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Comment Re:How Legit? (Score 4, Informative) 40

> but how much does it really happen?

A lot. Like, a LOT a lot.

Maybe you would like some other videos if that's your preferred media?

Roblox Situation is Worse Than You Think
Roblox: How to Destroy Your $83,000,000,000 Company Overnight - A Deep Dive
Roblox, Take a Seat (ft: Chris Hansen)

Roblox has had problems with child exploitation too, for years now; Investigation: How Roblox Is Exploiting Young Game Developers and their follow-up, Roblox Pressured Us to Delete Our Video. So We Dug Deeper.
=Smidge=

Comment Re:Want vs. Need. (Score 1) 170

You are discussing - ranting about, really - what should be.

The rest of us are discussing what is.

The original claim is that people aren't buying the F-150 Lightning because (paraphrasing) people want mid-size trucks and not fill-size trucks. That claim is refuted by pointing out that mid-size trucks already exist, they do not sell very well, and in fact full-size trucks are overwhelmingly popular.

Now you come in with your righteous indignation that because, in your view, people don't actually make full use of full-size trucks, they should not be buying full-size trucks. Notwithstanding that the majority of these trucks actually ARE used as trucks - because the cultural bubble that exists entirely up your ass along with your head is not representative of the entire world - the very real popularity of these vehicles is not dependent on what people actually do with them.

I'll say it again just to be crystal clear: It does not matter if you think they should not be popular, the fact is they are popular. Reality does not give a shit what your opinion is.
=Smidge=

Comment Re:Illegal search applies here (Score 1) 202

Excellent post, just a couple of comments.

A previous administration attempted to force asylum seekers to wait their turn for a hearing outside the country.

Which is really, really stupid. It just makes them some other country's problem, and no other country should be willing to put up with it.

First, it's interesting that Nikkos said "a previous administration", without naming it. It was, of course, Trump 1.0.

Second, international treaties on refugees don't require a country to accept every refugee and there are multiple examples where nations have made agreements that modify which county must handle asylum claims. For example, the US-Canada Safe Third Country agreement specifies that asylum seekers must make their asylum claim in whichever country they arrive in first. If the US and Mexico had a similar agreement, then refugees could not enter from Mexico at all. Trump tried to get Mexico to sign a Safe Third Country agreement, but Mexico refused -- and it probably would have been invalid anyway, since Mexico might not satisfy the requirements of a "safe" country under the US law that authorizes the signing of Safe Third Country agreements.

Instead, Trump signed the "Migrant Protection Protocols" agreement with Mexico, which was the "remain in place" agreement. You said that no other country should be willing to put up with it, but Mexico did formally agree to it, though only to avoid tariffs. Of course, Mexico has declined to renew the protocols in Trump 2.0 (though Trump announced they had, which Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum immediately denied -- Trump's habit of unilaterally announcing that an agreement has been reached obviously doesn't really work).

Anyway, there are lots of reasons why countries might agree to various limitations on asylum processes to manage refugee volumes, and these agreements are often perfectly valid under international and national law. Trump, of course, doesn't care about legality, or humanity, only what he can get away with.

Comment Re:Want vs. Need. (Score 1) 170

Whether or not people use the vehicles for their supposed purpose or to the full capabilities is completely irrelevant to the sales numbers.

I'm sorry that the world does not conform to what you imagine it should be. The reality is full size pickup trucks are the best selling vehicle type in the US by a wide margin. Feel free to masturbate your is-ought sophistry until you go blind though...
=Smidge=

Comment Re:full-size electric pickup (Score 4, Interesting) 170

> MOST PEOPLE DON'T WANT A "FULL-SIZED" FUCKING TRUCK. THEY'RE TOO GODDAMN BIG.

Counterpoint: The Ford F series are the best selling vehicles in the US. Second place is the Chevy Silverado, which is another full size pickup. If you broke out just the F-150 I think it's just barely behind the Silverado (Looks like ~420K vs ~410K so far this year?)

The physical size isn't the problem. Smaller pickups like the Honda Santa Cruz and Ford Maverick do not sell well. The kinds of people who actually want a pickup truck do not seem to actually want a midsize or compact pickup truck.

Cheaper, on the other hand... that's something you can sell to the masses. Sounds to me that the market for EV pickups is still there but the price isn't alluring enough, and maybe people are willing to compromise on the size to get an EV truck that's more affordable.

> Back in my day

It ain't your day anymore; the world has moved on.
=Smidge=

Comment Re:F-Droid's claim isn't quite accurate (Score 1) 49

Errr no, their claim is completely accurate. ADB is just not a viable way to do anything for 99.9% of people. It's a complex developer tool that the vast majority of mobile users are simply not capable of using. There's no such thing as single click install, as you even have pointed out with the hoops you have to go through. That is enough to turn many people off, before considering that not every developers wants to go through the hassle of packaging their apps in this way.

That's also before you consider ADB can't actually install an app that updates itself, congrats, you've now just pissed off a whole world of power users too who don't want to deal with it either.

