I think one thing that’s very important for the worldwide audience to consider is what the involved countries count as “peace.” Peace for Ukraine is “give us our land back and stop attacking us.” Peace for Russia is “We’ll stop attacking you if you let us have a significant portion of you country as our own.” Obviously, the Russian “solution” is not an acceptable one. Sadly, I feel like China and other Russian-aligned countries probably support the distorted Russian version of “peace.”
I have been watching magnet fishing and people love to toss stuff over bridges without a second thought on the environmental impact. Hiding evidence I can almost understand but not lawnmowers, car batteries, etc....
People do this because they’re crackheads (or heroin addicts, or methheads, you get the idea). It’s not a poverty issue, it’s a drug issue. The person working a minimum wage job and sharing a studio apartment isn’t going to dispose of their old bicycle in the river. The person who steals a bike and realizes they can’t sell it to get their next fix probably isn’t going to have a problem dumping it in a lake or river. They’re already leaving needles on the playground, shitting on the sidewalk, and assaulting innocent people for not giving them a cigarette. Do you really think they give a damn about the environmental impact of dumping their stolen goods in a waterway?
I will never buy a Tesla. I’m not normally one to pay attention to brands, but Elon Musk has tainted the brand to such a degree, that I’m disgusted at the idea of being associated with it.
That being said, the company still makes some decent technology. From what I understand, the motors, motor controllers, and battery packs are fairly decent pieces of kit. There seems to be some kind of disconnect between their engineering teams, though, because the cars themselves are so bad. I’ve seen internal panels fall off, interior components break at the slightest touch, misaligned body panels, and any number of other fit-and-finish issues. Not to mention, every single one is hideous. Make them look like an EV or make them look like a luxury car, not some half-assed abomination between the two.
I have to wonder why there’s such a disconnect within the company. It feels akin to building a Ferrari drivetrain and installing it in a Kia.
The research from Purdue University, first spotted by news outlet Futurism, was presented earlier this month at the Computer-Human Interaction Conference in Hawaii and looked at 517 programming questions on Stack Overflow that were then fed to ChatGPT....
I will resort to ChatGPT for coding help every so often. I’m a fairly experienced programmer, so my questions usually tend to be somewhat complex. I’ve found that’s it’s extremely useful for those problems that fall into the category of “I could solve this myself in 2 hours, or I could ask AI to solve it for me in seconds.” Usually, I’ll get a working solution, but almost every single time, it’s not a good solution. It provides a great starting-off point to write my own code.
Some of the issues I’ve found (speaking as a C++ developer) are: Variables not declared “const,” extremely inefficient use of data structures, ignoring modern language features, ignoring parallelism, using an improper data type, etc.
ChatGPT is great for generating ideas, but it’s going to be a while before it can actually replace a human developer. Producing code that works isn’t hard; producing code that’s good requires experience.
I’m old enough to remember the 9/11 attacks. It was never in question that Saudi Arabia was complicit in what happened. The majority of the terrorists were Saudi. It took a bit longer for the fact that the Saudi government was complicit to emerge, but we knew within a short time that at the very least, they provided financial support to the terrorists.
The argument for starting the “war on terror” was that Al-Qaeda planned the attack, so we should attack the countries that harbor them. At the time, the majority of the country supported this; I remember George Bush Jr.'s approval ratings being in the 90s for a short time. Even then, most of us knew that Saudi Arabia was at least complicit in what happened. The lust for revenge, as much as it was justified, made people forget that.
Over the last 23 years, I feel like a lot of Americans have forgotten the role that Saudi Arabia played in the events of 9/11; after all, they’re our “ally,” right? I have always been on the fence regarding whether or not invading Iraq and Afghanistan was a good idea. Back in 2001, though, I felt like invading Saudi Arabia was a great idea. 23 years later, I don’t feel any different. Should the United States have attacked Iraq and Afghanistan, I’d say “probably”; should we have attacked Saudi Arabia? Absolutely. Yet it never happened.
Or perhaps people are starting to realize that you don’t need a new car as soon as your 5-year loan is paid off.
I do okay financially; if I wanted a new car, I’d buy one. I bought mine brand new off the lot 15 years ago, and I intend to keep driving it until I can no longer repair it. Why would I possibly want to buy a new, 5G-connected, spyware-infected plastic shitbox when what I have works perfectly well and probably has another 100k miles of life with a few minor repairs and maybe an engine swap at 2-300k or so?
This is a good thing, but it’s hardly unique. Any advanced manufacturing facility will have remote access to their equipment in case an operator needs reconfigure it, transfer data, or in this case if they’re invaded by Lesser Taiwan.
