• 4 Posts
  • 28 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 18th, 2021

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  • I do see how the narrative in the headline could be a call to action, but the article doesn’t propose a solution behind which the audience can rally. At most, the article describes how Americans can interpret the inevitable defeat. Of course, this text doesn’t exist in isolation; other texts would have to do the heavy lifting so that Americans rally behind a war effort.




  • I agree that we shouldn’t jump immediately to AI-enhancing it all. However, this survey is riddled with problems, from selection bias to external validity. Heck, even internal validity is a problem here! How does the survey account for social desirability bias, sunk cost fallacy, and anchoring bias? I’m so sorry if this sounds brutal or unfair, but I just hope to see less validity threats. I think I’d be less frustrated if the title could be something like “TechPowerUp survey shows 84% of 22,000 respondents don’t want AI-enhanced hardware”.


  • You’ve got a good point. I wonder if this an example of a trade-off between convenience and security. If you’re logging in and you get an MFA prompt, a Yubikey has to be physically searched, while Bitwarden or Proton Pass only have to be clicked. A Yubikey can only hold a limited amount of accounts, while Bitwarden or Proton Pass could hold many more. Of course, a Yubikey could be used as MFA for Bitwarden or Proton Pass, but that would create a single point of failure and reduce factor separation (which I think is your original point).

    While I posted a Bitwarden or Proton Pass recommendation of sorts, I genuinely wonder if it’s advisable to not use MFA at all if the factors will not be separated. Or, perhaps, the best security solution is the one you’ll actually use. I guess the answer is the good ol’ “What’s your security model?”




  • The article’s “valuing your time” argument is problematic in certain contexts. My brother has had so much trouble with his dual-boot (Windows and Linux). Yes, he could learn how to solve something in Linux every time a problem arises, but he also has to deliver his projects on time. Because of that, he mostly spends time on his Windows dual boot. Yeah, it sucks ethically and has its own pragmatic issues, but he has never had issues resolving dependencies or hunting down the most recent version that can actually be run in NixOS.

    I don’t doubt these will become issues that will not be as problematic in the future, but right now my brother cannot use Linux reliably for his assignments.

    Edit: My brother has tried what I use: Fedora and NixOS. He has also tried PopOS.

    In Fedora, he found some of his software didn’t exist as .deb, and struggled to make .tar files work smoothly for him.

    He tried NixOS afterward. He really liked the whole immutability thing, as well as the idea that apps would have their own dependencies.

    His dependency problem happened in PopOS. If I remember correctly, it was a code editor that required a version of something that was different to what a package he used in his software was.

    I think the order he tried was Fedora -> NixOS -> PopOS -> NixOS -> ? (Haven’t talked to him about it recently)










  • EDIT BEINGS HERE

    So I actually watched a talk by the person who coinded “enshittification”, Cory Doctorow, recently, and I have changed my perspective about Kagi. I no longer think Kagi is doomed to enshittify.

    Enshittification requires advertisers. As long as Kagi finances itself with money that does not come from advertisers, it will not enshittify.

    This does not mean that it’s not problematic that their code is closed-source.

    EDIT ENDS HERE

    I like what I hear about the user experience, but there are many problems I see with the service.

    For one, it’s based in the USA, so it is legally subject to the insane, antidemocratic, and awful state surveillance there.

    It is also a corporation, so it is subject to enshittification. Currently, it is giving users loads of stuff so that users use it, but sooner or later investors will want their money back and Kagi will enshittify.

    Finally, these two problems would be mitigated by open-sourcing and making libre their software. With that, alternatives in more sensible legislatures could open. Users could migrate to instances that are still libre and not enshittified.

    It is really unfortunate that Kagi is doing so many things well while doing some fundamental things terribly. As it stands, Kagi is doomed to enshittify.