A1kmm @ A1kmm @lemmy.amxl.com

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2 yr. ago

Australia has a Do Not Call Register. A telemarketing call (which includes where the purpose is "to offer to supply goods or services" or "to advertise or promote goods or services") is generally illegal if it is made to a number on the Do Not Call Register. There is an exemption if they submitted the number called to the Register to check if it was listed up to 30 days before the call, and it didn't come back - so generally complaints are only possible if the number has been on the register for longer than 30 days. Consumers can get listed on the DNCR, and submit complaints if they receive a telemarketing call more than 30 days after listing at https://www.donotcall.gov.au/. The legislation can be read here: https://www.legislation.gov.au/C2006A00088/latest/text

In addition, Australia has commonwealth legislation about processing of personal information (the Privacy Act). However, it currently doesn't apply to 'small businesses' - businesses which made less than $3,000,000 of revenue in the previous financial year, unless they are in the credit reporting, health, or data broking business, or supply to the commonwealth. For organisations the Privacy Act applies to, they are only allowed to use personal information for direct marketing in a few circumstances - they obtained it from a person who would reasonably expect them to use it in those circumstances, and they provide an easy way to opt out, and they haven't opted out. They can also obtain it from someone else with the person's consent (or if it is impractical to obtain the consent). If asked, they have to disclose what information they hold, and the source of the data. The text of the Privacy Act can be found here: https://www.legislation.gov.au/C2004A03712/latest/text. The government has announced plans to tighten it up, likely including covering small businesses and increasing penalties.

Disclaimer: IANAL, not intended as legal advice, your individual circumstances might vary, consult a lawyer.

If you have control of the domain, you can also get an X.509 certificate from any CA (e.g. for free from LetsEncrypt). Then you can put up a new server on that domain with a valid cert. If that server supports ActivityPub, it can provide new public keys for private keys you control for all users on the server, and can use the corresponding private keys to sign messages from any user on that server to any community those users are still subscribed to. In addition, any users on other servers still posting to / interacting with communities on that server would cause their server to send that to the inbox on the new server.

This means any usernames or communities on queer.af should no longer be trusted.

The main criterion to evaluate a phone should be how easy it is to install your own recovery and system. Pretty much all vendor-provided distributions from any major vendor (regardless of which country) are going to make decisions in the interests of the manufacturer (including violating privacy, making battery management decisions that are more about planned obsolescence than battery life, not letting the owner have root access to install a real firewall, etc...).

Xiaomi is perhaps the most often recognised Chinese vendor as being custom system compatible - at least they have an official path to root - but the official path to rooting your own hardware after you have purchased it is rather dystopian. It involves download a Windows-only tool (or a reverse-engineered third party tool) that talks to their servers, creating an account with them and handing over lots of PII. Then you have to "Apply" to them to unlock your own bootloader, and give a reason. Then they make you wait a variable amount of time (which is sometimes measured in weeks) between when the software first tried to unlock the phone, and when their system will allow you to unlock the bootloader. They will not reduce the wait time if you contact their support and beg nicely for them to graciously let you restore your system onto a new phone that you bought with your own money from them, replacing another identical model that broke. Eventually, after making you wait, when you try again after the minimum time, their system generates a certificate, signed by them, that will allow your phone to transition to 'unlocked bootloader' mode, and let you flash what you like.

As such, I'd not really recommend the Chinese vendors unless you find one that doesn't make you jump through such ridiculous hoops. While I never recommend giving Google any of your PII, if you just want a phone to install your own system on, I'd recommend Google over Xiaomi etc... if within budget; they at least recognise that if you buy it off them, you should have the right to install privacy respecting stuff immediately (they do make you click past a warning that the bootloader is unlocked on every boot, but that is pretty minor and is two quick button clicks you anticipate in advance per boot).

One pro tip: Once you have flashed a custom system, get something like F-Droid installed as your app store, and install a good firewall from it (AFWall+ or similar; many apps you might install are not privacy respecting, and a firewall helps), and also battery management software (ACCA is good; manufacturers optimise for day-1 marketable battery capacity even if it will trash the battery within a couple of years that could otherwise last a decade; only using 5% - 85% of the manufacturer battery capacity, i.e. turning off charging automatically at 85% and shutting down if you hit 5% instead of 0%, will make your battery last many times longer for most of the battery life, and modern LiPo batteries last surprisingly well per charge to 85% if you aren't running lots of software that is wasting battery on anti-features).

