NaibofTabr

Afghanistan has basically always been a warzone. The territory there changed hands fairly often, especially after Alexander, centuries before it became the area identified as Afghanistan today.

The feuds between people groups there are from long before “Western nations” were even a thing. Some of them pre-date recorded history. The biggest mistake any Western nation has made is believing they could somehow establish peace by getting involved in conflicts older than Rome. The West can certainly be blamed for being foolish, for meddling, for not really helping in any way… but not for starting the fight. The responsible parties are long dead, their remains crumbled to dust.

Sort of.

In 2017 China passed a law requiring Chinese user data to be held within the country: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-privacy-censorship.html

Following that, Apple paid for a local data center which is managed by a Chinese company. Functionally this means that the PRC has access to all of the data stored there, because the government exerts direct control over Chinese companies, especially anything related to data collection and storage. Most likely, the PRC is able to access Apple users’ iCloud data if it resides in the China-based data center.

In response to a 2017 Chinese law, Apple agreed to move its Chinese customers’ data to China and onto computers owned and run by a Chinese state-owned company.

Chinese government workers physically control and operate the data center. Apple agreed to store the digital keys that unlock its Chinese customers’ information in those data centers. And Apple abandoned the encryption technology it uses in other data centers after China wouldn’t allow it.

Independent security experts and Apple engineers said Apple’s concessions would make it nearly impossible for the company to stop Chinese authorities from gaining access to the emails, photos, contacts, calendars and location data of Apple’s Chinese customers.

This is not really different from what’s been happening with other countries requiring their citizens’ data to be held within their borders, and the UK has similarly forced Apple to withdraw the Advanced Data Protection for iCloud users: https://www.theverge.com/news/608145/apple-uk-icloud-encrypted-backups-spying-snoopers-charter

[…] British security services would have access to the backups of any user worldwide, not just Brits, and Apple would not be permitted to alert users that their encryption was compromised.

Silly, everybody knows sexism only goes one way.

First and most important:

In the context of long-term data storage
ALL DRIVES ARE CONSUMABLES

I can’t emphasize this enough. If you only skim the rest of my post, re-read the above line and accept it as fundamental truth. “Long-term” means 1+ years, by the way.

It does not matter what type of drive you buy, how much you spend on it, who manufactured it, etc. The drive will fail at some point, probably when you’re least prepared for it. You need to plan around that. You need to plan for the drive being completely useless and the data on it unrecoverable post-failure. Wasting time and money to acquire the fanciest most bulletproof drives on the market is a pointless resource pit, and has more to do with dick-measuring contests between data-hoarders.

Knife geeks buy $500+ patterned steel chef’s knives with ebony handles and finely ground edges and bla bla bla. Professional kitchens buy the basic Victorinox with the plastic handle. Why? Because they actually use it, not mount it on a wall to look pretty.

The knife is a consumable, not an heirloom. So are your storage drives. We call them “spinning rust” for a reason.

The solution to drive failure is redundancy. Period.

Unfortunately, this reality runs counter to the desire to maximize available storage. Do not follow the path of desire, that way lies data loss and outer darkness. Fault-tolerant is your watchword. Component failure is unpredictable, no matter how much money you spend. A random manufacturing defect will ruin your day when you least expect it.

A minimum safe layout is to have 2 live copies of data (one active, one mirror), hot standby for 1 copy (immediate swap-in when the active or mirror fails), and cold standby on the shelf to replace the hot standby when it enters service.

Note that this does not describe a specific number of disks, but copies of data. The minimum to implement this is 4 disks of identical storage capacity (2 live, 1 hot standby, 1 on the shelf) and a server with slots for 3 disks. If your storage needs expand beyond the capacity of 1 disk, then you need to scale up by the same ratio. A disk is indivisible - having two copies of the same data on a disk does not give you any redundancy value. (I won’t get into striping and mucking about with weird RAID choices in this post because it’s too long already, but basically it’s not worth it - the KISS principle applies, especially in small configurations)

This means you only get to use 25% of the storage capacity that you buy. Them’s the breaks. Anything less and you’re not taking your data longevity seriously, you might as well just get a consumer-grade external drive and call it a day.

