So by Israel’s own standard of discourse, they’re “using human shields” and hence any amount of killing of Israeli civilians is perfectly justified not matter how great the disproportion of civilians to non-civilians killed, their age or gender.

We’re talking about fingerprinting stuff coming in via HDMI, not stuff being played by the “smart” part of the TV itself from some source.

You would probably not need to actually sample images if it’s the TV’s processor that’s playing something from a source, because there are probably smarter approaches for most sources (for example, for a TV channel you probably just need to know the setting of the tuner, location and the local time and then get the data from available Program Guide info (called EPG, if I remember it correctly).

The problem is that anything might be coming over HDMI and it’s not compressed, so if they want to figure out what that is, it’s a much bigger problem.

Your approach does sound like it would work if the Smart TV was playing some compressed video file, though.

Mind you, I too am just “thinking out loud” rather that actually knowing what they do (or what I’m talking about ;))

Well that makes sense but might even be more processor intensive unless they’re using an SOC that includes an NFU or similar.

I doubt it’s a straight forward hash because a hash database for video which includes all manner of small clips and has to somehow be able to match something missing over 90% of frames (if indeed the thing is sampling it at 2 fps, then it only sees 2 frames out of every 25) would be huge.

A rough calculation for a system of hashes for groups of 13 frames in a row (so that at least one would be hit if sampling at 2 fps on a 25 fps system) storing just one block of 13 frame hashes per minute in a 5 byte value (so large enough to have 5 trillion distinctive values) would in 1GB store enough hashes for 136k 2h movies in hashes alone so it would be maybe feasible if the system had 2GB+ of main memory, though even then I’m not so sure the CPU speed would be enough to search it every 500ms (though if the hashes are ordered by value in a long array and there’s a matching array of clip IDs, it might be doable since there are some pretty good algorithms for that).

What! A! Surprise!

I’m shocked, I tell you, totally and utterly shocked by this turn of events!

I was curious enough to check and with 2KB SRAM that thing doesn’t have anywhere enough memory to process a 320x200 RGB image much less 1080p or 4K.

Further you definitelly don’t want to send 2 images per-second down to a server in uncompressed format (even 1080p RGB with an encoding that loses a bit of color fidelity to just use two bytes per pixel, adds up to 4MB uncompressed per image), so its either using something with hardware compression or its using processing cycles for that.

My expectation is that it’s not the snapshoting itself that would eat CPU cycles, it’s the compression.

That said, I think you make a good point, just with the wrong example - I would’ve gone with: a thing capable of handling video decoding at 50 fps - i.e. one frame per 20ms - (even if it’s actually using hardware video decoding) can probably handle compressing and sending over the network two frames per second, though performance might suffer if they’re using a chip without hardware compression support and are using complex compression methods like JPEG instead of something simpler like LZW or similar.

Server-side checks cost processing power and memory hence they need to spend more on servers.

Client side kernel-level anti-cheat only ever consumes resources and cause problems to the actual gamers, not directly to Rockstart’s bottom line (and if it makes the game comms slightly slower on the client side it might even reduce server resource consumption).

If Rockstar’s management theory is that gamers will endure just about any level of shit and keep on giving them money (a posture which, so far, has proven correct for just about every large game maker doing that kind of shit) then they will logically conclude that their bottom line won’t even suffer indirectly from making life harder for their existing clients whilst it will most definitelly suffer if they have more server costs due to implementing server side checks for cheating.

I played WoW right when it came out, on a PvP server.

There was already a subset of the crowd just like there back then - some people rushed game progression to have higher levels as soon as possible only to then hang out in beginner areas and “pwn” significantly lower level players.

That’s around the time when the term “griefer” was coined.

In these things the real difference is how the servers are structured rather than the human beings: if the architecture is designed so that there is some way to filter players (smaller servers with moderation or some kind of kick voting system that bans repeat offenders), griefers end up in their own griefer instances griefing each other and the rest can actually play the game, otherwise you get a deeply beginner (or people with less time, such as working adults) unfriendly environment.

As somebody else pointed out environments were people run their own servers tend create those conditions at least for some cases (basically if there’s some kind of moderation) whilst massive world centralized server environments tend to give free right to people whose pleasure in a multiplayer games derives mostly from making it unpleasent for others (in game-making, griefing is actually recognized as one of the 4 core types of enjoyment - along with achiving, exploring and socializing - people can derived from multiplayer games)

At least back when I lived in the UK the Greenparty were the only national party which was Leftwing, though I believe nations other than England did had more mainstream left of center parties.

