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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • In short, Facebook are incentivised to increase conflict and hate, it improves user engagement. They have also leveraged their large user base to boost numbers in threads significantly. Threads is already a cess pip of bigotry and hate.

    Federating with them would be like connecting your house’s drinking water pipe with the sewage pipe of an industrial pig farm. It would pollute our community to the point of destruction.

    They might try and control this initially. Unfortunately, it would almost certainly be part of an embrace, extend, extinguish attempt. ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish ). They play nice till they have control of enough communities, then they stop the controls, to increase profits.


  • One of Sir Issac Newton’s famous phrases is

    “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants”

    This sounds very nobal and humbling. However, its meaning totally changes with a few facts. It was written in an open letter to Robert Hooke. Hooke was apparently quite short, and EXTREMELY sensitive about this. Newton was basically dissing Hooke. Nobody will be standing on your shoulders, shortie!







  • I’m a parent, and we made the conscious decision to become parents. That said, I can fully understand people who don’t want to have that responsibility. It can be exhausting and thankless, changing almost everything with your life, hobbies and habits.

    On the other side of the coin, the depth of love you feel as a parent is impossible to describe. With that comes a set of incredible feelings, watching your children experience, learn and grow.

    Basically, parenthood is almost completely thankless, but I wouldn’t give it up for the world.



  • It very much depends on the task. So long as the tasks don’t overlap, in cognitive requirements, you’re fine. E.g. you can listen to a podcast, while washing up. As soon as the requirements overlap, then your point holds. E.g. I personally can’t write anything down, while listening to an audiobook. The resource requirements overlap.

    It’s also worth noting that different people can do the same task with different parts of the brain. E.g. accurate timekeeping. Some people do it visually, others audibly etc.




  • It’s not too bad. Relativity says that no frame of reference is special.

    • On earth, a second looks like a second, but a second on the moon looks too quick.

    • On the moon, the second looks like a second, but a second on earth looks too slow.

    Both are actually correct. The simplest solution is to declare 1 to be the base reference. In this case, the earth second. Any lunar colonies will just have to accept that their second is slightly longer than they think it should be.

    If it helps, the difference is tiny. A second is 6.5x10^-10 seconds longer. This works out to 56 microseconds per 24 hours. It won’t affect much for a long time. About the only thing affected would be a lunar GPS.





  • An encryption scheme is only as strong as its weakest link. In academic terms, only the algorithm really matters. In the real world however, implementation is as important.

    The human element is an element that has to be considered. Rubber hose cryptanalysis is a tongue and cheek way of acknowledging that. It also matters since some algorithms are better at assisting here. E.g. 1 time key Vs passwords.


  • The purpose is to access the data. This is a bypass attack, rather than a mathematical one. It helps to remember that encryption is rarely used in the abstract. It is used as part of real world security.

    There are actually methods to defend against it. The most effective is a “duress key”. This is the key you give up under duress. It will decrypt an alternative version of the file/drive, as well as potentially triggering additional safeguards. The key point is the attacker won’t know if they have the real files, and there is nothing of interest, or dummy ones.


  • St Johns Wort can help. It’s not as effective as prescription medication, but can help deal with mild ‘low mood’ type symptoms. It’s comparable to the effect of a compression bandage on a joint. It will help with the equivalent of a pulled tendon, but will do next to nothing against the equivalent of a shattered elbow.

    It is worth noting that there are 2 sorts of depression. Feeling sad, while unpleasant, is a lot easier to treat. It’s generally caused by external stimulus. While this is harder to treat with drugs, it responds a LOT better to lifestyle changes. Basically, you need to figure out 2 things. What is making you sad, and how do you remove that effect. Implementing it can be an absolute bitch, but it’s worth the effort.

    The other sort of depression is proper “clinical depression”. This is a chemical imbalance in the brain. It can be brought on by external stimulus, but it’s not dependent on them. With this, your brain starts losing the ability to care. Motivation becomes a lot harder, and so the cost to payoff with positive activities gets worse. Internally, it’s like having the chroma on a TV turned down. Everything gets muted and dull. Nothing is worth the effort required to do it. This sort of depression does need proper treatment. It’s far more insidious and will grind you down. To beat it you need to change your very brain wiring. This can be done, but generally requires significant external support. If you could beat it alone, you likely wouldn’t have become trapped within it.

    I’ve experienced both. Neither are pleasant. Just keep in mind, both distort your thinking. Often, you can’t fully trust your own thinking. Situations that seem impossible to cope with will just crumble when actually attacked. However, without enough motivation, you often won’t even try.

    An just to note, if you get to the point of intrusive, self destructive thoughts, that’s when you need to seriously reach out to external help. Even if you think you can cope with them, they can send your mind spiraling downwards.


  • Hiding it would work. You just have to make sure you don’t miss any.

    As for the danger. There are levels of exposure. You could leak something damning, but that could be played off as a 1 off. You might also be sitting on a huge amount of paperwork that proves it’s endemic. That paperwork might also expose others who wanted things changed, but don’t want to be outed. In this case, an initial leak can test the waters. The additional info can be rolled out, if it’s needed, or the results justified.

    E.g. Initial leak proves they did something nasty. The additional info massively backs it up, but also implicates a VP in its gathering. You might not want to show that hand until later, either to protect them, or to gather more info on their reaction.