abhibeckert @ abhibeckert @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

I'd look for one that also does passwords. And passkeys too, since that's looking like it will replace TOTP.

Since like it or not you're going to have three credential systems to deal with, at least have all of them in one place.

iMessage is a typical American thing which, we Europeans, have a really hard time comprehending what is the obsession with it.

To help you comprehend - the big difference is SMS has been free for a long long time in the USA. No other text messaging service has ever been able to get off the ground because why on earth would anyone sign up for Viber / WatsApp / Messenger / Signal / Telegram / Threema / etc, when you could just use SMS which works fine and works for everyone?

Then iMessage came along, and you could keep using "SMS", only now it's more reliable, has high resolution photos, delivery confirmation, etc. That was a real improvement over SMS, with no cost at all other than having to stay on the iPhone platform, which you were already on, and who's going to switch? You've got all these apps you found/like and who knows which ones work on Android?

Also, it's not just the USA. iMessage is big in other markets too. Also ones where SMS has historically been free. The cost of having to pay to send SMS between London/Paris is a pain we never really experienced here, so there was no motivation to try WhatsApp/etc.

There's still plenty of EU pressure. This was a close enough thing that the EU spent months investigating it before making a decision.

That sends a pretty clear message to Apple "we're OK with what you're doing with messaging right now, but only just barely". If Apple does something the EU doesn't like, new legislation can be written.

There's also pressure in the USA and other countries where iMessage is far more widely used. The pressure hasn't gone anywhere yet, but it definitely could. The USA came down hard on Ma Bell when they dominated the phone industry. They're so dead most people have forgotten they existed. They were arguably the biggest company in the entire world at the time. Just like Apple is now.

Part of the order against Ma Bell was to order the company to stop selling phones. Imagine if the USA did that again, with Apple this time. I listened to an interview with an antitrust regulator in the USA yesterday (Decoder podcast)... he said they're short staffed and rely on punitive damages so harsh that other companies choose voluntary compliance, removing the need to actually regulate the whole industry (they don't have enough people to do that). Pretty scary stuff - the EU's approach is far gentler.

Big difference between posting a comment and just viewing a website.

When I was 15? Sure. At 56 though? No. Shouldn't be doing that.

Probably shouldn't have done it at 15 either in hindsight. But kids can get away with that. Adults can't.

Idk how Microsoft has bungled this naming

You haven't followed been following Microsoft for long have you? The first version of Windows was version 3.0 (there were technically earlier versions but they were "a work in progress" and weren't really usable at all). The third version of Xbox was called "Xbox One".

// write a function to invert a string

That's not how I use it at all. I mean I started out doing that, but these days it's more like this (for anyone who hasn't used copilot, the grey italic text is the auto-generated code - tab to accept, or just type over it to ignore it):

Sure - I totally could have written the constructor. But it would have taken longer, and I probably would've made a few typos. And by the way it's way better than copying from Stack Overflow, because it knows your coding style, it knows what other classes/etc exist in your project, etc etc.

It's also pretty good at refactoring. You can tell it to refactor something to use a different coding pattern for example, and it'll write 30 lines of code then show you a git style diff.

Not to mention you can ask questions about your code now. Like "how has X been implemented in this 20 year old project I started working on today?" Or one I had the other day "I'm getting this error, what files might be causing that?" It gave me a list of 15 files and I was able to find it in a few minutes. The error had no context for me to figure it out.

Done properly it should prevent rust. Especially on already rust-resistant metal. And you could use clear paint.

SS301 is a great material

Totally agree. But is this an appropriate use for it? I regularly have to use sandpaper to remove surface rust from my SS301 knife. And I don't leave that out in the rain. It's just surface rust, doesn't damage anything, but it is rust and it's very ugly.

Thankfully with a knife, it takes two seconds to remove the rust. With an entire car? And body panels with areas that are hard to get to? Honestly if I was going to buy a cybertruck I would paint it.

If you want "real" stainless, you want 316, but it's not as strong and would require significant modifications - making it thicker/heavier/more expensive/worse battery range/etc.

I'll tell you what I want - make Electron based on web standards so it can operate on any rendering engine and therefore you don't need to bundle a browser engine with your binary. Just use whatever the operating system provides (Blink on PC/Android, WebKit on Mac/iPhone, etc).

The headline is totally wrong - there have been other fatalities before this one and I'd bet Washington Post reported all of them.

At least one was almost identical, which shows just how seriously Tesla takes this whole thing. They should be learning from every crash and making sure it's not repeated.

Nothing convenient about those for me. Browser extensions/etc that block tracking cause all of those services to direct me to "are you a robot" and "something looks strange about your login" auth bounces which are getting increasingly difficult to wade through.

