@solrize@lemmy.ml

comments

• You’re what we used to call a pixie wrangler.

  on Why yes, I do communicate via esoteric languages incomprehensible to the average person, why do you ask? in c/programmer_humor@programming.dev · 1d ago

• Who said military? They’re deploying armed drones (nonlethal for now) in Florida schools, in case of mass shooters. ICE will want their own I’m sure.

  newsweek.com/campus-guardian-angel-school-shootin…

  on No Warrant Needed: Border Agents in NY, CT, and VT Can Now Search Your Phone in c/technology@lemmy.world · 2d ago

• Heads up: they have more guns than you do, padre. And they will flatten you with a drone swarm before you can shoot anywhere near them. Your plan is 0 out of 10 for sound judgment.

  on No Warrant Needed: Border Agents in NY, CT, and VT Can Now Search Your Phone in c/technology@lemmy.world · 2d ago

• Take a digital camera and use that for pictures.

  They’ll search that too! Take an analog camera instead. At least that way you get the film developed for free ;).

  on No Warrant Needed: Border Agents in NY, CT, and VT Can Now Search Your Phone in c/technology@lemmy.world · 2d ago

• How about writing your own emails instead of sending slop.

  on AI might be making women sound bad at work in c/technology@lemmy.world · 3d ago

• I’m sorry but this is kind of a wtf to me. What’s wrong with a text file? I thought I was being fancy by using org mode, which is just a text file with some markup. If you want to be really fancy you could use a bug tracker. fossil-scm.org has a built in one that I might try sometime.

  on Looking for a new to-do and list maker in c/selfhosted@lemmy.world · 4d ago

• AI inference is doable on home equipment. AI training is less feasible, but nobody builds their whole Debian distro from source either. It’s enough that the source is available and you can rebuild any component if you want ot do so.

  on Mistral and Mozilla are bringing open, private and multilingual AI to your web browser: a partnership to bring privacy, control and choice to people using AI to browse online. in c/technology@lemmy.world · 5d ago

• Maybe you’re right and you could implement something like MLS in JS and/or WASM. I don’t know if those can open raw socket connections instead of using websockets. You’d need a raw socket connection to interoperate with other apps like Signal, but with websockets you could implement similar functionality non-interoperably, maybe even using a server side proxy to route to a Signal server (the proxy would never see plaintext).

  There’s still the matter of making sure that the JS or WASM download isn’t tampered with. You have to trust the server that send it to you, which is in conflict with the E2EE notion of not trusting the server. There could possibly be a MITM attack by someone with a signed TLS certificate. Worst is if it’s served from a CDN. CDN’s have alway seemed to me like supply chain attacks waiting to happen.

  on Looking for a chat app with specific requirements in c/selfhosted@lemmy.world · 5d ago

• Mxroute.com .

  on Email for self hosted services? (Not personal email) in c/selfhosted@lemmy.world · 17 Sep 2026

• Yeah it kind of sucks but it exists. I’ve used it for a very small server, like 3 users. I won’t say “avoid” but unless it’s gotten a lot better since I tried it, you probably should look elsewhere for a long term solution.

  on Looking for a chat app with specific requirements in c/selfhosted@lemmy.world · 17 Sep 2026

• Same as most open weight models. There are very few truly open source models, particularly if your definition requires distributing the whole training dataset.

  Yes exactly. Open weight is like a compiled binary. Misleading terminology made that sound desirable.

  I hope you’ve got some damn beefy hardware then. Even small models are a pain to train from scratch. You CAN still fine-tune it or train with LoRA.

  It’s ok I can manage without AI.

  on Mistral and Mozilla are bringing open, private and multilingual AI to your web browser: a partnership to bring privacy, control and choice to people using AI to browse online. in c/technology@lemmy.world · 17 Sep 2026

• E2EE with large groups is a hassle because you have to do messy key changing protocols every time somene leaves the chat (since you want to invalidate their keys when they leave). If you don’t mind the server (self hosted) seeing the plaintext that’s a lot simpler. Tbh I’ve simply used nextcloud chat or irc for stuff like this. I can’t really recommend nextcloud for various reasons but it was easy for me to set up a chat when I wanted one, since I already had a nextcloud server. Matrix is supposed to be the post-IRC IRC so I’d check into it, but I haven’t used it so far. I’m of the impression that Matrix isn’t E2EE (the server can see the private stuff) but maybe I’m wrong. I think Signal tries to be E2EE but has other problems, including that MLS (the E2EE mechanism) inherently requires a client app instead of being usable with just a browser.

