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blkhawk

1,043 karma · joined June 11, 2013

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blkhawk··on GPU World
As far as I understand the backstory of the jihad this rule was caused not by machine minds being bad but (some) humans are very shitty.
blkhawk··on Browser De-Slop
I concur with the misuse of the word "slop". But this is almost exactly how i setup my browser anyway and since I only do that on once i am nor sure how useful this is actually... maybe for setting up systems for others?
blkhawk··on Windows brings out the Rorschach test in everyone (2003)
I find it worrying because being super sensitive to stuff like that is usually red flag that the person is kinda into it - Senators in Bathroom stalls and all that (bonus if you get the reference).

But I think the person who directly contacted Microsoft about this was probably not the person who noticed it and brought it up on the Government side just the Person who was tasked with communicating about it so its good they remain nameless.

blkhawk··on Who Owns Commodore? The Retro PC Brand Still Exists, but a Lot Has Changed
this links to one of these stupid endlessly loading back-button injecting garbage sites. Is this slop?
blkhawk··on Annoying and alarming things about OpenCode
unless someone fixes the issues with LLMs at a fundamental level those will all have the same kinds of issues as is described with OpenCode and they will all be horrendous.
blkhawk··on SpaceX wants to launch 100k more Starlink satellites for 100x the bandwidth
They clearly don't want to threaten all the people directly for protection money. That limits what they are willing to do for the scheme. So they cut the cable at places where people are not. This is both efficient in employee time as well as in risk. Starlink antennas can be installed on roofs or in places that aren't easily visible.

Also you could install it in things that don't look like it since it only needs an mostly unobstructed view in a cone to the sky. For example I could se an installation in a fake rain barrel, old bathtub inside a stack of firewood. some cloth coverings also would work so it doesn't have to be open either.

The only way to find the actual installations would be survey flights that take pictures and compare the data. Then send out inspectors to see if changes on buildings hide starlink antennas.

I think the only effect will be that the scheme will go away. Alternatively they could just improve their service so it competes on performance and price with starlink.

blkhawk··on Nullsoft, 1997-2004 (2004)
nice advertiser friendly self censoring there :P
blkhawk··on Talkie: a 13B vintage language model from 1930
As far as Germany is concerned the Model seems to think its in pre WW1. I tried testing it a bit and it consistently describes the political situation pre 1910 - maybe even more like 1870ish?
blkhawk··on Honda is killing its EVs
there are yes, but it is still more efficient than an ICE engine. Not going to enumerate that here because that was a discussion to be had in 2010 and I am bloody tired of it.
blkhawk··on Was Windows 1.0's lack of overlapping windows a legal or a technical matter?
Actually it was very much a legal thing. For example i can point to GEM that had to have its windows glued down because of this. See GEM 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEM_(desktop_environment)#/med... vs GEM2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEM_(desktop_environment)#/med...

Apple sued Digital Research and later Microsoft when they enabled overlapping windows for windows 2.0.

Also lol a 286 with 256kb of ram - that is a very very weird combination you would never see in a desktop. Generally early IBM PC compatibles might have just 512KB of ram but around 1985 and later 640KB really became the norm even on 8088 and 8086 based systems. I am not counting stuff that really didn't get anywhere like the PCjr and that thing was much earlier in 1983.

286 based systems once they became more common started a 1mb RAM.

blkhawk··on I built Timeframe, our family e-paper dashboard
wow the markup on the larger E-ink displays is crazy and the price curve is well above the bare added area. looking at the smaller displays it seems to me like prices have even gone up especially for the 7.5" ones and that's surprising considering reTerminal and clones being about 75EUR-ish.

That said there are some displays for the adventurous with no clear ready made interface boards that would need some effort to connect to. Like the ES120MC1 12" high res ones for 50ish USD with some gnarly zif sockets.

blkhawk··on Deutsche Telekom is throttling the internet
Some of these contradictions are fractal - i.e. contradictions all the way down :) For example the independent Radio and TV isn't that independent actually but in practice is. Partially this is because of the insecurities of the times these institutions were setup in making people in power unsure about true independence - so they wanted a control mechanism. The end result is an institution that is deeply coupled into the government but that has at the same time to pretend to be independent to such a degree most people inside it just act that way and its output is sorta neutral except in very slight tonal shift ways and in some individual cases. instances that are very German-culturally local? This is very hard to explain correctly but easy to just explain it wrongly - Let me do that now and translate it to American.

Imagine an institution being dependent and biased in exactly the opposite way that fox news is independent and balanced. Imagine a government-independent institution where you join a controlling organ and after sworn in you are invited to 2 after-meetings at the same time. One invitation comes in a red letter the other in a blue letter. Yet everybody has to be independent because that is what it is supposed to be. Germans can be very very stubborn about that.

this is sorta incomplete and wrong but I think gets you the taste for the setup? If not complain in the replies :)

blkhawk··on Windows 8 Desktop Environment for Linux
I would never used the phrase "good intentions" in combination with Windows 8.1.

Say you had a mechanic you brought your car to for an inspection and they would set it on fire in the parking lot because of "evil ghosts" since they heard a squeak that sounded like evil ghosts speaking. Calling what they did "good intentions just poorly executed" isn't really fitting is it?

