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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 19th, 2023

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  • In October the Gaza Health Ministry claimed 471 people were killed by an Israeli missile strike on a hospital. Widespread credible (independent) evidence proves a small Hamas rocket missfired and hit a carpark near the hospital, causing relatively minor damage (there was a large fireball, but it was mostly rocket fuel - which is far less damaging than an explosive payload intended to kill).

    None of the credible evidence was able to put a number to the deaths in that accident but it’s highly improbable that 471 people were in the carpark. And it definitely wasn’t an Israeli rocket.

    In other words - Gaza’s health ministry is not a reliable source. Some of the things they report are probably accurate but they have been proven to be unreliable. Don’t trust anything they say unless it’s been backed by someone more reliable (in which case, you might as well refer to the other source instead).

    At best, the ministry failed verify facts (e.g. was a large missile even fired at all?) before reporting what happened. But I think that’s being too charitable. For example where did they get the 471 number from? I think they made it up. I don’t have proof but it’s the only believable explanation.

    Worse though - they haven’t retracted the claim. Mistakes are understandable… but failing to admit someone in your organisation made a mistake is unacceptable.


  • Signal Just Works™️

    Until you drop your phone in the swimming pool, and every message/photo you’ve ever received is just… gone. Forever.

    Sorry but I don’t buy any claim that Signal “just works”. It’s pretty clear they care about security more than anything else even when that means making decisions that are user hostile. And that’s fine - if you feel like you need that level of security I’m glad Signal exists. But it doesn’t really align with the general public and Signal is never going to be a mass market messaging service unless something changes (Signal or the general public).

    What’s weird to me is an app that excludes itself from phone backups considers SMS a valid form of authentication when a user links a device to a phone number - especially when you can necessarily link a device to a number that is already tied to someone else’s device. Like how is that ever going to be secure? Spoiler: it’s not. It’d make a lot more sense to me if users simply crated a username and shared it with other people instead of a phone number… and if they forget their password… come up with new username.



  • From the article: “The incident has been reported to officers from Richmond Police District who have commenced an investigation.”

    If I was the driver’s lawyer, I’d be instructing him to keep his mouth shut for the entirety of that investigation and whatever criminal charges might follow.

    At the start of the video the bus is stopped on a downhill, so the handbrake must have been on. Did it fail or did a student release the brake? Whatever the answer, the driver failed to maintain proper control of the vehicle and and also failed to supervise the kids. A lot of people could have died and he’s in big trouble.


  • The feature does require confirmation.

    It also requires accessing your contacts database, which is encrypted on iPhones…

    Because it’s encrypted, it’s impossible to share contact details unless someone enters the device passcode (or else does a biometric unlock - which effectively stores your passcode temporarily in a secure location that is wiped whenever the device is powered off or left unused for several hours).


  • It’s a tough call. Many forums have a rule against changing the title at all.

    Those forums are wrong. A title should accurately reflect the content. We can’t choose the title other websites choose… but we can choose a title for our posts and we should take advantage of that.

    Also - if you find yourself posting on a forum with that rule, just ignore it. And then tell them the title you typed out yourself was copy/pasted. They’ll have no way of knowing since so many news services A/B test titles anyway.

    Here’s the tile I would’ve used: “Police Alert Parents to iPhone’s Automatic Contact Sharing Feature” — I think we can agree it’s more accurate than the deliberately unclear title this post currently has.




  • As someone who grew up in Malanda… not much crime there as far as I know. Everyone in the town is on a first name basis and friendly.

    But other towns only slightly larger in the same area are out of control. I’m talking nuisance crimes - such as a kid smashing in the windscreen of your car with a baseball bat or spray painting a penis on your shop sign or straight up burning a business building to the ground for no reason other than they think it’s funny.

    If it was once in a blue moon… ok. That’s what insurance is for. But when you’re personally a victim of stuff like that several times a year and so is everyone else you know… it’s borderline unliveable. The police force are so under-funded most of these crimes don’t even get reported. They show up four days later and take a few notes, and that’s it.

    As for what Knuth is doing about it… not much he can do other than complain. Police are run from Brisbane and it’s clear they don’t think it’s a priority. Shit’s been getting worse every year for as long as I’ve lived here. Supposedly they need 150 additional officers for the district and recently hired four. They don’t report how many retired or quit in frustration (I suspect more than four).

    Last time I had a chat with a local Malanda officer, he said he’s in hot water because an independent audit reported people speeding regularly on a stretch of highway but where he’d never issued any speeding fines. It was a down hill where you need to be riding the brakes to stay within the speed limit and was recently reduced from 100km/h to 60km/h for no reason — the road is safer than it ever has been, due to upgrades, and there was never a crash even before the safety improvements. I’m talking a nice wide straight highway with nothing but cow paddocks on either side of the highway. Even if you “crashed”, you’d harmlessly get stuck in the mud and the next car to drive past would help you get out of the mud. I wonder if he’s been replaced by someone who’s happy to issue tickets instead of helping with real problems (I don’t live there anymore).






  • It shouldn’t show you as online in discord/slack, but it should be downloading messages/etc so that when you do come online you don’t have to wait for it to sync with all your cloud services.

    Also - consider those cloud services might not necessarily be available when you come online - maybe you open your laptop on a train in an underground tunnel or something.

    Macs do a good job at this. They have “high efficiency” CPU cores which are still very fast (like, very fast*) but draw about half as much power as the regular cores. Software is also able to schedule background tasks based on various things like power level, network connectivity, how often the user actually launches your app on this device (maybe you have an app installed on all your devices but only actually use it on your phone…).

    Background tasks like checking emails, backing up your computer, installing security patches, etc will all run while your Mac is sleeping.

    Anti-theft features run even fully powered off. So unplug the battery, and never plug it back in, if you’re going to steal anything with an Apple logo… the fact you can never turn it on does hurt the resale value, but that’s better than going to jail. It’ll phone home as soon as you boot it up too, and even after a full factory reset is still probably tied to the actual owner. You’ll need the owner or Apple to deregister it - and Apple is likely to call the cops unless you’ve got a good story.

    (* to give you an idea how fast the “Efficiency Cores” are on a Mac — in Game Mode the “Performance” cores are powered down, because the efficiency ones are more than fast enough and generate less heat - which allows the GPU to be pushed to the limit of the cooling system. The “efficiency” mostly comes from reducing features like speculative execution… though they do also run at a lower clock speed - as in ~3Ghz instead of ~4Ghz)




  • They require a license. They have the same road-legal requirements as any other “electric vehicle”: turn signals, head and brake-lights, license plate, etc

    Only in some countries.

    Even where they are regulated that generally only covers on-road use. If you ride them on private property you’re fine, which allows stores to sell high powered ebikes for “private use only”… for about the price of a good motorcycle helmet. No turn signals, no brake lights, a $3 headlight lucky and forget about number plates because there’s no way the tyres or brakes are suitable for the weight of the bike even at regular speeds, let alone the high speeds they can reach.

    They’re not mopeds at all. They’re e-bikes with a throttle and excessively large electric motor. And if you ride them to work every day, nobody’s gonna stop you. Shit will hit the fan when you run into a pedestrian or car though.