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Joined 4 years ago
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Cake day: January 21st, 2021

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  • it’s mostly solved already

    I wished I believe this. Or I guess I agree that it is solved in most software but there is lots of commonly used software where it isn’t. One broken bit of software can fairly easily take down a whole site or OS.

    Try to create an event in 2040 in your favourite calendar. There is a decent chance it isn’t supported. I would say most calendar servers support it, but the frontends often don’t or vice-versa.


  • require a separate device that looks like a calculator to use online banking

    To be fair this actually provides a very high level of security? At least in my experience with AIB (in Ireland) you needed to enter the amount of the transactions and some other core details (maybe part of the recipient’s account number? can’t quite recall). Then you entered your PIN. This signed the transaction which provides very strong verification that you (via the PIN) authorize the specific transaction via a trusted device that is very unlikely to be compromised (unless you give someone physical access to it).

    It is obviously quite inconvenient. But provides a huge level of security. Unlike this Safety Net crap which is currently quite easy to bypass.


  • which is supposed to enforce to run apps in secured phones

    The point of the Google Play Integrity API is to ensure that the user is not in control of their phone, but that one of a small number of megacorps are in control.

    Can the user pull their data out of apps? Not acceptable. Can the user access the app file itself? Not acceptable. Can the user modify apps? Not acceptable.

    Basically it ensures that the user has no control over their own computing.





  • Yes. As this is a workstation the memory use is highly variable, >95% of the time I would probably barely notice having 32GiB. But other times it is a huge performance win to have that capacity available. Sometimes I am compiling lots of stuff and 32 compilers running + ample disk cache is very important. Other times I am processing lots of data and other times I am running a few VMs.

    It is a bit of a luxury. I think if I was on a tighter budget I would have gone for 64GiB. However the price difference wasn’t that much and at least a handful of times I have been quite happy to have that capacity available. And worst case I just have everything sitting in disk cache after a warm up which is a small performance win on every small task.




  • There are three parts to the whole push system.

    1. A push protocol. You get a URL and post a message to it. That message is E2EE and gets delivered to the application.
    2. A way to acquire that URL.
    3. A way to respond to those notifications.

    My point is that 1 is the core and already available across devices including over Google’s push notification system and making custom push servers is very easy. It would make sense to keep that interface, but provide alternatives to 2 and 3. This way browsers can use the JS API for 2 and 3, but other apps can use a different API. The push server and the app server can remain identical across browsers, apps and anything else. This provides compatibility with the currently reigning system, the ability to provide tiny shims for people who don’t want to self host and still maintains the option to fully self host as desired.



  • IMHO UnifiedPush is just a poor re-implementation of WebPush which is an open and distributed standard that supports (and in the browser requires, so support is universal) E2EE.

    UnifiedPush would be better as a framework for WebPush providers and a client API. But use the same protocol and backends as WebPush (as how to get a WebPush endpoint is defined as a JS API in browsers, would would need to be adapted).






  • kevincox@lemmy.mltoPrivacy@lemmy.mlIn search for a good VPN
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    4 months ago

    I mean it is always better to have more open source. But the point of the multi-hop system is that you don’t need to trust the server. Even if the server was open source:

    1. You wouldn’t know that we are running an unmodified version.
    2. If you need to trust the server then someone could compel us to tap it or monitor it.

    The open source client is enough to verify this and the security of the whole scheme.


  • Because these buckets probably don’t exist (citation needed on all of these, I don’t have access to data from a large online store).

    I suspect that this is actually a “good” recommendation in the face of many other facts.

    1. Any recommendation has a very low risk of success. Outside of searching contexts (where there is clear intent) I suspect that the chance of a recommendation leading to a purchase is <1%.
    2. You usually make more money from bigger sales. So showing a 1% expected $1k GPU is better than showing a 20% expected purchase $20 pair of sunglasses (and I doubt any recommendation has 20% purchase rate outside of clear sources intent).
    3. People return things. Return rate is much higher than 1% on many platforms and some good chunk of these will want a similar product to replace the defective/bad/unsuitable one.
      • For Amazon this maybe isn’t a good excuse because they should be able to incorporate return information into the recommendations. But even then, lots of people may prefer to order a second one before going through with the return. Maybe they want to do a comparison to be sure that they like the new one more before sending the first back.
    4. People do have uses for multiple even for things that wouldn’t seem that way at first glance. If I just bought a GPU and am happy with it maybe my partner needs an upgrade (or gets a little jealous). Maybe I will see a similar or identical product recommended and get it for her. Maybe I like my new fridge and also want to replace my second basement fridge with it, or maybe the quietness of the new one made me realize how loud the other one is and I want to get a similar model to replace it.
    5. People recommend things to each other. Maybe I just bought a GPU and my buddy is asking if I like it. The next day I see a recommendation for a GPU that I think is a good open for them, I send the link.

    Yes, all of these scenarios are unlikely, but I suspect that is actually significantly higher than the baseline, and for the big items that people usually complain about much more profitable. I suspect you see these ads because they work. Not as in they are often right, but that they have higher expected value than other available ads.