zestier's recent activity
-
Comment on Exposing the Honey influencer scam in ~tech
-
Comment on Windows 11 is closing a loophole that let you skip making a Microsoft account in ~tech
zestier (edited )Link ParentFair. I largely think that at rest encryption is overkill for most home usage, especially with much of Windows's target audience, but having at rest encryption itself isn't the real problem. I...Fair. I largely think that at rest encryption is overkill for most home usage, especially with much of Windows's target audience, but having at rest encryption itself isn't the real problem. I think their audience contains a huge segment of people that don't know it's on, don't know what it means, don't understand the implications of it, and as a result are set up to get bitten by the way they did it. This is also partly a result of that Windows kind of brands itself as keeping a high level of consistency and this change breaks the little of what this set of people know about their computers.
So it would've been more fair for me to say I think it's a bad default for their brand than a bad default in general.
-
Comment on Windows 11 is closing a loophole that let you skip making a Microsoft account in ~tech
zestier (edited )Link ParentI was trying to call out that the statement that this improves security just seems like a blatant lie, not advocate that people should be building air gapped systems. Obviously you should be...I was trying to call out that the statement that this improves security just seems like a blatant lie, not advocate that people should be building air gapped systems. Obviously you should be patched if connected to the Internet, but that's not really related to their claims unless they are performing patching differently for non-linked installs. Linking an account and being forced onto the Internet should be neutral to security posture, but taking away the option of doing an air gapped install seems like strictly a negative in terms of security.
Now, if this were about a completely different feature I could buy it. For example, if they announced that the network stack was being set up such that the first connection it would always make is to their signed security patch servers and would disallow all other traffic until security updates were complete I'd have a completely different reaction. I'd still maybe have some opinions about the impacts of that, but it at least wouldn't seem like a lie on its face to claim it is to improve security.
I'll also add in that this policy seems like it would be a bit of a death sentence to any "now" software. What do retro tech people do if you want to run some random thing that only runs properly on a real Windows 98 system? Air gap it. What is the future, way after Windows 11 end of support, going to do if they want to run something that only runs on Windows 11? Hope the emulator is stable enough?
-
Comment on Windows 11 is closing a loophole that let you skip making a Microsoft account in ~tech
zestier (edited )Link ParentI'd personally argue that if that's their reason its entirely Microsoft's fault for a dumb set of defaults. They created the problem and are now trying to force you to use their cloud service to...I'd personally argue that if that's their reason its entirely Microsoft's fault for a dumb set of defaults. They created the problem and are now trying to force you to use their cloud service to "fix" it. There's a reason additional encryption layers are normally opt-in rather than opt-out: people lose the keys.
The reason I put "fix" in quotes earlier is that creating an account doesn't even solve the problem. It just gives a second set of key that provides backup access to the first, which lessens the risk I suppose. But, the average user still doesn't know there's a key at all and so would be unconcerned with retaining access to it. I'd wager the average person doesn't use their MS account for literally anything except logging into Windows, which they may be using a password bypass, such as a local pin, for.
And why doesn't the average person know about the keys? Because they never asked for or wanted them. The average person thinks that if you bring a dead computer or old hard drive to tech support they'll extract their data for them.
-
Comment on Don't trust Firefox to backup your session in ~tech
zestier (edited )Link ParentI don't close individual tabs almost ever. To me they're a waste byproduct of browsing that doesn't deserve to be curated individually. Periodically I just notice that I've reached a stable state...I don't close individual tabs almost ever. To me they're a waste byproduct of browsing that doesn't deserve to be curated individually. Periodically I just notice that I've reached a stable state where I'm not using my tabs actively anymore and I just nuke everything back to a fresh state. If I'm feeling fancy I'll maybe pull like 2 or 3 to the side and use the button that closes all in a direction from a point. I find it's easier to just type what I'm looking for than to try keep stuff visually organized, and conveniently there's a bar right there that searches both my open tabs and the Internet.
Because of this behavior I don't truly understand the desire to keep a browsing session or the need to organize tabs into groups. I don't even use desktop shortcuts or anything of that nature. If I want to run a program I just press the super key and then start typing in it's name or keywords (ex. term opens a terminal, sheet opens a spreadsheet program, etc.)
