dqv (u/dqv) - Readit News

dqv commented on Innocent woman jailed after being misidentified using AI facial recognition grandforksherald.com/news... · Posted by u/rectang

andrepd · a day ago

It's not even just incompetence, but malice. "AI says so" is going to be the perfect catch-all excuse for literally everything anyone might want to do that they shouldn't. You know how techbros love to excuse every horrifying outcome of their torment nexi with "don't blame me, the algorithm did it"? It's going to be like that, but now everyone can do it.

dqv · 17 hours ago

It's also why people start parroting the phrase "the purpose of a system is what it does". Look at where we are right now: a precipice before this becomes widely used in all forms of policing. We still have a chance to police the police's use of the AI.

The purpose of using AI to identify suspects in criminal cases is to ease the burden of manual searching for a suspect (or insert whatever the purpose of statement you want). Ok, but we're getting false positives that are damaging people's lives already in the early stages. And I don't want to hear "trust me bro, it will get more accurate" as an excuse to not regulate it.

At a minimum, we should enshrine the right to appeal AI and have limits on how it can be used for probable cause.

This isn't even the only recent case of this happening. There was another case of mistaken identity due to AI. [0] Sure 4 hours isn't the same as 5 months, but still this guy wanted to show multiple forms of ID to prove who he was! The bodycam footage was posted a few months back but never got traction here.

Like if the police officer can't read numbers, they can't do breathalyzer tests on people. If the AI can't be used responsibly, then it can't be used at all.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPUBXN2Fd_E

dqv commented on The surprising whimsy of the Time Zone Database muddy.jprs.me/links/2026-... · Posted by u/jprs

shagie · 5 days ago

> It can even work for future dates and times too!

Morocco has some complex logic around Ramadan... which is a moveable festival.

https://github.com/eggert/tz/blob/main/africa#L854

    Rule Morocco 2026 only - Feb 15  3:00 -1:00 -
    Rule Morocco 2026 only - Mar 22  2:00 0 -
    Rule Morocco 2027 only - Feb  7  3:00 -1:00 -
    Rule Morocco 2027 only - Mar 14  2:00 0 -
    Rule Morocco 2028 only - Jan 23  3:00 -1:00 -
    Rule Morocco 2028 only - Mar  5  2:00 0 -
    Rule Morocco 2029 only - Jan 14  3:00 -1:00 -
    Rule Morocco 2029 only - Feb 18  2:00 0 -

dqv · 4 days ago

Didn't know that it was moveable! It's actually a great example of why storing future datetimes in UTC is wrong. Future dates should always be stored in local time with appropriate zone information and then converted close to the "decision time". Otherwise, it may represent the wrong local time by the time the dated information is supposed to take effect!

dqv commented on 60 Minutes Havana Syndrome report finds U.S. government tested energy weapon cbsnews.com/news/60-minut... · Posted by u/jonas21

dqv · 4 days ago

I wonder to what extent propaganda played a role in disbelieving their claims. US propaganda is very strong on the US being the best, having the most advanced technology, and that nations like Russia and China are inferior to us. So it's totally plausible to me that agents in the CIA would fall for that same propaganda: this technology doesn't exist, because, if it did, we would have invented it.

Propaganda can galvanize, but propaganda can also lull.

dqv commented on The surprising whimsy of the Time Zone Database muddy.jprs.me/links/2026-... · Posted by u/jprs

themafia · 6 days ago

You need it to encode or decode past dates to unix time or other time standards. You do not need it to "interpret" past dates.

Even then the tzdb only covers _offsets_ within a day. So even without it you can get an answer that is very close to the "correct" answer. For dates at that great of a remove the lack of accuracy to a precise second is rarely a problem.

I don't exactly need to schedule a remote video phone call with someone still using Double British Summer War Time. For those that do have this requirement they can use whatever specialty database they want.

Combining these two concerns with insanely different scopes is precisely the issue with the tzdb.

dqv · 6 days ago

> You need it to encode or decode past dates to unix time or other time standards.

Which you need to do if

> You do not need it to "interpret" past dates.

you want to interpret past dates. Mainly you need a historical record of the offsets. Or you're trading inaccuracy of duration measurement from one or two days out of the year to every day of the year by not keeping track of historical offsets or taking them into consideration.

It is absolutely not esoteric for a user to want to know, for example, an accurate duration measurement between a past departure time in one zone and a past arrival time in another zone. (inb4 the user is supposed to somehow anticipate all possible datetimes and calculate these durations in advance in case they need them)

> Combining these two concerns with insanely different scopes is precisely the issue with the tzdb.

I'm laughing so hard at what I just visualized. "Oh, no you only use this zone library for current times, use this other library for past times".

Then someone gets this crazy idea to use just one library and realizes it's quite ridiculous to need a DNS client to pull in the records when they have this other library that has the historical and current zones in a few text files. So then they drop the DNS client and just start using tzdb. It can even work for future dates and times too!