  on Looking for a chat app with specific requirements in c/selfhosted@lemmy.world · 17 Sep 2026

• On principle I only want a pure FOSS program. I wouldn’t want to use a binary-only browser even if it was a great browser with good privacy. I do use the built in Firefox translate feature but I’ve been wanting to get around to seeing where its model comes from. The Mistral stuff is completely proprietary except for the final weights as far as I can tell. I’d rather resist that since I want to be able to build and modify it myself.

  on Mistral and Mozilla are bringing open, private and multilingual AI to your web browser: a partnership to bring privacy, control and choice to people using AI to browse online. in c/technology@lemmy.world · 17 Sep 2026

• It doesn’t say anything about how this works. “No data retention” suggests that data is going to a server that’s processing it but then not retaining it. That’s bad, this type of feature should run entirely on the client.

  Also, there’s a proprietary AI model doing the work, even if inference is in the client. It says “open weight” but that’s like letting people download a program as a compiled binary, the exact opposite of what FOSS is supposed to mean. It’s an open/free model only if the training data and algorithms are also public, not just the trained weights.

  on Mistral and Mozilla are bringing open, private and multilingual AI to your web browser: a partnership to bring privacy, control and choice to people using AI to browse online. in c/technology@lemmy.world · 16 Sep 2026

• I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla Nov 2025.

  on Mistral and Mozilla are bringing open, private and multilingual AI to your web browser: a partnership to bring privacy, control and choice to people using AI to browse online. in c/technology@lemmy.world · 16 Sep 2026

• I figured on doing shift management the same way as without a computer, like you would on a white board or signup sheet. But ok, if you need a spreadsheet, you need it. You could also look on drupal.org for any modules that might help. But, Drupal may be out of style by now, I haven’t paid attention.

  on Suggestions for service for real time collaboration in spreadsheets in c/privacy@lemmy.ml · 15 Sep 2026

• Yeah you can use a self hosted nextcloud or similar, or maybe you want a wiki rather than a spreadsheet.

  on Suggestions for service for real time collaboration in spreadsheets in c/privacy@lemmy.ml · 14 Sep 2026

• They’ll appoint a task force with Altman and Zuckerberg in charge.

  on Obama urges Democrats to have a ‘clear plan’ for AI safeguards in c/technology@lemmy.world · 14 Sep 2026

• Talk about a supply chain attack.

  on Iran and Houthi rebels used Anthropic's Claude AI to target US warships and build hypersonic missiles — Houthi rebels also used the bot to code ballistic missile guidance systems in c/technology@lemmy.world · 13 Sep 2026

• Shorter version: instead of wiki software, use a static site generated from a git repo. It’s a valid approach. I think emacswiki may have once worked that way. Note that Gitit uses git for version management, so among other things you can copy your whole wiki with git clone. But it also has a built in web editor instead of just relying on git push.

  on [Question] Public-facing Wiki in c/selfhosted@lemmy.world · 12 Sep 2026

• You might try Fossil then. It uses something like 2MB of server ram instead of gigabytes. It makes me wonder where we all went wrong.

  on [Question] Public-facing Wiki in c/selfhosted@lemmy.world · 11 Sep 2026

• Is it public facing in the sense that randos will edit it? If not, the simplest thing is probably fossil-scm.org which is very light weight, but it’s actually a version control system with a built in wiki, so its editing interface is a bit weird compared with Wikipedia. It is pretty fast though I’ve only played with it, not run anything public facing from it.

  Setting up Mediawiki is more complicated but it does have a familiar interface. I don’t know how much tuning and configuration you have to do to allow it to handle a lot of traffic, but obviously with enough caching and stuff, it scales all the way up to Wikipedia level.

