forty (u/forty) - Readit News

forty commented on The Going Dark initiative or ProtectEU is a Chat Control 3.0 attempt mastodon.online/@mullvadn... · Posted by u/janandonly

ranyume · a day ago

I read this as "It's perfectly fine to persecute people for their art". And boy, you're on the wrong side of history.

forty · 6 hours ago

There are all kinds of things you might qualify as "art" which are forbidden in my country (France) - for example if your "art" is about drawing nazi symbols you hopefully are going to have troubles - and I don't have a problem with having pedophile content in that list.

forty commented on The Going Dark initiative or ProtectEU is a Chat Control 3.0 attempt mastodon.online/@mullvadn... · Posted by u/janandonly

Jigsy · 2 days ago

The problem with "child abuse" is that some countries classify drawing things as "child abuse," or "rape," or "animal abuse." (Something I don't agree with.)

I mentioned in another thread a few weeks back that I got raided by the British police last February for "uploading/downloading "illegal" anime artwork on one of the (anime) artwork websites we're criminally investigating." (Yes, the British police are criminally investigating artwork websites, and I'm still under investigation at the time of writing this.)

Even if somehow the government were able to catch everybody who abuse children, take photos and upload them to sites on Tor, they can classify anything they like as "child abuse" in order to justify survillancing people and restricting further freedoms.

What's even sadder is that people don't care about safety. They care about the illusion of safety. As long as people have the illusion that they're being kept safe - the farce known as the Online Safety Bill being a great example - they'll tolerate any injustice.

Honestly, I'd recommend downloading software like Signal, Session, VeraCrypt, etc. as well as making a Linux USB stick now (especially since countries like the UK wants Red Star OS levels of snooping) because this is honestly going to get much, much worse...

forty · a day ago

If those countries have laws against making and consuming pedophile pictures and drawings (or "artwork"), I feel it's perfectly fine for people making and consuming those to be raided, even if they disagree with the law (if people could opt out of all laws they don't agree with, I'mnot sure what would be the point of making laws).

What is not ok is to watch the activities of everyone who is not a pedophile in order to catch those, otherwise when does it stop? Should they have cameras in every room of your home just in case?

forty commented on Problems with D-Bus on the Linux desktop blog.vaxry.net/articles/2... · Posted by u/LorenDB

GalaxyNova · 8 days ago

> This project currently has a bunch of C++ files, no docs, no tests

I think the more important thing is the protocol itself, rather than the specific implementation. As the author notes the current D-bus standards are substandard at best.

forty · 8 days ago

I think one of the point from your parent comment is that something that works for people is a powerful way of making things happen, much more powerful than rants or theory or protocols. I also noticed that with cryptography algorithms/protocol for example: design the most amazing algorithm - no one is going to use it ever if there is no great reference implementation people can use.

forty commented on Bikeshedding, or why I want to build a laptop geohot.github.io//blog/je... · Posted by u/cspags

andriesm · 16 days ago

I also want it. I dislike this idea "make it illegal I don't want other people to have the freedom to do something I dislike". Of you don't like unupgradable products, then don't buy them. I like upgradability - apple makes some things like the SSD non-uogradeable without much benefit. But many other parts gain different benefits when you don't try to make everything infinitely upgradable. I really want this non-enshittified macbook alternative!!!! Shut up and take my money.

forty · 15 days ago

I don't mind people doing things I dislike (and honestly I'd enjoy changing laptop every month as much as anyone else), I simply don't want people to damage too much the planet where I and my family live.

forty commented on Bikeshedding, or why I want to build a laptop geohot.github.io//blog/je... · Posted by u/cspags

PaulRobinson · 16 days ago

The half-life of Apple kit is so high, they are arguably a lot more sustainable than their repairable PC counterparts.

Apple laptops I have that boot include a 2007 iBook (my folks used it until this Summer and then bank websites would stop working with the Chrome browser they could get working on it), which I'll be putting a BSD or Linux distro on over Christmas, a 2012 Intel MBP that has Linux on it and a couple of 2015-2017 era MBPs that I inherited via one means or another.

I'm typing this on an M4 MacBook Air I picked up cheap during Black Friday sales. I fully expect it to still be functional in 10 years.

