HiPhish

In Germany I have a monthly plan. I got a physical card with an NFC chip inside it. No app shenanigans. I can pause and renew my plan from home: log into the Bahn website, go to my account settings and adjust things there.

The real issue is not smartphones, iOS and Android or apps. The issue is that independent technical standards are intentionally ignored. There is no reason that I should not be able to set my plan through curl and hand-draw the QR code with pen and paper. Sure, I would not want to actually do it like that, that's not the point. The point is: if I can use curl and pen & paper, then I can use whatever else I want. If I want to use a smartphone I should be able to code my own app according to a well-documented public API. Those APIs already do exist, otherwise the official app would not work, so it's no extra work for the service provider.

We need a law that mandates open specifications for access to all publicly available services.

It's not about veto power, it's about consulting technical experts to evaluate whether the legal proposal even makes sense. The EU Cyber Resilience Act is a good example: experts stepped in and made sure that the term "supplier" was accurately defined so some random Joe Shmoe could not be held liable for bugs in some piece of code he threw over the wall on GitHub. The law still got passed, but after being refined.

> It's lawfare against Constitutionally-protected speech.

Obscenity is not protected as Free Speech.

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/413/15/

> Utah's VPN law demands a technical impossibility

How does legislation work in the US? How can an impossible law pass? Is it just some boomer stomping his feet like a toddler "I know what I want, and I want it now" without consulting any technical experts, and then private organizations like the EFF and courts have to clean up the mess?

> I'd say enshitification is a good enough word.

Enshittification is when the perpetrator intentionally does make a product worse, like locking previously free features behind a paywall with a firmware update, or covers components of an electric device with some goop to make it unrepairable.

Verschlimmbesserung is when the perpetrator has good but ultimately misguided intentions. For example, so middle manager might think that replacing but buttons on a vacuum cleaner with app integration adds value, but ultimately it's replacing something simple, boring and reliable with an overengineered solution that causes more problems than it solves.

There is some overlap between the two: someone could make make a Verschlimmbesserung even though he knows no one wants the change, but he can pad his resume with it. In general I'd say enshittification leans more towards malice, while Verschlimmbesserung leans more towards incompetence.

> Verschlimmbesserung is not widely used these days in Germany.

Yes, it is.

> The reality for most people - even expert programmers - has been that the freedom is more about being able to lean on other people to do that. Most people can't justify the time commitment needed to read and then modify the code for tools they use very often.

So it's like everything else in life. I am not a plumber, but I very much do want to be free to do my own plumbing if I want to. Not because I do want to, but because it means that I do get to choose whom I let do my plumbing.

> kid

The man is 24 years old.

Isn't Wero just another proprietary app that requires a Google or Apple smartphone? Can I use it from my web browser like I can with PayPal?

> I guess that most companies just chuck it up there as a default so they dont have to read the law, or maybe they are all actually harvesting and selling personal data and therefore require cookies?

That has been my guess as well. If you run npm install half-the-internet you have no idea what's in there, so just slap on that cookie banner for good measure. Of course the real problem is not knowing what's inside your application, but the thought process is "eh, if a blanket cookie banner does the job then that's good enough for me".

All living being want to literally eat you in one way or another. You can respect the earth, but first you have to subdue it and have dominion, otherwise it will kill you.

> I have to ask…why do people want a Turing complete language to configure stuff?

What's the alternative? Petition the maintainer to add every little feature any random user might want? Or just do it yourself in a few lines of code?

Case in point, when I was still using BSPWM I did no like how if there was only one window on the desktop it would still get an outline. So I wrote 14 lines of Awk (BSPWM lets you use any language) to get what I want. This was only possible because BSPWM gives me all the primitive building blocks and lets me go wild with them. Sure, if all you want to do is set a few colors and numbers that's overkill, but any power user will sooner or later find himself thinking "oh, if only I could do X when Y unless Z".

> Python setup.py -> pyproject.toml?

