Kalcifer @ Kalcifer @sh.itjust.works

All of this user's content is licensed under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativeco

---

Read more

Posts

67

Comments

1,024

Joined

2 yr. ago

could be defeated by doing an analysis of when the commits were made on average vs other folks from random repositories to find the average time of day and then reversing that information into a time zone

This is the first thing I thought of upon reading the title

It's also in the post body.

Any given time zone there are going to be millions if not billions of people.

One more bit of identifying information is still one more bit of identifying information.

Git also “leaks” your system username and hostname IIRC by default which might be your real name.

This is only part of a fallback if a username and email is not provided [1].

::: spoiler References

1. Git. Reference Manual. git-commit. "COMMIT INFORMATION". Accessed: 2024-08-31T23:30Z. https://git-scm.com/docs/git-commit#_commit_information.

   In case (some of) these environment variables are not set, the information is taken from the configuration items user.name and user.email, or, if not present, the environment variable EMAIL, or, if that is not set, system user name and the hostname used for outgoing mail (taken from /etc/mailname and falling back to the fully qualified hostname when that file does not exist). :::

A fake name and email would pretty much be sufficient to make any “leaked” time zone information irrelevant.

Perhaps only within the context where one is fine with being completely unidentifiable. But this doesn't consider the circumstance where a user does want their username to be known, but simply don't want it to be personally identifiable.

UTC seems like it’s just “HEY LOOK AT ME! I’M TRYING TO HIDE SOMETHING!”

This is a fair argument. Ideally, imo, recording dates for commits would be an optional QoL setting rather than a mandatory one. Better yet, if Git simply recorded UTC by default, this would be much less of an issue overall.

if you sleep like most people, could be defeated by doing an analysis of when the commits were made on average vs other folks from random repositories to find the average time of day and then reversing that information into a time zone.

I mentioned this in my post.

It’s better to be “Jimmy Robinson in Houston Texas” than “John Smith in UTC-0”

That decision is contextually dependent.

How do you mean?

Huh. That's actually kind've a clever use case. I hadn't considered that. I presume the main obstacle would be the token limit of whatever LLM that one is using (presuming that it was an LLM that was used). Analyzing an entire codebase, ofc, depending on the project, would likely require an enormous amount of tokens that an LLM wouldn't be able to handle, or it would just be prohibitively expensive. To be clear, that's not to say that I know that such an LLM doesn't exist — one very well could — but if one doesn't, then that would be rationale that i would currently stand behind.

Fair point. I think "leak" is likely the wrong term to use here. "Exposes" is probably a better one. I'll update the post promptly.

The secret to success: survivorship bias.

"Despises O'Toole"? Did I just get transported back in time 4 years?

There's never a wrong time to update Arch Linux!

I don't have any fundamental issue with emojis when they're used to expand meaning or provide clarity. Eg you could use an emotive emoji to show/clarify the intent/emotion of something. Imo, using emojis in this way is no different than the practice of adding a "/s" to denote sarcasm. When they get annoying is when they're used superfluously; if they serve no purpose, then it's just clutter.

I'm cringing at the date format "1-20-21".

Health-related information should ideally be from peer-reviewed, reproducible scientific studies.

Note that even if a study is currently reproducible, it will only continue to be reproducible until it isn't. There isn't something fundamental that makes a specific scientific study objectively true or false — that isn't how science works.

When in doubt, a policy of “Do No Harm”, based on the Hippocratic Oath, is a good compass on what is okay to post.

I understand that that's likely well-intentioned, but, imo, it's rather subjective — it's more often a matter of relative perspective. That being said, it would be in your best interest to set as clear and precise definitions as you possibly can.

Non-peer-reviewed studies by individuals are not considered safe for health matters.

What does this statement mean? You are banning anyone from sharing anything that is not peer-reviewed…?

We know some folks who are free speech absolutists may disagree with this stance

That's a bit of a stretch.

I've played it for a bit, and it's a decently fun and well-made game! My only gripe is that it requires an email for signup; I wish it would only require a username and password. For most users, though, I'd wager that that's a pretty minor issue.

I upgraded from 8GB to 16GB like 2 months ago.

Watch for battery life when buying older Surface devices. Replacing batteries in the older Surface Pros is notoriously difficult, because apparently the whole assembly is glued together.

Thank you very much for the heads up!

Newer versions are apparently more repairable, but you’ll have to investigate where that cut-off line of repairability is.

It looks like an attempt at heading in the direction of repairability started with the Surface Pro 9, but it's still quite involved [1][2].

My "in Thailand"?

When I use a website as a source, at the time that I access it for information, I will also save a snapshot of it in the Wayback Machine. Ofc theres no guarantee that the Internet Archive will be able to survive, but the likelihood of that is probably far greater than some random website. So, if the link dies, one can still see it in the Wayback Machine. This also has the added benefit of locking in time what the source looked like when it was accessed (assuming one timestamps when they access the source when they cite it).

gestures passionately "Download Lemmy!"

I'm feeling warm and fuzzy for some reason.

What exactly am I looking at? Is this just for visual aesthetic on the outside of a building, or is there some specific purpose served by this architecture?

They don't quite look like balconies, and there's a hole. Perhaps in the rightmost column I can see a part of a railing or a window through some of the holes?

EDIT: Just saw this post in my feed, which I think is showing the same architecture as this one. It appears to be for aesthetic purposes, but I could certainly be wrong.

That's perfect!