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srmarm

1,071 karma · joined May 13, 2019

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srmarm··on I Could've Rickrolled the FIFA World Cup. All I Needed Was My ID
Clearly a big f-up by FIFA on what looks like quite a tidy platform otherwise.

One question though, how do you know your feed would kick off the 'real' feed if you pushed to RTMP, does it just take the most recent connection as live? Does the protocol have a mechanism for dealing with multiple people pushing to the same endpoint? There maybe more checking on that endpoint and if course I'm sure most live broadcasters would have a live director to cut any feeds at their end if a dodgy feed popped up too.

A huge vulnerability nonetheless and a great write up!

srmarm··on Adoption of EVs tied to real-world reductions in air pollution: study
My city is covered by a low emissions zone so the odd van polluting sticks out. I was in Athens recently and the pollution from so many old rough cars was so noticeable (and quite unpleasant).

Reminds me of how I didn't really notice cigarettes until they were banned from public spaces and the base level of normal was recalibrated.

srmarm··on The chess bot on Delta Air Lines will destroy you (2024) [video]
That's exactly how it usually happens in my experience. I think a lot of people are OK if everyones upright on short haul flights (here most budget airlines don't have a recline facility and it's not missed) but once someone reclines into your space you then recline to gain a little space back and the domino effect takes place even if you're not sleeping.
srmarm··on Schizophrenia sufferer mistakes smart fridge ad for psychotic episode
I think The Equality Act 2010 would be the UK equivalent. No idea whether it would cover this - might be a stretch.
srmarm··on Schizophrenia sufferer mistakes smart fridge ad for psychotic episode
That may be true but doesn't help if not accepting the terms prevents you from using the device.

On a practical level you then at best have a battle to get a third party (the retailer) to give you a refund and most people faced with the option of removing and returning a huge expensive device like a fridge with no guarantee of a refund are going to just leave it.

It does need some stubborn and tenacious people to make a stand and set a president - perhaps backed by a consumer rights group but it's an uphill battle.

srmarm··on Cloudflare Global Network experiencing issues
> May 12, we began a software deployment that introduced a bug that could be triggered by a specific customer configuration under specific circumstances.

I'd love to know more about what those specific circumstances were!

srmarm··on Grok 4 Launch [video]
Ah this is a positive thread so not [flagged] - gotta say Hacker News really has been shameful of late with it's shutting down of the negative stories around Grok.
srmarm··on The flip phone web: browsing with the original Opera Mini
I did my first toilet browsing on a Sony Ericsson K750i on Edge network. For forums it worked really well. I suspect this site would have worked well on it.
srmarm··on xAI's Grok 3 comes to Microsoft Azure
Be careful saying things like that or you'll get [flagged] - discussion of what seemed an incredibly important subject is forbidden on here it seems.
srmarm··on Royal Mail trials solar-powered postboxes with barcode scanners
There is a new function available in their app which does similar (i.e allow for proof of posting from a postbox). They've also been pushing collection by postman too.

It saves a trip to the post office which is a hassle which would be a cost for the Royal Mail (which was privatised as a separate company to the Post Office).

srmarm··on Data centers contain 90% crap data
Some fair points, but some 'crap data' has storage requirements orders of magnitudes from each others.

One short video can equal a year worth of emails for someone. Similarly those many webpages that don't get viewed often probably require only a negligible amount of resources to keep online and might help someone who'd otherwise be faced with linkrot.

Best to focus on the low hanging fruit.

srmarm··on Microsoft begins turning off uBlock Origin and other extensions in Edge
Good call, I've been meaning to try it for a while.

It feels a bit like ~25 years ago when Yahoo was this bloated do everything company with a bad search engine and someone showed me this simple website with just a search bar that was super quick with clean results...

srmarm··on Microsoft begins turning off uBlock Origin and other extensions in Edge
> If you use the uBlock Origin extension in Google Chrome or Edge, you should probably start looking for alternative browsers or extensions—either way.

I've used Firefox on android for a while as android chrome hasn't had adblocking for a long time.

Am pretty anti-google these days but it'll take some time to untangle myself from the ecosystem.

Anyway, I've largely moved back to Firefox on the desktop too, swapped a few icons about so my muscle memory now opens Firefox instead of Chrome and it's been totally painless. An easy win.

srmarm··on Skopje’s eccentric post office (2021)
It looks a fantastic building, I managed sneak in for a look around a couple of years back when visiting Skopje, it was full of pidgeons and all that comes with it but didn't seem beyond saving.
srmarm··on Ray-Ban Meta glasses have sold 2M units, production to be increased
I understand all the usual caveats of no expectation of privacy in public but this is very much slippery slope stuff.

Say on the metro sitting opposite someone. If they pulled out a camera and pointed it in your face you'd be offended and say something, with a camera phone you'd still probably notice if they tried to get a pic of you and most people would find it at best creepy and ask the person to stop or move away from them.

This product normalises that. Sure there are some legit use cases but I'm not consenting to you as a stranger pointing your camera in my face. You may not legally need my consent to do that but it's straight up rude to do it anyway.

