Zak

42 ms·

841.
by Zak 2y ago
> “you’re telling me there’s a @choldgraf@hachyderm.io and a @choldgraf@mastodon.social and they’re two different people?!” While the author has a valid point about Bluesky having more momentum and some UX advantages over Mastodon, thi
842.
by Zak 2y ago
I think FabHK is saying that Apple planned to offer iCloud users the choice of unencrypted storage with server-side scanning, or encrypted storage with client-side scanning. It was only meant to be for things uploaded to iCloud, but deployi
843.
by Zak 2y ago
That's a weird one. It's common for people to prefer the original audio, and most Germans understand English.
844.
by Zak 2y ago
> Permanent DST has problems in the northern parts of the US. Then adjust the time zones so northern states are one zone earlier.
845.
by Zak 2y ago
There's also an uptick in car crashes after both clock changes, which the article mentions. I think that's probably worse than some additional waking darkness, whether it's in the morning or the evening. We're pretty goo
846.
by Zak 2y ago
There's a huge gap between "we will scan our servers for illegal content" and "your device will scan your photos for illegal content" no matter the context. The latter makes the user's device disloyal to its ow
847.
by Zak 2y ago
Sites preferring geolocation over Accept-Language as a means of picking the language is one of my pet peeves. Preferring geolocation over a logged in user's stored setting is beyond absurd.
848.
by Zak 2y ago
It looks like the price is $1200, as that's the price for the cheapest practical combination of options. An airline could advertise this as $1200.
849.
by Zak 2y ago
There are two ways to implement a constant current LED driver; a linear regulator is one of them. The other is a switched-mode power supply. A linear regulator is the cheaper of the two.
850.
by Zak 2y ago
A series of web searches found one of the driver boards often used in LED tail lights: the Valeo b003809. Some images of it show an identifiable TLE4242 linear driver IC. I was starting to suspect that would be the case after reading the ex
851.
by Zak 2y ago
The effect described in the StackExchange answer to increase perceived brightness at a lower power level seems to rely on a low frequency and short duty cycle. It's not necessary to use that effect given that LEDs rated for higher powe
852.
by Zak 2y ago
Keeping in mind that it's on a moving vehicle, and road users often pan their eyes around rapidly, the frequency would need to be higher than for many other situations. Or they could use a variable linear regulator with no flickering a
853.
by Zak 2y ago
This prompted me to go look for a better answer, and I found a good candidate: pulsed current at a relative low frequency (~60hZ) allows higher perceived brightness from smaller/cheaper LEDs. From my perspective, it is undesirable to i
854.
by Zak 2y ago
As a flashlight nerd and reviewer, I know a number of ways to control the brightness of an LED, and linear regulators are a fairly common one. It's important to note that a linear regulator can be designed to target a specific voltage,
855.
by Zak 2y ago
I'm assuming it saves $0.47 per car to use slow PWM to set brightness rather than a linear regulator.
856.
by Zak 2y ago
The law is special because everyone has to obey it or face punishment. It is an injustice if most people can't figure out whether things they want to do are legal or not without employing a lawyer.
857.
by Zak 2y ago
This objection only applies to past products. If the law in a big enough market required that sort of code escrow and eventual release, companies wouldn't build future products covered by that law on top of code they couldn't re
858.
by Zak 2y ago
Perhaps they should have the option of publishing any specifications, APIs, and keys necessary for a third party to build equivalent functionality rather than source code. This stuff usually isn't rocket science, but it's often lo
859.
by Zak 2y ago
> Prusa (IIRC) had an interesting solution where you had to break off a physical piece to void your warranty in order to try different firmware. I'm not sure this would hold up to a legal challenge in the USA. "Warranty void
860.
by Zak 2y ago
It is not, however calls for racist violence are less dangerous when they're posted on a niche forum with 20 daily active users than when they're posted on Twitter.
861.
by Zak 2y ago
The original idea was that they needed big engines and bad aerodynamics to be able to perform their functions of hauling bulky loads and towing heavy trailers. Few people who didn't actually have those needs would want to drive one bec
862.
by Zak 2y ago
I wasn't thinking only of the Fediverse, but the same concern certainly would apply to a Fediverse server, an independent forum, a wiki, etc....
863.
by Zak 2y ago
Do you think harmful behavior from anywhere online other than large platforms is spilling out into the real world in a way that the Online Safety Act will prevent? If so, can you offer examples?
864.
by Zak 2y ago
This comment talks about large platforms with opaque algorithms showing some content to hundreds of thousands of people. I will not debate the merits of this law in that context here. My objection addresses your example of a "small Mas
865.
by Zak 2y ago
COPPA does not appear to require age verification. It actually appears to have the opposite effect, only coming into effect when the service provider has actual knowledge of the user's age. Actively avoiding collecting the user's
866.
by Zak 2y ago
> For those who are concerned that they will have to engage a solicitor to write reams of policies for their small Mastodon instance, need I remind you how utterly half-arsed everything in this country is? The problem is that it's
867.
by Zak 2y ago
The impression I have from period reporting is that American carriers still saw voice and SMS as core businesses and viewed anything that directly tried to transition users away from that as a threat. Including a messaging app on a phone wa
868.
by Zak 2y ago
Engagement driven algorithms do not necessarily show what users are consciously interested in, but what they subconsciously can't turn away from. You are probably a well-regulated, internet-savvy adult who easily recognizes engagemen
869.
by Zak 2y ago
Here's a related story from the period about why Microsoft didn't try something similar with Skype: https://www.pcworld.com/article/447285/why-skype-still-cant-... I can't help but think carriers we
870.
by Zak 2y ago
If it was nearly every Android device, it wouldn't have been a minority in the mid 2010s. I don't have an authoritative citation, but complaints from carriers is often reported as the reason Google backed away from the default SMS

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