I once had an interesting conversation with an Android OEM. I sat down with them to discuss what security issues they'd like to see the Android security team work on. They asked me "When are you going to fix the USB hole?". I didn't know what they meant and asked for clarification. They explained that in some parts of the world, notably India and China, there were "free" charging stations set up in bus stops, train stations and other public areas. These charging stations allow the public to charge their phones, for free! There's just one catch. On a sign above the charging station there's a set of instructions that tells users how to go about activating the charging. The sign tells them to go into the Settings app, then "About Phone", then scroll down to the build number, tap it seven times, then... it walks them through enabling ADB and accepting the key of the "charging station" computer, which would then proceed to install malware -- and to start charging.

Huge numbers of people used these charging stations every day, to the point that the biggest problem users had (besides the malware) was that they were always occupied. No one had a problem with "activating" charging for their device.

90% of people are capable of following a list of instructions. 100% of people are capable of either following a list of instructions or getting someone nearby to do it for them.

Anyway, this OEM wanted us to disable ADB entirely, or allow them to, because their users were doing it, getting loaded up with malware, and then blaming the OEM for making a crappy phone. I, of course, told them that we were not going to disable ADB and we were not going to remove the compliance requirement that forces them to support ADB.

Unfortunately, the current change still doesn't fix the "USB hole", but it does offer a way to rate-limit malware installation via downloadables.

Anyway, if you really think your users can't follow instructions, or can't get someone else to do it for them, you can always just register for a developer account. As long as you don't distribute malware, people will be able to sideload your APKs without using ADB. If the $25 is too much for you, maybe share the cost with some buddies, or get one of the limited accounts, though your APKs will only be installable on a small number of devices. Except, of course, by people who can follow instructions, or get someone else to.

Comment Re:F-Droid's claim isn't quite accurate (Score 1) 49

This is about control, 100%.

Oh, actually, I missed the most obvious flaw in this argument: The verification doesn't give Google any significant control! It does give them the real-world identities of registered developers, yes, but then what? It doesn't do anything to require registered developer to use the Play store or comply with any Play policies other than one: Don't distribute malware.

The real purpose here is malware rate-limiting. Right now, malware authors can pump out huge numbers of apps with small variations to defeat identification. Google may identify one malicious app and warn all of the user that have it installed, but the malware author has thrown out a hundred variations of that app and Google only twigged to one. What ID verification does is require the developer to tie each app to a unique government-issued ID. In countries where you can't just go get a hundred government IDs, this means teams of malware authors can make approximately one malicious APK per team member. In countries where they can go get a hundred unique government IDs per person (because the government is actively cooperating or because they have a cousin in the ID office) it doesn't help so much, but Google can then start working with the governments to crack down.

I don't know if you noticed in the announcement, but this program is starting in a small number of countries, with the cooperation of and at the request of the governments who are trying to defend their populace against waves of malware. This isn't an accident.

Comment Re:F-Droid's claim isn't quite accurate (Score 1) 49

How many cases of Malware in F-Droid do you know and how many in the Play Store?

How many apps in F-Droid vs how many in the Play store?

Actually, though, your comment and my off-the-cuff response both miss the real difference which is why malware authors would choose to use F-Droid to distribute their apps. They'd have to publish source, which would be a disadvantage in the competitive world of malware authoring, and publishing source code would also make it easy for their malicious code to be identified. It makes a lot more sense for them to publish via downloadable sideloads or -- even better, if they can manage it -- in the Play store.

From a security perspective, it makes sense to treat F-Droid differently from random downloadable sideloads... but how is the Android OS supposed to tell the difference? The Android mechanism for establishing APK trust is signatures. So... F-Droid could arrange with Google to get the platform to trust APKs signed by F-Droid, which would make F-Droid work fine. And, actually, there's no need for Google to go through any complicated process to set that up: F-Droid can simply register as a developer and sign the APKs it distributes. Done. Of course, if F-Droid ever screws up and does distribute malware, it could result in all of their apps being evicted from Android device, but since F-Droid is a zero-malware platform, that's not a problem, right?

Comment Re:Ok Elon (Score 4, Interesting) 110

I'm running FSD v13.2.9 and waiting for v14.x to be released, which is coming hopefully soon-ish. I'm not in major rush though for reasons you'll see below.

I just got the v14 upgrade a few days ago, and it's a mixed bag. On the plus side, it now handles parking, as in I give it a destination, it drives me there, goes into the parking lot, picks out a spot and parks in it, all with zero human input or intervention. On the negative side, I think v14 needs a little more compute horsepower than my 2025 Model S has. I used to have a 2020, with previous-gen computer, and as FSD got more capable it actually degraded a bit, becoming indecisive and occasionally "stuttering". With the new car that went away entirely. I was very impressed. With v14, in the new car, it's began to get indecisive and stutter again. Not often, but it happens. I think this is a result of the model not being able to complete its processing quickly enough, because it doesn't have enough compute.

I'm hopeful that they can refine and optimize v14, though, to fix that problem. Other than that, and the fact that on the country roads where I live it always wants to drive too slow (the roads are small, but the speed limit is 45 and everyone drives 50-55, while the car is clearly not comfortable going over 35-40), it's extremely good.

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