• 5 Posts
  • 768 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: October 4th, 2023

help-circle

  • I vaguely remember reading in my criminal law textbook, years back, that murder is one of the few exceptions to the doctrine of necessity (this would have been in the context of US law), so I don’t think that it’s ever legally-permissible to intentionally kill some random person to save yourself. IIRC the rationale was that it prevents thing like terrorist groups from coercing someone to do actions for them by threatening someone else.

    That being said, there are obviously points where people are forced to take actions where either one group of people is going to die or another; in ethics, the trolley problem is a well-known example. For a maybe-less-artificial problem, closing hatches in a ship where not everyone is out of a compartment to prevent the ship from going down, say. I don’t know how law applies in the situation of weighing lives; my assumption is that it doesn’t mandate inaction.







  • I’m not really gung-ho about mandatory approaches either, like with licensing, but for an optional approach:

    • I have to be able to assess a device and its drawbacks with a reasonable amount of knowledge and time spent researching it.

    • There has to be at least one option on the market that does what I want.

    For cars, at least, we’re really getting to the point where it’s not practical to get a new car without a cell data link that phones home.

    And trying to stay atop of the privacy issues for all classes of device out there can’t be a full-time job, or it’s not reasonable to expect people to make informed purchasing decisions. Like, I should just be able to say that I don’t want a device that broadcasts any persistent unique IDs in plaintext over a radio, not have to research whether the current crop of smart automobile tire pressure valves has a protocol that exposes that information or not…

    I’d like to avoid Europe’s prescription-heavy regulatory route, but the way things are now in the US isn’t my ideal either.



  • One issue that has come up recently in discussions on here is that it’s hard to get dumb TVs or computer monitors in large format in 2024.

    Not impossible, but surprisingly difficult. I went looking for a large computer monitor for some user who wanted a large one. I eventually found an older one on Amazon still for sale, but it’s not that easy to get large computer monitors, which I think is part of what drives people to use smart TVs as computer monitors.

    You can get projectors, but that’s not what everyone’s after.


  • Thing is, it’s getting pretty cheap to build radios into devices, and companies are doing that and bridging them to whatever Internet connectivity they can reach, not just your own. You don’t necessarily have to personally plug something into an Ethernet socket to make a device Internet-connected.

    From back when Amazon Sidewalk was rolling out:

    https://www.statuscake.com/blog/what-is-amazon-mesh/

    This time, however, the big news is Amazon mesh, a network to connect users and their devices. The tech giants have called this project Amazon Sidewalk+ with the idea first being made public back in 2019 where they announced they wanted to extend and expand the connectivity of their customers.

    Why did Amazon do this?

    According to Amazon, the main reason was to provide a better service for their customers whilst using their devices. Although there has been some backlash by those in the safety and security space, the idea seems to be very safe and simple.

    How will Amazon mesh work?

    The Sidewalk project will create a network mesh between all the connected devices so it can increase the connection field around the devices. It will be able to do this by using Low-energy Bluetooth and 900MHz radio signals to pass data with the connected compatible devices. By doing this, the network can extend the reach of the signal and thus it will be able to cover a larger area to allow devices to connect.

    Here is an example of how this will work: imagine if you have a compatible device at the end of your garden such as a light which you normally can’t control with your phone. With the extended network, that light could connect to a neighbour’s device and by doing this it will be connected to the network, and you will have the ability to then use your phone to control the light.

    There has been some concern regarding how much data the network will use for those who agree to be part of it and Amazon have estimated that the data usage could be around 400-500mbps a month. For most people, this is such a small amount that it won’t even be noticeable.

    How can the mesh network be used?

    Another use for this mesh is for users around the network to connect and possibly use the mesh to perform other tasks such as a Ring doorbell (Amazon-owned) to be installed in the part of the house where the usual Wi-Fi signal doesn’t reach. This provides customers with a great alternative to the far more expensive Wi-Fi extender mesh products on the market.

    As is normal in situations like this, many users are concerned about the security of this project. According to what Amazon has released regarding how it will work so far, there will not be any security concerns as the connections will not identify which device was connected meaning that if your Ring doorbell extends the network to a nearby device, the system will not mention that this device was connected to that particular Ring doorbell. However, people need to be aware that Amazon itself can collect this data and the way the users interact with the network.

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jun/01/amazon-us-customers-given-one-week-to-opt-out-of-mass-wireless-sharing

    The feature works by creating a low-bandwidth network using smart home devices such as Amazon Echoes and Ring security cameras. At its simplest, it means that a new Echo can set itself up using a neighbour’s wifi, or a security camera can continue to send motion alerts even if its connection to the internet is disrupted, by piggybacking on the connection of another camera across the street.

    But the company’s plans have caused alarm among observers. Ashkan Soltani, a former chief technology officer of the US Federal Trade Commission, told the tech site Ars Technica: “In addition to capturing everyone’s shopping habits (from amazon.com) and their internet activity (as AWS is one of the most dominant web hosting services) … now they are also effectively becoming a global ISP with a flick of a switch, all without even having to lay a single foot of fiber”. The feature may also break the terms and conditions of users’ internet connections, which do not allow such resharing, warned Lydia Leong, an analyst at Gartner.