The statistics demonstrate, beyond all reasonable doubt, that journalists are more likely to be killed compared to the already high base rate for Palestinian civilians: https://lemmy.amxl.com/comment/752651 - targeted weapons on journalist vehicles just makes it more blatant. This is not going to look good for those involved if they ever face justice for targeting civilians.

Maybe a good countermeasure would be a lot of honeypot fake cameras that actually just play old video on a loop, or AI generated fake video. Then they might struggle to work out which cameras are real, and waste their time on fake intel.

Presumably the drones do either have pre-programmed flight paths in them, or are flown by radio that can be triangulated - and giving up that location information probably is equivalent to 'snitching'.

I think alienating all the advertisers probably didn't help much either.

Ukraine has an oligarch problem (with Putin at the head of it), not a Russia problem. Putin ultimately wants to exploit the resources of Ukraine unimpeded like he does in Russia - and he's tried puppet governments, and the people fought back, so now he is trying force.

Ukraine killing Russian civilians (who are also victims of Putin's greed) is not going to deter Putin. Putin cares about one person - himself - and everything else is only a means to enriching and protecting himself and his status. He only cares about Russian civilians to the extent that those civilians living is in his best interests.

So killing random Russian civilians is unlikely to achieve much except depriving some innocent family of some of its member. Targeting Putin and his property, oligarchs and generals is much more likely to make a real difference.

I think it would be a real shame, and would fragment the fediverse as a whole - some of Beehaw's communities are some of the best on the Fediverse (and I really appreciate the work of the mods of communities on Beehaw), but the Fediverse / Lemmyverse is a lot bigger than just the Beehaw instance, and I really like being able to participate in communities from all over. Having to create accounts separately on lots of walled garden instances is probably not worth it, so I think it would make both Beehaw and the rest of the Fediverse weaker.

Overall I'd be sad about it, and discourage, but I'm sure the fediverse would live on despite it, in a weakened form.

Perhaps the real question is why would you consider doing that? It seems like a lose/lose for everyone. Would you be able to elaborate on what the exact problem you are trying to solve is? Perhaps the community could help you come up with a better solution.

I'd pick an irrational number, say pi, and ask for every decimal digit of it. Then, I have infinite time to walk around the world in explore mode (i.e. I can't die, and hence don't need to eat etc..., and am effectively an infinite energy source, and can interact with objects) while time is frozen. This effectively makes me a god, but only for one point in time, with the ability to create a discontinuity in the world state at that point. I'd travel around the whole world (even if it involved swimming oceans) and try to make it so that the infinite sum of each action I take while the world is frozen converges on a world that is in a much better state infinitesimally after the moment compared to infinitesimally before.

That's generally not recommended as a way of stripping them though, since the coating is often made of polyurethanes, which release alkyl isocyanates (highly toxic) when heated strongly. While a small amount in a well-ventilated area might not be enough to give you any problems, if you get too much it is very bad. The organic material will also impact the ability to solder. Better to scrape it off first.

I use https://f-droid.org/packages/mattecarra.accapp/ (with a rooted phone) to keep my charge levels within 5%-85% of the manufacturer battery range.

Most manufacturers made a decision to set the range their devices will charge to based on what is less likely to fail so quickly you'll get mad at the manufacturer, but they trade off significant battery life for slightly higher design capacity (or perhaps more likely, they see shorter battery life as a feature not a bug, as long as it doesn't catch fire, since it will mean your phone becomes e-waste faster and you give them more money).

Battery chemistry tells us that avoiding those extremes of high and low charge (shutdown earlier on low charge in the rare event that happens, stop charging at a lower level) drastically increases battery life - it is aligned with my interests, even if not the manufacturers'.