A simple username/password, saved in a password manager, is so much easier.

Would you refuse to visit websites that force registration even if the account is free?

Lots of sites require a free account these days. I don't visit those sites.

What’s all the fuss about, you don’t care?

I care.

Is advertising a necessary evil in fair trade for content?

I like advertising - how else are you supposed to find out what products/services are available? Regularly visit every website of every company I might be interested in? That doesn't work.

It's data collection I dislike, nothing wrong with ads as long as they're a reasonably short interruption. Make ads relevant to the content, not the visitor.

Unfortunately under the current system I don't see ads, because the only way to block tracking is to also block most ads. Sorry, but ad networks have burned that bridge. It's going to take time to rebuild it.

Would this limit your visiting of websites to only a narrow few you are willing to trade personal details for?

A website would need to offer some really valuable service for me to "trade personal details". Even sites where I have an account (e.g. YouTube) I generally don't log into that account.

Is this a bad thing for the internet experience as whole, or just another progression of technology?

I think anything that gives users control over wether or not they're tracked is a good thing - and forcing people to sign up / agree to terms before using a site does that. If websites want my personal details to access them... that's fine with me. I just won't use those sites. Other people will make a different decision. It's how it should be.

I also think I'm not alone, and plenty of major sites will choose to just not do any tracking. I look forward to using those sites.

Is this no different from using any other technology platform that’s free (If it’s free, you’re the product)?

I reject that premise. Lemmy is free. I don't feel like "the product" when I use lemmy. The product is the content and the discussions. If Lemmy has a few ads on every page, I'd be fine with that. I think it'd be a good idea - as long as it's done right, without invading privacy.

Should website owners just accept a lower revenue model and adapt their business, rather than seeking higher / unfair revenues from privacy invasive practices of the past?

It's their business, choose whatever revenue model they want. Just be honest and open about it.

IP anything is generally far more difficult to jam thanks to TCP/IP checking for acknowledgment the data arrived and trying again - at a slower speed which can handle more noise.

Our cameras at work use wifi and Ethernet and have an internal SD card - plus a built in coin cell battery that can run for a little while. Obviously not cheap though.

Huh? If anything it would probably be even easier to jam.

E2EE does help. Notifications can include the content of the notification but they don't have to and it's generally recommended to send a notification telling the device to launch the app in the background to check the server for new content. The app will then decrypt the message and display a plain text notification that is not sent to any servers.

If you're worried about metadata leaks, you can delay delivery by a random time interval.

And yet the need for a car in our family is indeed extant.

Let me guess - because while your home is ideally located for your daily commute, it's not ideally located for the rest of your family?

I love travelling by bike, but unfortunately it's just not possible to find a home that is within cycling distance for everywhere anyone in our household needs to go. Right now it's pretty much only my kid's school, but in a couple years he'll be older and need to move to another school, which won't be as close. We live about half way in between my work and my partner's work - which is 30 minutes each way (by car) in opposite directions... it's not really practical to take a bus either (cycling is faster, because it's not a direct bus route). So, two cars in our household. I try to cycle to work twice a week or so, whenever I can spare the extra time, but my partner can't do that since there are no safe cycling paths on her commute.

Android Auto/Car Play don't require giving the car access to anything. It should just be a simple video signal output, touch screen coordinates, and audio output/input line.

And I'm pretty sure that is how it works, unless cars are applying screen reader/etc technology (TVs do that, so I wouldn't put it past car manufacturers...).

I'm pretty sure this article is talking about bluetooth, not Android Auto / Car Play. The bluetooth car protocol sends a copy of your full address database to the car because it's a low bandwidth protocol that minimises sending data back and forth while the user is interacting with the hardware. I would never pair my phone to a modern car with bluetooth.

Better cameras aren't enough - you also need much brighter lighting. So bright customers would complain and get headaches.

Or alternatively, have the camera close to the customer's face. Again, nobody wants that... though we do put up with it for ATMs / etc.

No I don't think this is a training issue. Light skin physically reflects more light, which gives cameras significantly more data to work with to detect shadows/etc.

The face recognition on a phone gets around that by creating their own light, with dot projection at a light wavelength the human eye can't see, but I've only ever heard of that being done for short range face recognition. CCTV cameras are too far away from the face and are not really accurate enough for anyone (including white people).

AFAIK Amazon's system was mostly intended for their self service retail stores... that's a different scenario entirely since you're only comparing faces to other customers who are in the store at the same time as you. And also the stakes are much lower - if two people appear to be the same person you can just flag both customers as needing to be verified by a staff member. No big deal at all.

Using it as evidence for a crime though, will inevitably result in false convictions.