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thanks_shakey_snake @ thanks_shakey_snake @lemmy.ca
Posts 6
Comments 964
BACK IT UP
  • It's Vitamin D. There was this whole thing during the COVID pandemic about how the FDA/CDC were SUSPICIOUSLY QUIET about how impactful Vitamin D levels were on COVID outcomes or something and how that's how you know that... something something sinister ulterior motives.

    So like the idea was that everybody going outside and getting some sun was actually the best thing for public health, but THEY were telling you to languish inside under lockdowns, because clearly they didn't want you to be healthy.

  • YSK: There is a list of volunteer computing projects where you can donate CPU/GPU time to help researchers globally with their scientific problems.
  • https://ooni.org/blog/

    OONI monitors internet censorship and other forms of network interference, especially by state actors, worldwide. It's an important contributor to digital rights and freedoms IMO, and you can run their client in the background to contribute non-personal data on pretty much any device.

  • Farming Simulator 25 has sold 2 million copies already - that's more than Alan Wake 2
  • They get you in different ways. Maybe Dave the Diver hooks you with some fun farm and restaurant mechanics. Then you make a little garden in Valheim and that feels pretty good. You think maybe you'll experiment with a bit of Stardew. Then next thing you know, BAM you're mainlining Farming Simulator-- Ironically at first, and then not.

  • Your smart TV (probably) sends screenshots to advertisers

    There was another thread with a paywalled article, but here's the actual study that found that smart TVs use "automatic content recognition" to build an ad profile for you based on what's on your screen... including HDMI content streamed from a laptop, game console, etc. Yikes.

    > At a high level, ACR works by periodically capturing the content displayed on a TV’s screen and matching it against a content library to detect the content being viewed on the TV. It is essentially a Shazam-like technology for audio/video content on the smart TV [38]. ACR is implemented by all major smart TV manufacturers, including Samsung [9] and LG [55 ].

    > Our findings indicate that (1) ACR operates even when it is used as a “dumb” display via HDMI; (2) opt-out mecha- nisms stop ACR traffic; (3) ACR works differently in the UK as com- pared to the US.

    So it seems like you're opted-in by default, but you can stop ACR traffic by simply configuring six different options on Samsung, or eleven different options on LG.

    Oh, and this doesn't seem to happen when you're using native streaming apps like Netflix or Disney+, because hey, they wouldn't want to infringe on those companies' rights by spying on them, right?

    31

    Is there a reason that mobile devices are considered more "trusted" than desktop/laptops?

    I keep interacting with systems-- like my bank, etc.-- that require (or allow) you to add one or more trusted devices, which facilitate authentication in a variety of ways.

    Some services let you set any device as a trusted device-- Macbook, desktop, phone, tablet, whatever. But many-- again, like my bank-- only allow you to trust a mobile device. Login confirmation is on a mobile device. Transaction confirmation: mobile device. Change a setting: Believe it or not, confirm on mobile device.

    That kind of makes sense in that confirming on a second device is more secure... That's one way to implement MFA. But of course, the inverse is not true: If I'm using the mobile app, there's no need to confirm my transactions on desktop or any other second device, and in fact, I'm not allowed to.

    But... Personally, I trust my mobile device much less than my desktop. I feel like I'm more likely to lose it or have it compromised in some way, and I feel like I have less visibility and control into what's running on it and how it's secured. I still think it's fairly trustworthy, but just not categorically better than my Macbook.

    So maybe I'm missing something: Is there some reason that an Android/iOS device would be inherently more secure than a laptop? Is it laziness on the part of (e.g.) my bank? Or is something else driving this phenomenon?

    9

    Twitter’s Clumsy Pivot to X.com Is a Gift to Phishers

    👀🍿

    29

    Who would you recommend opening a bank account with in 2024?

    I'm planning to open a new chequing account in the near future, and I'm contemplating bailing on RBC. I've been with them for a very long time, and one possible outcome is that I'll just open a new RBC account and be done with it. That'd be... fine.

    But for a variety of reasons (including my satisfaction with RBC trending steadily downward), I'm thinking about opening this new account elsewhere. I don't have a ton of hard requirements, and I'm not really sure what to look for in a bank, but the following would be nice:

    • Good online banking experience, particularly desktop (RBC is shockingly bad at this)
    • Good credit card; easy to make payments from the new account
    • Minimal fees
    • Easy e-transfers
    • Real security (another thing RBC is terrible at)
    • Neat rewards would be cool
    • Low-fee, low-friction investing would also be cool-- I don't really do much investing, but I'd like to be able to

    Any suggestions would be great, including anti-suggestions if you happen to know of a bank that I should avoid.

    18

    Sure Todd, lol

    251

    "Managers are the real architects," concludes manager

    For reference (as per Wikipedia):

    > Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure. > > — Melvin E. Conway

    Imagine interpreting that as advice on how you should try to design things, lol.

    Tbf, I think most of the post is just typical LinkedIn fluff, but I didn't want to take the poor fellow out of context.

    46