-
Comment on Windows 11 is closing a loophole that let you skip making a Microsoft account in ~tech
zestier (edited )LinkMaybe I'm crazy, but I feel that claiming that forcing Internet connectivity immediately improves security is just outright false. An offline machine is secure in ways not possible for an online...Maybe I'm crazy, but I feel that claiming that forcing Internet connectivity immediately improves security is just outright false. An offline machine is secure in ways not possible for an online machine. It was a little before I was messing with computers, but wasn't it standard practice in the early days of XP to bring in updates and security tools offline prior to connecting to the Internet specifically because immediately hooking to the Internet can be a bad idea?
-
Comment on Stremio is an impressive program in ~tech
zestier (edited )Link ParentI'm curious about the truth of the stated "no legal risk". What exactly is protecting you, especially if you know you're pirating? Obviously other than being in a jurisdiction that just doesn't...I'm curious about the truth of the stated "no legal risk". What exactly is protecting you, especially if you know you're pirating? Obviously other than being in a jurisdiction that just doesn't care, like OP is. The addition of add-ons like Torrentio and being blocked by payment processors seems like it makes it even more obvious that it is being used to intentionally violate copyright.
What I suppose I'm really asking is if there's no risk, or if the risk is there but just lessened due both not keeping a local copy of the files and hiding away what you're streaming from your ISP? The pattern you described doesn't sound like it would actually be legal, maybe just convoluted enough to get away with? Maybe each individual company isn't breaking the law, but presumably the end user is when they combine them?
-
Comment on What keeps you up at night? in ~talk
zestier (edited )Link ParentYep, and it is certainly part of why I have some of the other open issues. For example, If everything is just going to work out why even look for a job? If I just do the bare minimum of responding...Yep, and it is certainly part of why I have some of the other open issues. For example, If everything is just going to work out why even look for a job? If I just do the bare minimum of responding to recruiters that ping me on LinkedIn something will fall into my lap anyway. I haven't even updated its details in years or reached out to anyone and still already have a phone screen scheduled. As you said, pretty much the embodiment of privilege, so much in fact that it's hard to separate me from it and it's easier to not bother.
Laying in bed last night I was thinking about some of this stuff again. What would give me the courage to take risks outside my comfort zone rather than waiting for life to come to me? The thought, "if an administration as deeply unqualified as the one that just came to power can do it, why can't I?" was oddly comforting. They're doing a horrible job, but people are still letting them. If being qualified isn't actually a prerequisite then maybe I too should be taking more risks.
-
Comment on Rust | Official trailer in ~movies
zestier (edited )Link ParentI'm going to preface this with that I was never going to see the movie anyway as I'm personally not a fan of his acting. I say this just to clarify that the following is not from the perspective...I'm going to preface this with that I was never going to see the movie anyway as I'm personally not a fan of his acting. I say this just to clarify that the following is not from the perspective of a defensive fan.
The media coverage surrounding that case was, in my opinion, a complete circus. They wanted to attach as much blame as possible to the biggest name possible because that drives engagement. It was easy for them in this case both because he was holding the gun and was attached as a producer. My suspicion is that if he wasn't famous the story would've rapidly blown over as a tragic accident, but one that is quite rare in the industry.
I'll first address the holding the gun bit. In general, actors do not mess with the guns. They specifically do not tamper with them and leave safety precautions to the on-site expert. Generally, this is how it should be on a properly operating set. Actors opening things and trying to apply personal knowledge is not typically advisable and can reduce safety due to the state no longer necessarily matching with the expert's judged state (imagine a case like a revolver loaded in a particular order being unexpectedly changed by the actor). So, when one is handed a gun they're told is safe they trust that it is. This causes the standard rules of firearm safety, such as to never point it at anyone, to overridden by "except under the direction of an expert" so the acting can actually occur. This applies to a lot of stuff on film sets relating to stunts or action scenes.
Onto the producer bit: people way overstate what this means. Actors take producing credits to get more creative control or as part of a desired career expansion. While this will often lead to influence over on-screen casting choices, hiring and management decisions for technical staff are not something an actor producer would normally get involved in. Maybe if they had a bad interaction personally they'd make a stink about someone on crew they don't like, but generally that stuff will fall to more technical producers or even just department heads.
