Here is a picture, that may help a little bit. The n is input size, and f(n) is how long does the algorithm runs (i.e how many instructions) it takes to calculate it for input for size n, i.e for finding smallest element in an array, n would be the number of elements in the array. g(n) is then the function you have in O, so if you have O(n^2) algorithm, the g(n) = n^2

Basically, you are looking for how quickly it grows for extreme values of N, while also disregarding constants. The graph representation probably isn’t too useful for figuring the O value, but it can help a little bit with understanding it - you want to find a O function where from one point onward (n0), the f(n) is under the O function all the way into infinity.

For me, my common result would be something like O(shit).

Exactly this. I only have pretty vague experience with machine learning, since it was one of the other specializations for my Masters than the one I choose, which however means we still shared some basic courses on the topic, and I definitely share his point of view. I’ve been saying basically the same things when talking about AI, albeit not as expressively, but even with basic insight into ML, the whole craze that is happening around it is such bullshit. But, I’m by no means an expert in the field, so I may be wrong, but it’s nice to finally read an article from an “expert” in the field I can agree with. Because so far, the whole “experts talking AI” felt exactly like the COVID situation, with “doctors” talking against vaccines. Their doomsaying opinion simply contradicts even the little knowledge I have in the ML field.

I self-hosted it few months ago, and it’s actually surprisingly easy! Someone has made an Ansible script for Matrix with Element and some bridges, that (at least a month ago, IaaC tends to be pretty fragile) worked out of the box on a first try. I just set up some config values (mostly about enabling bridges I want) based on their amazing documentation, and then ran it once and everything is working so far. I even updated it several times already, and every time it was smooth, and it was basically just running a single ansible command. Their documentation is pretty well written, and with my basic cloud, IT and Linux knowledge I had no issues with following it. All you need to know is how to set up cloud VM, get a domain and set DNS, and set up SSH keys to access the server.

In total it took me about two hours in total, from when I decided “I’m setting up Matrix tonight” without any prior knowledge, looking up my options and finding the ansible script, setting up cloud and getting Matrix up and running.

I’m renting a VM on Hetzner for like 6$ per month, and it worked without issues so far. I use it for Discord and Messenger, although the Meta bridge does have some problems, for example I didn’t figure out how to message someone with whom I haven’t had a conversation since I set up the bridge, since only then it creates the room for it. But that can be solved by keeping the Messenger app or usign the browser to send a first message, and it immediately shows in your Matrix bridge (and stays there forever).

Looks like I’ll finally get a reason to cut off another website I hate using, but never found the willpower to get rid off.

Good

This made my day, thank you!

My favorite windows update was when I was attending an onsite coding competition hosted my Microsoft. We were all in this large meeting hall that looked like a theater, and we spent first 10 minutes or so at the start of the competition just looking at Windows update, with the Microsoft rep apologizing to us, because his pc decided to do the “Forced update restart you cant postpone any more” literally two minutes into the presentation

This is actually a great question, in the context of the Fediverse.

Usually, every social network or forum has in their ELUA that anything you post is theirs, and you can’t do anything about i.e Reddit using your data to train AIs.

Hlwever, here, we’re on private instances of regular people. We can make our own rules, can’t we? If an instance would say that anything you post is copyrighted by the author, i.e by CC, would it be enforcable if someone would decide to scrape (or repost) the content for profit?

I suppose it’s written in a way to sound way worse and alarming than it actually is, due to the upcoming elections. It sounds almost unreal, i mean “EU secret plan to ban any kind of encryption or privacy” can’t be reallistically happening, right?

I know about Chatcontrol, so I wouldn’t be surprised, but this article sounds pretty overblown, to the point of sounding more like a wild conspiracy theory. Does anyone have more resources or info about this, that don’t read like an election ad?

I’m not trying to dismiss or disrespect the author, and I trust that it was written with best intentions, but it’s a really worrying topic about which I’d like to get more information about.

However, thanks for bringing it up, I contacted our local Pirate party about the topic, because they don’t have anything related to crime prevention vs. privacy in their programe. I suppose that I know what the answer would be, but getting a confirmation before I vote for them would definitely be nice.

I’d like to mention one exception, because it took me ages to properly debug.

If your endpoint is serving mirrors for APT, don’t redirect to HTTPS.

