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dotps1

65 karma · joined September 12, 2023

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dotps1··on DeepSeek app faces ban in Germany for illegal transfer of user data
They transfer all your data passively by using 45 year old encryption with known IVs so it’s easy for the CCP firewall to siphon it all.

They just have to pretend they didn’t know what they did and it’s legal.

The only way to not leak your data is to run it locally.

dotps1··on Meta fires staffers for using $25 meal credits on household goods
It's not up to Zuckerberg.

Expensing food is tax deductible. Allowing people to buy whatever they want is taxable income.

The only companies that would allow their employees to buy whatever they want are those that aren't worried about getting audited.

dotps1··on Ask HN: AWS registering MFA will be required in 29 days
For passkeys, your password manager should prompt you to save them if it supports them.

For the authenticator (TOTP), you just save a QR code where it tells you. Just google "TOTP <your password manager>" and I'm sure you will find a guide

dotps1··on Ask HN: AWS registering MFA will be required in 29 days
Least amount of hassle is probably a passkey in your password manager, if it supports it.

Passkeys are the quickest way to sign in.

Don't use a passkey on your computer, otherwise you will only be able to sign in from that computer.

If you find yourself struggling with passkeys, then the "authenticator" route is next best.

This just gives you a QR code, which you can also store in your password manager and have it generate one time codes.

If you have an authenticator app on your phone, you can rescan that same QR code to have the codes both places. (password manager and authenticator app)

dotps1··on Ask HN: AWS registering MFA will be required in 29 days
Personally I would do all of them.

I would make a passkey and stick it in Bitwarden so I have it with me on all my devices.

I would link my account to my authenticator app.

Then I would also register my yubikey I keep on my keychain.

dotps1··on Indian entrepreneur, industrialist, and philanthropist, Ratan Tata, dead at 86
I'll just share a little more here.

The scale of the outsourcing I am talking about is far greater than whatever you're imagining.

We brought teams of people from India over to the US, housed and fed them, so they could be able to work with their counterparts overseas. On the India side we found their operating infrastructure to be woefully inadequate, so we helped them build entirely new facilities with perimeter fences, proper security, the works.

After all was said and done, the skills of the people we were getting were on par with someone with no programming experience that skimmed a java book in their spare time. The code quality was abysmal at best, and this was in the days before source control was popular.

One of the other huge problems was just the time zone difference. You get into work in the morning to have a meeting with some second-shift team in India, and find out about all of the work that didn't get done because they didn't know what they were doing .. spend the time to correct them, they say they will fix it the next day .. next day comes, same issues, no progress, repeat ad nauseum.

It physically hurt to be a part of all of this.

dotps1··on Indian entrepreneur, industrialist, and philanthropist, Ratan Tata, dead at 86
I'm sure he was an amazing capitalist, but my experience with Tata consulting was the worst.

I worked for a division of GE during the Immelt years that outsourced large portions of IT to Tata, and was in charge of the transition.

It was a masterclass in waste and inefficiency.

Definitely one of the larger nails in the coffin of a former Fortune 5 company.

dotps1··on Irish finance minister calls €14B tax windfall from Apple 'transformational'
Before the ruling Apple was paying about 8B in taxes per year to Ireland.

If multinational corporations are no longer able to do a Double-Irish Dutch Sandwich anymore, it doesn't make sense to stay there.

Which means the future losses in a single year from several large multinational corporations leaving will be larger than this one payment.

dotps1··on Meta fined $102M for storing passwords in plain text
To be clear, they are absolutely being fined for storing passwords in plaintext.

They chose not to mitigate the fine by following proper procedure.

dotps1··on Grocery Territories of America
I've noticed that this stretches farther than America.

For example big name retailers in the Caribbean like Massy seem to be mostly or partially owned by Save-a-lot .. but I haven't had the time to investigate this yet.

dotps1··on Grocery Territories of America
https://web.archive.org/web/20240928091654/https://www.washi...
dotps1··on Vulnerabilities in the Feeld dating app
It's always been like that.

The costs involved with maintaining garbage are infinitely more than maintaining something well built.

This is why software is so lucrative.. because the true cost of the software isn't how much you pay for it .. it's "how much is it going to cost you to change to something else?"

dotps1··on Microsoft to delay release of Recall AI feature on security concerns
I think the issue is more that nobody asked for it.

