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pseudo0

3,404 karma · joined September 17, 2020

Infosec, cryptography, dabbles in machine learning.
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pseudo0··on [dead]
Wow, if only there were a way for a sovereign nation to control the composition of its immigrants... Crazy how this is framed as a factor completely out of their control, rather than the deliberate policy choice that it is.
pseudo0··on Stripe is friendly to “friendly fraud”
You presumably have their shipping address, so you can look up their local police department and report it as general fraud. Eg. The Toronto police have an online reporting tool for fraud and scams: https://www.tps.ca/services/online-reporting/

If it happens to be a slow day, or the person is already on their shit list (eg. on probation) maybe something will come of it. Having the gloating emails definitely helps. Or maybe the report just goes into a file until this person does this for a more expensive item and then it gets pulled to prove a pattern of behavior.

pseudo0··on Getting arrested in Japan
That's not how it works. Especially for foreigners, where it's often easier to just make them someone else's problem, assuming the charges are relatively minor.
pseudo0··on Turtle WoW classic server announces shutdown after Blizzard wins injunction
League's Wikipedia page describes it as "inspired by Defense of the Ancients, a custom map for Warcraft III." I believe they also hired some of the core Dota devs to work on League. I guess if you want to be pedantic it was a custom map, but that was more a consequence of WC3 lacking support for mods. They ended up having to work around a lot of limitations to make Dota work in the custom map framework.
pseudo0··on A prediction market user made $436k betting on Maduro's downfall
The issue there is time. The Nobel prizes will be announced in around 9 months. Buying a share of "No" would currently cost 98.2 cents, working out to a (basically) risk-free return of around 2.4%. Alternatively someone who wants a very low-risk investment product could just buy 1-year t-bills with a return of... ~3.5%. And that doesn't require messing around with buying crypto and the inherent risk of trusting Polymarket with your money.

Anything under 3%/year of time until decision is going to have pretty limited predictive value within that range. Anything starting above that range will end up hitting that floor rather than going to zero because of the difficulty of finding a counterparty.

pseudo0··on A prediction market user made $436k betting on Maduro's downfall
There are also issues with the time value of money for long-shot events. Someone has to be willing to buy a share of "No", and if that works out to a return lower than the risk-free rate (eg. buying t-bills) there will be no incentive to take the "No" position. That makes anything roughly under 3-4% per year pretty unreliable.
pseudo0··on The 60 Minutes report that Bari Weiss censored is now internet contraband
What exactly is novel about this case of copyright infringement if you put aside the political angle? Thousands of new torrents get uploaded every day, this is established technology that has existed for decades.
pseudo0··on The 60 Minutes report that Bari Weiss censored is now internet contraband
This is a petty political slapfight, basically the definition of an off-topic submission. If you want to hear about it, turn on CNN.

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

pseudo0··on X's new country-of-origin feature reveals many 'US' accounts to be foreign-run
The stats don't bear that out. Bluesky has been losing momentum since the election, with its DAU dropping from around 3.5 million to under 1.5 million today. For comparison Twitter has over 100 million. Right-wing alternative platforms had similar issues sustaining momentum, despite a much stronger push factor (right-wing people kept getting banned). It's hard to overcome the power of Twitter's network effect.

https://bluefacts.app/bluesky-user-growth?t=3m

pseudo0··on Canada loses its measles-free status, with US on track to follow
Canada had eliminated measles, it was reintroduced by travel from a country where measles was endemic. This is not rocket science. High-volume international travel from countries where measles is endemic, like India, poses a public health risk to countries that have eliminated the disease. The same goes for tuberculosis, hepatitis, etc.
pseudo0··on Canada loses its measles-free status, with US on track to follow
Only for stays greater than six months. So an unvaccinated person can fly in from wherever and stay for 180 days legally, or just overstay their visa. That's plenty of time to spread measles.
pseudo0··on Canada loses its measles-free status, with US on track to follow
Mass immigration from countries where measles is endemic? India has over 10,000 cases per year and makes up the plurality of Canada's immigration intake. Canada has a very high two-shot vaccination rate, but there are pockets like the Mennonite communities that are vulnerable.
pseudo0··on US car repossessions surge as more Americans default on auto loans
Those rules are usually intended to prevent people from having a derelict car up on blocks "under repairs" for weeks or months at a time. No one will notice or care if you do a quick oil change.
pseudo0··on Nintendo Alerted After DHS Uses Pokémon to Promote ICE Raids
It's political satire, it's 110% fair use. Nintendo can't bully the US government with an army of lawyers, so they aren't even going to try.
pseudo0··on ICEBlock handled my vulnerability report in the worst possible way
Unfortunately something like 90% of "vulnerability reports" are some guy in India running an automated scanner reporting something that isn't actually a vulnerability and demanding $1,000+. This creates a ton of noise in the system both for legitimate security researchers and the people stuck managing vulnerability disclosure programs.
pseudo0··on U.S. Military Strikes Drug Vessel from Venezuela, Killing 11
The alternative was loading up a Coast Guard ship with guys and sending them out to do an interdiction, seizing 11 men, processing them through the American legal system, incarcerating them for decades, and then eventually deporting them. I bet that costs a couple orders of magnitude more than a drone strike. Arguing cost is not compelling in the slightest.
pseudo0··on Detecting and countering misuse of AI
I had a fingerprint scanner on an old phone and it would fail if there was a tiny amount of dirt or liquid on my finger or on the scanner. It's not big deal to have it fail on a phone, it's just a few seconds of inconvenience putting in a passcode instead. On a firearm, that's a critical safety defect. When it comes to safe storage, there are plenty of better options like a safe, a cable/trigger lock, or for carrying, a retention holster (standard for law enforcement).
pseudo0··on Anduril's product engineering machine
Ukraine keeping the nukes was never going to happen. The US, EU, and Russia were all in agreement on that. Ukraine was in shambles at the time, and no one wanted the risk of nukes getting transferred or sold outside of the existing nuclear club.