APT packages are signed and validated, so there is no need to use TLS. Lot of docker images (such as Kali) do not have root certificates by default, so they can’t use the TLS, because cert validation fails. You also can’t install the certificates, because they install through APT. If your local mirror redirects to https by default, it will break it for people who choose the mirror, which IIRC happens automatically based on what’s closest to you. I think this issue is still there for Czech Kali package mirror, and it took me so long to figure out (because it’s also not an issue for most of the users, since they have different mirrors), so I like mentioning this when talking http/s. It’s an edge case, but one that I find interresting - mostly because it would never occur to me that this can be an issue, when setting up a mirror.

But that was more than a year ago, it may be better now.

Depends, assuming a fresh install, can you even create account on win11 without internet access? Last i checked, it wont let you start with local account and requires MS account.

Another one came to my mind - ROBLOX_OOF.mp3 by hbomberguy.

It’s really a wild ride. As traditional with his videos, it starts with a pretty innocent investigation into one of sounds popular on the internet, and then gets into a mindboggling rabbit hole about Tommy Tallarico, the guy behind Video Games Live, and how he accidentally discovered what an insane text-book example of pathological lier he is. It’s funny, and really absurd - I’d recommend it to everyone, because it’s really interesting insight into how bad can it get with pathological liers. It’s a roller coaster, and a really fascinating one. And I also learned that Guiness World Record is a scam and literally only an advertisement business, which I never realised before.

It’s a shame, I really liked Video Games Live, the live recordings of it’s shows are great. Assuming you skip the ego-trip monologues he interupts the concert with.

Down the Rabbit Hole for EVE Online is absolutely amazing. I’ve played the game here and there for quite a long time, and it’s one of my favourite experiences, that is however really hard to put into words.

That game is weird. I still can’t explain why it’s one of the best games I’ve played, but I always keep returning to it and love consuming content about it from time to time. And this document is amazing in explaining how extremely unique and cool the game is in it’s metagame and the stories it generates. The game has it’s problems, but I still think it’s one of the most unique lifestyles in gaming, that nothing ever comes close to. It’s the only MMORPG that’s actually literally roleplay, that basically forces you to roleplay without you even realizing it. Sure, you may not speak in character, but the fleet doctrines, logistics, corp organization, propaganda, corp-politics and everything around it people do - that’s literally roleplaying.

Another one would be B-Movie: Lust & Sound in West-Berlin 1979-1989. This document is really really hard for me to watch, because it’s a subculture that was always really important to me, to the point where I help with event promotions and DJ at local 80s goth/synthpop events and it’s my main hobby. But, since I’m now in my 20s, I’ve missed it. The way internet transformed music subcultures is terrible, especially so the alternative ones, but music consumption in general - sure, it’s really amazing to have every almbum ever in the palm of your hand, but there’s just so many that I don’t know any. If I talk to anyone who started with music with the one MC tape, and each new relleas was something hard to get that you actually treassured, I really envy their relationship with music. And that’s something that’s almost impossible to build in this day and age.

The fact that I’ll never get to experience the scene as it was in the 80s is one of the saddest things for me, and this documentary shows it in really genuine and amazing way.

And then there’s The Social Dillema, about the dangers of social networks. A word of warning from people who worked at large social network companies and left because the way they exploit users got too much for them, and now they are trying to spread the word. I really recommend this for everyone, it’s eye openning and really terrifying. It was one of the first impulses that got me heavy into privacy, and it everyone should see it at least once.

But… They said that privacy is the most important thing for them 0_0 https://about.meta.com/actions/protecting-privacy-and-security/

I’m starting to think that “good code” is simply a myth. They’ve drilled a lot of “best practices” into me during my masters, yet no matter how mich you try, you will eventually end up with something overengineered, or a new feature or a bug that’s really difficult to squeeze into whatever you’ve chosen.

But, ok, that doesn’t proove anything, maybe I’m just a vad programmer.

What made me sceptical however isn’t that I never managed to do it right in any of my projects, but the last two years of experience working on porting games, some of them well-known and larger games, to consoles.

I’ve already seen several codebases, each one with different take on how to make the core game architecture, and each one inevitably had some horrible issues that turned up during bugfixing. Making changes was hard, it was either overengineersled and almost impenetrable, or we had to resort tonugly hacks since there simply wasn’t a way how to do it properly without rewriting a huge chunk.