That's because setup.py was objectively a mistake. In order to know how to run the package you need to know its dependencies, which requires evaluating setup.py, but you cannot evaluate setup.py until you know the dependencies, which requires you to evaluate setup.py, and so on. The pyproject.toml is plain text where you specify the build backend and its options, and the build system can be as complex of a program as need by.

If anything, pyproject.toml is an example of taking the idea of programmable configuration to its next conclusion. The build system is part of the configuration and it's more than a simple script, it's an entire application. You just plug in its name into the universal entry point pyproject.toml.

> But it’s not the biblical story. At Babel, the loss of common language stops construction whereas in AI-assisted engineering, construction can continue after shared understanding has already collapsed. The lack of an immediate failure is what makes it curious and a bit disorienting. The tower does not fall, and so we do not notice what was lost. It just keeps rising.

I don't know whether the author thinks this is a good or a bad thing, but in my eyes it's clearly a bad thing. Intelligence is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad. AI is the the ultimate form of intelligence with zero wisdom. Actually, it's not even intelligence, it's an illusion of intelligence. If there is no human who can understand what the AI is doing it's time to stop and accept that we do not have the wisdom to contain what we are building.

Chesterton's Fence, even if there is actual inefficiency there might be a reason for that. It might not be a good reason mind you, but even a bad reason is still a reason. You cannot cut inefficiency without understanding the reason first. It would take multiple years of research to understand and uncover all the inefficiency that has built up over the years. Otherwise you just end up throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

> LLMs will listen to you and follow your instructions and restrictions most of the time, which seems to be enough for people to believe that they will every time.

It's called automation bias. If something works 90% of the time the human mind will extrapolate that to be 100%. That's just how humans work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automation_bias

Unfortunately ownership on console has been down the drain for a long time. Even if you have the disc you still have mandatory downloads, patches, one-time download codes that tie the content to your account and of course DLC. What is even the point of having the disc anymore? Might as well go full digital and avoid the plastic waste.

I do own a PS4 and I have to do research every time I want to play a game. The website https://www.doesitplay.org/ is quite useful. But it's all so tiresome, it really makes me want to just check out of console gaming altogether. With full-on digital at least there won't be any ambiguity. It's not what I wanted, but all it means for me is that they won't be getting any of my money anymore.

What pisses me off about all this is that the there is the underlying assumption that the working class is with the lazy working class. No, the problem is efficiency and incompetence at the top levels, not at the bottom. Running faster in the wrong direction won't get us any closes to the goal.

Let me make a proposal and you tell me what you think of it. I'd say the fundamental problem is career culture, the idea that mobility is valued over reliability. What I mean by that the culture of collecting good-boy points by starting projects, building PowerPoint slides and giving the appearance of getting work done, all in order to get a promotion and jump ship to the next higher position before your sloppiness catches up with you. Someone else is left holding the bag. If people had to actually own what they shit out in the long-term things would be much different. You either fall or rise with whatever projects you start. You might be able to bullshit your way through the corporate structures for a year or two, but ten years? No, if your project is to last for ten years you better put actual effort into it, not just the bare minimum to produce Potemkin slides.

Look at Stuttgart 21[1]. The reason it has been moved to 2031 (at the very least) is not because of the grunt worker being too slow. It is systemic failure at the top. Is it incompetence or malice? I don't know, you pick which option is worse. What I do know is that it cannot be the common worker on the ground who has to pay the price for it.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttgart_21

I had a migraine attack recently; I was able to call my doctor and have him write a sick note for a day over the phone and have it transmitted digitally to my employer. What the fuck would be the point of tormenting myself for half an hour on a noisy public bus in bright daylight in the middle of summer, the waiting in a bright room for half an hour, wait at the bus stop in bright daylight for up to an hour for the next bus back (since I don't know how long I will be at the doctor's office I cannot plan my trip back) and then torture myself for another half hour on the bus back?

It's not like the doctor can do anything but take my word for it when I'm in his office anyway. There is no migraine test you can run. So you might as well cut out all the bullshit and let me rest so I can recover better.