Ultimately this was the fault of a bad armorer that seemingly skated into the role, and held it through previous issues, via nepotism. Her father is, or at least was, a famous figure in the world of Hollywood armory. A single act of negligence should have been enough to have the armorer replaced. Rightfully, the armorer was jailed for the death caused by her negligence. And, if I remember this bit of the case correctly, her father should be absolutely ashamed of his behavior over the course of the trial and blacklisted from the industry over his defense of her negligence.
Whoever her actual supervisor was got pretty lucky from a media perspective. It almost certainly wasn't Alec Baldwin, but someone was her direct supervisor and that person presumably had received reports of her previous issues but didn't oust her. If media wasn't so determined to go after Baldwin in particular it may have been a big problematic story for that person.
-
Comment on Tildes Minecraft Survival in ~games
zestier (edited )Link ParentI had a couple minutes and moved like 30 shulkers into community storage. I'd guess that isn't going to run out any time soon.I had a couple minutes and moved like 30 shulkers into community storage. I'd guess that isn't going to run out any time soon.
-
Comment on Tildes Minecraft Survival in ~games
zestier Link ParentSadly life is currently busy elsewhere so I haven't yet put interfaces on any of it, but there's a bone block farm at my base that is both reload safe and technically doesn't need to be AFKed (it...Sadly life is currently busy elsewhere so I haven't yet put interfaces on any of it, but there's a bone block farm at my base that is both reload safe and technically doesn't need to be AFKed (it self loads when low). I think there's probably somewhere around 50 shulkers of bone blocks hanging out there.
The bone blocks in particular are just down a random shaft next to the closest of my farms to the Titanic. The general rule to not break anything is pretty simple: only take from chests that are hopper outputs, or just plop shulkers onto the hoppers that face into air. So if you need any more for whatever reason feel free.
It would probably be a good idea for me to just shove an inventory worth of bone block shulkers into community storage at some point. Someone else is welcome to do it if they want as I'm obviously not online much right now. Just look for the chest that only has shulkers of bone blocks and take however many. That chest isn't connected to anything. It's next to the bonemeal filter, but I was just manually putting full shulkers in there.
-
Comment on What keeps you up at night? in ~talk
zestier LinkIn a literal sense, a baby that sometimes isn't sleeping when the rest of us want to. In a metaphorical sense, vaguely the future. Will we need to leave the country to better my daughter's life?...In a literal sense, a baby that sometimes isn't sleeping when the rest of us want to.
In a metaphorical sense, vaguely the future. Will we need to leave the country to better my daughter's life? Am I going to look for another job any time soon? Will I ever build up the courage to risk starting something of my own?
On the whole, things just work themselves out for and around me. Upon seeing the recent thread about what your past self would think of current you I was also thinking about what I would say back and it is probably, "Stop caring. Everything will just work out for you anyway." I don't like this part of myself. I don't like that the best advice I'd have for past me is just to not care. I don't like the feeling that I lack agency in my own life, but I also know it's entirely because I'm not doing the work of seeking it.
-
Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp
zestier (edited )LinkI've been working on a project to use SDL GPU to render a many-entity simulation, like simulating a million worker ant colony. I started the project because the idea of making the simulation...I've been working on a project to use SDL GPU to render a many-entity simulation, like simulating a million worker ant colony. I started the project because the idea of making the simulation itself sounded fun, but I've ended up down a tangential rabbit hole of playing with the graphics stuff. Trying out different shader languages and compilers, trying different approaches to multi threading, hooking shader complication into my CMake build process, and so on. I'm having a surprising amount of fun diving into the weeds of SDL's Vulkan implementation. This has been a problem for making progress because I'm too distracted by using the project as a bit of a Slang/Vulkan/SDL playground.
Edit: I should've originally added what my favorite multi-threading synchronization structure has been for multi-threading GPU commands from the CPU. This favorite structure has basically been just no synchronization at all. Instead, I'm embedding all the data into a fixed set of GPU buffers, and drawing whatever their latest state is at any given time. So I can do things like change the number of entities being rendered without synchronizing the main rendering thread and the main simulation thread because the simulation thread embeds all that data into the buffer it is writing to. The main rendering thread just makes an identical indirect draw call every frame without needing to know what's in the buffer.
-
Comment on What have you been watching / reading this week? (Anime/Manga) in ~anime
zestier (edited )LinkI had fun last week writing a review of just some random anime I happened to be watching, so I think I'll do that again. Today will be https://myanimelist.net/anime/58502/Zenshuu. Spoiler Warning...I had fun last week writing a review of just some random anime I happened to be watching, so I think I'll do that again. Today will be https://myanimelist.net/anime/58502/Zenshuu.
