I used to run a TFTP server on my router that held the decryption keys. As soon as a machine got far enough in the boot sequence to get network access, it would pull the decryption keys from the router. That way a thief would have to steal the router along with the computer, and have the router running when booting up the computer. It works wirelessly, too!

I mean…yeah. Just because something is provably the best possible thing, doesn’t mean it’s good. Sorting should be avoided if at all possible. (And in many cases, such as with numbers, you can do better than comparison-based sorts)

To the best of my knowledge, this “drives from the same batch fail at around the same time” folk wisdom has never been demonstrated in statistical studies. But, I mean, mixing drive models is certainly not going to do any harm.

The scary thing? Define “new”. This judgment is from a lawsuit in 2014. So any car made in at least the last 9 years is doing this. Maybe newer cars are doing even worse things.

Yes, which is literally what OP is asking about. They mention system calls, and are asking, if a userland program can do dangerous thing using system calls, why is there a divide between user and kernel. “Because the kernel can then check permissions of the system call” is a great answer, but “hopefully you can’t harm your computer with userland programs” is completely wrong and misguided.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda is a userland program, which I would say causes harm.

Maybe that’s why the new one got renamed to Aptos, ha.

Yeah thanks for the COVID-19 there, buddy.

I had a very realistic visual hallucination once (hypnopompic). I was coming out of a nap while I had a fever. I looked over, and beside the bed was a young woman staring at me intently. She leaned over to bite/eat me, but calmly and without any emotion. As soon as she got within touching distance of me, she started to vanish, from the centre-out, and within a couple seconds was totally gone.

I was really struck by how real she seemed. She looked exactly like a real person.

But I just knew she wasn’t real (the same way that you just know things in dreams). Because of that, I didn’t find it scary at all. I remember being a little curious what kind of sensations I would “feel” when she actually made contact with me, and was a mixture of disappointed/relieved when she vanished at that point. But strangely(?) not scared.

We will see!

Traditionally it’s been a day for young people to go out partying and clubbing in costumes.

But last year 67 people were crushed to death and we had an official week-long period of mourning. We will see how Halloween is treated this year.

I don’t know that this one really counts. First, as stewie said, Edison didn’t electrocute Topsy (though he did film it).

But anyway, what “stupid prizez” did Edison win? An enormous pile of money and immortal fame and admiration?

Assuming you’re a man, 32 is definitely not too old. In my personal experience as a 40-something, 32 is right around your peak.

Are you hot? If the answer is “no”, that’s fine. Most of us aren’t. But it means that you’ll have to do a little bit more work in figuring out what kind of people (women?) are attracted to you, why they’re attracted to, and what might be the best way to meet them. The answer may not be Tinder.

I don’t think “greed” is quite the right word. “Greed” would be the right word if they were trying to make themselves more profitable. But they’re not: they’re trying to make themselves profitable at all. That’s not about greed, but about surviving. You can’t survive unless you stop hemorrhaging money at some point.

Maybe the question is “Why do investors invest so many hundred of billions of dollars into companies that cannot be profitable without becoming super-shitty? And why do users join them knowing that they’re going to become super-shitty one day?”

just assume everything actually costs 20% more and tip.

And by “everything”, you mean “not actually everything, but you’d need a 400 page manual to describe what gets tipped and what doesn’t”.

Sadly most people CAN’T connect through dial-up, even if both parties have all the equipment. A lot of telcos have redone their entire network in VoIP stuff (with heavy compression) which makes it hard to keep a connection even at 300.

telnet or ssh (usually telnet)

If you’re connecting from a modern computer, you just get a telnet client that does the appropriate code pages/ANSI/zmodem/etc. If you’re connecting from a real vintage computer, you get a little dongle that pretends to be a modem (and often accepts AT commands, including fake phone numbers), but secretly connects to WiFi and relays through a telnet connection.

Some BBSes do still have landlines, and there’s the occasional ham radio BBS, but 99.999% of it is through IP-based telnet or ssh these days.

I hate when people use passive voice in these things. It’s such a slimy way to try and avoid responsibility.

“We have blocked you from using a mobile browser.” is the active voice. It includes a subject (“we”) and a verb (“blocked”). It says that someone made a decision, executed that decision, and is responsible.

"It looks like … “, " … is currently unavailable” is so fucking weaselly and irresponsible. You are 100% a complete piece of shit if you ever say something like that. You are not responsible enough to handle a Wendy’s drive-through order, let alone a large organization.

Are you thinking of it as a centralized replacement to YouTube? If you’re centralized, yeah, you probably need a data centre the size of Malta. There are decentralized alternatives (like PeerTube) where the cost is also distributed. If you’re using PeerTube, you literally can “just throw it on a cheap VPS”, and lots of people do, with no problems.

I think the real reason decentralized video isn’t going to catch on is because video (and YouTube in particular) has not been a community thing for many years now. There are very few YouTubers who make videos to build a community or connect to a community. YouTubers are on there for money, and there’s really no alternative that can both host the videos and pay out big cheques to content creators.

I don’t have statistics to back this up, but I’d be willing to bet an entire doughnut that most reddit users have never posted even a single comment. People with that level (dis)engagement aren’t the type to seek out alternatives. They just kind of drift away.