What? Why?

I’ve read that masks do not actually thwart these systems.

Wouldn’t be surprised if that’s how it shakes out in time or in the reality behind the pr piece but the article does specifically mention that that this extends to employees too and that was actually what the quote in the headline was in reference to specifically.

This action was so fucked up and beyond my list of shitty things that the US might do that it honestly didn’t occur to me and so when reading the headline I found it confusingly phrased but thought maybe it somehow meant there was some hint of support for the ICC’s decision and warrants which would have been amazing. Imagine the rollercoaster for me when they actually managed to surprise me with a decision and stance worse than I could have imagined.

Never heard of anything on the playlist before and I doubt I would have really stumbled on it normally because it’s not the style I normally seek out but so far it all slaps. How is it they’re allowed to include this stuff on their website?

Didn’t know they’d taken out the storage drives but I was aware despite my general ignorance that it’s not turnkey ready to go. I guess what I’m wondering is, is there any part of the of the process involved in designing and building such a supercomputing cluster that is already taken care by buying it in the manner that it has been sold and could that in any way offset the increased costs of trying to bring such a cluster online rather than starting from scratch? I’m not saying it is the case, so much as wondering aloud for anyone with expertise to chime in, to see if that’s a way it could make sense.

I understand there’s a mountain to climb to bring this thing in to a usable state for anyone, but could it maybe get you to base camp more quickly?

Does the hardware being all so arranged as it is in this manner to create a supercomputer make any difference to that evaluation? Like does the work of putting all the outdated hardware together in the complex way needed to make it functional for supercomputing make it potentially cheaper than buying more modern hardware but having to build it all yourself?

Holy shit.

As part of just living in… the world, I already kind of assumed it was possible for some parties, credit card companies in particular, to pry in to my financial activity and also interested governments to compel banks to hand over whatever they had, and/or possibly just hand over everything about everyone to government all the time automatically. This was bad enough, however, even I was surprised and shocked to learn how bad it was with my own bank when they sent me a letter gleefully telling me that as of the date of the letter they had now managed to sell my data to even more 3rd parties. I was not, up until that point aware that they were selling my data at all, and that 3rd parties (other than the credit card company) were getting access to it not just because of powers to compel, like people might expect of governments, but purely because the bank was literally handing it over to whoever was willing to pay for it, no consent on my part necessary. I don’t know what changed that required them to apparently have to now disclose this to me, but I assume that they were forced, hence the letter. The sneaky motherfuckers didn’t frame it that way though, not “due to recent legislation the bank is obliged to inform you blah blah blah”, no just “good news removed, we were selling your data, we still are, but we used to too, and now we’re selling it to more people, hope you like egregiously unethical behaviour because we put a travesty in to our travesty so you can experience a travesty while processing the first travesty”.

Yes, but in the context of the comment to which I’m replying, I say scare quotes because the commenter has interpreted editorial intent behind the choice of how and where the punctuation has been used beyond simply establishing that the word is a direct quote.

While I kind of disagree with what that intent is, hence my reply to them, I agree with the original commenter that there is reason to believe the quotation marks served more purpose in that headline than simple punctuation. As a quote, it’s an odd choice, given it’s a single word long, conveys nothing that the sentence without the marks couldn’t have said and used to complete a sentence that is otherwise entirely constructed by the author.

I and the person to which I replied have interpreted this choice as a form of editorial commentary upon the reasoning behind the policy being discussed in the article. In the original commenter’s case they’re taking it to mean that the article’s author thinks the premise of iphones having security problems is so absurd that the people claiming such must be crazy (which the commenter obviously does not agree with). I don’t take from it such an extreme implication, although I do read some kind of implied commentary and given that this security concern has nuance to it that a headline would struggle to convey, I have suggested perhaps that that punctuation is serving to subvert or undermine the supposed security concern in some way. When that writing technique is employed, the punctuation is referred to as scare quotes.

Or you know, we’re just reading tea leaves and it’s just a one word quote, but there’s the rationale for you at least so you know why I chose that term specifically.

I don’t know too much about the relative security chops of different smartphones, however in terms of what’s actually in this article it seems reasonable for the government department to consider the iphone a security issue within the context where it presents this particular problem and for the reason why it presents that problem for them. However, it does also seem like the very reason this is a security concern in this more narrow context is arguably a better security option in almost every other context so I wonder if that’s what they were getting at with the scare quotes.

