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  • Makes sense. As for the opinions, over time people end up cussing the same tools that were introduced to fix their previous problems, all tools can be misapplied 🤷

  • Makes sense.

    BTW, kudos for using Gentoo (probably the most OCD distro). I'm afraid you'll get more of these triggers though, since there is a monetary incentive to introduce them... at least until we figure out a generic way to make FLOSS financially viable.

  • No immunity + no exposure = ...great as long as you keep it that way.

    I'd say... nowadays few people can avoid "all" exposure, so they're going to end up doubly stressed: from the marginal cases + from keeping them marginal. Depending on each person, the minima for "immunity vs. exposure" will vary, finding them will require some trial and error. Since it's an evolving system, revisits will be required over time.

  • Fair point. I'll edit the comment to make it clear.

  • Are the majority of people inured to interruption?

    Yes and no. They are there because they work, but at the same time more seasoned people filter out anything that looks like an "ad".

    In the early 2000s, the abuse of bright colors in ads, and in particular of red color, lead to a lot of people becoming "red blind". As in, putting a red "log in" button on a website, had people stumble around looking for it, because they were trained to ignore anything red in a browser.

    Nowadays ads use other patterns, but I've found it helpful to train oneself by playing ad-supported games on a smartphone: when the ad comes, usually in 30 seconds blocks, put the phone down and count back from 30. After enough repetitions, it becomes easier to ignore sudden interruptions.

    In aviation they call it startle training, but the same strategies work for all kind of stressors.

  • I'm citing a first-person historical fact of having read some real websites on the uncontrolled Internet of the 1990s, and the answer they offered to that question.

    I don't support that kind of rhetoric, but I did leave my opinion out of the comment... is it really needed? The link to the Proud Boys is the other way around: it predates them by some 20 years.

  • No, it's a MFA bypass. All a hacker needed was the ability to initiate new sessions (after stealing user:pass, for example via malware).

  • Nobody cares about "international law", it's a bully-vs-bully out there, "laws" are not laws when they can't get enforced. There are agreements, and disagreements, that change over time. Don't be mistaken, this or that country's "support" for this or that war, is just an excuse, a propaganda bite.

    Touching China's assets, is too dangerous for as long as they're the main source of slave labor worldwide. As India's slave capabilities grow, things may change though... and India is being smart, buying arms from everyone, for the time being.

    As for democracy, "representative democracy" is little more than a step away from a full dictatorship. Keep in mind that Russia is still "a democracy"... they just happen to pick the same guy over and over 🙄

    There is not really an alternative, countries will force onto each other whatever they manage to get away with.

    Putin will keep trying to "Make Russia Great Again", as in the Soviet era USSR "great", stopping at East Berlin at the very least... only that's another bunch of propaganda 😮‍💨

    Russia needs to secure its inland waterway system, and its resource extraction areas. That includes control over the Sea of Azov. Any less, and the country might as well break up already, so they'll throw the whole country under the bus rather than surrender any of that.

  • The problem lies in what is a "depiction":

    (5) "visual depiction" includes undeveloped film and videotape, data stored on computer disk or by electronic means which is capable of conversion into a visual image, and data which is capable of conversion into a visual image that has been transmitted by any means, whether or not stored in a permanent format;

    section 2256(5) of title 18

    https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=%28title%3A18+section%3A2256+edition%3Aprelim%29+OR+%28granuleid%3AUSC-prelim-title18-section2256%29&amp%3Bf=treesort&amp%3Bnum=0&amp%3Bedition=prelim

    via: section 1309 of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022 (15 U.S.C. 6851).

    https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=%28title%3A15+section%3A6851+edition%3Aprelim%29

    via: the definitions section of the act

    https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/4569/text#idE946FA7637914C2F88ACBEDF472397DB

    The way it is written, even cropped, rotated, blurred, or in any other way processed files of that "depiction", even the values learned by a neural network (capable of conversion into a visual image), would fall under the "identical" part.

    Since perceptual hashing does exist, there are open source libraries to run it, and even Beehaw runs an AI based image filter, the "reasonable effort" is arguably to use all those tools as the bare minimum. Even if they sometimes (or always) fail at removing all instances of a depiction.

    But ultimately, deciding whether a service has applied all "reasonable efforts" to remove "identical copies" of a "depiction", will fall on the shoulders of a judge... and even starting to go there, can bankrupt most sites.

  • How the hell can he look at himself in the mirror?

    I can answer that.

    Some decades ago, before all the PC censorship on the Internet, there were sites teaching young men what to do in the morning... among which, was always stuff like:

    1. Look yourself in the mirror, repeat 5 times the pledge: "I am a worthy member of the superior race. I will spend this day ensuring my worthiness. I and my brothers will proudly seize this day to train our bodies and mind."

    How can he look in the mirror?... Proudly.

    PS: Nazis can fuck off.

  • Depends on "how identical" is "identical".

    The SHA hash of a file, is easy to calculate, but pretty much useless at detecting similar images; change a single bit, and the SHA hash changes.

    In order to detect similar content, you need perceptual hashes, which are no longer that easy to calculate.

  • Neither.

    If you can code it in a week (1), start from scratch. You'll have a working prototype in a month, then can decide whether it was worth the effort.

    If it's a larger codebase, start by splitting it into week-sized chunks (1), then try rewriting them one by one. Keep a good test coverage, linked to particular issues, and from time to time go over them to see what can be trimmed/deprecated.

    Legible code should not require "reverse engineering", there should be comments linking to issues, use cases, an architecture overview, and so on. If you're lacking those, start there, no matter which path you pick.

    (1) As a rule of thumb, starting from scratch you can expect a single person to write 1 clean line of code per minute on a good day. Keep those week-sized chunks between 1k and 10k lines, if you don't want nasty surprises.

  • As long as profit margins stay above the cost of theft prevention measures, nobody's going to pay anyone more than the bare minimum.

    As long as the ROI of forced labor stays positive, the USA will keep a higher per-capita incarceration rate than Russia.

  • Is anyone actually supporting Russia? Or are they fleecing Russia, waiting for it to become weak enough?

    China is definitely looking towards regaining control over Manchuria, as it had during the Qing dynasty, and why not some more.

  • Depends on what you call "to afford".

    You can have dozens of kids right away... as long as you don't mind having them born at home, no vaccinations, no doctors, homeschooling, maybe have half of them die before adulthood, force the older ones into taking care of the younger... and so on.

    Maybe in Kazakhstan they don't even have a choice, but in China they already do.

  • Yeah, I was afraid that would be the case. Recently we're getting some "consent or pay" popups, which are also being debated and will likely become illegal.

    Guess it makes even more sense to use a VPN in the US, then.