71
submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by Vinegar@kbin.social to c/opensource@lemmy.ml

I came across an NPR Article this morning discussing malware believed to have been installed by China on many small office / home routers across the United States.

National Cyber Director Harry Coker Jr. alluded to the fact that the US does the exact same thing by advising The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party to "continu[e] operating with confidence, not yielding the initiative, not merely staying on the defensive, but being as strong as the United States has always been"

The vulnerability that was exploited was "outdated Cisco or NetGear devices that were no longer subject to software updates." These vulnerabilities were present because proprietary equipment and software was no-longer being maintained. This is far less likely to have occurred with routers using FLOSS, like OpenWRT. Such routers regularly receive updates for many years after the original equipment manufacturer has stopped supporting them.

Only with FLOSS hardware, software, and shared standards can nation states have digital sovereignty, compatibility, and security. If all sides are using the same FLOSS standards, then they can host their own services without dependence on a foreign tech sector, they can maintain international compatibility, and any vulnerabilities affect all parties equally. Therefore, it is in the best interest of each party to contribute fixes which ensure their own infrastructure is secure, and simultaneously provide security & functionality to each other party.

[-] Vinegar@kbin.social 26 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Unfortunately, generics can vary wildly in efficacy & quality. As @Aradina pointed out, sometimes the encapsulation is different (e.g. extended release coating vs. standard release), but also the form of the drug can differ (e.g. capsule, tablet, softgel, chewable, etc), chemical by-products from different manufacturing techniques may be present in different amounts, and different manufacturing processes can also yield different chiral enantiomer ratios in the end product.

The "same" drug from different manufacturers may vary in effectiveness / side-effects, and brand-name drugs aren't always the best formulations for most patients.

[-] Vinegar@kbin.social 27 points 9 months ago

Thank you! Lemmy is a tremendous contribution to the wider Fediverse, and no amount of "thank yous" is ever enough for people like you writing free software and giving freely to the public domain.

I have been on Lemmy, and around the Fediverse on various accounts since ~2021, and a suggestion I have seen promoted countless times is for communities which federate across instances. e.g. posts to Linux@lemmy.ml will show on Linux@lemmy.world as long as lemmy.ml and lemmy.world federate with one another. If I remember correctly, each of you have previously opposed this idea for multiple reasons. If you do still oppose such a feature, will you please reiterate why you think this is the wrong direction for Lemmy? Also, have you considered adding a multi-community feature similar to Reddit's multi-reddit feature which allows end-users to combine multiple federated communities into a single page just for them?

[-] Vinegar@kbin.social 16 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

When I install Linux for friends and family the only distro I use anymore is Fedora. I have used just about every major distro, and Fedora is the only one that has "just worked" on every computer I have tried it on.

Love them, or hate them, Red Hat is by far the single biggest company in the Linux community, and their Red Hat Enterprise Linux is renowned for being stable, performant, and very well supported. Fedora is where most of the updates that make their way into RHEL are initially available, so with Fedora you get a cutting edge distro with the backing and resources of a massive corporation that employs many of the top Linux-desktop contributors.

If you want a distro that "just works" I strongly recommend you give Fedora a try.

[-] Vinegar@kbin.social 22 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Companies DO analyze what you say to smart speakers, but only after you have said "ok google, siri, alexa, etc." (or if they mistake something like "ok to go" as "ok google"). I am not aware of a single reputable source claiming smart speakers are always listening.

The reality is that analyzing a constant stream of audio is way less efficient and accurate than simply profiling users based on information such as internet usage, purchase history, political leanings, etc. If you're interested in online privacy device fingerprinting is a fascinating topic to start understanding how companies can determine exactly who you are based solely on information about your device. Then they use web tracking to determine what your interests are, who you associate with, how you spend your time, what your beliefs are, how you can be influenced, etc.

Your smart speaker isn't constantly listening because it doesn't need to. There are far easier ways to build a more accurate profile on you.

[-] Vinegar@kbin.social 79 points 10 months ago

I avoid Ubuntu because Canonical has a history of going their own way alone rather than collaborating on universal standards. For instance, when the X devs decided the successor to X11 needed to be a complete redesign from scratch companies like RedHat, Collabora, Intel, Google, Samsung, and more collaborated to build Wayland. However, Canonical announced Mir, and they went their own way alone.

When Gnome3 came out it was very controversial and this spawned alternatives such as Cinnamin, MATE, and Ubuntu's Unity desktop. Unity was the only Linux desktop, before or since, to include sponsored bloatware apps installed by default, and it also sold user search history to advertisers.

Then, there's snap. While Flatpak matured and becoame the defacto standard distro-agnostic package system, Canonical once again went their own way alone by creating snap.

I'm not an expert on Ubuntu or the Linux community, I've just been around long enough to see Canonical stir up controversy over and over by going left when everyone else goes right, failing after a few years, and wasting thousands of worker hours in the process.

[-] Vinegar@kbin.social 72 points 10 months ago

I worked at a sandwich shop and had given my two weeks notice a few days earlier. My manager came to me and asked me to clean up the bathroom...alright. I could smell it before I even opened the door.

