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Zak Zak @lemmy.world
Posts 36
Comments 992
Trump does not deny speaking with Putin in 2021.
  • He's already a convicted felon, and yet he remains free.

    If you're referring to the Logan act, nobody has ever been convicted under it in more than two centuries, and it's probably unconstitutional. Is it bad that Trump chats with Putin? Absolutely. It is a crime? Unlikely.

  • What Happened To Duracell PowerCheck?
  • Even if you did (don't eat batteries), the voltage range is much lower and you probably wouldn't feel anything.

  • What Happened To Duracell PowerCheck?
  • Now if it was added to rechargeable batteries, it would be pretty useful

    I think the reason we haven't seen that is that NiMH rechargeables have fairly stable voltage during discharge while alkalines don't.

  • Google is testing a new version of Chrome for Android with extensions support
  • I use Firefox almost all the time, but I've run into a few sites that act up, and the rate seems to be increasing. Sometimes I complain.

    When Firefox had a tiny set of permitted extensions, I used Kiwi most of the time.

  • Hacked ‘AI Girlfriend’ Data Shows Prompts Describing Child Sexual Abuse
  • There are better ways to assess the legitimacy of a media outlet than critiquing its web design. The Wikipedia page might be a good start.

    I don't like the loginwall, but it doesn't require payment.

  • Google must crack open Android for third-party stores, rules Epic judge
  • The biggest reason is most likely that the cases had different judges.

  • Google must crack open Android for third-party stores, rules Epic judge
  • My initial reading of the reporting on this ruling suggests it won't do that. App developers can opt out of most of the provisions, but Google may not pressure them to do so.

  • Google is testing a new version of Chrome for Android with extensions support
  • Extension developer information from Firefox explains why it was necessary to make some technical changes. What they've never explained to my satisfaction is why they took a cautious, curated approach to it reminiscent of Apple.

    The typical approach of a large open source project is to put a "here there be dragons" sign on unstable features and let anyone who wishes to use them anyway do so at their own risk, and that's the approach I prefer.

  • Google is testing a new version of Chrome for Android with extensions support
  • Kiwi Browser has offered an Android build of Chromium that will install and attempt to run any extension available for desktop Chrome. Most of them work.

    Firefox also recently regained reasonable extension support on Android, which was a slow and frustrating process for those of us who had used it before.

  • GEICO is Terminating Insurance Coverage of Tesla Cybertrucks, Says “This Type of Vehicle Doesn't Meet Our Underwriting Guidelines”
  • Why would someone own 8 vehicles?

    Car collectors exist, and I have the impression quite a few of them are among the Cybertruck's early adopters.

  • Google as Darth Vader: Why iA Writer quit the Android app market
  • They wanted full access to the user's Google Drive. That's a permission Google is very reluctant to hand out because some users (perhaps unwisely) store large amounts of sensitive information there, and very few apps actually need direct access.

    Even if an editor app needs access to arbitrary files on Google Drive that it did not create, it can use the Android file picker. This seems like a case of an app developer failing to follow the good practice of minimizing permissions. I have complaints about Google and the Android ecosystem, but having high requirements for unrestricted access to Google Drive is not one of them.

  • Conservative asked me my thoughts on a situation if a guy who says he's trans walks into a womens restroom but is lying and isn't actually trans
  • When I try to recall the few non-gendered public bathrooms I've been in, they all had private stalls with real doors. It was nice. I'd be happy if all public bathrooms were like that.

  • International travel is a privacy nightmare these days
  • You probably can't fit a large enough explosive in a cell phone battery compartment to reliably crash a plane by exploding it anywhere in the passenger cabin, though that seems like more of an airport security thing than a customs thing.

  • Please Don’t Make Me Download Another App | Our phones are being overrun
  • I remember getting a boarding pass from an airline that was only offered in their app or printed at the airport, no email/download image/PDF option. I didn't have to install their app, but I would have had to waste time at the airport otherwise. I removed it when I was done and left it a negative review.

  • Please Don’t Make Me Download Another App | Our phones are being overrun
  • The number I remember seeing was that on average, app users are seven times more profitable than web users. Sorry, no citation.

    I suspect there's some selection bias in that regular/loyal users of a particular product or service are more likely to install the app, but it also affords the company greater access to send notifications and collect data. On the rare occasion that I install some random company's app for a specific benefit, I remove it when I'm done.

  • Men Harassed A Woman In A Driverless Waymo, Trapping Her In Traffic
  • It's likely the harassers can be prosecuted for false imprisonment, a misdemeanor. It is illegal to use deadly force such as hitting people with cars to prevent/terminate a misdemeanor.

  • Paralyzed Man Unable to Walk After Maker of His Powered Exoskeleton Tells Him It's Now Obsolete
  • here’s not really anything of that nature for tech stuff

    The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act does not exclude tech stuff. The problem is that it's a lot harder to work on tech stuff without insider information than 1970s cars.

