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Joined
2 yr. ago

  • The UK government is still trying and has been very open about their contempt for objective oversight foreigners.

  • Consider a refurbished USFF business PC.

    https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_nkw=usff+pc

    A unit from any major brand will be good and there are i5/8gb units available for well under £100 that will happily shunt 4K video about. Plus they have the advantage of coming in a nice case, lots of ports, included storage, etc...

  • I should try making my own, it's presumably just a case of soaking oats in water? I guess? Also, Aldi's oat milk is really good.

  • Surely a man is entitled to his koalafanfiction.

  • Forever in our hearts, rnoưe, you w'll stay,

    🥲

  • rule

    Jump
  • TIL there are colour-coded helmets on worksites. Makes sense, I suppose. If you need a first aider or something it's probably easier to look for a particular colour helmet than just Jim.

  • I came here to recommend BoJack. Especially after that moment in the middle of Season 1, it's a masterpiece.

  • If I had a nickel for every time Microsoft created an oligarch I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice, right?

  • You just reminded me I'm out of Gestating Mammal Liquid.

  • Definitely the Moog. I'm not into music, but it's an unlimited source of electricity; just open the case and find the power rails.

  • RTO?

    Rollercoaster... Tycoon... On... line...?

    Rollercoaster Tycoon Online?

    We're getting Rollercoaster Tycoon Online!?

  • Apple was trying to get rid of PWAs. End of. If you used Safari: no PWAs. If you use Firefox or Edge: no PWAs. Since the PWA rendering engine is part of the OS in the same way that MacOS and Windows include their own web rendering engines separate from the web browsers, they could easily continue use that for PWAs even if Safari was 'uninstalled'. The whole thing was Apple throwing a tantrum at being forced to do something for the benefit of not-Apple.

  • E2EE, unlimited attachment sizes, rich formatting, read/delivered notifications, reactions, group chat, stickers, a third-party app integration, stuff I'm forgetting about, and all part of the standard Messaging app.

  • Take a look at FRIEFUNK, a cooperative mesh WiFi network covering a number of cities in Germany. They primarily use firewalls running OpenWRT with the mesh handled by the amazing BATMAN project, which presents a standard network interface for IP traffic to run over. I'd love to live in a city where this kind of thing is possible.

  • Oh, boy, story time!

    One of the first manufacturers to include asymmetric encryption as a standard component of their engine immobiliser across all their cars, at least in the UK, was Fiat in the 1990s. But they faced a quandary: once they keys were encoded with the appropriate codes, what should Fiat do with the codes? If they kept a copy it would be an expensive project and charging customers to access them every time they wanted a new key cutting would be terrible PR. They could gimp the security so you could just clone a key, but then it would be very easy to sidestep the encryption.

    The solution they came with was pretty clever: in addition to the standard pair of blue keys the car came with, there was also The Big Red Key. The Big Red Key contained a code that could be used to program other keys or to change any of the parts of the engine that were part of the ECU without having to involve Fiat at all if that's what you wanted. The customer was given an advanced security system without being beholden to the manufacturer. The Big Red Key was comically oversized, and it came with a sticker, fob and in a bag all with clear warnings to the effect: "Do not use this key. If you lose it your car is ten kinds of fucked. Do not use this key. Keep it secret, keep it safe."

    So what happened? People happened. A small mibority of people saw The Big Red Key and insisted on using it as their day-to-day key, but it wasn't as hard wearing as the blue keys (hard plastic instead of silicone) so it would crush or crack and, of course, people would lose them. Then when they needed a new key or needed work doing on some easily-stealable components that the ECU would validate they didn't have their The Big Red Key, so they'd need the ECU security module wiping or replacing - which was expensive, over £1000 if I remember right.

    Naturally the shitty tabloids got hold of it and every week The Daily Mail and The Sun were full of stories of Innocent British Motorist™ Conned™ By Foreigners™. "If Mandy Pleb had known how evil Fiat were she'd have bought a Rover," they'd moan, and Fiat had a real PR disaster on their hands, despite bringing a quality security technology to market, including it as standard and resisting the temptation to profiteer off it.

    So they gimped the security. Future Fiats didn't have a The Big Red Key. You got your blue keys which were dumbed down and, at least for a time, went back to inferior symmetric encryption to the detriment of the overwhelming majority, but at least a handful a prats were saved from themselves and the power of tabloids to change the world for the worse went unchallenged.

    In short, fuck tabloids.