Games where I have perfect knowledge of the state of play, and where one player moves first, I don’t enjoy much. For each of these games, there provably exists a strategy where the first player that moves can only win or draw

That doesn't seem quite correct for any game meeting those criteria (I'd also add that the game is deterministic - no true randomness in the game either, since that is distinct from state - otherwise the outcome could trivially depend on random events). There are two other possibilities for a deterministic game: that optimal gameplay by both players will always end in the second (or another player if more than two) winning, or that optimal gameplay by both players will result in a game that never ends (impossible for games with a finite number of states, and rule that the game ends in an outcome if the same state recurs too many times - like chess).

A trivial example of a (poor) game that would meets your criterion but where the first player loses under optimal strategy: Players take turns placing a counter anywhere in the play area from an infinite supply of counters. Players cannot skip a turn. If there are an even number of counters on the board after a player's turn, the player who placed the counter can optionally declare victory and win. Not a game I'd play, but it does prove there exist deterministic open state games where one player moves first where the first player will not win or tie.

In a 3+ player deterministic open state game, the actions of a player who goes on to lose could impact which of the remaining players win (they are essentially just a different source of non-determinism).

I think it is correct to say that any two-player deterministic open-state game which can only end in a draw, win, or tie, for any fixed initial conditions, there exists a strategy for one of the two players that will ensure that one of the three outcomes occurs: the game continues forever, that player draws, or that player wins. That can be proved by contradiction: either one or more move in the strategy decision tree can be improved to make the player win, which contradicts the strategy not existing, or the other player can rely on the strategy not existing for the first player to devise a strategy, which also contradicts no strategy existing for either player.

I think all the numbers are for all of Palestine - the population, the number of journalist fatalities, and the number of total deaths (most would be in Gaza, but the IDF is apparently also continuing activities in the West Bank which are killing Palestinians and included in the total - see for example https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-briefing-notes/2023/11/alarming-urgent-situation-occupied-west-bank-including-east-jerusalem).

If I had separated out numbers, focusing on the Gaza subset would probably tell a similar story; it might remove some noise that could have masked a significant difference in proportions if the difference was more marginal. However, including the whole of Palestine the proportion difference was still extremely highly significant - there can be no doubt from the numbers that journalists in Palestine are more likely to be killed than any random citizen.

I can't find a good source for how many journalists work in Palestine, but in other countries, it is about 0.1% of the population (I couldn't imagine it would be higher in Gaza given the oppressive conditions).

That means there are probably about 5,428 journalists working in Palestine (based of 0.1% of 5,428,542, the best figure for Palestine's population). 64 have been killed since October 7th, or ~1.2% of all Palestine's journalists (under the estimate based off worldwide journalism figures). Of Palestine's population, 19,968 have been killed since October 7th, or ~0.37% of the population.

Doing a two-sample Z-test for proportions on those proportions gives a Z-score of 25.43, which has a P-value of << 0.001 - in other words, if the probability of journalists being killed was the same as for the general Palestinian population, it is vanishingly unlikely we would see a difference in probabilities of being killed this extreme. This is very strong statistically significant evidence that journalists are more likely to have been killed in Palestine than members of the general Palestinian population.

The question then is why are journalists more likely to be killed? There could be an argument made that journalism is inherently a more risky occupation. However, the vast majority of journalists seem to have been killed at their home, not while filming military action or anything like that. There is a theoretical possibility journalists have stayed closer to the action and are less likely to have evacuated to another corner of Gaza since their job requires them to stay closer to the action. However, the other, probably more likely and much more disturbing possibility is that the Likud (Netanyahu) controlled IDF is intentionally targeting journalists (which is a serious war crime).

Because there are limits to freedom of expression when it infringes on other people's rights.

For example, if I walk up to someone and tell them I'll kill them if they don't give me all their money, that's outside the limits of free expression - it's a threat of violence, and hence that makes it a robbery. That is a reasonable limit of freedom of expression in a democratic society.

The same applies if, given mutually shared background and context, the threat is only implied. For example, if I walked into a bank and gave the teller a bag and a note saying "You'd better put all the money into the bag right now!", that is still robbery even though the there is no explicitly written threat, because it is implied from the context. The message sender (me in that example) and receiver (the teller) know how it will be interpreted even though the threat is left unsaid. Even if that particular bank robber has never hurt anyone, they rely on actual force used by past bank robbers to reinforce their message. Criminalising such robberies that rely on implicit threats is still a reasonable limit of freedom of expression in a democratic society.