Microsoft got hit by a case of delusion on a corporate level where seemingly good arguments combine to create the completely wrong conclusions.

blkhawk··on IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data centers will pay off
I am just saying that he is a bad example because he is a different beast from the run of the mill corporate potemkin-ism.
blkhawk··on IBM CEO says there is 'no way' spending on AI data centers will pay off
I don't want to defend musk in any way but I think you are making a mistake there using him as an example because what boosted him quite a lot is that he actually delivered what he claimed. Always late but still earlier than anybody was guesstimating. And now he is completely spiraling but its a lot harder to lose a billion than to gain one so he persists and even gets richer. Plus his "fanatical" followers are poor. It just doesn't match the situation.
blkhawk··on AGI is not possible even in 10 years
because people hedge their bets almost always. basically how likely something is vs costs vs what everybody else is doing vs how you are personally affected.

So in case of the current AI there are several scenarios where you have to react to it. For example as a CEO of a company that would benefit from AI you need to demonstrate you are doing something or you get attacked for not doing enough.

As a CEO of an AI producing company you have almost no idea if the stuff you working on will be the thing that say makes hallucination-free LLMs, allows for cheap long term context integration or even "solve AGI". you have to pretend that you are just about to do the latter tho.

blkhawk··on Someone at YouTube Needs Glasses: The Prophecy Has Been Fulfilled
"Watch the world explode as I try to make a table!!!!!!!!!!!!" is unlikely its more like "Watch the world explode as I try to make this thing!!!!!!!!!!!!".
blkhawk··on What the hell have you built
uh, maybe you only have the issue that you need redundancies because you have so many pieces of software that can barf?

I mean it will happen regardless just from the side effects of complexity. With a simpler system you can at least save on maintenance and overhead.

blkhawk··on JetKVM – Control any computer remotely
People without a serious server environment or in all the myriad places where you need a local terminal temporarily or setting up one is super inconvenient. Say a small 19" rack in a cellar. with this you just plug in in, memorise the IP and go somewhere where you can sit comfortably.
blkhawk··on Intel Arc Pro B50 GPU Launched at $349 for Compact Workstations
because the cards already sell at very very good prices with 16GB and optimizations in generative AI is bringing down memory requirements. Optimizing profits means yyou sell with the least amount of VRAM possible not only to save the direct cost of the RAM but also to guard future profit and your other market segments. the cost of the ram itself is almost nothing compared to that. any intel competitor can more easily release products with more than 16GB and smoke them. Intel tries for a market segment that was only served by gaming cards twice as expensive up until now. this frees those up to be finally sold at MSRP.
blkhawk··on Keeping secrets out of logs (2024)
oh god - I had that come up in an issue at work just about a month ago. A development system used really simple usernames and passwords since it was just for testing but all the lines with one of those got gobbled up because they had "secrets" in them.

I have very strong opinions on this issue that boils down to. _why are you logging everything you lazy asses_ and _adding all the secrets into another tool just to scan for them in logs just adds another point for them to leak_...

Especially since the ability of lines getting censored even when the secrets were just part of words showed that probably no hashing was involved.

But its a security tool so it stays. I kinda feel like Cassandra but I think I can already predict a major security issue with it or others with the same functionality in the future. its like some goddamn blind spot that software that is to prevent X cannot be vulnerable to X but somehow often is vulnerable because prevention of X and not being vulnerable to X are two separate things somehow.

blkhawk··on Toyota is recycling old EV batteries to help power Mazda's production line
plus if you aren't making your packs unrepairable on purpose with foamed construction (like Tesla). you can par out modules in the packs into new configurations somewhat easily for the amount of work needed.
blkhawk··on Setting serial baud rate on ESP-IDF does nothing
uh - you clearly misunderstood something. The video is about the port of the Arduino framework that is running on the ESP32. on the ESP32-S* that have native USB that has implications that makes the option of setting a baud rate for them using the Arduino Framework superfluous. The ESP32 Variants have pretty good documentation themself.
blkhawk··on South Park creator’s 2007 digital ad revenue sharing clause
TLDR:

“A cut of revenue not derived specifically from broadcast on the cable channel” went from “meaningless” to “huge significance” to “boner-inducing” arguably the greatest clause ever in TV contract history…at a minimum, it’s one of the most improbable all things considered.

blkhawk··on Emailing a one-time code is worse than passwords
uh no - a password manager is an open source application you can compile and install yourself if you want. Its nothing more than a small specialised database with a excel like interface. Personally I think that the argument that things are "too complicated for the average user" eventually gets gets you users that find breathing and sphincter function too complicated.
blkhawk··on Linux and Secure Boot certificate expiration
That is sorta the rub - the treat profile "evil maid" is mainly governmental actors for most people even for Orgs. Your example shows mostly how an org can secure their own devices against casual misuse by unprivileged users. This does not help against any serious attack. It only protects against stuff you don't need to worry about generally.
blkhawk··on Linux and Secure Boot certificate expiration
ah, I almost mentioned roblox but checking protondb it has gold status. So it should work?
blkhawk··on Linux and Secure Boot certificate expiration
As a Linux-only gamer since 2019 I wonder what kids games you are talking about?
blkhawk··on Linux and Secure Boot certificate expiration
Secure boot belongs to a class of security that while clearly giving a theoretical benefit in practice it falls far short of providing any benefit whatsoever at least to the user of a system. Its introduction was mostly part of a wider (probably partially defunct and failed regarding mobile x86) strategy to lock down the PC so the Microsoft store and purchased apps through it would be more secure from the end-user. Secondary was in my opinion better security for handheld phones and tablets running x86 but there the "App store" aspect is even more clear.

"attacker tampers with your system" does not happen at least in the way you think it does or it does not protect you against meaningful attack at all.

blkhawk··on SpaceX Starship 36 Anomaly
Well the military purpose was why the Shuttle was so crappy. The original design was smaller and meant to sit on top of its rocket. This would have probably prevented loss of crew in both of the instances where shuttle failed.
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