Spoiler Warning
Before starting it I skimmed the description and saw pieces of some trailers. What I thought it was going to be about was an artist struggling with a mental block by retreating into media. For example, since she was having issues with writing a love story I thought the plot would largely revolve around her consuming love story media and, from the perspective of the audience, self inserting almost like an isekai (except we'd know it's in her head and she's actually sitting watching a movie or whatever). In those "retreats" she'd overcome whatever personal growth gap she was dealing with.
I was kind of right, but in a way that was less fulfilling than I was picturing. I was right in that the story does involve the main character, who is struggling to represent love in her own work, that is taken to another world that is a different piece of media. She is in that world the entirety of every episode except the first and last, and during most of that time it is made unclear if she is fully isekaied or may eventually return to reality.
I have to give the show big credit for it's visuals. It is very well animated. Character designs are good and all that. But, the show is pretty terribly paced and would've made a better movie than a show.
Most of the episodes take place in a fantasy world under attack by an alien race referred to as Voids. Many of the episodes can largely be summarized as "Voids attack and then Natsuko, the main character, uses her powers to save everyone" with a sprinkle of "I've seen this movie before so I know what's going to happen" thrown in. That cycle gets old fast. Her power is that what she draws comes to life and this more-or-less means she'll just draw the counter to whatever the Voids are doing, at worst she sometimes doesn't know what to draw for a moment.
Eventually Luke, the main character of the movie she's in, falls in love with her and from there on its a combination of Void attacks and him trying to get her to like him back. I'm not going to go too much into the finale, but it should be rather obvious at this point that the conclusion of her journey is confessing her love for him. When she finally does the world fades away and she returns to reality with a new found understanding of love and goes on to direct a hit love story movie.
Looping back to that I think it would've been a better movie: the cycle where they're just fighting Voids is like half the season and adds very little. It makes it feel like it's just a standard magic isekai monster fighting anime, causing it to completely lose the tone of a story about someone learning about love for most of it's runtime. I wish it had been tightened up into either a movie or to have been broken up differently. 12 episodes is a long time for the payoff "main character confesses her love to the hero of her favorite movie since childhood."
-
Comment on Are you tech-savvy enough? in ~tech
zestier (edited )Link ParentWe just have very different preferences. The one I was actually looking at when I was calling it cluttered was the Windows one. I'm both glad that there's no longer a bunch of space to reminding...We just have very different preferences. The one I was actually looking at when I was calling it cluttered was the Windows one. I'm both glad that there's no longer a bunch of space to reminding me of the name of the application and I'm glad to not have File, Edit, View, etc. as I click them so rarely that they don't deserve to be a constant presence.
Admittedly the OSX one looks almost okay, but that's just because they hoisted half of the same junk into a different persistent location that happens to be outside the screenshot.
OSX has 4 vertical sections, plus one outside the screenshot for a total of 5. They could easily get rid of bookmarks to bring it down to 4, but I only really use 2 (tabs and URL/search). I'm not using a Mac these days, but was up until a few months ago, and I honestly cannot remember a single time I ever used the out-of-screenshot menu items with Firefox. Maybe once in Safari to enable F12 since they don't let the dev tools be turned on by default?
Windows has basically the same 5, which again could be easily reduced to 4, but I again only want 2 of them.So I guess I'm saying that I'm glad they changed it because I don't think that keeping with standard patterns is necessarily a great reason to leave a worse design. I think that getting rid of the title in the title bar and using it for just about anything else is a strict improvement over wasting space on text I don't need. If the standard had been to put the menu bar in the title area (ie. icon, menu bar, padding until right side, minimize, maximize, close) my guess is that browsers would've settled on 3, but the standard was bad. Every application eating up a bunch of vertical space with a title and then a menu of rarely-used options was just, at least in my opinion, a bad standard.
Additional note on the dragging since I didn't respond to that originally: I bound super key + drag to drag whatever window its over without interacting with the Window itself. I didn't actually do this for applications like VsCode (I was trying just now and found it difficult to produce a size that was problematic, but some definitely exist unless you're willing to use the icon itself as a persistently available location), but instead because it also lets me move stuff that never would've had a title bar in the first place. For example, I can get back windows that I somehow pushed too high (title bar above screen) and a game running in borderless full screen can now be dragged between monitors. For this reason I wish something more like this had been the initial standard rather than depending on titles that may or may not be present.
