papasquat's recent activity

  1. Comment on In search of the hypothetical iPhone Duo buyer in ~tech

    papasquat
    Link Parent
    I don't think it's a matter of someone forcing them to use phones, it's that they're more comfortable using them. A lot of young people just didn't grow up using computers. They've been able to...

    I don't think it's a matter of someone forcing them to use phones, it's that they're more comfortable using them.

    A lot of young people just didn't grow up using computers. They've been able to theoretically do everything they needed to do on a smart phone their whole life, so they've never been really exposed to anything else. Makes sense that they wouldn't seek out a computer unless they were required to by a job or something. Even though doing any sort of long form input on a phone seems like torture to me, if it's all you've ever known, it probably feels normal.

    1 vote

  2. Comment on In search of the hypothetical iPhone Duo buyer in ~tech

    papasquat
    Link Parent
    I think the requirements in a phone for users that do most of their computing on a computer (ie, older people) is much different than the use cases of users who do most of their computer related...

    I think the requirements in a phone for users that do most of their computing on a computer (ie, older people) is much different than the use cases of users who do most of their computer related tasks on a phone (increasingly, younger people).

    If I need to fill out a resume, or pay a bill, or write an email longer than a couple of sentences, I'm not using my phone to do that. Touchscreens are a really terrible compromise that are a necessary tradeoff of input usability against screen real estate. I find them really frustrating to use, and I'm way more comfortable using a mouse and keyboard for anything requiring a lot of input.

    There are a lot of people that don't feel that way, and it seems to be the case more as time goes on. There are a lot of people who don't own a computer of any kind except for their phone. They do everything on their phone, from reading news, to filling out job applications, paying bills, investing, writing and so on.

    For those kinds of people, it might make sense to have a phone that can transition to having a gigantic screen.

    For me, I just want something small that fits in my pocket, has decent battery life, and mostly gets out of my way.

    I would never buy something like this in a million years. If I was forced to only use a phone for everything technology related though?
    Maybe it becomes more appealing at that point.

    5 votes

  3. Comment on Apple announces iPhone Duo, its first foldable iPhone in ~tech

    papasquat
    Link Parent
    They do, it's just more rare over the past few years since Apple became the iPhone company and stopped actually making new kinds of devices. I still encounter people to this day who insist that...

    They do, it's just more rare over the past few years since Apple became the iPhone company and stopped actually making new kinds of devices.

    I still encounter people to this day who insist that Apple invented the smartphone, even though I knew people with them for years before the iPhone was released.

  4. Comment on UN says world will miss its climate target, warming must be reversed in ~enviro

    papasquat
    Link Parent
    It's also the plot of Rainbow Six

    It's also the plot of Rainbow Six

  5. Comment on Apple announces iPhone Duo, its first foldable iPhone in ~tech

    papasquat
    Link
    Nice, I can't wait for all the breathless reviews and comments online implying that Apple invented folding phones.

    Nice, I can't wait for all the breathless reviews and comments online implying that Apple invented folding phones.

    4 votes

  6. Comment on GPS tracker for an interstate move in ~life

    papasquat
    Link
    As someone else mentioned, air tags are probably a much better solution for this. GPS trackers have a lot of limitations. Their battery life isn't that good because they require both a gps...

    As someone else mentioned, air tags are probably a much better solution for this.

    GPS trackers have a lot of limitations. Their battery life isn't that good because they require both a gps receiver and some sort of cell radio to actually transmit their location info.

    They also notably do not work well/at all indoors. Trucking/shipping companies typically take goods from trucks with metal roofs directly into warehouses with metal roofs. Its very difficult to get a gps signal through that. Usually, logistics companies put GPS and RFID trackers on the outside of shipping containers, or put antennas on the outside of vehicles to get around this.

    The airtag sidesteps all of those limitations by just using the existing infrastructure of ios devices that exist worldwide.

    I don't even have any apple devices and I'd still probably use an airtag for this.

    2 votes

  7. Comment on Software for humans in ~tech

    papasquat
    Link Parent
    The thing about the frontier models is that theres no real secret sauce. They advance mostly based on throwing raw compute power into training, which is why all of the frontier labs have similar...

    LLMs as they are right now (opaque closed-source models, tightly controlled and guarded by billionaire-owned corporations) are the complete antithesis to FOSS ideals

    The thing about the frontier models is that theres no real secret sauce. They advance mostly based on throwing raw compute power into training, which is why all of the frontier labs have similar performance. Those models get distilled, and cheaper Chinese and open source models see similar performance within six months to a year. Openai, anthropic and Google are controlled by billionaire run corporations, LLMs as a whole aren't though.