I was actually a member of the Greenparty until I left the UK following Brexit and at least the people in my local are were trully well intentioned people though quite naive (IMHO). Then again in the UK I worked for almost a decade in Finance - which was pretty much Sociopath-Central - so maybe it was me being significantly more cynical and skeptical than average rather than them being more naive.

They try really hard to make the difference de facto as small as possible whilst being loudly theatrical about how “different they are” to make it seem as big as possible.

It’s why for example in the US you get loud outrage about some stupid teenagers posting a photo were they spell the N-word, but nowhere the same outrage about kids in poor inner city neighbourhoods not having anywhere the same chances in life as the rest because schools there are shit or having significantly lower life expectation because for poor people food is shit, houses are shit, healthcare is shit, even the mattresses they sleep on are shit - all of which are things which disproportionatelly impact minorities and are the mechanisms via which racism shapes lives and causes suffering 24/7.

Again and again make clown shows of morons being morons (and there are always morons) so as to avoid addressing the actual ways in which people are oppressed because those are all about money and one can’t negativelly impact the wealth and what the priviledges it buys, and if there’s one thing where both the Fascists and the Marginally-Less-Fascist are exactly the same is making sure the wealthy remain wealthy and can derive maximum priviledges of it, with zero concern for all those who must suffer for it to be so, minority members or otherwise.

Zero surprise in seeing the hard Neoliberals of New Labour siding with ethno-Fascists and silencing criticism of it even from their own party members.

For those who didn’t follow it, some years ago the Labour membership elected an actual Leftie to lead the Party - Jeremy Corbyn - overthrowing decades of total control of the party by the New Labour faction (who are hard Neoliberals, not Leftwing, and whose policies were at one point deemed by none other that Margaret Thatcher as “my greatest achievement”) and what followed was a massive slander campaign, mainly using accusations of anti-semitism anchored on statements from Israeli linked Jewish organisations, even at one point with New Labour faction politicians relentlessly keeping on the slander campaign during an election causing Labour to lose it, something they then claimed as being because Corbyn was “unelectable”, until they finally managed to bring down Corbyn and restore power to the New Labour faction who promptly went on a purge of the Labour part of any overltly Leftwing members.

Fast-forward to present times and the Neoliberals who now control the Labour party have a huge debt to the Zionists, hence their support of their Genocide (and the recent “we’re blocking some arm sales” announcement only “blocked” 20 out of 300 kinds, and was clearly just the the usual theatre so typical in UK politics)

In my experience working with Designers for web and app design, they always had trouble with dynamic stuff at all levels, from program flow and elements which dynamically collapsed or expanded to using animation to illustrate things or call attention to something.

Don’t get me wrong, as a programmer I was like a toddler next to them when it came to even just awareness of the concerns related to merelly visual organisation, not counting all sorts of other concerns in a visual design some of which I’m sure I’m even not aware exist. It’s just that when it came to dynamic elements their expertise was comparativelly non-existent and they have little or no tendency to use such capabilities, even in things such as apps where they’re reasonably easy to do.

This made me think that the whole unofficial production of everyday devices with explosives in Hungary was a great opportunity for well connected Hungarian criminals wanting to get their hands on what are probably military explosives which is typically highly controlled stuff hence valuable.

I’m wondering if some of the stuff which was suppsed to have been used for this won’t pop-up elsewhere in the EU in the hands of some criminal group, possibly even used for a terror attack.

The possible implications of this shit just keep in getting better and better.

It sounds a lot like you’re letting Perfection be the enemy of Good Enough.

Should there be no UN because in a small proportion of situations it’s actually shit and is it really realistic to have no talking shop like that at all for as long as it takes for the World to somehow get together and make a perfect entity for that?

I’ve given some thought to it over the years and I think that the UN still does more good than bad, even whilst being shit at some things and having no real power other than that of influencing nations in general and the World’s public opinion.

Further, even if in the balance of things tearing down the UN and creating something better turned out to be the best thing to do, I don’t quite see how arbitrarily kicking countries from the UN that were deemed “badly behaving” at the moment would help us create the something better since those countries would need to be there too (it would certainly help tear down the UN, just not help with the actual primary purpose of getting something better to replace it).

