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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 20th, 2023

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  • HDMI has an Ethernet channel builtin to it. This was designed along with the audio return channel and the remote channel to make it so you only need one cable between your smart devices.

    Its lovely really, other than the privacy concerns. USB-c takes it one step further and let’s you power devices over the data cable. So you might really only need one cable to link all your devices.

    I’ve been worried about the data over HDMI standard for a while, but I don’t think many devices implement it. At some point there probably should be a revision to the standards (if there isn’t one already) to require pairing permissions in the next version. Otherwise manufacturers will eventually start using this back channel to spy on customers, even when you don’t enable WiFi on the television.



  • People used to argue email can’t be fixed because it’s ubiquitous and there would never be a flag day where everyone changed to a new protocol.

    That has changed. Now 90% of email comes from a big 3 providers, gmail, Microsoft, whoever. They could implement protocol changes and everyone else would be forced to follow.

    The second thing is you could just add a v2 header and include some backword compatibilty.

    Things email is desperately missing: Attestable records. Anyone can append anything anywhere INA message. Breaking DKIM all the time.

    Rather than that they need to make the format append only. Each new part can add headers that are signed by the forwarding node but they can’t tocuh the original message.

    At that point you still wouldn’t know if you could trust the originating mailserver or mail agent, but you could at least be sure of who the originator was, and it allows you to establish trust based on that (with further things like deferred emails for untrusted senders using something like postgrey, but with better support due to trusting keys rather than domain addresses)

    The problem then becomes forcing the big three to implement changes that rock the boat for them.

    People have largely accepted spam as a fact of life on email and shifted conversations to less infested platforms.

    The other problem is the obvious one that no matter what technical solution you come up with it’ll be ruined in 24hrs by spammers.








  • Something eats these insects and then we in turn eat those somethings.

    This is not a way to save us from microplastics. Centuries from now that shit will still be in dirt particles all over the world.

    The best thing to be done is go back in time 100 years and stop people from making millions of tons of plastic bullshit.

    The second best thing is to stop making millions of tons of plastic bullshit.




  • There are options for additional checks they could explore that are less creepy.

    1. Make someone pay a one time charge. This might not give you the full details but the transaction gives more data, and shows someone is willing to back up their request for access with a paper trail which has fraud protection laws.
    2. Third party verification services. Like your bank, who already have details about you. There just needs to be a way for them to vouch for you. Credit reporting agencies probably already do this, but I kinda think this is almost creepier than giving Facebook a video.
    3. Verifying the email attached to your account is a good first step.

    In the meantime I think knowing the password should at least get you logged in enough for account maintenance. You should be able to set the entire account private and take it offline with limited toggles. Restoring full access would require the additional verification.



  • The free software as a passion project idea became untenable long ago. It works for UNIX style utilities where the project stays small and changes can be managed by one person but breaks down on large projects.

    As a user, try to get a feature added or bugfix merged. Its a weeks or sometimes months/years long back and forth trying to get the bikeshedding correct.

    As a maintainer, spend time reading and responding to bug reports which are all unrelated to the project. Deal with a few pull requests that don’t quite fit the project, but might with more polish. Take a month off and wait for the inevitable “is this being maintained?” Issues reports.

    I contribute back changes because I want those features but don’t want to maintain a longterm fork of the project. When they’re rejected or ignored its demoralizing. I can tell myself “This is the way of open source” but sometimes I just search for another project that better fits my needs rather than trying to work on the one I submitted changes to.

    That is the happy path. The sad path of this is how many people look at the aforementioned problems and never bother to submit a pull request because it’s too much trouble? Git removed most of the technical friction of contributing, but there is still huge social friction.

    Long story short: the man pages maintainer deserves something for all the “work” part of maintaining. He can continue to not be paid for the passion part.