-
Comment on Are you tech-savvy enough? in ~tech
zestier (edited )Link ParentI'm actually glad the 3.5 design is dead. There's so much space going to the browser container rather than the content. The 3.5 screenshot feels like its just absolutely full of clutter that is...I'm actually glad the 3.5 design is dead. There's so much space going to the browser container rather than the content. The 3.5 screenshot feels like its just absolutely full of clutter that is eating up screen real estate that could be used for something I actually care about. I almost never need to interact with the container beyond editing the URL, tab interactions (open, change, close), and closing the whole window.
Editing in an extra hot take: I despise the persistent bar on Mac. Hate hate hate. Often I have to click an application window just to get that bar to change to the application I want to access the toolbar for even though I have floating windows for both already. This makes workflows that involve multiple applications pretty miserable for me. In other OSes without that irritating bar I can directly click the button I want because it doesn't disappear just because I changed window focus. And concrete-ish example, imagine you're reading a guide in your web browser and you need to click certain menu buttons in QuickTime or something and every time you switch back to read the guide the buttons are now gone!
-
Comment on “I don’t see how we can save it.” in ~life
zestier LinkI'm also on track to lose a tree to a septic system. A large old tree that I really liked when buying my home. At least I don't have to needlessly kill it though. Mine, at according to an...I'm also on track to lose a tree to a septic system. A large old tree that I really liked when buying my home. At least I don't have to needlessly kill it though. Mine, at according to an arborist, has already started the process of dying. There's nothing to do but wait, periodically get dead limbs removed, and ultimately watch it perish.
My story is not nearly as frustrating as yours though. I believe it's fate was sealed before we bought the house. Some of it roots were cut back when the septic system was replaced prior to sale. An amount of cutting back that I now believe was just too much for it to survive.
-
Comment on Why I recommend against Brave in ~tech
zestier (edited )Link ParentMy tinfoil hat theory is that someone at Mozilla realized that because there's no money in the engine portion of a browser it is a poor investment to actively feed their competition. What I mean...My tinfoil hat theory is that someone at Mozilla realized that because there's no money in the engine portion of a browser it is a poor investment to actively feed their competition. What I mean by this is that Mozilla wants to draw funding from Firefox installs, not Gecko or Servo embeds, and that empowering competitors to provide yet more options that aren't Firefox is shooting themselves in the foot when they're so desperate to validate their existence.
-
Comment on Why I recommend against Brave in ~tech
zestier (edited )Link ParentI put a little bit of the blame for Blink + V8 being virtually the only technologies any new browsers use on Mozilla. Gecko is just not designed to be decoupled from Firefox and embedded into...I put a little bit of the blame for Blink + V8 being virtually the only technologies any new browsers use on Mozilla. Gecko is just not designed to be decoupled from Firefox and embedded into other applications the way that Blink is. If you've ever wondered why it seems like all the projects that use Gecko are more like forks of Firefox than an fresh application that just depends on some of it's core components, that's probably because they are.
We need a proper competitor to Blink, but Gecko just doesn't provide it. So this leaves the reasonable-ish options for building a browser as: build your own thing from scratch and probably never ship due to the size of the web standards, fork Firefox and hope to not be sunk by fighting against decisions that are different from how you want your browser to work, or make your own application and just embed Blink.
-
Comment on Are you tech-savvy enough? in ~tech
zestier Link ParentThe wiki was written by cowards. Real talk though: the Arch wiki is one of the best wikis I've ever used. The maintainers of it do legitimately great work.The wiki was written by cowards.
Real talk though: the Arch wiki is one of the best wikis I've ever used. The maintainers of it do legitimately great work.
The only part I really believed was that the video likely lied, at least to some extent, about the statement that the extension intentionally presents bad codes. This is largely because of the code censoring in the video. Like if the argument is that this better code is the one that should've been presented then obviously it should be fine to present said code in the video, but it wasn't which suggests it may have been a user-specific or one-time code or something.
Something that stood out to me when I was first reading through the AMA was the prevalence of the word "should", especially in answers like https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1jlfms8/comment/mk3lrhr. What it "should" do and what it "does" do very well may be different things and are kind of the core of the controversy.