A talking shop for everybody using the penalty of kicking members out only ever succeeds in turning itself into an exclusive club, and at the time when the only thing that existed were such clubs (which were naturally made up of nations allied with each other) was before and at the start of WWI and lead to it and to WWII.

The point being that sometimes things that look “clever” if you only look at the obvious primary effects are not at all clever when you also consider secondary effects.

If only when it comes to “ease of eavesdropping” it might very well be in the best long term interest of the Israeli Security Services that the rest of the World keeps on acquiring Made In Europe and Made In US devices which this action will likely impact (one thing are accusations of “backdoors” in certain devices a whole different thing is seeing on TV a mass attack were a batch of devices all made in a nation allied with Israel contained explosives and that were detonated in all manner of arbitrary places hitting thousands of arbitrary people).

Then there’s the possible impact on Israeli Allies’ exports of electronics given these pagers were specifically manufactured in Hungary (a very strong ally of Israel) by a company licensing the brand name - is it really a good idea for anybody in a political, state or security position in any nation not allied with Israel to buy any device with remote access capabilities from made in any nation allied with Israel or with a significant part of the supply chain passing thorugh one of those nations. If they’re willing to have explosives put in them and detonated in the middle of crowds of civilians, what else are they willing to do - it’s the same reason why buying Security Software from an Israeli company is extremelly stupid for any company (even in allied nations) only now Electronics is also included, there’s very obvious proof that they will do just about anything (rather than merelly an unproven risk of industrial espionage) and the risk also includes things sourced from nations allied with Israel.

Time will tell just how big those two classes of secondary and tertiary effects really are.

Mind you, as I see it anybody who gets in bed with ethno-Fascists like the Zionists deserves all the damage that comes from them having no limits whatsoever to what they’ll do.

They were on TV over here (Portugal) doing a press conference were they explained the devices were made in Hungary by a company which licensed the brand name from them (a Taiwanese company) so the manufacturer’s name (which I totally forgot) is definitely out.

The obvious solution is to just procure their equipment from China only as they are naturally not allied with Israel if only because geostrategicaly they’d adversaries of the top Israeli ally, the US.

Given the indiscriminate nature of this attack this might imply purchasing decisions all over the World from much more than merely “members of groups deemed terrorist by the US”.

Specifically in Hungary, same country that has been voting with Israel in the UN and also has a Fascist government.

It sure makes manufacturing involving explosives much more easily to go ahead if the local government has approved of it.

I’m curious what this will do to the “Made In EU” brand in the rest of the World.

There are several reports that the devices were made with the explosives built-in.

According to the spokesperson of the Taiwanese brand in a press conference, those were all devices produced by a Hungarian licensee of the brand.

Hungary, you know, been voting with Israel in the UN and also has a Fascist government which is massivelly racist against Arabs.

Kind makes sense that those things were manufactured in a country very friendly of Israel and with their authorization, already with the explosis built-in.

The interesting second and third level effects to consider of this are around the impact on things like Globalization (if having to start paying attention to the alliances of the countries the stuff you buy comes from the places which are part of a supply chain stop being irrelevant) and even brand licensing (that Taiwanese company will have their name pop-up associated with this in every single internet search from now on)

Also curious about what will this to to “Made in EU” - Hungary might just have screwed the rest of us much more than ever before.

It depends on the Western country - some are much worse than others when it comes to the whole practice of defining people’s worth mainly from their race.

Some Western nations (maybe most of them in Europe) do tend to see value in all human live, Arab or otherwise, but many to indeed see no value in Arab life.

If I was to point a finger at the worst in Europe I would say Britain, Hungary, Austria and Germany.

It’s a country founded on 19th century White Colonialist ideology (this bunch of people who see themselves as Whites being Jewish rather than Christian makes no different to their victims) which, unlike the places from were such thinking hailed, has never evolved away from it, quite the contrary: just like Apartheid South Africa, with time they just become more violent and oppressive against those they see as lesser races, only Apartheid South Africa was forced to stop whilst Israel just kept doubling down on it and getting more violent.

It’s not by chance that most Israelis and their leadership say that they “have Western Values”: they do have Western Values it’s just that they’re 19th century Western Values.