Will be interesting to see how this pans out. I'm fairly placid and would probably just tut and move if someone sat opposite with these but I suspect other people might have a stronger reaction.

Breaking societal norms like this should have consequences, even if it's sanctioned by Zuck.

srmarm··on 5G networks meet consumer needs as mobile data growth slows
The problem I find is with the backhaul rather than the 5G signal. I can still get unreliable internet with a strong 5G signal. Even today I find for general internet browsing is good 3G is OK and can even support a video stream. My understanding is that 4G/5G allow for better network design and the faster headline speeds are just a positive for marketing as much as anything else.
srmarm··on The mistake of yearning for the 'friendly' online world of 20 years ago
There seems to be a bit of a preoccupation with federated identity and linking communities but the lack of that is what I like about forums and web communities back then.

I don't necessarily want my identity as a bus nerd cross pollinating my interest in going to raves or my interest in business being mixed up with my interest in left wing politics. There all things that I've had some level of interest in joined forums for. I always use different random usernames because I'm also from an age where the internet was it's own world where your real identity didn't matter. More so while we look back at those days with rose tinted specs, many viewed the internet as a dangerous wild west and staying anonymous was one way of protecting yourself.

srmarm··on Kannel: Open-Source WAP and SMS Gateway
I know the article sort of touches on it but I only recall WAP as being a sort of mark up language akin to a mobile HTML rather than a network layer protocol. My old site (probably late 90s) had a wap.mysite.com subdomain which I hosted them on and which seemed to work well on my limited testing - I don't recall setting anything special up with the hosting - just the same hosting as the regular site. It worked very well on the contemporary mobiles but did I miss something back then?
srmarm··on Dear OAuth Providers
I found once I started using a cross-device password manager, I stopped using OAuth anyway!
srmarm··on Show HN: IMDb SQL Best Movie Finder
Yeah, I also struggled with the purple box - I assumed I'd change the options, click run and it'd reload the data accordingly. Almost quit before I realised you have to build and then run. If the changes in the purple box were reflected in the SQL code preview that would be much better.

That being said it's an impressive demo of what the browser can do without breaking a sweat! Will try and discover some new stuff to watch now!

srmarm··on Using Cloudflare on your website could be blocking RSS users
I'd have thought the website owner whitelisting their RSS feed URI (or pattern matching *.xml/*.rss) might be better than doing it based on the users agent string. For one you'd expect bot traffic on these end points and you're also not leaving a door open to anyone who fakes their user agent.

Looks like it should be possible under the WAF

srmarm··on Digital River runs dry, hasn't paid developers for sales since July
That's a name I hear from time to time but have never quite understood what their purpose was.

My last laptop purchased from the the Lenovo store and my subscription to Nvidia GeforceNow were processed via Digital River.

You'd think both Lenovo and Nvidia would be big enough to manage their own ecommerce. I suspect their legal teams will see them get better treatment anyway.

srmarm··on WordPress.org's latest move involves taking control of a WP Engine plugin
They could have backed down and allowed WPEngine to publish an update or even published it on their behalf. Instead they've doubled down and taken this ridiculous action that undermines the whole wp/plugin eco system.

None of this is necessary.

srmarm··on WordPress.org's latest move involves taking control of a WP Engine plugin
What's that in response to? I don't have an account so don't seem to see anything beyond 'Sorry, who are you?'
srmarm··on Wordpress.org Login: "I am not affiliated with WP Engine in any way"
I'd argue there is a moral obligation to support open source projects if you rely on them as a cornerstone of your business. However it's not a legal one.

Open source is based on idealistic and community based mindset and modern tech is now based around extracting the dollars. The two aren't really compatible and it's really quite sad to see.

That being said this the most stupid way to go about it.

srmarm··on Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
This whole situation is a negative sum game, everyone is going to come out worse off - Matt/WP/WP Engine, the project and all the end users. It's such a shame.

If there's a solid legal argument from either side, let dispassionate legal teams deal with it in a dignified manner.

As someone who defaults to wordpress as the bedrock of new projects, this instability is a massive turn off.

srmarm··on Filed: WP Engine Inc. v Automattic Inc. and Matthew Charles Mullenweg [pdf]
I'm always amazed at how many typos make it into legal docs that should be picked up by automatic spell checks. It seems to be a normal and accepted practice for legal types - interesting to see that's the case in the US as well as here in the UK.
srmarm··on Modern Wardriving (2023)
This has been a known fact for some time

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/may/15/google-ad...

srmarm··on Condo prices at SF's beleaguered Millennium Tower drop to as low as $649,000
Is that just for shared services or does it go towards the costs to repair the bad design?
srmarm··on Spotify: Droppin' Some Fake Beats
Personally 3/4 times I'll put my big Spotify playlist on random or play a Spotify curated playlist. Certainly there is scope there for Spotify to select songs based on their licensing costs.

I've certainly had a hunch that certain songs get much more frequent rotation than others on my liked songs playlist (although I appreciate humans are notorious for picking out patterns where there are none!)

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