pitay · HackerTrans

قبل 5 سنواتdiscuss

This reminds me of BlueJ. Does anyone remember BlueJ with its auto generated class diagrams?

قبل 5 سنواتdiscuss

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26062977

I posted the linked comment almost a year ago, but the incident happened much closer at the start of Covid. I didn't say it at the time, but I willingly say it now, LiveCode were the perpetrators. They employ the dark pattern of graciously offering free stuff for education during lockdown, because they are such good guys, and then will charge $1500 if someone forgets to cancel their offer. After the dashes is copy of the text from the other comment:

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I treat 'free but remember to cancel' plans as scams.

About 10 months ago I got emails from a company that developed an development environment that was I was mildly interested in. They presented an offer with said it was free so that people could help educate themselves during lockdown. Unfortunately the terms was after 1 year you needed to pay something like $1500 if you didn't cancel, these terms were right at the bottom of the page and very hard to spot. Paid through PayPal and the about $1500 was there right in front of me. I cancelled it on the same day.

A company offering that sort of deal waiting for people not to cancel and saying it is to help people during the lockdowns is just awful.

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Addenda: Unfortunately I don't have the original email for this any more, as I was annoyed and marked it as spam before copying any text like an idiot, and it vanished. Although I may be able to use the internet archive to recover the page the email sent me to. Aside: if anyone doesn't copy the text they wrote in a webpage to a text editor or something before they press the 'submit' button or equivalent, they may regret as I have a couple of times, if an AI or site error swallows their text, it's a good habit to get into.

pitay

قبل 5 سنواتdiscuss

Parameterized queries and statements are great. They solve problems where the paramaterized queries are used. However care must be taken, a script running on the database after information has been entered can still inject long after the initial parameterized statement put it into the database if that script itself does not use parameterized queries, making a SQL injection still work, in a delayed way.

pitay

قبل 5 سنواتdiscuss

It was one time for me. Although I do think what they advertised there and the way they advertised it was nonsensical and disrespectful to the user.

pitay

قبل 5 سنواتdiscuss

I do not have this issue, but I have a very customized about settings.

Here is the relevant about:config settings I have these changed for the URL bar:

  browser.urlbar.suggest.searches false
  browser.urlbar.searchSuggestionsChoice false 
  browser.urlbar.showSearchSuggestionsFirst false

Also for your urlbar you want to change it so it always shows the scheme and every part of the URL.

  browser.urlbar.trimURLs false

Stop Firefox trying to help with incomplete urls and loading the wrong site:

  browser.fixup.alternate.enabled false

Setting the above about:config entries should stop URLS you type being sent to a search engine and also stop some other surprises in the URL bar.

pitay

قبل 5 سنواتdiscuss

My bank used to have a virtual keypad, they now have a normal password field. So they actually saw reason. I think there is reason to be optimistic about bank password security getting better; what is known to be good password policies and interfaces are getting more widespread. It may take some time, but it should get better because it is accidental or ignorant password policies from the past, not deliberate attempts to make their customers trip up (unless someone knows better).

As for the asking birthday for security reasons, relic from the past, getting more useless as time goes by. With so many websites asking for that information, and then they get hacked, sold or leaked. Yes, this said the completely obvious, but it still amazes me that any organisation that I have a financial relationship with asks that for identification over the phone, usually my address as well, but that is almost as public.

pitay

قبل 5 سنواتdiscuss

Steam also allows a user to view the raw information if they want. At least the last time I looked. The option could definitely be more obvious though. Giving the user the ability to see the like/dislike data over time gives them their own ability to decide whether likes/dislikes come from an external source to the page. This information should include a graph of the total views over time as well as likes and dislikes over time in parallel.