    One of two things is going to happen. We're going to see increasingly diminishing returns, where in order to get any improvement, more capital and power than exists on the planet is required, and open source competitors will close the gap and catch up. Or, these models will never stop getting significantly better, in which case we're likely fucked as the technology dominates the human race.

    I think the former is the more realistic option, but I don't see anything besides harsh multilateral government enforcement of a total ban being feasible if it's the latter.

    6 votes

  8. Comment on LG smart TVs caught logging audio with screen off and snooping on local devices in ~tech

    papasquat
    Link Parent
    That alone is baffling too, because cable was originally pitched as a premium, subscription based TV option that didn't require ads. No idea how long that lasted, but I don't think it was a while.

    where it's viewed just how our parents' generation viewed ads on cable.

    That alone is baffling too, because cable was originally pitched as a premium, subscription based TV option that didn't require ads. No idea how long that lasted, but I don't think it was a while.

    7 votes

  9. Comment on LG smart TVs caught logging audio with screen off and snooping on local devices in ~tech

    papasquat
    Link Parent
    You do, I do, maybe even most people on this site do, but that's not a representative sample. The general populace at large doesn't care that much about this stuff. If they did, any company that...

    I mean I do, but what can you realistically do these days?

    You do, I do, maybe even most people on this site do, but that's not a representative sample. The general populace at large doesn't care that much about this stuff. If they did, any company that was found to be violating people's privacy would very quickly go out of business, just like a TV manufacturer that doesn't make TVs bigger than 30", or refuses to... I don't know, put HDMI ports on their TVs would.

    I do think that regulation is needed in situations like this where the free market isn't responding to harmful business models, but the reason the free market isn't responding to it is thet most people really just don't care that much. At least not compared to size, price, image quality and so on.

    3 votes

  10. Comment on What are your current pain points with Linux? in ~tech

    papasquat
    Link Parent
    You can absolutely do that. I ran KDE with i3 as the wm for years, and it was great. I had helpful utilities for connecting to wifi, suspending, dimming the screen and so on, while using the...

    My ideal would be something like i3/sway with just a few key bells and whistles from a larger DE.

    You can absolutely do that. I ran KDE with i3 as the wm for years, and it was great. I had helpful utilities for connecting to wifi, suspending, dimming the screen and so on, while using the window manager I wanted.

    The people that endlessly scream about bloat aren't worth listening to, they're not living in the same world as normal people.

  11. Comment on What are your current pain points with Linux? in ~tech

    papasquat
    Link Parent
    Mobile OSes had a huge advantage in that they were a greenfield implementation during a time that security started being taken seriously in OS design, and they've had the luxury of being...

    Mobile OSes had a huge advantage in that they were a greenfield implementation during a time that security started being taken seriously in OS design, and they've had the luxury of being controlled by a single entity that also controls the major distribution of software on it.

    Microsoft wishes they had the level of control that apple and Google have over their OSes. It vastly simplifies things when you can say "hey, were making this change to our sandboxing/permissions structure/whatever, fix your apps in 3 months, or we'll yank it off the app store".

    Linux, and even windows will never have that level of control, which makes doing "proper" security much, much more difficult.

    3 votes

  12. Comment on LG smart TVs caught logging audio with screen off and snooping on local devices in ~tech

    papasquat
    Link Parent
    Pretty horrible practice from both the provider and the consumer's POV. As a consumer, you get to have random people siphoning the bandwidth you're paying for, and the risk of misconfigured ACLs...

    Pretty horrible practice from both the provider and the consumer's POV. As a consumer, you get to have random people siphoning the bandwidth you're paying for, and the risk of misconfigured ACLs on the device exposing your traffic.

    As a provider, you get to lose out on potential customers who don't feel the need to pay you anymore when they can use their neighbors wifi through the wall for free.

    No clue why a default open SSID would be desirable for anyone. (Except people who want to mooch off their neighbors wifi I guess)

    5 votes

  13. Comment on LG smart TVs caught logging audio with screen off and snooping on local devices in ~tech

    papasquat
    Link Parent
    Yeah. If the data is valuable enough to them, that would absolutely be within the realm of possibility. I've also heard of manufacturers embedding LTE radios in devices for communication like...

    Given the initial topic I wouldn't be surprised if LG was considering a deal with Comcast just for that kind of thing at this point.

    Yeah. If the data is valuable enough to them, that would absolutely be within the realm of possibility. I've also heard of manufacturers embedding LTE radios in devices for communication like this, but I have to imagine that an individuals data isn't valuable enough for that to make sense at scale for a TV.

    Plus, they can count on 90% of people just connecting the thing to their wifi anyway, so all of these games are probably unnecessary for their bottom line.

    5 votes

  14. Comment on Farmers turn to perennial grains as one solution to extreme weather in ~enviro

    papasquat
    Link Parent
    Yeah. One of the problems with living in a democracy unfortunately. People do not generally vote for bitter pills that improve their lives in the future. They mostly vote like children, for things...