I use a mixture of Linux and Windows 10 LTSC on my PCs/servers/VMs. I will be the first to admit that Windows does sometimes make sense to use. My desktop PC and my dev environment are both Windows 10.
That being said, what is the advantage in using Windows 11 over 10? As far as I can tell, it’s worse in every way. Built-in ads, a crappier UI, forced obsolescence with TPM requirements, and “feature” bloat that nobody asked for.
10 was a clear improvement over 8, but 11 just seems all-around worse.
I’d like to hope that by the time Win10 is no longer supported, we have Win12 that doesn’t suck. The way things are going, though, I doubt it. I’m expecting that Win10 will be the last version of Windows I use.
I still prefer Windows over Linux for gaming and software development, but everyone has their limit. I am strongly opposed to advertisements, and when I can no longer block ads from my operating system, it’s dead to me.
It doesn’t sound to me like this really negates the purpose of a VPN, more accurately it provides a way for someone on your local network to snoop on VPN traffic, if I understand correctly.
From how the article describes the attack, someone on your local network would have to set up a malicious DHCP server/gateway. The average home user who is using a VPN to mask their public IP probably doesn’t need to worry about this.
I think you could make an argument that even burning plastic in a firepit vs sending it to a landfill are roughly equal. Climate change and air pollution are both major issues, but so is plastic waste and microplastics working their way into everything. I have no idea of the overall harm of burning plastic is less than throwing it away; they both pollute the environment. I can see the the logic in thinking burning is a viable alternative.
Ideally, though, people would just stop using disposable plastic. Plastic is a fantastic material, but it was never supposed to be for “use once and discard” items. For creating durable objects with a decent lifetime, sure, use plastic. Don’t use it as wrapping over another plastic object.
I really think this depends largely on who you are and what you do with your phone. I have face recognition and fingerprint recognition both enabled on my phone. It’s good enough to prevent a thief from gaining access to my device, and if law enforcement asked, there’s nothing on my phone that could possibly be incriminating. Realistically, I’d have no issue just unlocking my phone and giving it to a police officer, although I do know well enough to always get a lawyer first. Biometrics add an extra layer of convenience; it’s nice to just look at my phone and it unlocks. My concern personally is more about someone stealing my phone and accessing my accounts than self-incrimination.
If I ever was going to put myself in a situation where I’d run afoul of the authorities, I’d leave my phone at home anyway.
The United States last week secretly shipped a new long-range missile system to Ukraine, and Ukrainian forces immediately used the weapons to attack a Russian military airfield in Crimea last Wednesday and Russian troops in the country’s southeast overnight on Tuesday, according to a senior U.S. official....
This is certainly good news, and I don’t intend to detract from it.
That being said, my opinion as an American is that the kind of missiles we need to be sending to Ukraine are the nuclear kind. The Russian government has said that they will use nuclear weapons in the event that the existence of their country is threatened. Fine, I understand that. Ukraine needs to have the same leverage. The existence of their country as they know it is being threatened; it would certainly turn the tables for them to say “Yes, we have nuclear weapons, and we’ll only use them if our continued existence is being threatened. By the way, you’re threatening it; you should really stop.”
I run uBlock origin on every device I can. I use PiHole on my home network. I’ve canceled every streaming service in favor of self-hosting, and IoT devices are blocked from the internet. Incoming connections are geoblocked. Meta is blocked at the DNS level. Suffice to say I have put a lot of effort into privacy and security.
I still can’t get rid of Google, though, solely because of Gmail. I’ve had the same address for so many years (ever since the invite-only days), it would be an absolute nightmare to try to change it.
I certainly don’t think it will be easier in a few years, but I also think that after 19 years of using gmail, a few more years aren’t going to make a huge difference. It’s really kind of sad to think about how far Google has fallen. I started with gmail in 2005. At the time, Google was starting to become the “go-to” search engine. They had better results than Yahoo or AltaVista; the “do no evil” slogan was also a great “feel-good” factor. I don’t think anyone at the time expected how different things would be in 2024.
I can host my own media on my own server. I use Nextcloud Talk for IMs (also hosted on my own server). Just about any online service can be self-hosted, except for email. I have certainly tried in the past, even hosting email on a VPS. You run into so many issues, though. Your server isn’t trusted, websites don’t recognize your domain, a whole litany of problems. Email is just one of those things that you really can’t self-host.
Sure, I could switch to a new email provider, forward gmail, and slowly over time update my email address for everyone who’s sending to my gmail account. What happens then when my new email provider decides to start harvesting my data for profit? Email is one of those things where you can’t live without it, but you’re forced to use a service that isn’t your own and could fuck you at any time.