  I’ve also used Gitit and I think MoinMoin but not with any significant amount of traffic. Gitit looks like Mediawiki while MoinMoin is retro, like 1990s style.

  on [Question] Public-facing Wiki in c/selfhosted@lemmy.world · 11 Sep 2026

• And the AI models are systematic distillations of… Uh never mind.

  on Feds accuse China of ‘systematic’ distillation of U.S. AI models in c/technology@lemmy.world · 9 Sep 2026

• Wait was it Bonta’s web site running that AI? Otherwise where is it running?

  on I Typed ‘Block the Merger.’ AI Revised it to ‘Drop Your Opposition.’: An AI assisted generator dramatically altered my statement before my own eyes. in c/technology@lemmy.world · 9 Sep 2026

• Maybe this helps? help.libreoffice.org/latest/…/01190000.html

  on Document history in c/foss@beehaw.org · 8 Sep 2026

• Well it worked for Trump, messing with crypto and running for president. Hunter maybe has something similar going:

  thehill.com/…/6073586-hunter-biden-says-i-may-hav…

  Hunter running for president sounds lolworthy but Trump seemed the same way, so.

  on Channel 5 shares their email list with Hunter Biden who used it to pump a crypto scam apparently in c/privacy@lemmy.ml · 8 Sep 2026

• I just write text docs in Emacs and use Git for version tracking. If he wants real-time tracking it’s possible that one of the collaboration editors can do that and I might look into it. In the extreme you could videotape yourself working and typing, and maybe saying out loud what you are doing. I think the purpose is to show that you were doing the work yourself rather than prompting an AI.

  I guess there are also software screen recorders and maybe there’s a way to log X events (keystrokes and mouse movement) if that approach is ok with both of you.

  on Document history in c/foss@beehaw.org · 8 Sep 2026

• Meh there is some kind of artificial scarcity making e-ink screens expensive as far as I can tell, especially big ones. If e-readers are declining it’s because people are using their phones instead, just like small digital cameras have declined. Small e-readers just don’t have much to offer compared to phones.

  I don’t know how the market in tablets is doing. But there are no affordable large e-readers (13" and up) as far as I can tell. I can’t predict whether such a thing would get traction if it existed, but I’d be interested.

  on Tiny E-Reader Is the Best Piece of Technology in Years - The Atlantic in c/technology@lemmy.world · 8 Sep 2026

• Bigger e-readers have been around longer and are popular now, particularly the 7" Kindle size. I find it too small but that’s partly because I like to read full page PDF documents rather than just epubs. As it is, I use my laptop and it’s not too bad.

  Touch screens aren’t a particular technological challenge nowadays. It’s mostly about the actual displays and the power that they draw, and the PHB’s making product decisions.

  on Tiny E-Reader Is the Best Piece of Technology in Years - The Atlantic in c/technology@lemmy.world · 7 Sep 2026

• I don’t like reading on my phone because the screen is too small. An even smaller screen worsens the problem. I don’t even like a 10 inch e-reader. I know someone with a 13 inch ipad and while I don’t like Apple stuff, the form factor and screen size seems just about right to me. I get that epaper screens in large sizes are very expensive for whatever reason, but just acknowledge that fact, stop trying to convince us that tiny ones are usable.

  on Tiny E-Reader Is the Best Piece of Technology in Years - The Atlantic in c/technology@lemmy.world · 7 Sep 2026

• Minimal… $599. Um, nah, just let me degoogle my $200 Moto G and I’m good.

  on Minimal Phone 2 will have unlocked bootloader and a rom without google in c/privacy@lemmy.ml · 4 Sep 2026

• Oops not sure how I got 600 (actually 598). Thanks yes that’s more impressive. I’ll make an edit.

  on RSA-260 has been factored in c/technology@lemmy.world · 3 Sep 2026

• Let’s say you have a number like 35. This is the product of two prime numbers, and with a bit of calculation you can figure out that the primes are 5 and 7. Factoring is doing that calculation, and 5 and 7 are called the factors.

  When the number that you start with is large (RSA-260 is 260 decimal digits) factoring is a difficult computational challenge. RSA-260 (and a bunch of other ones of various sizes) were published a few decades ago and someone just managed to factor RSA-260. One of the factors is 439732… (the number in the post body) and that lets you calculate the other one by long division (no big deal when you use a computer). Without reading the report I’m going to guess that factoring RSA-260 took some months on a cluster of fairly fast computers, i.e. a bit much for a random person with a laptop but within reach of government agencies or tech companies.