> I know it'll never happen with the people we have in government these days, and the anti-consumer organizations, like the ESA, that are out there now claiming things like running private servers for Minecraft is illegal and piracy. (Yes, they really said that. Despite the fact that Minecraft has always provided the server and allowed this for 15+ years)

I really do not understand how it is not considered treason to give blatantly false testimony to lawmakers. Lawmakers, even the most upstanding and righteous ones, have to rely on the testimony of experts and if those experts can just make up whatever they want then democracy is not worth shit when it can be circumvented like that.

> I've just added some new lessons before the first lesson to explain assembly syntax!

Thanks, I just read them and they are well-done.

> I wanted to match the colour theme of the GameCube

Ouch, now I feel like a real asshole; I was reminded off all those purple gradient slop websites. Yeah, your reasoning makes perfect sense. I completely forgot about Nintendo's weird purple phase (GBC, GBA and GC all had purple as their main brand color) because I had a silver GameCube.

I love how the images are an AI-generated fever dream. Normally I hate those things, but in this case it's a perfect match for the AI clown world.

Love the idea! Assembly has been on my forever-list to eventually learn. I have worked through the warmup exercises, but I doubt I'll have the time to continue much past that. A few points of note:

- Not a fan of the purple theme, it screams "AI-generated". It's not a deal breaker, you can keep it if you have more important concerns, but just something to point out

- It would be nice to have a "Chapter 0" for a primer on assembly syntax. Does not have to be interactive, a few toy examples I can work out on paper would be good enough

- Maybe I just haven't seen it, but it would be nice to have a reference of all the various instructions. Your lessens explain them well enough, but I would like to have a list of all of them at a glance so I can look up instructions from earlier chapters later.

For anyone wondering: the library uses the GPLv3 (good) while the Android keyboard uses the Futo License (shit).

- https://gitlab.futo.org/keyboard/swipe-library/-/blob/master...

- https://github.com/futo-org/android-keyboard/blob/master/LIC...

What's wrong with two-factor authentication? TOTP work without any network connection and only requires synchronized clocks to work. You could even do TOTP with pend and paper if you wanted (and were fast enough), no computer needed at all.

> My impression is that people who can work on stuff like that are the kind who just take the stuff in the world for granted. "This is how the world is, we need digital restrictions so now we need to implement them." "I don't have a say about whether DRM or remote attestation is standard business practice or not, it is just how it is."

I like to call those people "ventablackpilled". Being blackpilled is all about gloom and doom, but being ventablackpilled is beyond being blackpilled. It is when you actively want the world to be a worse place because you believe that that is how the world works.

I guess they think "someone is going to do it anyway, so it might as well be me so I can be the one who gets paid for it". But yeah, I'm sure there is also a good chunk of tech workers who are indeed useful idiots who think they are the last link in the chain.

The implementation might change, but the pattern of absolute control is old as time.

> I am now generating this website with Clojure

As everyone knows, you are not a true lisper until you have written your own static site generator.

It gave me such a great high with how easy it was to add my own "templating engine" on top, implemented all using macros. The downside is that the crash came hard; there is so much more to a good static site generator such as optimizing the output, supporting scoped CSS, server-side rendering of SPA framework components, and of course integration with the Node ecosystem (for better or for worse there is just so much useful stuff). I have since moved over to Astro. It's still fascinating how far I was able to push my own SSG all by myself though.

I really miss the ability to swap out KWin for a tiling window manager. I'm currently using Krohnkite and it's OK, much better than nothing, but after having used a real tiling window manager the difference is just too jarring. I physically need a desktop which is usable as much as possible both with the mouse and with the keyboard so I have to switch as rarely between the two as possible. Plasma on X11 with a tiling window manger was the perfect combo.

The solution would be either for Plasma to do something like River did [1] and separate compositing from window management, or for Plasma to make it possible to use Plasma widgets in other compositors. As it stands now I either have to make do with Krohnkite or go down the ricing rabbit hole with with River and Quickshell.

[1] https://isaacfreund.com/blog/river-window-management/