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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • In these companies, does anyone check the licenses in details to make sure using them is ok for the company?

    Meta will get at least the metadata: meaning they will record who was in which call connecting from where.

    For example, if one member is visiting a client, Meta may be able to infer the relation between the 2 companies.

    If any of the people in the room click “report”, then the discussion is sent for review without the encryption protection

    I’m pretty sure their user agreement translates to “you agree to let us do whatever the f*ck we want with the data you’re purposely disclosing to us”.

    And last but not least: if Meta decides to wipe the archives, any info get lost?

    There a reasons large companies ban unauthorized apps to talk about work.













  • In theory, yes, you could make a mess, and any firmware is supposed to be certified to allow the device to be used.

    In practice, this has been a convenient excuse to keep a whole chip with a separate OS in every smartphone, and it is very difficult to isolate from the rest of the system (see Graphene OS efforts).

    I say all firmware should be opensource. Whether you’re allowed to change them or not is a separate question… for now.


  • I use to say “all extremes call for their opposite”. Since almost no information ever transpires about this whole scandal, the opposite is to release all the names to the public. It was to be expected. If we were trusting the justice system, this would seem inappropriate. But we have what we have, and making the whole list public is the only guarantee we have that not one of the “bad” guy can escape public’s attention. That of course, is valid only if the list is comprehensive and some names have not already been taken out.

    It is indeed unfortunate that a lot of people who didn’t deserve and didn’t want any bad attention will get some.

    I’m not saying I agree with the move. I’m saying it was to be expected.

    [Edit made: grammar & missing words]


  • Scientists have not been hyperbolic. If anything, so far, they’ve been very cautious abut their statements.

    I still remember reading headlines about “likelihood of global warming” then “probably caused by human activities” because 90% level of confidence is not enough, you need more data until you can reach 95% or 98% confidence before boldly writng “most probably”.

    But in their “probably” they predicted we would see more floods, droughts, violent storms, all of these happening one after the other causing devastation.

    And Ô surprise: we see floods, droughts and storms following each other and causing devastation. Yet our leaders will claim “no one could have predicted all of that would happen at once!”.

    Now they start telling us our civilization could collapse (“could” must be what? 75% confidence level???)

    We’re going to spend 20-25 years claiming they exagerate, another 20-25 years saying “well, they maybe right, but we can’t change things too fast because that would be unreasonable and the people would not accept it”.

    By the time, we will start reading articles stating no matter what we do now, we can only push out the end a bit, but we’re doomed. And the first reactions will be “those damned scientists always exagerate and use hyperboles”.




  • Inflation reduces the value of money at the bank: the money saved as well as the money borrowed.

    In an ideal world, wages are indexed on inflation (way of calculating inflation in this context can be discussed), and inflation is kept above present targets levels (central banks try to keep it at 2% these days).

    That makes your debts easier to reimburse, and limits returns on savings. Have you ever noticed that people who keep talking about the “value of work” actually push for low wages and no or low taxes on capital gains, so actually wants the capital to make more money than work?

    A low inflation allows big money to hoard more and more. Higher inflation means money that’s not actively contributing to the economy will lose its value over time, and that’s exactly what you, at the bottom of the ladder, want (and considering top of the ladder is hundreds of billions of $, ever 6 figures employees are bottom of the ladder).

    Too high inflation leads to an uncontrolled spiral. Deflation is also very bad (no investment will ever happen if your money just appreciate by doing nothing). But the 2% target is not to protect you. It’s made for money to make more money.

    But about the link between wages and inflation: what we have today is a situation where we let cost of life dramatically outpace wage growth. So where did the inflation come from? Profits! That needs to be rebalanced.

    From 1945 to the early 80’s (before the €), France and some other countries minmum wages were indexed on inflation. If doing so would instantly crash an economy, we would have noticed…