  Factoring big numbers efficiently is a big important math problem that until recently was the basis of most web security. There is a scheme (“RSA”) for using a composite number (like RSA-260) as an encryption key, where decryption requires knowing the factors, which are very hard to find. Typically the numbers encryption keys for web servers were 2048 bits which is around 600 decimal digits, so still out of reach for the methods and hardware that cracked RSA-260. But, for other theoretical reasons, the web has been moving away from the RSA scheme towards one based on elliptic curves (another math thing, don’t worry about what it means exactly, it’s a more sophisticated version of the same idea).

  on RSA-260 has been factored in c/technology@lemmy.world · 3 Sep 2026

• About 600 bits I think. I’m surprised this one wasn’t done sooner. It’s about 863 bits per below (260 / log10(2)). I made a miscalculation earlier. Ok this is impressive.

  on RSA-260 has been factored in c/technology@lemmy.world · 3 Sep 2026

• Dunno about type theory per se but I visited a Haskell-based company a while back, and they said 50% of the women they interviewed were trans. Not sure of the cause and effect relationship. I know of several male-at-the-time programmers who got interested in Haskell and then transitioned later.

  on Paradox in c/programmer_humor@programming.dev · 2 Sep 2026

• I had to look it up, DLC is downloadable content.

  on Paradox in c/programmer_humor@programming.dev · 2 Sep 2026

• What are they going to do about upstreams that use it? Like the Linux kernel for example.

  on As Ubuntu embraces AI, Debian discusses banning all AI-generated code in c/technology@lemmy.world · 28 Aug 2026

• Source for this?

  This is a start: grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/117140352254892456

  The obsession with security chips is what allows Pixels and iPhones to be the most secure devices on the planet.

  I remember the govt trying to muscle Apple into unlocking someone’s iphone, til they suddenly stopped because they found Cellebrite could unlock it instead. There have been several new iphone generations since then but I haven’t heard about govt muscling anytime recently. So I have to infer they can still unlock iphones. As for Pixels, this is in Dutch but very recent: omroepbrabant.nl/…/drievoudige-moord-in-oosterhou…

  Machine translation of main paragraphs:

  The Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI) has unlocked the Google Pixel phone belonging to 29-year-old Veronica K., according to the prosecutor. “A large number of images of weapons and stacks of cash were found on her phone. There are also a large number of chat messages that can now be read.” K. is alleged to have facilitated the murder by supporting the perpetrators.

  The prosecutor expects to receive the first results from the NFI on Thursday. During the hearing, the prosecutor also said there is good reason to hope that the NFI will be able to unlock the Google Pixel phones belonging to the other two suspects as well.

  So I think you’re putting too much faith in this stuff. I will ask my crypto homies if they have any recent info about phone attacks though.

  More relevantly, most secure devices AGAINST WHAT? You’re talking about a locked phone attack which is the absolute least of most users’ worries. The phone is so insecure in everyday use that the border patrol is near irrelevant. Plus users including paranoids like me don’t have any opsec to speak of. When was the last time you crossed a border with an Android phone anyway? I don’t think I’ve ever done that. Like most people I don’t leave the country that often. Last time I did was before I switched to Android, IIRC. I might have had an analog or 2G flip phone or something. If I travel somewhere again it’s not that big a deal to leave my Android phone at home, as I mentioned before.

  Even in the border patrol picture, Graphene and TPM won’t protect you from what used to be called rubber-hose cryptanalysis (xkcd.com/538). They’re defending from the wrong threat.

  Look, I understand the advantages of crypto hardware. I’ve programmed it and written simulators for it. But, the way to really keep cryptography in people’s hands is to make it not require special hardware. Thus I’m skeptical that the government hates Graphene, but it really did hate PGP back in the day.

  If I get to add new hardware to phones, TPM would be on my list but not at the top. First might be something like POCSAG (plus build out the pager network again) so you can receive text messages without transmitting anything or revealing your location. Second, third, etc. would be in a similar vein.

  on Motorola's 2027 flagships will officially support GrapheneOS in c/technology@lemmy.world · 26 Aug 2026

• That’s all very nice but not many of us are willing to buy a $1000 phone (or an obsolete Pixel) to get Graphene. They soon won’t be able to run it on new Pixels, and also the stuff about AOSP updates stops mattering since AOSP itself is nearly dead. The obsession with security chips (fighting the seized phone attack while comparatively ignoring much more relevant threats) is another misplaced priority. It’s the old notion of “fence post security”, putting a 100 foot fence post in the middle of the desert expecting the attacker to try to climb over it instead of going around it.^1^ And again, I’m amused at the idea of the US and Chinese governments allowing a Motorola (Lenovo) Graphene to be sold if it’s really that secure.