    Yeah. One of the problems with living in a democracy unfortunately. People do not generally vote for bitter pills that improve their lives in the future. They mostly vote like children, for things that they see benefiting them right now.

    Its the root cause of why so many long term issues get kicked down the road forever.

    3 votes

  15. Comment on LG smart TVs caught logging audio with screen off and snooping on local devices in ~tech

    papasquat
    Link Parent
    I see networks without WPA2/WPA3 a lot, but those are almost always locked down with captive portal authentication. Xfinitywifi definitely is, as part of comcasts "Xfinitynow" service (which as a...

    I see networks without WPA2/WPA3 a lot, but those are almost always locked down with captive portal authentication.

    Xfinitywifi definitely is, as part of comcasts "Xfinitynow" service (which as a sidenote, is also fucked as a business model). LG TVs wouldn't have access to those without paying Comcast.

    Its possible that someone is either running a 25 year old router, or manually removed the password on their AP, but basically any consumer wifi router of the past few decades has WPA2 authentication out of the box, and most of them have randomized passwords.

    Its of course entirely possible to find open public wifi, but personally I've just never encountered it in the past 10 years or so.

    8 votes

  16. Comment on LG smart TVs caught logging audio with screen off and snooping on local devices in ~tech

    papasquat
    Link Parent
    Yeah, but would lots of other people? That's always been the issue with privacy concerns. I hate tracking, I hate ads, and I hate being spied on. I'm willing to pay an extra $1000 for a TV that...

    Regardless, personally I would rather pay the cost upfront rather then be nickel and dimed and a/b tested and exploited and influenced for decades.

    Yeah, but would lots of other people? That's always been the issue with privacy concerns. I hate tracking, I hate ads, and I hate being spied on. I'm willing to pay an extra $1000 for a TV that doesn't do those things.

    Is the average consumer though? Probably not. They will mostly just buy whatever has the biggest screen at the cheapest price.

    Screen brightness, color reproduction, and contrast are all things that move the needle at the high end, but probably still isn't, even in the market that high end LG TVs compete in.

    Its just something that, bafflingly to me, most people don't care about.

    20 votes

  17. Comment on LG smart TVs caught logging audio with screen off and snooping on local devices in ~tech

    papasquat
    Link Parent
    I use a Google TV streamer. There are probably other, better (cheaper) options for android set top boxes, I've heard the Walmart brand one is actually quite good. To me, android is where its at...

    I use a Google TV streamer. There are probably other, better (cheaper) options for android set top boxes, I've heard the Walmart brand one is actually quite good.

    To me, android is where its at for streaming boxes.

    It strikes the right balance between a good 10 foot user interface and lack of fucking around with it, that a lot of open source HTPC projects don't, and openness allowing me to stream content from wherever I want, including legally grey areas, that solutions like the apple tv and Roku don't.

    My wife is pretty smart and techie, and could figure out an HTPC, with a little pain, but it wouldn't be very pleasant. My parents and friends that come over absolutely could not though, and I don't want to give everyone that comes to my house and uses my TV a 20 minute course on how to fuck around and put a YouTube video on.

    If Google ever truly gets rid of sideloading on android, I'll be once again searching for something acceptable, but for now, Android TV is where its at for me.

    7 votes

  18. Comment on LG smart TVs caught logging audio with screen off and snooping on local devices in ~tech

    papasquat
    Link Parent
    I don't know about you, but I haven't seen an open SSID in years. I've heard this concern before, but realistically, where are people still running unauthenticated wifi networks?

    I don't know about you, but I haven't seen an open SSID in years. I've heard this concern before, but realistically, where are people still running unauthenticated wifi networks?

    11 votes

  19. Comment on Farmers turn to perennial grains as one solution to extreme weather in ~enviro

    papasquat
    Link Parent
    How do you do that though? I guess you could tarrif the hell out of out of season foods, but it doesn't seem like a political strategy that's likely to gain many votes. The practical platform...

    How do you do that though? I guess you could tarrif the hell out of out of season foods, but it doesn't seem like a political strategy that's likely to gain many votes. The practical platform you'd be running on would be something like "vote for me, I'll make bananas more expensive". It doesn't seem like something with a lot of political support behind it.

  20. Comment on Farmers turn to perennial grains as one solution to extreme weather in ~enviro

    papasquat
    Link Parent
    Doesn't traditional wheat get completely ripped up during the harvesting process? If these are perennials, and the goal is to presumably not do that, do you need a more specialized kind of combine...

    Doesn't traditional wheat get completely ripped up during the harvesting process? If these are perennials, and the goal is to presumably not do that, do you need a more specialized kind of combine to harvest them so that they aren't destroyed?