Not giving users this information and removing like dislike counts just makes it so that a small number of people at YouTube have even more ability to control what is pushed on that site. With this change users have even less ability to check the validity of a video; validity means different things to different users here. People who stay at YouTube will just have to deal with the fact that they will have videos pushed to their screen for reasons that are hidden to them, that they don't have the ability to check out anything other people think about the video, and can't even signal that there is something wrong to them about the video (sure, they could comment, but any comment can be deleted by the video author and there is the fear of losing your Google account, which can include their email contact to everyone and authentication information also, which can have huge consequences for their ordinary life).

pitay

قبل 5 سنواتdiscuss

Microsoft could just not give discounts to computer suppliers that don't have UEFI secure boot on forced on.

I definitely recall Microsoft killing hardware manufacturers putting Linux on the machines that they sold by mandating that if they put Linux on any consumer desktop they would not get the OEM discount for a Windows licence for any computer they sold. It stopped new non Windows PC sales dead at the time IIRC. This was something like over a decade ago.

pitay

قبل 5 سنواتdiscuss

Interestingly just removing the US location restriction it looks quite different, with KDE being far more frequently searched for than the others at the moment. Searches for Linux desktop environments look to have reduced a lot in total since 2004, on Google at least. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F0...

pitay

قبل 5 سنواتdiscuss

Yeah the lack of consequences for those that administer justice is (I believe) the strongest reason an innocent person is convicted or punished far too harshly for the given crime. The only time I have heard of judges ever getting punished for their judgments is either when it is revealed that they have been taking bribes or their nation lost a war.

pitay

قبل 5 سنواتdiscuss

Here you go:

  DavidXanatos
  on 16 Aug
  
  Interesting driver,
  is the process termination feature of PH the only thing MSFT has a problem with?
  I mean if its the only thing they don't like, may be its worth moving that feature into a separate tool or a plugin with an own unsigned driver?
  Also changing the name would be an option, if than all the problems can be avoided.
  @dmex
  dmex
  on 16 Aug
  Maintainer
  
      the only thing MSFT has a problem with
  
  MS refused to discuss anything and have ignored every email so who knows what their problem is.
  
      if its the only thing they don't like
  
  It's not the only thing.... There are recent changes to APIs that block and limit features when the caller isn't taskmgr.exe.
  
  Either way this discussion is offtopic from the KPH updates.

pitay

قبل 5 سنواتdiscuss

I guess this will have to do for now. https://web.archive.org/web/20210301034848/http://oss4gov.or...

pitay

قبل 5 سنواتdiscuss

Sounds like a micropayment system where there is much more significant first buy in amount to be on the micropayment system than the actual (tiny) cost of a micropayment to use a service would make it worth far less worth it to spam online services.

The risk of having their payment identifier/address banned from services before significant use makes it very risky for them to use such a thing even if tiny micropayments a worth it to the spammer.

It certainly could have other problems with people getting banned from such a system for things other than: spam and other use detrimental to the service provider. There is also the issue of how the initial buy in fee is distributed.

But a high buy in for a system that many online service providers use would very strongly discourage use detrimental to the services providers (I think; this is only for discussion, as this is posted by someone with little knowledge on this. Micropayment systems have been talked about a lot, but I don't remember high buy-in mentioned).

Edit: Forgot to mention that the idea of this is that service providers can offer their services at lower cost because the risk to them from a account/address with a high buy in is lower than from an account/address with no buy in.

pitay

قبل 5 سنواتdiscuss

That was a previous attacker, not the one now. The article does not give any identifying information about the new attacker except they know who he is, but don't have the data to prove it. Look at the top of the paragraph quoted to see this.

