You think only non-citizens are under assault? Are you familiar with “Kavanaugh Stops”?
Readit Newsrectang commented on The US is flirting with its first-ever population decline bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/alephnerd
rectang commented on Sheldon Brown's Bicycle Technical Info sheldonbrown.com/... · Posted by u/ostacke
rectang commented on I now assume that all ads on Apple news are scams kirkville.com/i-now-assum... · Posted by u/cdrnsf
On the modern internet, there seems to be less money in selling advertising to legitimate businesses than in helping scammers connect with and take advantage of the vulnerable.
> These fake “going out of business ads” have been around for a few years, and even the US Better Business Bureau warns about them, as they take peoples’ money then shut down.
Shouldn’t facilitating such scams be illegal? Cracking down on media companies like Apple who serve scams might be a bridge too far, but why not go after a scam aggregator like Taboola?
rectang commented on Notepad++ supply chain attack breakdown securelist.com/notepad-su... · Posted by u/natebc
The backdoors snuck in because literally everyone is being targeted.
Few people ever see the impact of that themselves or understand the chain of events that brought those impacts about.
And yet, many people perceive a difference between “getting hacked” and “not getting hacked” and believe that certain precautions materially affect whether or not they end up having to deal with a hacking event.
Are they wrong? Do gradations of vulnerability exist? Is there only one threat model, “you’re already screwed and nothing matters”?
rectang commented on Notepad++ supply chain attack breakdown securelist.com/notepad-su... · Posted by u/natebc
I'm sure that will contribute to the illusion of security, but in reality the system is thoroughly backdoored on every level from the CPU on up, and everyone knows it.
There is no such thing as computer security, in general, at this point in history.
There's a subtlety that's missing here: if your threat model doesn't include the actors who can access those backdoors, then computer security isn't so bad these days.
That subtlety is important because it explains how the backdoors have snuck in — most people feel safe because they are not targeted, so there's no hue and cry.
so is there any open source alternative to these meeting apps? (selfhostable)
It's not open source, but up until a few years ago I used whereby.com for videochats.
Unlike the alternatives at the time from Google, Apple, etc., it didn't require an account for participants — I could just give them the meeting room URL. So although it wasn't open source, it at least didn't lock you into a network.
(Unlike you, I wasn't up for self-hosting.)
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rectang commented on A macOS app that blurs your screen when you slouch github.com/tldev/posturr... · Posted by u/dnw
I'm not sure how you can use a laptop with good posture. An external monitor at the right height seems like a necessity.
I'm also optimistic about monitors in the form of glasses- even less effort needed to set yourself up for perfect posture. But the sweet spot problem is still very much a thing from what I've seen- can't wait until it's normal for them to have eye tracking, foveated rendering and streaming, and be wireless.
When working at a desk I put my 16-inch MacBook Pro on a stand and use an external keyboard and trackpad.
I don't like adapting my monitor layout when moving between working environments.
Instead of an extra monitor, I have an iPad Pro on a stand.
rectang commented on Are we all plagiarists now? economist.com/culture/202... · Posted by u/pseudolus
I would say that copyright empowers distributors more than creators, especially in the age of the internet where distribution is otherwise cheap and commoditized. The creator has the ability to make more but a finite capability to create, the distributor only has the copyright that they own, but an almost unbounded ability to accumulate more.
Right now, distributors have to compete with each other in terms of the content they provide — if your competitor offers Taylor Swift or AP News stories or Marvel movies but you don't, your consumers care and may flee.
Take away copyright and distributors no longer compete with each other on the basis of their catalogs — all of them have access to all works, and they're left to compete on network effects, verticals, and locking consumers in to specific distribution channels. Creators have no role in that economy because they have nothing they can leverage.
rectang commented on Are we all plagiarists now? economist.com/culture/202... · Posted by u/pseudolus
Cutting back the power of creators dramatically increases the power of distributors. Do we really want the vast majority of economic benefit for human creativity to flow to middlemen?