Posts by Lomax

> Linux *is* obsolete

Thanks for the laugh!

You started the division by giving air to that clown in the first place - bit rich to complain when others point out that every word that comes out of his mouth is an inflammatory lie. Same holds true for his army of bots. #LockHimUp

Re: Who buys from Temu?

I would never buy from Amazon, but I've noticed eBay doing much the same; degrading the quality of search results and removing more and more filtering options. For example it's no longer possible to filter results geographically, resulting in dozens of pages of exactly the same item from Chinese sellers. It's a dreadful user experience, which surely cannot be unintentional - though I struggle to understand the reasoning. The only search option that makes it remotely possible to still use eBay is to filter by "condition: used". And no, this does not seem to be related to Brexshit - the same is true for all eBay sites, including US, Germany and France. Does anyone have a reasonable explanation for what's going on with this!?

Re: Disappointing

I assume this is based on how people voted at the time, because a very clear majority is already in favour of rejoining:

The YouGov polling showed that 57% of Britons would now support joining the single market even if that meant the resumption of the free movement of people, a policy which led to millions of families and workers moving to Britain during the country's membership.

One in five people opposed it.

Support for joining the single market, which also guarantees the free movement of goods and services, was divided along political lines.

For those respondents who voted to leave the EU and who would back the opposition Labour Party in an election tomorrow, 53% support single market membership, with 31% opposed.

For those who voted for Brexit and intend to vote for the governing Conservatives, only 29% would support a return to the single market, with 54% opposed.

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/majority-britons-support-rejoining-eu-single-market-poll-2023-11-29/

It's true that only five of the seventeen people who intend to vote for the Conservatives on July 4th are in favour of rejoining - but of the fourteen who are against twelve are cabinet members...

Re: Can the game access the tablet's microphone?

> I feel like if there was audio-data tracking, someone would have found it already.

They did.

The ultrasonic pitches are embedded into TV commercials or are played when a user encounters an ad displayed in a computer browser. While the sound can't be heard by the human ear, nearby tablets and smartphones can detect it. When they do, browser cookies can now pair a single user to multiple devices and keep track of what TV commercials the person sees, how long the person watches the ads, and whether the person acts on the ads by doing a Web search or buying a product.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/11/beware-of-ads-that-use-inaudible-sound-to-link-your-phone-tv-tablet-and-pc/

Academics in the US have developed an attack dubbed NUIT, for Near-Ultrasound Inaudible Trojan, that exploits vulnerabilities in smart device microphones and voice assistants to silently and remotely access smart phones and home devices.

https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/04/siri_alexa_cortana_google_nuit/

Ultrasound Sensing uses your Google Nest device's speakers and microphones to determine whether a person is approaching the device. Your device's speaker will emit soft, inaudible ultrasonic pulses. These pulses are reflected off of nearby objects in the room and the microphones detect these reflections.

https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/9509981?hl=en-GB

The patent application describes a system where an audio fingerprint embedded in TV shows or ads, inaudible to human ears, would trigger the phone, tablet or long-rumoured smart speaker to turn on the microphone and start recording “ambient audio of the content item”. The recording could then be matched to a database of content to allow Facebook to identify what the individual was watching – like Shazam for TV, but without the individual choosing to activate the system.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/28/facebook-patent-phone-mic-listening-tv-shows

With built-in ultrasonic detecting abilities, your [Amazon] Echo can do more than just respond to questions. It can act like a smart motion sensor and perform tasks such as turning on lights or air conditioning, as well as alerting you to intruders, without your having to buy extra sensors that take up space and burn through batteries.

https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/amazon-echo-hidden-motion-sensor/

In this paper we evaluate the innate ability of mobile phone speakers to produce ultrasound and the possible uses of this ability for accurate indoor positioning. The frequencies in question are a range between 20 and 22 KHz, which is high enough to be inaudible but low enough to be generated by standard sound hardware. A range of tones is generated at different volume settings on several popular modern mobile phones with the aim of finding points of failure. Our results indicate that it is possible to generate the given range of frequencies without significant distortions, provided the signal volume is not excessively high.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/224198839_Investigating_ultrasonic_positioning_on_mobile_phones

In this paper, we present BatNet, a data transmission mechanism using ultrasound signals over the built-in speakers and microphones of smartphones. Using phase shift keying with an 8-point constellation and frequencies between 20--24kHz, it can transmit data at over 600bit/s up to 6m.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/343415125_BatNet_Data_transmission_between_smartphones_over_ultrasound

To demonstrate this technology, I recorded such a beacon being broadcast in my lounge room while watching Netflix. In the below image you can see the audio ends around the 15kHz mark with the ultrasonic beacon beginning at 20kHz, the point at which average human hearing ends.

https://theconversation.com/how-silent-signals-from-your-phone-could-be-recording-and-tracking-you-94978

Google Nearby enables Android phone users who are in close proximity to each other to connect their devices and share data, such as documents or media. Google says: To share and collaborate in apps, Nearby uses Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and inaudible sound to detect devices around your device. (Some people can hear a short buzz.)

https://cosmosmagazine.com/technology/your-phone-is-listening-to-things-you-cant-even-hear/

Phillips

While not designed specifically for it, the propensity for Phillips screws to "cam out" was considered a benefit on the early assembly lines: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cam_out

Torx and hex drives were designed not to do this, and are far superior IMO.

Re: GNOME V 2

I'm going to send a bill for a new keyboard to the Gnome devs after seeing for the first time today the absolute monstrosity of a UI that ships as default with Debian 12 - the shock of which caused me to spray my morning coffee all over the keys. I'm a happy Devuan+XFCE user and was just curious, and now I have PTSD. What. Were. They. Thinking? This is worse than Windows 8/Metro.