pitay

قبل 5 سنواتdiscuss

I completely agree with this list. Although Windows 8 had a bad desktop UI, it was easily mostly fixed with Classic Shell at the time (these days it is Open Shell as Classic Shell is not updated any more). What Windows 10 has now is a better UI, but it has all this background stuff and telemetry which screws any performance for long periods of time, other times it is fine. But I have had to have performance monitoring tools open all the time to see what is going through my hard drive. It is that bad that I have resource monitor open all the time, just out of habit, because of how often there is Windows telemetry stuff or update medic service or even stuff which tries to measure power usage of programs in Windows when I am running it on a desktop. This is all stuff built into Windows installed by Microsoft, not 3rd party stuff. I have been able to deal with this by bypassing the haphazard protections MS put into place to stop me turning that stuff off, if they truly manage to stop me using my PC the way I want, not allowing me to disable the stuff I don't like, then it will become to unbearable to use Windows. The only reason it isn't unbearable is the protections against turning stuff off can be bypassed (not that they haven't tried to stop it).

With Win 11 requiring SecureBoot and the Trusted Platform Module turned on, it is a hard no for me. I like having control over my PC.

pitay

قبل 5 سنواتdiscuss

Live Editable Environment? Live Editable Program(ming)? Live Editable Programming Environment?

Just what instantly comes to mind. No recommendations.

pitay

قبل 5 سنواتdiscuss

Well as someone who does that on occasion, not very often, far more on this site than real life, the answer is fear. If I was to do argue for free speech, I'd think twice because from experience I know that I will get called names and have terrible arguments against me that sound good but don't apply to what I said. In the IRL space (the actual like 2 times I've done this rather than the who knows how many times I have remained silent) it has been people who are absolutely fine with whatever horrible things happening to other people as long as those people are the ones the media has told them to hate. The funny thing about these people is that you know they will scream if this was applied to groups that they support or are part of, the hypocrisy is lost on them. In the online space, I think it is a mix of the former people I have mentioned and actual malicious people working for powerful groups destroying peoples ability to talk about important things.

So in the end do I want to get into arguments with either malicious people or people who already have their mind set, get called names, have people deliberately portray what I am saying as something else and call it stupid when that was not what I said at all. Most of the time I really don't want to deal with that BS. Most of the people want to post about this are reluctant to do so and in many times don't, this is not just extrapolating from my experience, but what I have observed from other sources as well (such as asking whether they agreed with something shown, seeing no hands go up, then asking whether the didn't put there hands up because they were afraid and seeing almost all the hands go up).

pitay

قبل 5 سنواتdiscuss

They certainly have. Here is one from 2010 when they held over 600,000 euros from Markus Persson, the creator of Minecraft for 'suspicious activity' that they wouldn't disclose. It's a good thing for him that he was so well known. https://notch.tumblr.com/post/1096322756/working-on-a-friday..., https://www.devicemag.com/2010/09/10/paypal-holding-over-600...

pitay

قبل 5 سنواتdiscuss

Take this as you may, but I would just like point out that this is even more strongly implemented in courts via an offence called 'contempt of court'.

Here is what is advised to do to avoid being charged with contempt of court. 1) Know the etiquette and court standards of the court for which you will appear, including dress codes; [1] 2) Avoid raising your voice, outbursts, or any other display of anger or adverse reactions to an order. [1]

Here are some selected things that can get you a contempt of court offence: 1) Criminal Contempt: being rude or disrespectful to court proceedings, the judge, or attorneys in the proceedings, or causing some type of disturbance in the courtroom. [2] 2) Direct Contempt: an action taken in the presence of the court, which is intended to cause embarrassment or show disrespect for the court. [2] 3) Indirect Contempt: actions taken away from the court, which are intended to mock, degrade, or obstruct the court or court proceedings. ... In addition, publishing or handing out flyers intended to cause disrespect for the court may be considered an act of indirect contempt. [2]

Here is an explanation of being imprisoned for contempt of court: Even in cases of civil contempt, jail time is sometimes threatened, though if imposed it is usually brief. In fact, jail time usually ends when the individual complies with the judge’s order. In this situation, the jailed individual is usually placed in the custody of the local sheriff or other court officer and, because he is said to “hold the keys to his own cell,” due process of law is not necessary. [2]

Now from this you can see that someone could honestly criticize the courts and be imprisoned forever until they lie they lie and say that the court is great. If they are too honest and aren't willing to lie or be dishonest then they will stay imprisoned until they die, with no due process.

