but as with any online service, it has its caveats. But with instances, you get different 'camps' who have different agendas, and you can filter those away with a blacklist if you don't want to engage them.

This is something Twitter doesn't have: the ability to silence entire political agendas and categories like porn, although porn still slips through the cracks on Mastodon, so it's not a given that you won't be ambushed by it.

[0] https://www.itworldcanada.com/article/mastodon-passes-the-10...

Yeah what's stopping people doing this? Do they hate 'advance fees' and just want to pay yearly because they consider themselves financially savvy, or what is the issue?

there are services like freenom

Worth reading this HN thread posted just recently:

Freenom (the operator of .tk, .ml, .ga, .cf, .gq TLDs) is falling apart

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34194555

I wouldn't rely on them.

Worth reading this HN thread posted just recently:

Freenom (the operator of .tk, .ml, .ga, .cf, .gq TLDs) is falling apart

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34194555

I wouldn't rely on them.

'Tinkering' is my goto phrase if I want to avoid the negative connotations of 'Hacker'. And I never call cyber-criminals 'hackers' since I don't want to taint the word hacker or associate it with e-crime.

Steve Jobs and Elon Musk are enigmas

Elon is listening to the music inside his own head. He has the right people working for him, and he's often mistakenly seen as the person who takes all the credit, but he's sitting on the work of countless engineers who work painstakingly to create his product range. As for Jobs, again, sitting on the work of countless designers and product people who make Apple what it is. Jobs & Musk are only genius tier people insofar as they piggyback on others hard work.

Esoteric texts. Rare books. Knowledge which isn't mainstream. This way I have an unfair advantage over the general population.

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them"

Mark Twain

I recommend a Chromebook for him. As long as he doesn't install apps/extensions he should be fine, with the exception of uBlock Origin. I'm not saying Chromebooks are bulletproof, though. Also since I gather he's not tech savvy, it would be worth configuring some handy bookmarks for him, with official URLs so he doesn't get phished. I'm tech savvy, and even I do that. I drag things like `mail.google.com` to my bookmarks bar so I always click the official URL.

Also have a small chat with him about not clicking on e-mail attachments, & not installing extensions. As an extra measure, turn on 2FA for all his accounts too.

Ex Machina, written by Alex Garland is brilliant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_Machina_(film)

It's a plausible story line that could happen.

data needs to be validated regularly and cycled to a new media every 5-10 years in order to ensure it’s safe and easily accessible

This is what I do. I hate doing it, but it's for posterity's sake. I'd be lost without certain data. I have old virtual machine disk images that I've been using for years, ISOs of obscure software, and other rarities. Every 4 years I buy a new 4TB HDD and copy over files to a freshly bought disk.