While I share the sentiment of your post, I'd just like to point out that it was the eminent Swedish chemist (and physicist) Svante Arrhenius who first explored the heat-trapping mechanism of CO₂ and showed that our CO₂ emissions were sufficient to significantly alter the earth's climate. Arrhenius used the basic principles of physical chemistry to calculate the extent to which increases in atmospheric CO₂ could increase Earth's surface temperature through the greenhouse effect. He presented his findings in 1896.

"If the quantity of carbonic acid in the air should sink to one-half its present percentage, the temperature would fall by about 4°; a diminution to one-quarter would reduce the temperature by 8°. On the other hand, any doubling of the percentage of carbon dioxide in the air would raise the temperature of the earth's surface by 4°; and if the carbon dioxide were increased fourfold, the temperature would rise by 8°."

"Although the sea, by absorbing carbonic acid, acts as a regulator of huge capacity, which takes up about five-sixths of the produced carbonic acid, we yet recognize that the slight percentage of carbonic acid in the atmosphere may by the advances of industry be changed to a noticeable degree in the course of a few centuries."

- Svante Arrhenius, Worlds in the Making (1908)

See also: the planet Venus.

Re: Really? This tired old thing again?

"The charges against Assange should never have been brought in the first place. It is not too late for the US authorities to set things right and drop the charges"

- Agnes Callamard, Amnesty International Secretary General

"Mr. Assange is not a criminal convict and poses no threat to anyone, so his prolonged solitary confinement in a high security prison is neither necessary nor proportionate and clearly lacks any legal basis."

- Nils Melzer, UN Special Rapporteur on torture

"Journalists must not be persecuted or punished for their work anywhere in the world. In the interest of press freedom as well as for humanitarian reasons in view of his poor state of health, Julian Assange must be released without delay."

- Open letter signed by more than 70 members of the German parliament

"Julian Assange has made a significant investigative contribution to the news by revealing classified footage and text of possible US war crimes. In his work with the Internet platform WikiLeaks, Assange has always accepted immense reprisals in favor of reporting. The relentless pursuit of the investigative journalist Assange by the USA with the threat of extradition now poses a threat to free reporting in general."

- Excerpt from the 2022 Günter Wallraff Prize jury motivation

"I just say that enough is enough. There is nothing to be served by his ongoing incarceration. I think that when Australians look at the circumstances, look at the fact that the person who released the information is walking freely now, having served some time in incarceration but is now released for a long period of time, then they'll see that there is a disconnect there."

- Anthony Albanese, Prime Minister of Australia

"In view of both the press freedom implications and the serious concerns over the treatment Julian Assange would be subjected to in the United States, my assessment as Commissioner for Human Rights is that he should not be extradited."

- Dunja Mijatović, Commissioner for Human Rights, Council of Europe

"I observe the closest of similarities to the position I faced, where the exposure of illegality and criminal acts institutionally and by individuals was intended to be crushed by the administration carrying out those illegalities. Assange cannot get a fair trial for what he has done under these charges in the United States."

- Daniel Ellsberg

Re: This is probably worthy of an article on its own

> Video editing, maybe for a light home user sure, but if it doesn't run Premier or Pro Tools that's the userbase it's going to stay with. Have you tried editing 4K video with 7.1 Dolby Surround on a Linux app?

If Blackmagic's DaVinci Resolve doesn't satisfy your needs, what do you want? It's widely regarded as one of the best NLA/VFX/grading packages in the industry. It p****s all over Premiere while laughing. And while only free in the sense a beer might be, I'll take that any day over Adobe's virtual prison.

I'll also throw Blender in the ring, because it too has little trouble knocking out Adobe's and Apple's contenders when it comes to video editing. And that's free in both senses.

Re: Proper paper orientation

I agree with Victor Hasselblad: why confuse things by having an orientation at all - just go square and stop worrying about it! Square monitors are in fact readily available, if not cheaply, and are often used in air traffic control rooms. See for example the 1920x1920 Eizo FlexScan EV2730Q. Makes sense if you think about it.

Re: A potential wokable solution?

My suggestion: switch off the Internet. It's not nearly as useful as it was supposed to be, and may in fact be doing more harm than good. Don't agree? Then tell me, really, how has it improved human existence? Other than providing a way to further concentrate wealth and power in ever fewer hands, giving us the ability to troll each other anonymously at scale, and handing undemocratic forces the means of mass surveillance on a level that would shock even Orwell - providing a grossly inflated source of income to self important developer types who spend their days unquestioningly aiding our assimilation by the borg in the process, while robbing anyone with a creative mindset of their means, and turning everyone else into a miserable social media addict. I used to be its biggest proponent; now I can't wait for WWIII to finish it off.

Icon: nuke it from orbit before it's too late.

Re: T42p

I had the 14" T42p and it's definitely one of the most solidly built of the Thinkpads (the 600 series also springs to mind as particularly "indestructible"). I'd left mine switched on and open on the desk in my office when a torrential downpour caused a leak in the roof right above it - when I got into the office the next day I was met by a faint smell of burnt electronics and found my cherished T42p had been completely filled with rainwater. I removed all batteries, took out the keyboard and DVD drive and left it on the radiator for a few days, but any hope I had was lost when I reinstalled the parts and tried to turn it on; it was of course dead as a dodo. Chucked it in a drawer and tried to forget about it, but found it a month later and was amazed to see it spring to life when I flicked the power switch! I kept using that machine for several years, and even did a hardware mod on it to change the HDD interface from IDE to SATA. It was a lovely machine.