I don't think I've ever had a PC laptop last close to that.

forty · 15 days ago

My experience of being one of the only dev with a Linux/Lenovo laptop in a company where everyone else has Macs, is that my Thinkpad from 2018 outlived all the Macs from the same period, most of which had become overheating helicopters.

forty commented on Bikeshedding, or why I want to build a laptop geohot.github.io//blog/je... · Posted by u/cspags

maccard · 15 days ago

You're getting all up in arms about a strawman argument that you feel very strongly about. I'

> as a result laptop makers have no incentive to making long lasting repairable laptop and our planet will look like a giant electric waste (not counting the problem will producing the required minerals etc).

And yet pretty much every windows machine on the market right now has user replacable RAM, storage and batteries.

My point is that hardware is not changing at the same pace as it was - a laptop from 2015 with a fresh battery is absolutely perfectly usable in 2025. A laptop from 2005 would be unusable in 2015. An SSD would help you get from 2010 to 2015, but going from 2GB to the chipsets maximum 8GB is going to do nothing for the longetivity of the machine - that 2005 laptop processor is unlikely to even be able to boot a web browser.

forty · 15 days ago

I don't have concrete number to give you but I have a feeling that the trend is to have more soldered ram (at least that was my impression last time I shopped for a laptop). I think things like batteries and disk replacement is something that buyers cares (cared?) a bit more about than repairability and as a result, makers delivered.

My laptop from 2007 with an old core 2 duo cpu can boot a web browser fine. Some websites with "modern" web tech might not work well (ie it's slow), but I don't think the CPU is the issue here :)

forty commented on Bikeshedding, or why I want to build a laptop geohot.github.io//blog/je... · Posted by u/cspags

maccard · 16 days ago

> The assumption here is that the MacBook is better because of soldering components rather than because Apple simply made a better chip and has a better OS than Windows.

That's your assumption - my point is that I don't care as long as it's actually good. The only part I really care about is the battery because it has a limited number of cycles that is shorter than the lifetime of the rest of the components.

forty · 15 days ago

The issue is precisely that you don't care, and as a result laptop makers have no incentive to making long lasting repairable laptop and our planet will look like a giant electric waste (not counting the problem will producing the required minerals etc).

If they were required to make things long lasting and repairable, they would put the effort into designing things this way, and you'll probably have laptops as perfect as you require, probably not much more expensive if at all in a few years but also have the required properties to f*ck our planet less.

That's the main issue with our current system, companies are only incentivised to maximize their profits, so they will happily f*ck our planet if they can save 1 cent in r&d on a 4000€ product.

forty commented on Bikeshedding, or why I want to build a laptop geohot.github.io//blog/je... · Posted by u/cspags

forty · 16 days ago

I think the kind of laptop this person wishes should simply be made illegal to make. We cannot sustain having all electric devices being thrown after a year or two, these things need to last, to be repairable and make it easy to grab pieces and materials when they die anyway

forty commented on IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data centers will pay off businessinsider.com/ibm-c... · Posted by u/nabla9

chrisweekly · 20 days ago

But reducing friction, eliminating the barrier to entry, is of fundamental importance. It's human psychology; putting running socks next to your bed at night makes it like 95% more likely you'll actually go for a run in the morning.

forty · 20 days ago

Yes, "I couldn't have bothered..." is different from " I wouldn't have been able to make...".

You might not go for a run when the socks are not there, but I don't think you would start questioning your ability to run.

forty commented on IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data centers will pay off businessinsider.com/ibm-c... · Posted by u/nabla9

blazingbanana · 20 days ago

Not the OP you're replying to, but I've put together quite a few projects using only LLMs, no hand crafted code anywhere (I couldn't do it!)

https://dnbfamily.com

https://eventme.app

https://blazingbanana.com

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.blazingban...

Are they perfect? No probably not, but I wouldn't have been able to make any of these without LLMs. The last app was originally built with GPT-3.5.

There is a whole host of other non-public projects I've built with LLMs, these are just a few of the public ones.

forty · 20 days ago

Maybe the most depressing part of all this is if people start thinking they would not have been able to do things without the LLM. Of course they would have, it's not like LLMs can do anything that you cannot. Maybe it would have taken more time at least the first time and you would have learned a few things in the process.