Are you sure? What you say is true of the EM drive, but this looks like it’s a completely different technology. As far as the article is written, it doesn’t sound like microwaves are used at all.
What has me skeptical is that they say the device produces enough thrust to counteract its own mass, which would be revolutionary. Why are we not reading about this all over the news?
You bring up a great point with callback functions. I have written plenty of code that uses a 3rd-party library that expects a void* in a callback, and code I write myself is almost certainly never going to be used by anyone other than me (so I already know what types are valid). If library authors would start using std::any instead of void*, that would certainly improve things significantly. void* is really one of the very few C-style language features that I still use, and only because of necessity.
I’m looking for a portable air conditioner (the kind with 1 or 2 hoses that go to outside air). The problem I’m running into is that every single one I find has some kind of “smart” controller built in. The ones with no WiFi connectivity still have buttons to start/stop the AC, meaning that a simple Zigbee outlet switch...
I have heard the same thing about ACs, but I think it depends on the unit. The window units that I use have a switch on the front that literally just turns them off; there’s no delay time for the compressor. It’s the same as pulling the plug.
I’ve used single and dual-hose portable ACs in the past, and I only have dual-hose units now. This is purely anecdotal, but when I had single-hose units, they would maintain the temperature throughout the day as it warmed up, but they didn’t do a great job of cooling. A dual-hose AC with a similar capacity was actually able to lower the temperature.
This is looking more and more like my best option. I guess I can just buy an AC and run it with thr on-board temperature control until I have time to build and integrate an ESP board.
What is YOUR top 10 list of all time best video games?
Any platform(s).
Zelenskiy calls on world leaders to attend Ukraine ‘peace summit’ after deadly Kharkiv strike (www.theguardian.com)
Why do people throw out old motors, bicycles, anything metal into rivers and lakes instead of a junk yard or the trash system?
I have been watching magnet fishing and people love to toss stuff over bridges without a second thought on the environmental impact. Hiding evidence I can almost understand but not lawnmowers, car batteries, etc....
How Tesla made the worst truck ever (youtu.be)
The release of the long awaited Tesla Cybertruck has been nothing short of a disaster for Tesla. Here's why its the worst truck ever made
ChatGPT Answers Programming Questions Incorrectly 52% of the Time: Study (gizmodo.com)
The research from Purdue University, first spotted by news outlet Futurism, was presented earlier this month at the Computer-Human Interaction Conference in Hawaii and looked at 517 programming questions on Stack Overflow that were then fed to ChatGPT....
New 9/11 Evidence Points to Deep Saudi Complicity (www.theatlantic.com)
Two decades of U.S. policy appear to be rooted in a mistaken understanding of what happened that day. archive
Average U.S. vehicle age hits record 12.6 years as high prices force people to keep them longer (www.nbcnews.com)
Semiconductor manufacturers in Taiwan can remotely disable their chip-making machines in the event of a Chinese invasion. (www.bloomberg.com)
Microsoft stoops to new low with ads in Windows 11, as PC Manager tool suggests your system needs ‘repairing’ if you don’t use Bing (www.techradar.com)
What do you do to cheer yourself up ?
Novel attack against virtually all VPN apps neuters their entire purpose (arstechnica.com)
Is it greener to just burn plastic?
Just thinking in terms of compared to microplastics and toxins in recycled plastic.
Stop Using Your Face or Thumb to Unlock Your Phone (gizmodo.com)
U.S. Secretly Shipped New Long-Range Missiles to Ukraine (www.nytimes.com)
The United States last week secretly shipped a new long-range missile system to Ukraine, and Ukrainian forces immediately used the weapons to attack a Russian military airfield in Crimea last Wednesday and Russian troops in the country’s southeast overnight on Tuesday, according to a senior U.S. official....
“Crypto is already a giant video game — and we are here to make it more fun and rewarding.” (medium.com)
The video game in question:...
What happens when every time your browser sends data to a tracker it makes a beep sound? (infosec.exchange)
video...
Although not peer reviewed or replicated, a NASA veteran claims their Propellantless Propulsion Drive, that physics says shouldn’t work, just produced enough thrust to overcome Earth’s gravity (thedebrief.org)
What is a valid use case for std::any?
In c++17, std::any was added to t he standard library. Boost had their own version of “any” for quite some time before that....
Looking for a portable AC with local control
I’m looking for a portable air conditioner (the kind with 1 or 2 hoses that go to outside air). The problem I’m running into is that every single one I find has some kind of “smart” controller built in. The ones with no WiFi connectivity still have buttons to start/stop the AC, meaning that a simple Zigbee outlet switch...