Ukraine had physical possession of the nukes, but their ability to actually use them was highly suspect. They might have been able to circumvent the security measures given enough time, but if anything such an attempt would have sparked an international "peacekeeping operation" to make sure the nukes didn't fall into the wrong hands.

https://cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/news/budapest-memorandum-myth...

pseudo0··on Investigation into 4chan and its compliance with duties to protect its users
It's bad optics to build their own Hadrian's Firewall, so they are trying to bully foreign companies into compliance instead. If they want to go after the ad revenue, they would have to try to identify and prosecute the UK-based companies doing business with 4chan, and they will struggle to do that when they have no ability to subpoena 4chan for their business records.
pseudo0··on Netanyahu's cybersecurity official arrested in Vegas in child sex sting
So they let a guy charged with a felony who was an obvious flight risk out on a $10k bond, didn't even take his passport, and he just hopped on his return flight home? What a joke. Israel does not extradite, so he's effectively home-free now.
pseudo0··on Tesla used car prices keep plumetting, dips below average used car
That works if you have the skills, tools, and willingness to do a lot of work yourself. For most people, a major repair on a 10+ year old car (engine, transmission, etc) means sinking more money into a car than its blue book value.
pseudo0··on Brennan Center for Justice Report: The Campaign to Undermine the Next Election
That's a specious argument because the voter ID problem requires basically zero resources. Just mandate voter ID, problem solved. Practically every other first-world country does, including progressive European countries.
pseudo0··on Monitor your security cameras with locally processed AI
Finally a practical use for the Metal Gear Solid cardboard box!
pseudo0··on Australia’s gains in wheat-farm productivity
You can turn it into animal feed.
pseudo0··on $83B Wasted: Showing up at the airport 3 hours before your flight
The TSA has a workforce of 65,000 people, it's an insane waste of collective time and energy. Meanwhile private planes don't even have to go through the TSA, presumably because big donors have actual political pull and the risk is laughably low. Too bad Elon didn't pick the TSA as a DOGE target, it would have been actually useful and wildly popular.
pseudo0··on The Dollar Is Dead
Isn't it a 50% inclusion rate for capital gains in Canada? That works out to a maximum tax rate of 27% in the top tax bracket. And they canceled the proposed increase to a 66% inclusion rate, which is probably smart considering how a ton of rich Canadians already move to Florida.
pseudo0··on Australia’s gains in wheat-farm productivity
A lot of it also gets turned into biofuels or sent to third-world countries as food aid. That could easily be rerouted in a crisis scenario, if domestic food security became an issue.
pseudo0··on Australia’s gains in wheat-farm productivity
A bit ironic to quote that considering how the speech was 55 years ago, and the green revolution is going stronger than ever. If anything the crisis of the next 50 years will be the economic and societal pressures crushing the childbirth rate in Western countries.
pseudo0··on EU kills Android bootloader unlock starting August 1
It's trendy to blame everything on AI, but this looks like good old-fashioned journo clickbait. The site has been around since 2017 and appears to be a Turkish content mill focusing on Chinese phones.
pseudo0··on A.I. researchers are negotiating $250M pay packages
Funding is so plentiful right now that they are really competing with acquihire rates. That amount might sound crazy as straight salary, it comes with multi-year golden handcuffs and avoids having to buy them out for billions if they go start their own endeavor.
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