I told my manager I'd clean it if he'd still give me the employee discount after I was gone. "Done". That's when I knew it was really bad.

When I opened the door I discovered someone had ass-blasted the bathroom. I'm not talking about blowing up the toilet, they did that too, but they had dropped their drawers and point-blank diarhea shotgunned the pipes under the sink.

My manager didn't honor the employee discount after I was gone, either.

22
submitted 11 months ago by Vinegar@kbin.social to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

I've been creating a short-list of organizations I would love to work for, and I wanted to ask for suggestions here because many members of this community are technology professionals with a strong interest in social & ecological issues.

I recently graduated with a bachelors of science information technology degree, and I have the Comptia trifecta (A+, Net+, Sec+) as well as several other certifications. Ideally as soon as possible, but within the next 3-5 years I want to work in conservation/climate change mitigation, humanitarian aid, disaster relief, or another tangentally related field. I'm looking for recommendations for specific organizations I might want to work for, and needed skills that I can learn to be more useful to those organizations.

I have about 2 years experience in IT (enterprise helpdesk, SOHO networking, some enterprise networking) and I have about 3 months of volunteer field experience in disaster relief (mucking & gutting, organizational liason & team coordination). I am also interested in positions that require a similar skillset (like GIS), and I am open to 100% travel time because I prefer fieldwork to remote work.

I greatly appreciate any guidance you can provide. Thank you for the help!

393
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Vinegar@kbin.social to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

Below is the full-text of a Mozilla campaign email I received. Mozilla's consumer buyer's guide Privacy not included reviews apps and consumer electronics to help the general public choose products that better respect their privacy, and occasionally organizes petitions & campaigns to push for privacy regulation and accountability.

The bad news: major car companies say they can listen to us in our cars, collect our genetic information, track information about our sex lives, and sometimes even sell our personal information to places we don’t even know.

The good news: major car companies are also listening to our complaints about data privacy.

Last week, [Mozilla] revealed research showing that 25 global car brands are out of control when it comes to collecting, protecting, and even selling our personal information. And [Mozilla] stirred up a hornet’s nest.

Immediately, the auto industry scrambled to defend their disturbing surveillance practices: They spoke to the international press and wrote to the United States Congress, claiming that their car companies are “committed to protecting consumer privacy” and even called for regulation themselves.

As infuriating as this may be, it’s actually good news for our cause. If the auto industry is already getting so defensive, it means they are feeling the pressure from our research and all the bad press. And that means we’re making an impact.

Now is the time to use the momentum, increase public pressure and make car companies stop their intrusive data collection practices. Will you join thousands of Mozilla supporters and become part of the campaign?

[-] Vinegar@kbin.social 43 points 1 year ago

It is supposedly a personal moral failing every time someone drives too old, too tired, or too impaired, but if trains, busses, & walking were the default ways to get around then this chronic societal problem would diminish dramatically. For the vast majority of US citizens busses, trains, walking, biking, etc are not viable options because US infrastructure & city planning overwhelmingly neglects everything but the automobile.

Incompetent driving is rooted in systemic failures, not personal moral ones.

[-] Vinegar@kbin.social 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Check out the Fairphone 4/5 running /e/OS. To get a "stock" phone that comes degoogled and ready to use, no tinkering required, you can buy a phone directly from the makers of /e/OS/: Murena

[-] Vinegar@kbin.social 115 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The 9to5 article is poorly written. In the first paragraph 9to5 says a new window system is "scheduled to replace" the current one, but this is not true. The cited blog post explicitly says "There’s no timeline or roadmap at this stage". The Gnome developers are merely experimenting with a new window management system and at this early stage it's impossible to know what the finished product may look like if these experiments go anywhere at all.

Here's a link to the original blog post where Gnome developer Tobias Bernard explains their dissatisfaction with existing window management systems and discusses the techinical challeneges developers face.

[-] Vinegar@kbin.social 50 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Police spend most of their time on routine traffic stops, and routine traffic stops could be eliminated by transit and walkable infrastructure. It's almost like it's a racket...

[-] Vinegar@kbin.social 36 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

All too often I think the discussion misses the fact that there is no alternative to driving for the vast majority of US citizens. Busses, trains, walking, biking, etc are not viable options because US infrastructure & city planning overwhelmingly neglects everything but the automobile.

It is supposedly a personal moral failing every time someone drives too old, too tired, or too impaired, but if trains, busses, & walking were the default ways to get around then this chronic societal problem would diminish dramatically. Incompetent driving is rooted in systemic failures, not personal moral ones.

[-] Vinegar@kbin.social 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If you earn 45000€ or more per year (post-tax) you are in the 1%. (According to this)

€45,000/yr is in top 1% globally, but not the top 1% for the EU. Either way, the article is discussing a tax on wealth, not income. Even if €45,000/yr was in the top 1% income for the EU, someone making that salary is extremely unlikely to have accumulated enough assets to place them in the top 1% for wealth.

view more: next ›

Vinegar

joined 1 year ago