These tools are useful, and on a Mac if you want Rewind, you have to know you want it, go out download it, pay for it, install it yourself .. and you knew what you were getting into the whole time.

Having a tool like this planted in your device without your consent is pushing your userbase over the edge.

If they made it a separate feature you had to manually install, like Windows Sandbox or WSL .. they could have avoided shooting themselves in the foot.

dotps1··on Tesla investor suit: Elon Musk harmed carmaker by founding rival company, xAI
Up until the recent AI boom Tesla was the #1 AI company in the world, now they are falling behind other tech leaders.

Elon is now stealing Tesla's AI lead and squandering it on his pissing match with OpenAI because he feels jealous of what they were able to accomplish, despite his attempted takeover.

Now he is even taking AI hardware earmarked for Tesla and using it instead to push his other interests

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/04/elon-musk-told-nvidia-to-shi...

Tesla's AI is about vision learning and they were way ahead in that field, and now he's deciding to focus instead on "anti-woke" chatbots.

This does not benefit Tesla in any way shape or form.

dotps1··on Google has been blocking Invidious with error "This helps protect our community"
FYI - you can't be sure which side of the A/B test you are on.
dotps1··on A physicist runs the math on direct air capture and warns it's a distraction
I was going to dismiss your comment thinking that it wouldn't be possible to capture the amount of carbon we are emitting with trees alone .. but after running the numbers, trees seem like a pretty decent solution.
dotps1··on The new visa fees for foreign artists are out. This is not good
The fees are going up, but this article is mostly clickbait.. which is why they likely don't link to anything but their own website.

Pretty much all touring artists will use a P3 visa, or get a waiver.

A P3 visa is going to cost the sponsor $460. The person filling out the application will have to pay $190 (and then another $80 for biometrics if it's their first time)

dotps1··on Cannabis use linked to epigenetic changes, study reveals
I was just giving them a hard time for unprompted bragging about being perpetually inebriated on a technology forum.

No need to try and think too deeply about it.

dotps1··on Cannabis use linked to epigenetic changes, study reveals
If you type things like 'lols' and are over 20, people will know you are mentally-regressed.

Does it really matter if they know it's drugs or not?

dotps1··on XZ Backdoor: Times, damned times, and scams
The attackers would have to know the distributions used by the company they are targeting, that connections are open to the internet, that the company won't change their setup over the course of several years.

Everything you are saying is so far out of the realm of possibility that it makes me wonder if you follow this stuff at all.

If you had 2+ years of spare time, and these type of skills, the attacker would be far better off just trying to get a job inside the organization they are targeting.

dotps1··on XZ Backdoor: Times, damned times, and scams
Occam's razor says that the perpetrators likely didn't spend years building up trust to hack some early adopters before the releases got more stable.

It would be like spending hours baking bread only to eat it before it goes in the oven.

dotps1··on XZ Backdoor: Times, damned times, and scams
Always .. however the holiday schedule thing does stand out as something that could have been missed by the orchestrators.
dotps1··on A cargo ship's 'WindWing' sails saved it up to 12 tons of fuel per day
likely lots of moving parts with a less-than-ideal place to be conducting regular repairs
dotps1··on China blocks use of Intel and AMD chips in government computers
It feels that way, because that is the exact intent.
dotps1··on Why is it so hard to build an airport?
European airports have train service to most destinations.

Nobody cares if the airport is 45 minutes away because going back and forth is made seamlessly easy, and you can eat or read the news during the trip.

dotps1··on 5-year study finds no brain abnormalities in 'Havana Syndrome' patients
I mean the fact that they did this before, I think should go in the evidence column

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

After they got caught they put extra cladding up on the building, and the soviets in turn responded by just making their signal transmission stronger.

dotps1··on NASA engineers make progress toward understanding Voyager 1 issue
I mean, this stuff does happen.

There is an old electric station near me that is used for various things sometimes. Some band was in there shooting a music video and bumped something and somehow the whole area started filling with water. Nobody could stop it.

The government, the water company, everyone was struggling to figure out what to do, and they decided to call the old guy that used to work there. He was in his 90s but he told them how to fix everything.

dotps1··on The trouble with ingredients in sunscreens
I mean that's a great anecdote, but it distracts from the article.

The takeaway here that people should be leaving with is that mineral based sunscreen is a safe, effective, and healthy alternative.

This "throw the baby out with the bathwater" comment that does not address the linked article at all should not be at the top.