Zak

18 ms·

361.
by Zak 11mo ago
I think that's mostly to do with script kiddies trying to DoS anyone they disagreed with.
362.
by Zak 11mo ago
> Removed SD card. The manufacturer of the camera had requested certain components of the device be redacted. Portions of this image have been redacted. And so it is, but anyone who has ever seen a Sandisk SD card knows what they'
363.
by Zak 11mo ago
Lemmy and Piefed are federated Reddit clones. I'm assuming you think they're not good. What should they improve?
364.
by Zak 11mo ago
A post on HN a couple years ago discussed research showing antidepressants only work for about 15% of patients: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37671529 The thing is, they work very well for that 15%. I suspect the e
365.
by Zak 11mo ago
It might be illegal in the EU under the DMA. As I understand it, litigation involving Apple's equivalent is in progress, and the outcome may not be known for years. Wrong in this context is an assertion about morality. I do think it&
366.
by Zak 11mo ago
Calling something a right is an assertion about morality; it implies that a law to the contrary would be a violation of that right. I do not believe an an OS vendor with an app store has a right to limit alternate distribution channels
367.
by Zak 11mo ago
There's an option for a password-protected backup to the local filesystem. Of course you need to copy that backup to somewhere else if you want to be able to restore it without the old phone.
368.
by Zak 11mo ago
Ignoring pride , WhatsApp has major advantages over SMS/MMS, including high-quality media, group chats that actually work, free international messaging, video calls, and (unless they're lying) encryption. I would be pleased if ev
369.
by Zak 11mo ago
AWS isn't the only way to host a website, and his been an obviously bad choice for hosting something controversial since it denied service to Wikileaks.
370.
by Zak 11mo ago
Some countries have very specific standards for bike lights; others have none. Most jurisdictions have a crime like "reckless endangerment" though, and intentionally shining bright lights into a cyclist's eyes could qualify.
371.
by Zak 11mo ago
There are, but if kids are using iMessage for it and not using other things even though they could, not having iMessage can serve to insulate a kid from it. Parental controls may prevent some of the kids from installing third-party messagin
372.
by Zak 11mo ago
The thing I really don't love about ATProto is its decision, or that of its dominant implementation to enforce a schema ("lexicon") on content, limiting interoperation between disparate software. This violates the Old Interne
373.
by Zak 11mo ago
The USA seems to suffer from a not-invented-here problem when it comes to automotive regulations. Most of the world adopted the European standard for adaptive headlights, but the USA had to spend years coming up with its own incompatible st
374.
by Zak 11mo ago
The obvious solution is to carry a 10000 lumen[0] flashlight and use it to trigger the auto-dim[1]. [0] Most flashlights that advertise numbers like this are lying, but a few aren't [1] This does present a risk of impairing the driver&
375.
by Zak 11mo ago
Another problem is LED lights using low-frequency PWM to control brightness. If they're moving in someone's field of view, there's a strobe effect.
376.
by Zak 11mo ago
I was thinking about Tay when I wrote about brand safety. I doubt the incident really set AI research back. Allowing models to learn from interactive conversations in a large public setting like Twitter will always result in trolling.
377.
by Zak 11mo ago
The linked project is about removing censorship from open-weight models people can run on their own hardware, and your comment addresses incidents involving LLM-based consumer products. Sure, products like character.ai and ChatGPT should be
378.
by Zak 11mo ago
When a model is censored for "AI safety", what they really mean is brand safety . None of these companies want their name in the news after their model provides a recipe for explosives that someone used for evil, even though the
379.
by Zak 11mo ago
Apple doesn't need that. Apple is very happy selling storage for 2-4x market rates.
380.
by Zak 11mo ago
I don't think being a phone-substitute in that way has ever been a goal for Pebble. It doesn't even have WiFi. Its goals are battery life and a simple set of features including notifications from the phone via Bluetooth. You seem
381.
by Zak 11mo ago
Most apps don't read notifications for that purpose, and I'm not sure they'd be allowed in the Play Store if they wanted the permission just for that. It's mainly used for automation and sending notifications to other de
382.
by Zak 11mo ago
That's true. The whole point of an open ecosystem is that you get to decide who you get your software from. You can decide on the official F-Droid repository and get the benefits and drawbacks of a strict open source rule with the F-Dr
383.
by Zak 11mo ago
It's similar. I think there's a difference in that special entitlements have to be approved by Apple. Read/manage notifications is under "special app access", which has a different prompt where the user has to pick
384.
by Zak 11mo ago
This becomes a problem when someone asks me for help with their phone and I want to point them to some apps from F-Droid to reduce their exposure to surveillance marketing. Of course that's a side effect Google probably wouldn't b
385.
by Zak 11mo ago
> Are they admitting that their app sandboxing is so weak that a malicious app can exfil data from other unaffiliated apps? An app can read the content of notifications if the appropriate permissions are granted, which includes 2FA cod
386.
by Zak 11mo ago
I imagine what they're going to do involves a time delay so a scammer cannot wait on the phone with a victim while they do it.
387.
by Zak 11mo ago
I would like a world where buying something means you get final say over how it operates even if you might do something dangerous/harmful/illegal.
388.
by Zak 11mo ago
As a former regular user, I don't remember it being notably worse than any of the other options. It was definitely preferable to SMS. Maybe there was some glaring flaw I'm not remembering, but Google certainly had the resources to
389.
by Zak 11mo ago
Google tried the same thing Apple did long before RCS when it made Hangouts the default SMS app for Android. Conversations could be upgraded from SMS to Google's internet-based chat protocol if the other person had an account; it was e
390.
by Zak 11mo ago
I suspect the iPhone Mini didn't sell well for reasons beyond people generally preferring larger phones, and suspect it might sell better today. The biggest issue is that it was introduced in 2020 when many people were in lockdowns. A

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