    Users can disable Sidewalk in the settings section of the Alexa or Ring apps, but have until 8 June to do so. After that, if they have taken no action, the network will be turned on and their devices will become “Sidewalk Bridges”.

    Amazon is not the first company to look to create such a network. Apple has taken a similar approach with the company’s range of AirTag item trackers, which can connect to the internet through any compatible iPhone they come into contact with, not simply their owner’s. And BT, through a long-term partnership with Fon, ran a service from 2007 until 2020 that allowed broadband customers to share spare bandwidth in a public wifi network.

    When you have companies creating their own radio networks, they can use someone else’s Internet connection to move data.

    For expensive devices, like cars, it also makes economic sense to have a dedicated cell modem and service phoning data home. But it’s not the only route.

    Point is, you don’t have a monopoly over granting your devices Internet access any more.


  • I’d rather pay for pretty much all products up-front with money at purchase time rather than pay with my data.

    Not gonna tell other people what to do, but for myself, whether it’s my car or television or search engine or whatever, I’d rather just pay the bill rather than having the manufacturer or service provider go data-mining my data to figure out how they can make money from it.

    I think that YouTube is a great service. YouTube Premium, though, is ad-free. What I want isn’t no-ad stuff, but no-log policies. And there aren’t a lot of manufacturers selling privacy. And it’s hard to compare services and products based on that.

    I’ll go one more step. I don’t want to go read through privacy policies and figure out what the latest clever loophole is. We had to deal with that kind of legal stuff back prior to standardization around a few open-source licenses, and it sucked.

    And I don’t want to deal with privacy policies that change and maybe don’t do what I want.

    What I want to do is look for a privacy certification, and let the certification agency deal with that.





  • The billionaire this week posted his hoped-for change that “the block function will block that account from engaging with, but not block seeing, a public post”.

    If I understand the change aright, that’s an excellent move in my book.

    What it sounds like Twitter is doing now is how Reddit used to work. When you ignore a user, you won’t see their responses, but other users can.

    Then Reddit changed it to “blocked user cannot respond”, which people on Reddit promptly started abusing to, in heated arguments, make a comment and then promptly block the other person, so that it looked like they weren’t responding. You wound up with people commenting all over a thread with stuff like “this user blocked me, but here’s my response to this other comment”. Was one of the several major moves that Reddit made that I think were in error and made me less happy with the site.

    Lemmy works the same way Reddit originally did as well; that’s how I’d want social media to generally work.

    EDIT: It might also be that this is only a partial move in that direction, so that a block prevents a user from responding but not seeing a post. If so, that’d be an improvement, I think, but not as far as I’d like things to change.





  • I couldn’t find it when I glanced at their site earlier, but the Germany-based Tuxedo Computers, according to this Reddit post, does have or is supposed have a Swiss French layout option:

    https://old.reddit.com/r/tuxedocomputers/comments/13voqru/swiss_french_keyboard_layout/

    Hey there!

    We will add CH-FR as option without extra cost to the configurator soon.

    If you’re in a hurry please order with “custom layout” and point to this thread at the order comments box. We will refund the extra costs afterwards.

    Hope that helps!

    Someone else already mentioned them.

    I have looked at Tuxedo before; they sell laptops specifically targeting the Linux market, so I expect that they’d have good compatibility, and they’re in Europe. I was interested mostly in that they were one of the very few vendors out there who made laptops with large batteries and Radeon-based GPUs (more-Linux-friendly). They’re a little pricey, but not, in my book, unreasonably so relative to the hardware that I was looking at.

    That being said, I have never personally owned one of their laptops, so I cannot personally speak as to the experience, just that it’s a vendor that I’ve looked at.

    If I were going to personally go get a laptop that runs Linux right now for myself, I’d probably be considering one of:

    • Framework. Here in the US, pricey, good repairability, good expandability, Linux-out-of-box (I’m not gonna use their out-of-box install, but it means that they’ve checked the hardware for decent compatibility). I doubt that these guys offer a Swiss French layout, though, so that’d probably kill it for you. They aren’t a huge company, and have been talking about taking on projects other than laptops, and I’d be a little concerned about them maybe going out of business or something.

    • Tuxedo. Germany-based, somewhat-pricey, large batteries, Linux-out-of-box. Radeon GPU hardware (if you want an off-CPU GPU). I couldn’t find a Swiss French option, but that Reddit post says that they have it.

    • Lenovo Thinkpad. China-based, not-as-expensive. Used to be a pricey IBM line. Notable for having a model with three physical trackpad buttons, a rare feature in 2024 and a major selling point for me. I like physical buttons and they’re rare now, and Linux benefits from having three rather than having to chord two or something. May not matter if you’re fine with virtual buttons. Strong history of Linux users using the thing. I’m much-less impressed with their current hardware than I once was, but it’s also cheaper than it once was, so…<shrugs> Reasonably good historically about expandability and case-opening; last one I needed Philips-head screws and a spudger tool, though no security bits. Physically durable, at least. Large-enough that I bet that you can get a Swiss French layout. Muted black business aesthetic without a lot of LEDs and shiny stuff, which I prefer. Batteries aren’t as large as they once were, but battery life is still good (though the T14 I’m typing this on has less-than-impressive screen brightness).

    • Dell XPS. Often listed as being comparable to Thinkpad, business-class laptops. Haven’t owned one.