Right now, my whole prpgramming knowledge about game aechitecture is a list of “this desn’t work in the long run”, and if I were to start a new project, I’d be really at loss about what the fuck should i choose. It’s a hopeless battle, every aproach I’ve seen or tried still ran into problems.

And I think this may be authors problem - ot’s really easy to see that something doesn’t work. " I’d have done it diferently" or “There has to be a better way” is something that you notice very quickly. But I’m certain that watever would he propose, it’d just lead to a different set of problems. And I suspect that’s what may ve happening with his leads not letting him stick his nose into stuff. They have probably seen that before, at it rarely helps.

I had the same issue with gamedev industry, but thankfully Ive very quickly realized that’s how work works, and you usually have a choice - either earn a good living being a code monkey, or find a job in a small company that has passion, but they won’t be able to afford paying you well, or do it in your free time as a hobby. Capitalism and passion doesn’t work together.

So I went to work part-time in cybersecurity, where the money is enough to reasonably sustain me, and use the free time to work on games in my free time. Recently, Ive picked up an amazing second part time job in a small local indie studio that is exactly the kind of environment I was looking for, with passion behind their projects - but they simply can’t afford to pay a competitive wage. But I’m not there for the money, so Ibdon’t mind and am happy to help them. Since there are no investors whose pocket you fill, but the company is owned by a bunch of my friends, I have no issue with being underpaid.

But it’s important to realize this as soon as possible, before trying to make a living with something you’re passionate about will burn you out. A job has one purpose - earn you a living. Companies will exploit every single penny they can out of you, so fuck them, don’t give them anything more than a bare minimum, and keep your energy for your own projects.

And be carefull with trying to earn a living on your own - because whatever you do, no matter how passionate are you, if it’s your only income and your life depends on it, you will eventually have to make compromises to get by. It’s better to keep money separate from whatever you like doing, and just keep your passion pure.

EDIT: Oh, I forgot to mention one important thing - I’m fortunate to not have children, share living costs with a partner, and live in a city with good public transport, so no need for a car, and free healthcare. I suppose that makes it a lot more easier to get by with just a part time.

I do feel kind of simillarly betrayed. Watch Dogs were my forst point of reference into what hacker subcultures look like, and it has shaped a large part of my life - next month i’s going to be 5 years I’ve worked as a Red Teamer in a cybersec company. I’m also mostly a poser, and the aesthetics simply makes it way more fun - making art that’s tied into what you do is great, assuming you dont take it too seriously, of course. Not that I do it, but the way Watch Dogs portraied it, it was fun.

Is it neccessary? Of course not. Is it a shame there aren’t many hackerspaces with cool street art, and hacktivists making over the top manifests ajd cool streetart around our town? A little bit.

I work in gamedev and its really baffling how rare is for someone to read the docs. I’ve already solved so many issues by just reading through the related docs and discovering a feature that does exactly the thing we’ve been trying to solve with a workaround, or had a overcomplicated process for doing, while it could have been a single function/API call.

Read the docs people! You probably have a lot of downtime while waiting for stuff to build/compile, and just rabdomly (or systematically) scrolling through the reference or docs of the library/tool your working with, even when not looking for something specific, may save you a lot of time in the long run. Knowing what are your tools capable off is well worth the effort.

This is definitely possible, since you can actually controll cars (at least some models) via a (non-public, but the capability is there) API. Two security researchers at defcon were able to find a way how to control a vehicle remotely, even including things like stopping or turning, and eventually made an exploit that could be used remotely to any car of the same model. So, if they wanted to, they were able to stop or turn the wheel of IIRC hundreds of thousands of cars around the world instantly, since the cars are connected to the network through GSM, so you don’t even need to be anywhere near them.

It’s been a few years since I saw the video, but IIRC the vehicle controls are on a separate board that should not be reachable from the other smart vehicle system. However, they were able to reverse engineer a way how to abuse framework update mechanism as a bridge, and use it to patch the framework to get it under their control. And then they discovered that they could actually trigger the update remotely.

Oh, I see. Oh well.

Can I send money to my friends with Taler? Taler supports push and pull payments between wallets (also known as peer-to-peer payments). While the payment appears to be directly between wallets, technically the operation is intermediated by the payment service provider which will typically be legally required to identify the recipient of the funds before allowing the transaction to complete.