a0123 (u/a0123) - Readit News

a0123 commented on Grokipedia by xAI grokipedia.com... · Posted by u/thsName

txcwg002 · 2 months ago

Definitely not an encyclopedia that is supposed to be objective.

a0123 · 2 months ago

When you grow up to be an adult, you will understand that "objectivity"is a fiction.

And an encyclopedia can absolutely do that and still present factual information based on actual research and facts.

You know that just because a lady has blue hair or a person has colored skin does NOT mean that they can't be right about something or do good research. Right? You do know it, right?

Because in the end, when you cry about DEI (whatever you believe it to mean), this is the implication that comes with it: that you can't imagine for a second that anyone who doesn't look exactly like you could ever do anything competently. I genuinely wonder if you've ever thought about that for more than half a second after you closed that Charlie Kirk video.

If you do believe it, fair enough. I guess you're allowed to believe it. But at least be honest about it.

a0123 commented on Grokipedia by xAI grokipedia.com... · Posted by u/thsName

davydm · 2 months ago

I'm no apartheid apologist, but I have lived here (ZA) all my life.

Whilst I haven't read the entire article, the first paragraph is actually on-point: apartheid was shit in a lot of respects, but the schools, especially in rural areas, have dramatically declined since 1994, as have most government-run companies (with the exceptions like Eskom being bailed out every year).

You don't have to like the facts, but that's what they are.

a0123 · 2 months ago

I wonder if something called "context" and the socio-economic direction might have something to do with it.

"I think we gotta hand it to Apartheid because schools were very slightly less worse" isn't the argument you think it is. It does paint where you stand quite clearly.

Never start a sentence with "I'm no apartheid apologist, but". Nothing good can ever come out of it.

a0123 commented on Grokipedia by xAI grokipedia.com... · Posted by u/thsName

a0123 · 2 months ago

Ah yes, America. The place where you get beaten to death for being a fascist asshole. It is well known. Famously.

a0123 commented on Grokipedia by xAI grokipedia.com... · Posted by u/thsName

croes · 2 months ago

>A prevailing narrative depicts apartheid as a system of unremitting total oppression for black South Africans, yet empirical data indicate substantial advancements in black literacy and real wages during the era.

This is a false contradiction. You can oppress people and still pay them higher wages and fight illteracy.

a0123 · 2 months ago

No you can't.

You also don't seem to understand "apologetics"?

a0123 commented on Today is when the Amazon brain drain sent AWS down the spout theregister.com/2025/10/2... · Posted by u/raw_anon_1111

behnamoh · 2 months ago

Anything that wastes my time and only reveals its half-assed reasoning half way through the article is indeed worthless.

a0123 · 2 months ago

You could make smart inferences based on past and very frequent occurrences.

Or you could just say "there is no way the thing that constantly happens over and over again has happened once again, just no way".

Staff cuts constantly happen in the name of maximising profits. They always yield poor results for a company's performance. Every time. Especially for the consumer's side of it (not the company's finances of course).

Every time.

But maybe this time it's different. That one time.

a0123 commented on Proton Mail suspended journalist accounts at request of cybersecurity agency theintercept.com/2025/09/... · Posted by u/lehi

gruez · 3 months ago

Can proton even win here? The obvious solution would be "we don't take down unless there's a court order", but then you'd get exposé pieces saying how protonmail is a den for drug dealers/pedophiles/doxxers/cyber criminals.

a0123 · 3 months ago

No.

They currently do cooperate and they go get the odd bad press about this.

So doing what they actually claim to do would change nothing. Their current stance is just a cop out.

a0123 commented on Proton Mail suspended journalist accounts at request of cybersecurity agency theintercept.com/2025/09/... · Posted by u/lehi

j-bos · 3 months ago

> Phrack reached out to Proton in private multiple times, and Proton ghosted them.

According to Proton's response in the linked reddit post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45227356

They say: "Regarding Phrack’s claim on contacting our legal team 8 times: this is not true. We have only received two emails to our legal team inbox, last one on Sep 6 with a 48-hour deadline. This is unrealistic for a company the size of Proton, especially since the message was sent to our legal team inbox on a Saturday, rather than through the proper customer support channels."

a0123 · 3 months ago

Sorry but doubt.