  We need a de-googled Android fork (maybe Lineage is that) on mass market phones using the hardware that those phones have. Otherwise we’re acquiescing to the notion that Elon Musk deserves more privacy than Joe Schmoe when it should be the other way around.

  ^1^ hpmor.com chapter 115.

  on Motorola's 2027 flagships will officially support GrapheneOS in c/technology@lemmy.world · 25 Aug 2026

• You believe GrapheneOS is not able protect against Motorola?

  Um yes? How do you protect against someone who literally controls the hardware?

  on Motorola's 2027 flagships will officially support GrapheneOS in c/technology@lemmy.world · 25 Aug 2026

• I think that isn’t really a thing. Usually you would have a tape drive in a backup server for a network, and the backup server would have its own HDD, so you’d back up over the network to the HDD and then dump HDD to tape locally at close to the transfer speed of the disk. Higher capacity tapes have fast transfer and if your data source can’t kee up, the tape has to start and stop all the time, which slows everything down and wears everything out.

  “Some TB’s” = single digits? Probably just back up to remote storage if you have enough network speed.

  on Is there any tape media backup system that works through USB? in c/selfhosted@lemmy.world · 22 Aug 2026

• I get the impression that most kindle books are sold (well rented) by subscription, i.e. all you can read for a fixed monthly fee, so a subscriber downloading an AI book or other crap doesn’t pay any increment to do so. IDK how the revenues are divided up.

  on AI-generated books are flooding Amazon and tanking sales for human authors in c/technology@lemmy.world · 18 Aug 2026

• I’ll take The Noisy Decisions RMS and Linus Torvalds Made That Devastated Microsoft for all the marbles, Alex.

  on The Quiet Decision Microsoft Made That Devastated Thousands of Nonprofits in c/technology@lemmy.world · 18 Aug 2026

• !c/selfhost

  !c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

  on GitHub Has an Availability Problem. Is It Time to Look Elsewhere? in c/technology@lemmy.world · 17 Aug 2026

• This is in Brazil, fwiw. It’s unclear what the charges were. Anonymous crypto currency and 3D printed firearms are both possible targets.

  on A man has been jailed for designing 3D printed firearms and using Monero. Legally. in c/privacy@lemmy.ml · 17 Aug 2026

• marshallbrain.com/manna1

  on The AI boss at a San Francisco store just fired its first human in c/technology@lemmy.world · 16 Aug 2026

• If you have an ok phone now, there’s no need for a new one unless it’s interesting. I’d wait to see about the moto graphene phone. I’m quite happy with low end moto hardware (G series) but they will probably screw up and make the graphene phone a flagship, as someone mentioned.

  on would you wait for the Grapheneos-Motorola phone or buy a new pixel now? in c/privacy@lemmy.ml · 15 Aug 2026

• The installer included with Debian, was there a problem? It’s in the step where you partition the disk. It asks whether you want to encrypt.

  on Encryption help in c/privacy@lemmy.ml · 14 Aug 2026

• Which projects?

  Can you look at the source code in the repos and make any sense of it?

  Are there open issues connected to the repo, that you think you could make some headway with?

  If you have 0 experience writing code, I think contributing to an existing project isn’t a good way to start. Better to text a textbook and work through some exercises, and do a few small projects of your own, before trying to join an existing team where as a total newbie, you’ll be a burden. Note that “small project of your own” can involve forking something that exists and making your own changes or additions. That doesn’t require much attention from other people.

  Then, contribute once you feel you are ready to contribute.

  on How can i teach myself to contribute to these projects? in c/selfhosted@lemmy.world · 14 Aug 2026

• LUKS is generally the least obstrusive once it is running, though setting it up the first time can be confusing.

  If you install Debian (or maybe other distros) from scratch, the installer offers to do it for you. Otherwise, basically,

  cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sdb xyz  # make an encrypted mapping of raw disk partition
  mkfs -t ext3 /dev/mapper/xyz whatever  # initialize new FS on encrypted/mapped partition
  mount  /dev/mapper/xyz /yourfs  # mount encrypted partition as a file system
  rsync -a oldfs /yourfs   # copy all the files from your old drive
  

  The above is a basic strategy not something to cut and paste. Check the man pages for details, or ask here.

  How to quickly integrity check all files: hmm, I’ll think about whether there is a neat trick for that, otherwise md5sum everything and compare file by file using “find”.

  on Encryption help in c/privacy@lemmy.ml · 13 Aug 2026