Buy 4 disks, it doesn’t matter what they are or how much they cost (though if you’re buying used make sure you get a SMART report from the seller and you understand what it means) but keep in mind that your storage capacity is just 1 of the disks. And buy a server that can keep 3 of them online and automatically swap in the standby when one of the disks fails. Spend more money on the server than the disks, it will last longer.

Remember, long-term is a question of when, not if.

Employers not paying a living wage bad.

*reaches for parking brake

*grabs cactus

The fact is AI can make as-good or better art than most “artists” because most “art” is just cookie-cutter shit for morons.

This is an obvious misstatement. If you actually believe this then you’re not qualified to have opinions on art in general.

“AI” (in this context meaning generative algorithms, because there is no intelligence) can no more “make art” than it can think, or care.

It’s no surprise public opinion is these tools are trash when the free models are unable to answer simple questions

The tools are trash not because they are unreliable but because they are actively destroying human society and culture. They are destroying art, science, journalism, open source software, the internet at large, and the environment we all live in. It wouldn’t matter if the generative models were accurate, they would still be garbage.

The fact that they are unreliable just serves to highlight what a colossally destructive waste of time and resources this entire exercise has been.

Ah, well most people use the internet for banking, employment, housing, medical care, government services, and communicating with friends and family, so… how would you propose to avoid it once it’s implemented?

*edit: downvotes, but no counterarguments. Hilarious.

He was not in the least bit scared
To be mashed into a pulp.
Or to have his eyes gouged out,
And his elbows broken.
To have his nicaps split
And his body burned away,
And his limbs all hacked and mangled
Brave Sir Robin.

You’re right.

They just shit themselves to death.

Yes, instead we have gangrene, leptospirosis, trepanning, faith healing, no education unless you’re clergy, forced labor for 95% of the population, a life expectancy of 40 if you’re lucky…

Oh, and taxes! still got those. Have to pay for Richard’s crusade, you know. Congratulations on being conscripted as a peasant spearman, now get back up and stand in line with the rest of the fodder.

Cursor is pouring gasoline on the fire.

So, business as usual.

Patch Tuesday didn’t become a thing for no reason.

The genie is out of the bottle

This is a lot more like Pandora’s Box - all the evils have been let loose.

“We appreciate China’s support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, and we had a very substantive and pragmatic conversation.”

How has China supported Ukraine’s territorial integrity? They’ve been supplying Russia with war material since the invasion started.

In an official Chinese summary of their meeting, Wang said China was “willing to provide new humanitarian assistance to Ukraine” but made no mention of any invitation to visit Kyiv.

China is interested in establishing a foothold in Ukraine, with its own equipment and security personnel.

“We are willing to maintain communication with Ukraine and work with the international community to play a constructive role in achieving an early political solution to the crisis,” Wang added.

How very gracious and noncommittal.

China has close economic and security ties to Russia and has refused to join international sanctions on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.

No kidding.

I think I saw a 2…

Enforced toxic positivity is unhealthy, yes.

It’s not the cause, it’s a symptom of a larger problem.

What would I need an “out” for?

A good forum design will only get you so far, the rest is up to the moderators. If you let bad actors in, it doesn’t matter how you designed your forum, they will poison the well and drive other people out.

Yes, well, the problem with hexbear was that it started with bad actors. As they made their true colors apparent to the lemmy community at large, they were increasingly defederated.

The best communities I’ve been in are in independent old-style forums. One of them is Tildes. Most of these don’t feature downvotes (or upvotes for that matter) and are honestly the better places to have discussions IMO.

Oh yes, my past experience is in old web forums as well. Those communities were more isolated though, they essentially existed inside their own bubbles. Unregistered users could read them, but not participate in any functional way, and typically the people that found them were looking for a community like that on purpose.

I’ve also experienced such communities becoming toxic due to the actions of individual moderators or admins, post voting not required.

Ultimately I think I agree this far - if you’re going to disable voting you should do all of it. Removing only the downvoting is the YouTube path, the authoritarian path, the toxic positivity path.

I wouldn’t imply that the unhealthyness of hexbear is due to the disabled downvoting though, and I’m sure you aren’t either, but just to be clear.

No, I’m implying the reverse: disabling downvoting is a symptom of the unhealthy mentality of the people running that server. Disabling downvoting appeals to authoritarians - that is, the type of people who are interested in silencing dissent (QED).