The whole "we have only received two emails" is a classic move of every company caught with their pants down. Considering Proton's history, they don't get the benefit of the doubt on this one.

As for the "company size excuse" sorry but considering the business you claim to be in (the private and secure email), having an on-call skeleton crew legal team available over the weekend for urgent requests is a bare minimum (and I'm pretty sure they have people available to hand over everything the cops request if "the proper process is followed").

Remember that they have turned over information in less than 24 hours before (for what they call an extreme case of course). So the "size" excuse doesn't hold. Doesn't matter how urgent it is, if they are the small bean they claim they are, there is no chance they can have a turnaround of less than 24 hours.

Again, it's not what they did that's the biggest issue, it's the coverup. Just like last time they got in hot water. Because the coverup raises a lot more questions.

a0123 commented on Proton Mail suspended journalist accounts at request of cybersecurity agency theintercept.com/2025/09/... · Posted by u/lehi

fivefives55555 · 3 months ago

I've been following this on X/Twitter and I think one of the most egregious things that's important to point out is that folks from Phrack reached out to Proton in private multiple times, and Proton ghosted them. Proton only engaged with them and then reinstated the accounts after Phrack went public and their X/Twitter post went viral.

It also looks like one of the writers filed an appeal with Proton and Proton denied the appeal, so they manually investigated the incident and refused to reinstate the account and then only did after this got attention on X/Twitter.

So make no mistake about it: Proton didn't just disable the accounts after whatever CERT complained, which would have been bad enough - they also didn't do anything about it until this started getting lots of eyes on social media.

a0123 · 3 months ago

Which the reddit fanatics on their sub are bending over backwards to defend and explain away when there is no two ways about it tbh.

a0123 commented on Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation help.dropbox.com/installs... · Posted by u/mercenario

privatelypublic · 3 months ago

Why rely on them at all? Dollar per GB they cost more than literally any other solution with file storage.

a0123 · 3 months ago

The only cloud storage that has a decent Linux client is Dropbox.

Koofr is a decent cloud solution. Their client is horrendous across all platforms and lacks the most basic functionalities.

You can argue OneDrive / GoogleDrive are semi decent if you also use insync, which adds another license to purchase when a basic client should come free with the service you've already bought.

And no, rsync doesn't come even close to it in terms of functionality/simplicity, no matter how much hardened Linux users who haven't been outside since 1988 are trying to convince everyone otherwise.

a0123 commented on Dropbox Paper mobile App Discontinuation help.dropbox.com/installs... · Posted by u/mercenario

ianstormtaylor · 3 months ago

The way Dropbox has mismanaged Paper over the past decade, and squandered so many opportunities in the productivity tools space, has been one of the most frustrating things to watch.

Dropbox bought Hackpad and launched Dropbox Paper a decade ago!

Paper was awesome at launch — so much less friction than Google Docs for teams back then — and had a good internal product team behind it, but leadership failed to see the potential. I think it's because the Dropbox founders were so consumer-focused that they couldn't envision how huge Paper could be in the productivity tools space. They kept framing it as an Evernote competitor, instead of seeing it turning into something like Notion.

Even when they finally seemed to understand that Dropbox was never going to be a B2C sensation, they kept acquiring "side product" businesses instead of ones that built on Dropbox's existing value. (To their credit, this was the zeitgeist back when they started — B2B was not cool at all, and the sort of B2C/B hybrid that exists now wasn't a thing.)

Meanwhile startups like Notion actually saw the opportunity and blossomed. And nowadays, even super-slow Google is releasing features like pageless mode, markdown support, etc. Such that Paper is almost irrelevant at this point, despite having had such a massive head start.

It's sad because I can easily imagine an alternate future where Dropbox understood what Paper could be, and invested in it alongside things like an Airtable competitor, to create a truly viable, and forward-looking alternative to Google Docs/Sheets/Drive, without all the baggage of being a Microsoft Office clone.

a0123 · 3 months ago

Here is the thing: Dropbox has no business being anything other than a cloud storage solution. Stop trying to do everything, it's too difficult and too expensive. Find what you're great at, and just improve it little by little. Stop adding shit.

Never, ever used any additional Dropbox services. All I need it to do is be a reliable cloud storage. Nothing else.