  • Paralyzed Man Unable to Walk After Maker of His Powered Exoskeleton Tells Him It's Now Obsolete
  • He can't. He's paralyzed and his exoskeleton is broken.

    On a more serious note, the 404media article (login wall) reports the problem was that the wristwatch controller for the exoskeleton had its battery wire's solder joint break. They seem to be trying to frame it as a right to repair issue, but that's a trivial repair for anyone with basic electronics experience.

  • Men Harassed A Woman In A Driverless Waymo, Trapping Her In Traffic
  • If I feel threatened in my car, I am not allowed to run over the person

    You are not allowed to run people over merely because you feel threatened.

    You are allowed to use deadly force, in the USA when you reasonably believe that it is necessary to prevent someone from unlawfully killing, causing serious physical injury, or committing a short list of violent felonies. The harassment described in the article probably does not rise to that level, though an ambitious lawyer might try to describe intentionally causing the car to stop as carjacking or kidnapping.

  • How are pseudo/true random numbers generated mathetmatically, what sorcery is this?
  • PRNGs aren't random at all; they produce a deterministic sequence of numbers based on a seed value and an internal counter. Two PRNGs using the same algorithm and seed will produce the same sequence of numbers. The sequence is difficult to predict without knowing the algorithm and seed, and the values are close to evenly-distributed, which is enough like random numbers for a lot of use cases.

    Here's an example in Ruby:

    seed = Random.new_seed()
    => 142757148148443078663499575299582907518
    prng_1 = Random.new(seed=seed)
    prng_1.rand()
    => 0.6702742156250219
    prng_2 = Random.new(seed=seed)
    prng_2.rand()
    => 0.6702742156250219
    prng_1.rand()
    => 0.9667236181962573
    prng_2.rand()
    => 0.9667236181962573
    

    If you run this yourself using 142757148148443078663499575299582907518 as the seed, your first two pseudorandom numbers will also be 0.6702742156250219 and 0.9667236181962573, assuming your version of Ruby hasn't changed its PRNG.

  • EDC just came up in another community, so it's time for a pocket dump

    • Old leather wallet
    • Flashlight (Skilhunt H150)
    • Knife (Spyderco UKPK)
    • Pepper spray (Sabre Red, with a pocket clip from a random flashlight)
    • Phone (Pixel 4A)
    • Keys, and another flashlight (Skilhunt EK1)
    • Flash drive (Sandisk 128gb)
    • 1.38€
    14

    The HP35R, a new heavy-duty headlamp from Fenix uses 2x21700 batteries and runs at 1200 lumens all night

    6

    Recommend a server-side email classifier

    I've been self-hosting email with Maddy for a bit, but haven't shared any of the addresses widely yet in part because I haven't set up a spam filter. I'm pleased with Maddy; there's much less to learn to get a server up and running with sane default behavior than with the email software of old.

    Ideally, I'd like to go beyond just spam filtering and have something with arbitrary categories like newsletters and password resets. I would prefer that it learn categories when I move messages to IMAP folders from a mail client. Maddy can feed messages into arbitrary programs and pick a destination folder based on their output.

    Web searches turn up a ton of classification programs, most of which seem to be more interested in playing accuracy golf with well-known corpora than expanding functionality beyond simple spam filtering.

    5

    Please stop blocking VPNs for established accounts

    I often use a commercial VPN service, which I suspect is not rare among Lemmy users. Most of the time, I'm able to post to lemmy.world, but on occasion I am not. The default web UI provides zero feedback, just a spinning submit button forever, but if I look in the browser dev tools, I can see it's being blocked.

    I understand that some limitations are necessary to prevent spam and other abuse, however this is a very blunt instrument. The fact that I have a 10 month old account with consistent activity should outweigh any IP address reputation issues.

    Perhaps the VPN limitations could be narrowed in scope to cover only account creation and posts from young accounts.

    33

    Anduril firmware adds dark mode

    github.com Release 2024-04-01 · ToyKeeper/anduril

    It has been a long time coming, but today marks a monumental leap forward in the world of illumination, and I'm proud to announce an upgrade which will usher in a new era of lighting technology. Yo...

    Release 2024-04-01 · ToyKeeper/anduril
    3

    What RSS readers should I recommend to others?

    If I want to quickly pitch "you should follow X, Y, and Z using RSS because [problems with social media]" to people who have never heard of RSS, what readers should I recommend?

    I want at least web (not self-hosted), Android, and iOS options. Native apps for Mac and Windows would be nice as well. Linux users probably already know what RSS is.

    There absolutely must be a free option good for at least 25 feeds because unfamiliar tech is a hard enough sell without having to pay. I'll grudgingly accept ads if that's the tradeoff for something beginner-friendly.

    20

    Image uploads blocked by Cloudflare

    When I attempt to upload images to lemmy.world via the desktop web UI, I get the following error message:

    > SyntaxError: JSON.parse: unexpected character at line 1 column 1 of the JSON data

    Looking at network traffic in dev tools, I see that I'm getting a 403 page from Cloudflare saying:

    > Sorry, you have been blocked > You are unable to access lemmy.world > Why have I been blocked? > This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks....

