kbal

joined 1 year ago
[–] kbal@fedia.io 26 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I'm so old that I still remember when working in the fields picking fruit was a thing that local teenagers would occasionally do. And I'm not really that old, it was the 1980s. It's been quite a rapid change.

[–] kbal@fedia.io 7 points 3 months ago

The URL to which the target is redirected is typically a webpage crafted by the attacker to look like a genuine login page for the target’s email service

DO NOT enter your password after clicking on a link you got in an email, or an emailed pdf, or an emailed word document, or a link you got in telegram, or a strange url that came to you in a dream, or anything else like that. Why is it so difficult to get people to remember this?

[–] kbal@fedia.io 2 points 3 months ago

Sometimes I wonder what happened to all the food co-ops that used to be around, but since I'm in Canada it's probably just the same thing that happened to all the small independent grocers: They got squeezed out by the monopoly and monopsony power of the tight little cartel that now controls the whole market.

I'd say it's pretty obvious that other things being equal, it's generally better to run things cooperatively, just like it's stupidly obvious once you stop to think about it that free software is the right way to go. But it's not the only consideration, it's no guarantee of success, and the forces opposing it are strong.

[–] kbal@fedia.io 18 points 3 months ago (2 children)

[How do we bring back free speech?] "The answer is journalists getting eyeballs so they can sell subscriptions and advertising, get sponsorships and do what media have done for, I don’t know, 3,000 years.”

3000 years, huh. 10th-century BC journalists be like Word has reached us that Tiglath-Pileser II is now King of Assyria, succeeding his father Ashur-resh-ishi II. He promises to be a strong leader who will increase spending on the military and keep the resulting rise in tax rates as low as he can. Subscribe today for more vital stories like this one, and don't forget to tell your friends that you like us. This clay tablet was brought to you with the support of Ashur-Ekil Baked Goods. When you think ḫuḫḫurtu, think Ashur-Ekil!

[–] kbal@fedia.io 4 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Spending time driving garbage trucks monthly in the local waste management Co-op is not going to fly well.

Why not? I'm a member of a local co-op that does exactly that sort of thing. It's not actually garbage collection but close enough in every way in which it might be relevant here. Members (basically everyone who lives in the area and wants their trash collected) pay a fee. That goes to covering all costs, including hiring one direct employee for the one job (driving the truck) that can't be filled by volunteers (who handle management, accounting, et cetera.) There is no government bureaucracy involved except in setting basic regulations that the co-op legally needs to observe. No taxation is required. There are no profits. Nobody gets rich off of the arrangement. Anyone can opt out if they're capable of finding other alternatives, but nobody does because that would be crazy. The co-op has reliably done a good job for decades.

It's great. I suspect that replacing all municipal services (including e.g. "last mile" telecoms) with co-ops like this would make things better for everyone.

[–] kbal@fedia.io 51 points 3 months ago (4 children)

If I was shopping for speakers right now

I would buy speakers that are just speakers, which do not collect any data about me, do not rely on any computer networks, do not involve any monthly subscription fees, and do only the job of being speakers. I'd connect them to audio sources with cables, probably through a suitable mixer and/or amplifier. Not the platinum-plated $300 cables, either. It's not that complicated everyone, give it a try some day.

[–] kbal@fedia.io 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

We need someone to write a fediverse manifesto that explains it for the uninitiated like the GNU Manifesto did for free software.

[–] kbal@fedia.io 16 points 3 months ago (7 children)

It's been urgent since the beginning of the rise of electronic mass media a hundred years ago. I'm sure we'll get to it some day.

[–] kbal@fedia.io 6 points 3 months ago

The nerve of all these foreign influence campaigns, coming in without permission and taking jobs away from hard-working patriotic American influence campaigns.

[–] kbal@fedia.io 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

If I were looking to assign blame, I'd start with the coal and gas operators who are digging up fossil fuels that would otherwise remain in the ground just to fuel their bitcoin mining rigs, those who peddle specious arguments claiming that it somehow isn't a problem, those who turned the whole thing into a machine for separating the gullible from their money, and those who've built the shaky, buggy, mostly proprietary, convoluted, half-finished, untrustworthy, horrible mess that is the software ecosystem surrounding the whole cryptocurrency sphere. Perhaps none of that could have been foreseen by whoever designed bitcoin. On them we can instead put the blame for the failure to make it anywhere near sufficiently scalable, and the ridiculous choice of mechanism for the bitcoin monetary policy which serves to make it function only as a get-rich-quick pyramid scheme and not a durable currency. Regardless of who's to blame, it's got to go.

Perhaps there's already an alternative out there somewhere which is actually useful and not based on avarice, fraud, unsustainable resource usage, or unsustainable hype, but if so it's currently hidden under such an enormous pile of shitcoins that it's impossible to identify. At least the internal combustion engine was good at doing the thing it was supposed to do.

[–] kbal@fedia.io 9 points 3 months ago

If you can afford more than a small plot of land in this economy, you've probably been hoarding too much wealth. I know it's a very popular hobby, but it's quite bad for you if taken to excess. But this is getting somewhat off-topic.

Some kind of technology that resembles today's cryptocurrencies may or may not have a future. As they exist right now none of them are anything like a good investment opportunity or a safe store of value.

[–] kbal@fedia.io 23 points 3 months ago (4 children)

A small plot of land with good soil and a steady supply of fresh water, a good education, and a sturdy pair of boots.

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