Now you can imagine how this can translate to a police officer being able to arrest or lock up people for not being respectful enough to them. The different levels of law enforcement are not unlinked, from the legislature down to the police. Scary to think about legal punishments for criticizing the wrong people/institutions. Instead of just looking at police, it may be much more beneficial to look at the whole system (including the police), seriously look at the whole system.

Here is an example of someone getting huge fines and jail time is right here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe2BfdlzwgI (CNN: Judge flips out after getting flipped off). I personally found that disgusting and it stuck in my head, although as from [1] the defendant apologized about the outburst and said she was under the influence at court after four days in jail. If she was unwilling to be dishonest and thought that the punishment was excessive, she could still be in jail today.

Note: It should go without saying but I am most definitely not a lawyer, who has not studied the law in any slightly significant way, this is just what I have observed during ordinary life. And for the 5 people who read this, sorry if this comment was too long.

[1] Contempt of Court: Woman Gets 30 Days in Jail for Disrespecting Judge, https://blog.novakazlaw.com/contempt-of-court-woman-gets-30-...

[2] Contempt of Court, https://web.archive.org/web/20210123193533/https://legaldict...

pitay

قبل 5 سنواتdiscuss

I recently installed the latest version of Linux Mint because I was sick of Windows with Microsoft thinking that because I had installed Windows it owns my PC, automatically 'fixing' things that were better off not running, as these were things that trawled my hard drive and absolutely destroyed the performance of the PC for long periods at a time. The two things that come to mind when dealing with this is 'Microsoft Compatibility Appraiser' (the Microsoft Telemetry thing) and 'Windows Update Medic Service'. Both these things trawl my hard drive, I've watched them do it. Why 'Windows Update Medic Service' would be going through the jar files of a program that I unpacked to a completely non-windows directory I have no idea. These programs doing this is one thing, but Microsoft tries to prevent people from disabling these services from running, I actually have to break windows enough so that it actually runs well. That is why I realised that when I run Windows I really don't own my PC and installed Linux.

Experience installing and setting up Linux.

* Installing Linux was trivial, scary to shrink an NTFS partition in the installer, but after a long time it finished and worked really well. Tried Windows built in NTFS resize before this but even with almost all data removed from HDD it wouldn't lower the more than something like 300MB off of a 2.7GB partition.

* The basics worked without configuration. Graphics were fine even before installing drivers, internet was autosetup out of the box.

* There was still some basic stuff that needed searching the internet for to deal with, such as sound volume. The sound was really quiet even putting it to max volume on the desktop. Thing is the graphical control to change it was separate from the master volume, which was set to almost 0%. To change this I needed to run the 'alsamixer' command line program.

* Fonts look different, for some reason the way they were rendered made them look skinnier. Played with the rendering settings and then just accepted it.

* I was hyper sensitive to programs and games running differently and thought that some had problems on Linux (such as micro stutter in a game). But then I compared and they had exactly the same problem on both Windows and Linux. Ended up installing the much newer XanMod kernel distribution before I realised it was my perception and not my Linux install that was the problem.

So the setup worked to a point, having a desktop with internet connectivity was no problem and required no actual setup that I remember. Other things like sound required required me to use the terminal to set it up correctly. There was some other stuff I had to change which I had to search the internet for quite some time for, I wouldn't have been able to do it without looking stuff up on answer sites. Not the smoothest setup for getting stuff working correctly, but not too bad, and it is stuff I don't have to worry about after initial setup. Some of the issues with sound may have been because I was using a USB sound card which I think is not that common. Anyway that is my recent experience, Linux didn't run perfectly out of the box for me, but it was manageable. That was just the setup, running it is very nice, very snappy, and it doesn't have stuff that grinds my hard drive for no good reason.

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