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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • Is it feasible that there interceptor systems saw they weren’t a threat from the trajectory and prioritized those that were? I mean the article states that they might have prioritized defending the city over the airbase, but I don’t know how much manual decision making is likely to be involved as I don’t know the flight/travel times. Or Maybe the defense system is has target areas pre-prioritized?

    I mean a hole in a runway is somewhat inconvenient, but overall an easy fix. A destroyed hangar less so (but also depends on what’s in it, if anything). Casualties in a city are a different category, obviously.


  • I’ve used windows since the 90s. Not once have I intentionally used WordPad.

    It did open by default for some file types for a long time (.doc), usually mangling the content cause it couldn’t actually handle them properly. I think it was also the default for .txt files at some point, causing many curse words when editing plain text files, that invisibly weren’t so plain any more after… Programs expecting a configuration fine really don’t like that sort of thing.

    So: I’m very ok with this. Just install LibreOffice or something if you needa Word-like experience. Install notepad++ for anything “plain”.




  • The “key” of an m.2 defines what the pins mean, basically what signal they carry (PCIe, USB, …). There’s a nice table here, if you scroll down a bit. Some are extensions to others, and are pin compatible (meaning the things they have in common are on the same pins).

    A key and E key are very similar, while E just provides a few more interfaces, but importantly A doesn’t provide anything the E doesn’t. So any card that can work in A can also work in E. This is why A+E is so common: they don’t require the Mainboard to provide E, only A, but both will work so both notches are present.



  • In this context “self host” can ironically mean using a cloud service for hosting. You can use a file based password manager and just sync the database. Solutions like KeePass have apps for many platforms, and they can often even directly load from cloud storage, like Google drive, OneDrive or DropBox. The password database is strongly encrypted, and even if your storage gets compromised, your passwords are still safe (assuming a good password or some then better security was used to encrypt it).

    You give up the convenience of having a single service and having to get each device to access the file. But that’s it. It’s not that hard and so much better than a password service, even if just for their attack surface, or the “likely target” these are.


  • Ah the Internet classic: calling someone’s comment irrelevant, when you clearly haven’t even read, or at least not understood it. It isn’t that long of a comment. Try reading it again.

    Oh whatever, here’s another attempt at explaining it: there’s a huge difference if my passwords are in a place where people generally keep passwords, or if they are where only my passwords are. If someone has never heard of me, but they attack my cloud-password-solution and get in, they still get my passwords. Someone attacking me personally, if he’s truly competent as a hacker, in probably screwed either way. At least he can only attack me, he can’t attack “some public thing” and get my stuff “by accident”. Think “personal safe in my home” compared to “public bank” (ignoring the fact that a bank is insured and all that for this analogy).

    Your second point would be valid if open source didn’t exist. First of all I didn’t imply that it was inherently safe, I implied that there isn’t a single point of trust, which was my would point. Even if you can’t read/audit it yourself, there are projects that have public audits by reputable security companies. Plus if there truly were backdoors, assuming a non-tiny user base, someone would’ve probably noticed.

    Then your final point seems to acknowledge the attack surface, but the problem with the “locally encrypted blob” is that this statement from the cloud provider is another thing you just have to believe them on. They might do that, they might not. Many don’t even claim that, because people like convenience and want options for password recovery to their password service. those two are mutually exclusive.


  • Stop using “the cloud” to store your passwords. Unless you control said cloud, you have to trust someone to not fuck up their security that you now depend on. Everyone eventually does.

    The difference is also, that someone who’s job is storing other people’s passwords is by definition a target. So is the fuck up, someone will notice. If you host those yourself, or you rent a place where you can host them for yourself, that is just one person’s server. The interest and possible gain for someone gaining access is so small, it’s even unlikely. So when you inevitably fuck it up, the chances someone notices before you do are relatively small.



  • Maybe they down vote because they think I don’t like the research or think it’s pointless (far from it). The only thing I dislike is the reporting about it, and even there mostly the clickbaity headlines intentionally misrepresenting the facts. It’s clearly intentional, because when reading the articles it usually becomes quite clear that the author was well aware.

    I can also imagine that articles like that stop at least a couple of people here and there from adopting solar for their home, cause they read what they think means that there’s about to be a 10% efficiency increase for panels. Clearly that’s a time to wait, not to buy! The number is people that only read the headline is probably uncomfortable high, but I got no clue what the actual percentage is, or if those that don’t click through take the headline at face value…


  • That’s pretty definite by any measure.

    Not really, sorry. The complaint still is that the announcements are of some magical huge improvement that is just not real. They might work in a prototype, maybe in a laboratory, or the thing just disintegrates after being exposed to water or something. Of course the results influence existing or future products, that’s how the real world improvements come about.

    By the time you modify the prototype (or whatever) into something that is actually real world production viable, with a reasonable lifespan and production costs, there’s barely anything left in common with the hyperbolic announcement about fantasy stuff.

    I stand by that statement you highlighted. And the fact that it isn’t hyperbole. With all of these achievements being released as clickbait news articles, somehow when something exciting it’s actually everything the market, it’s crickets. Like solid state or “salt” batteries are starting to become products, seen any articles on those posted here recently? Or in news outlets in general? I haven’t, but I honestly could’ve just missed them, or they didn’t gain as much traction.


  • You guys really seem to have a hard time to understand my point, so that’s on me. Clearly I didn’t explain it very well. First, look at my reply to GreyEyedGhost. Let me reemphasize from that post: I have never said or intended to imply that there were no advances made in the last 20 or 30 years. I have no idea why you keep bringing up long term (price) developments at all. It wasn’t even about price at all, please go back and read my comment again.

    Let’s address your points: Of course stuff has gotten cheaper, as that’s how “scale of production” works. That’s how the price AND the “doubling of installed capacity every 3 years” were achieved. Nothing about that is a technological breakthrough, it’s just production capacity you need for this.

    Of course there were improvements in technology (solar efficiency, battery density and others, wind “stuff”, …). But none of those were anywhere near those claims that you read in these pseudo-news. It’s a percent here or there. Look at the nice graph on Wikipedia. See how those lines go up very very little per year? Yet in the article that sparked this thread, it’s a whopping 10%! Unfortunately, the cells fall apart when they get warm. No idea how a solar panel would ever get warm. But hey, let’s make another headline claiming amazing gains, can’t ever have enough of those!