Sometimes, no words are required at all; there are situations where a combination of clothing and actions / gestures also send a threatening message that both the message sender and the message receiver know are threatening. Dressing up in neo-nazi garb and throwing Nazi salutes is equivalent to shouting "If you aren't white, this place is not safe for you now". The people sending that message know that is the message - that is, in fact, why they choose to do it. The people receiving the message also know that. And the message is reinforced by occasional actual violence by neo-Nazis (even if not everyone sending the message actually has been violent). The only real difference from the bank robber making the implicit threat is that the threat is implied by actions instead of words. Criminalising symbols and gestures that send an implicit threat to people is a reasonable limit of freedom of expression in a democratic society (less so if the gesture is only used ironically to call someone a Nazi, but given the rise of actual neo-Nazis I think the law is reasonable, and there are plenty of other ways to criticise authoritarian politicians that should not be illegalised).

Probably more likely they dial more calls than they can scam on the basis that a silent hang up call costs them only the cost of connecting the call, but their scammer's wages cost them more if not enough people answer and there is no one for the scammer to speak to.

It's essentially putting the cost of uncertain numbers of people answering onto the victims rather than the scammer - selfish, but so is scamming people!

Telemarketers do the same thing, although at least they often have to fear their local regulators in many countries if they do it too much, while scammers are criminals who are going to break the law anyway, so I suspect most silent calls are probably scammers.

This seems extreme for the long tail of hobbyist apps. Finding 20 testers seems like a huge commitment for an unproven app, and I'm sure it would be a hurdle many apps currently in Google Play would not have gotten across if it existed then.

I wonder if this is a deliberate attempt to shut out hobby apps from their app store for whatever reason, rather than a good faith attempt to improve app quality.

In parallel they are also forcing people to publicly attach their real name to apps (people have long had to tell Google who they are to get in the app store, but not to make it public) - which might be another thing that is no big deal for big companies, but many smaller hobbyist app devs might think twice about doxxing themselves given how hostile people are on the Internet these days and how many crazies there are out there.

Prevention is the best cure for that - get a squeegee and hang it by your shower, and have a rule that if you get the glass wet, you get every drop of water off it. Some of the shower sprays just reduce the surface tension to stop water sticking (i.e. they are a similar preventative measure to just wiping all the water off) - they only work if you use them every time (but wiping with a squeegee is easier, the reason those products exist is selling a consumable you use every time you shower is more profitable than selling a squeegee).

If over time, you repeatedly get it wet, and don't let any liquid dry on it, you'll eventually leach out all the scum (most Melbourne water is relatively soft - low calcium - so just water works eventually). If you really want to accelerate it, try something with oxalic acid in it, which will strip calcium from limescale - but repeated cycles of tap water and squeegee will eventually get the same result.

more is a legitimate program (it reads a file and writes it out one page at a time), if it is the real more. It is a memory hog in that (unlike the more advanced pager less) it reads the entire file into memory.

I did an experiment to see if I could get the real more to show similar fds to you. I piped yes "" | head -n10000 >/tmp/test, then ran more < /tmp/test 2>/dev/null. Then I ran ls -l /proc/pidof more/fd.

Results:

    
lr-x------ 1 andrew andrew 64 Nov  5 14:56 0 -> /tmp/test
lrwx------ 1 andrew andrew 64 Nov  5 14:56 1 -> /dev/pts/2
l-wx------ 1 andrew andrew 64 Nov  5 14:56 2 -> /dev/null
lrwx------ 1 andrew andrew 64 Nov  5 14:56 3 -> 'anon_inode:[signalfd]'

  

I think this suggests your open files are probably consistent with the real more when errors are piped to /dev/null. Most likely, you were running something that called more to output something to you (or someone else logged in on a PTY) that had been written to /tmp/RG3tBlTNF8. Next time, you could find the parent of the more process, or look up what else is attached to the same PTS with the fuser command.