As soon as you create a timestamp, it becomes a recording that needs to take historical zone information into account when interpreting it.

dqv commented on Show HN: Kula – Lightweight, self-contained Linux server monitoring tool github.com/c0m4r/kula... · Posted by u/c0m4r

c0m4r · 7 days ago

I got your point. The project structure remains from the initial phase of building the tool. I think I'll eventually remove it or put it on the wiki or somewhere else. My excessive attachment to copyright probably stems from the fact that years ago, when I wrote my own websites and articles, people often simply copied them and signed them as their own. The Linux Foundation website has attribution instructions that ask for the use of the ® symbol; I simply followed this instruction, but I agree that it's probably an exaggeration on my part. Considering what this tool does, I personally think it's lightweight in terms of both binary size, execution times, and dashboard performance. But I agree that's debatable.

dqv · 7 days ago

In fact, you followed the instructions exactly to spec https://www.linuxfoundation.org/legal/the-linux-mark

dqv commented on Plasma Bigscreen – 10-foot interface for KDE plasma plasma-bigscreen.org... · Posted by u/PaulHoule

yjftsjthsd-h · 7 days ago

I'd argue that that's orthogonal; this is making the general UI work well on a TV, then apps get populated into that. And honestly I'll bet that for most uses Firefox working well is what you want, since a handful of shortcuts to open Firefox to assorted streaming services would do the trick quite nicely.

dqv · 7 days ago

I immediately envisioned having my feed reader as a FireFox shortcut and being able to navigate to YouTube videos from that.

Another thing is that I've found certain old movies can only be streamed from weird websites - as in https://weirdstreamingwebsite is the only licensed entity to have it. I could either buy a VHS (which is what we did) or stream it. But since a physical copy might not be available, the only option would be to use that weird website to stream it. There is no app!

dqv commented on Emails to Outlook.com rejected due to a fault or overzealous blocking rules theregister.com/2026/03/0... · Posted by u/Bender

elcritch · 9 days ago

For these large services it seems that small companies should be allowed to sue them.

Otherwise there’s no incentive for the big providers to care.

Similarly for anti-virus. It’s a PITA when Windows or Mac falsely flag a program as a virus when it’s not in their app stores.

dqv · 9 days ago

Yes, at least in the US, being a litigious freak gets results.

Weird trick to get unblocked: follow the standard three-email procedure to sender support, then send a fourth email ccing buscond@microsoft.com telling them to unblock or next step is attorney general.

The thing about a lot of attorney generals is they LOVE to smack down a big corporation like Microsoft for the little guy.

dqv commented on Emails to Outlook.com rejected due to a fault or overzealous blocking rules theregister.com/2026/03/0... · Posted by u/Bender

wccrawford · 9 days ago

It feels like there's quite a lot of spin on this. There's no hint as to how many users were actually affected. It only really seems to mention Estonia, and probably only a region of it.

The ISP there claims they haven't received any reports of SPAM. But that sounds wrong. No reports probably means your reporting system is broken.

So putting that together, it seems like a small ISP screwed up and let spammers go wild, and Outlook blocked them for it. I can't really fault Outlook for that.

dqv · 9 days ago

Your intuition is way off, like dangerously off. But your comment is a great example to show a smug lawyer at Microsoft when they try to say there is no basis for the claim that these blocks against legitimate senders are defamatory.

This has been affecting reputable senders who take spam reporting seriously, including MXRoute and Discourse.

> No reports probably means your reporting system is broken.

"No reports" can mean a lot of things. There is no "probably".

The "you" in "your" is Microsoft because under a certain volume of email, they don't even send reports. I regularly test the abuse contact address for my server because of this exact unfair assumption - that it must be my fault. I have never once gotten an abuse report notification from Microsoft, but I have gotten a bounce message saying that I'm blocked because I apparently send spam! Btw, this was in reply to an email from a Microsoft user.

Worse, I figured I'd just disallow any email from a Microsoft property - if an outlook (or hotmail or live or anyone else) sends an email, I can just bounce it and tell them to use a different service to reach me since I can't reply. Nope! Microsoft won't surface the bounce message to the user.

So, I am barred from replying to Microsoft emails. I am also barred from informing the sender that their email won't reach me.

It's defamation - the sender is always going to assume that it is my fault if I didn't reply even if the reason I "didn't reply" is outside of my control.

> So putting that together, it seems like a small ISP screwed up and let spammers go wild, and Outlook blocked them for it. I can't really fault Outlook for that.

Yes, in your imagined scenario, you can't really fault outlook. In the real world, however, outlook is very much to blame.

dqv commented on I built a demo of what AI chat will look like when it's “free” and ad-supported 99helpers.com/tools/ad-su... · Posted by u/nickk81

WarmWash · 12 days ago

Examples would be the best way to prove me wrong.

Most (all?) streaming services offer an ad-free plan, and those are the most popular hybrid payment services by far.

dqv · 12 days ago

Hulu: Disney+, Hulu Bundle Premium: For $19.99/month, eligible subscribers get Disney+ (No Ads)* and Hulu (No Ads)*.

*Ads will be served in select live and linear content

I won't be engaging in any mental gymnastics where there is some redefinition of "no ads" to mean "some ads".

dqv commented on The Pentagon threatens Anthropic astralcodexten.com/p/the-... · Posted by u/lukeplato

dqv · 16 days ago

> anyone know what news it was reacting to?

Probably this https://time.com/7380854/exclusive-anthropic-drops-flagship-...