In the case of defence personnel entering secure locations they say the iphone represents a threat because it doesn’t allow 3rd party apps to control inherent functions of the device, so the defence force cannot use an app they developed which would presumably do things like disable all voice recording abilities so they can be sure that people walking around secure locations aren’t unknowingly or deliberately transmitting or recording conversations and sensitive information. I can see why this would be a problem for them, however if you don’t work in defence and are an average consumer, the fact that random 3rd party developers can not do exactly what such an app would be designed to prevent sounds like a more secure way to operate. In that scenario, apps are incapable of controlling inherent functions of the phone unless they’re developed by Apple. Obviously this leaves the door just as open for untrustworthy behaviour from Apple themselves, but if you’ve chosen to trust them, you can at least be sure that no one else is controlling your device in ways you wouldn’t want, unless the device is somehow hacked but in that case, well it really doesn’t matter which phone it is because somehow it’s security has been circumvented and at that point all bets are off.

Aww I was just about gush about how awesome they’ve been all these years. Guess I haven’t really kept up to date. I mean it doesn’t sound like it’s gone totally to shit, but just clearly embarking on a path straight in to the shit

I think there has to be at least little more to this than that. There’s some complicated implications taking this to logical extremes, what of the adult industry for example? But really, it’s hardly a stretch to say the whole theme around which these cafes operate is degrading. Typically cafe work doesn’t require a worker to behave or be encouraged to be objectified in this way and in a normal cafe context, most of the whole maid cafe schtick would be considered pretty inappropriate.

Is any of that information centralised anywhere? I still have and love my old dumb TV, but I want to be prepared for when I am inevitably dragged in to the “smart” era.

Hopefully they won’t start standardizing TV’s that have to phone home periodically and if they are denied this for long enough, refuse to work until they’ve established a connection to their servers. I’m not aware of anything that does this but it’s definitely what will start happening if enough people disable network connectivity to circumvent smart features. This wouldn’t worry me too much since I’d likely want to use the device as just a display anyway and plug something useful in to the HDMI but if the whole machine is somehow tied up in these sophisticated operating systems, what if they just disable HDMI until they get their way?

That’s a bit like me, definitely like me for some specific tasks, but as a ratio it’s very similar to my attitude towards packing, doing homework/assignments, preparing for job interviews, preparing for any important impactful life moments except with the key difference being the label for the yellow section. For me in those scenarios, including packing, the yellow section represents time spent mentally avoiding the stress and anxiety that comes from mentally preparing for packing or anything else unpleasant by suddenly getting very interested in a random topic and reading all about it, or playing a specific videogame to absolutely ridiculous excess, or watching every episode of a long running series from at least 20 years ago, if I have it available I’m also doing most of these other tasks with a lot of weed.

It’s especially shitty because to the outsider, this looks like laziness, and that’s not wrong, I mean it’s much easier and more pleasurable to do that stuff than the hard thing you should be doing, but I’m not really enjoying that stuff because I’m doing it hard. It might sound impossible to watch a TV series hard, but doing anything in this state is a heart racing extreme form of mental concentration to absolutely fully and completely consume my mind with anything except the source of stress. So it looks like I’m watching TV and laughing at the jokes and I am, but I’m also simultaneously really stressed and tired from expending so much mental energy in to blocking everything else out. Truly a fantastic skill since I’m able to achieve precisely nothing, still get really tired, look like I didn’t do anything that would break a sweat at all and still feel like shit and be completely stressed by the end which itself will usually serve as a reminder of how little progress has been made towards the thing I was trying to avoid thinking about which induces a lot of anxiety and self loathing that needs to be fixed by even more intense even harder doing of anything else.

Nah they really like it, it’s making me feel like a weird uncaring sociopath that I’m just really not that interested in the multiple daily photos, but the rest of us around the person sharing can’t seem to get enough of it. I don’t know why I don’t care so much, I’ve met the kid and they’re nice enough, I hope I’m someone they’ll be glad to have in their lives and form an affection for but you can’t really convincingly fake intense interest and emotional investment and much as I’d like it to be, that just isn’t my natural reaction. I like to think if I have ever have kids it’d be different otherwise the poor kid would have to deal with someone totally uninterested for the rest of their lives.

aww you beat me to it.

I don’t know why that weird ass little gross thing is so appropriate but that is probably the best possible response lol.

Well I mean what did you just read? He already said those are the facts bro.