    I also get error messages when trying to upload images using Connect and Sync on an Android device. I successfully uploaded images in the past.

    6

    2000 subscriber giveaway

    We just hit 2000 subscribers! I’d like to thank everyone for showing up here to create a new community, and what better way than giving stuff away?

    I’m giving away the Nitecore MH10 v2 I reviewed. I can ship it anywhere in the USA or EU, but EU winners will have to wait until mid September. This is a basic, beginner-friendly flashlight that can accept almost all 18650 and 21700 batteries.

    To enter, leave a top-level comment on this post before midnight UTC on Sunday, August 27, 2023. Only accounts that have posted or commented on /c/flashlight prior to this being posted are eligible to win.

    50

    Kaidomain has 3000K high-CRI SFT40s

    kaidomain.com Luminus SFT-40 Warm White 3000K CRI95 LED

    Luminus SFT-40 L5 HB4 Warm White 3000K CRI95 Long Throw SMD 5050 LED

    4

    Canada Geese, Lexington KY

    cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/1730120

    > Caught a cute moment on film. Look at that balance!

    0

    Juice Force (and mountains)

    0

    Today's knife and light

    • Skilhunt M150 v2 (519A swap)
    • Kershaw Launch 5
    1

    Webpack hashing problems after Mastodon server update

    I just updated my Mastodon server to the latest version due to a security vulnerability. I got a 500 page and error:0308010C:digital envelope routines::unsupported in the logs from mastodon-web.

    I could reproduce by running bin/webpack from the command line. Some searching led me to try Node 16 LTS, but then I get an apparently blank page when I load the site and call to eval() blocked by CSP in the browser console.

    The API works normally; this only affects the website.

    2

    Does the hard-use folder I want exist?

    I want a folding knife that can get away with most most of the things I know better than to do with a folding knife. That leads to specific criteria:

    • Price: under $100, lower is better. I might break it.
    • Lock: crossbar, backlock, compression, or something similarly strong. Not liner/frame/button. I might want to trust the lock more than is prudent.
    • Steel: tough stainless like AEB-L, 14C28N, or Nitro-V. I might baton through salt-driftwood with it and put it away wet. See toughness chart.
    • Blade: Ideally 3.25-2.5" (85-90mm) and a tip that isn't dainty. I might pry with it.
    • Pivot: washers, not bearings. I might get mud in it.
    • I dislike thumbstuds, but will accept them if they're not in the cutting path.
    3

    Update: Olight paid me

    Less than 24 hours after yesterday's post, an Olight rep got in touch by email. A few hours after that, they sent the full payment.

    5

    1000 subscriber giveaway

    We just hit 1000 subscribers! I'd like to thank everyone for showing up here to create a new community, and what better way than giving stuff away?

    I'm giving away the Acebeam Pokelit 2AA I recently reviewed. I can ship it anywhere in the USA or EU, but EU winners will have to wait until late July.

    To enter, leave a top-level comment on this post before midnight UTC on Monday, July 3 2023. Only accounts that have posted or commented on /c/flashlight prior to this being posted are eligible to win.

    Winner selection

    I extracted the usernames of commenters, manually removed those who said they weren't in and got these:

    1. "@[email protected]"
    2. "@containerfan"
    3. "@DuckDuckGoneForGood"
    4. "@UndulyUnruly"
    5. "zzap"
    6. "@ScratchDiggity"
    7. "@[email protected]"
    8. "@Minsk_trust"
    9. "@lemmy_party"
    10. "pickle"
    11. "@[email protected]"
    12. "@[email protected]"
    13. "@jewinthebag"
    14. "@Hilgerone"
    15. "@MashedPotatoJeff"
    16. "@poudi8"
    17. "@zumlin"
    18. "@AmbitiousView"
    19. "@rule1n2"
    20. "@escew"
    21. "@PsychedSy"
    22. "@masterironchef"

    I then requested a random integer from 0 to 21 (inclusive) from random.org. The winning number was 2 and the winner is @[email protected]

    32

    Can I eat lens hoods?

    2

    Can I eat lens hoods?

    1

    Convoy has released a 17mm, 3V, 8A buck driver with 5A and 3A coming soon

    I'm assuming this will fit the C8 and many S-series lights. 8A is suitable for the SST-40 and SFT40, but will likely be limited by forward voltage with most emitters.

    5A is running a 519A, SST-20, etc... fairly hard, while 3A is a pretty average single-emitter light.

    8

    YSK: Your phone camera's aspect ratio is 4:3; setting it to anything else crops your photos

    Why YSK: I've been seeing an increasing number of phone photos shared online in 9:16, 9:21 or similarly tall aspect ratios, often with parts of the subject cut off. I've asked a few people why they cropped their images that way, and none of them knew they were cropped.

    32