Bits and PCs - a Computers and Tech Miscellany

[JoeP]

Hope it connects via Blueteeth

[lisarea]

Missouri governor vows criminal prosecution of reporter who found flaw in state website • Missouri Independent

In a press release Wednesday, the Office of Administration Information Technology Services Division said that through a multi-step process, a “hacker took the records of at least three educators, decoded the HTML source code, and viewed the social security number of those specific educators.”

View Source. They left clicked on the pages, selected "View Page Source," and subsequently viewed the source code, a feature that has been integral to the web since its inception.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Also didn’t publish the story until the flaw had been addressed. Oooh, touchy touchy people in power.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

d4c5ecf04a4f069c118ebd1247e14f22.jpg

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

[Ari]

From my quite limited understanding Tesla’s biggest seller outside of grand promises from Musk are EV credits to other car companies so they can keep producing environmentally damaging gas vehicles while not running into regulatory issues. Cutting too much into other automakers sales would directly hurt Tesla’s own profits. It’s entirely possible Tesla would fold if they sold too many vehicles.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Interesting!

And depressing.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

I don’t know who needs to hear this but, when you’re using your phone, stop using your pinky as an anchor. It’s destroying your wrist and aggravating your ulnar nerve.

— MrsBundrige (@MrsBundrige) October 18, 2021

[Ensign Steve]

"I don't know who needs to hear this but..."

Phone designers. It's designers of phones that can actually do anything about it.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

I was just told Pop Sockets are a thing and p cool.

[steve_bank]

The big auto companies are phasing out gas cars. EV is coming by popular demand.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Finally my two favotie things in the same place: keeping poor kids from eating school lunch, and phrenology.

— bitcoin wallet inspector (@Conqy) October 19, 2021

[Ari]

It took too long for you to gather and pay for your £2.05 for lunch, so instead of making lunch free, or increasing lunch time so children don’t have to shovel food down their throat, we’ve invested in a new high tech facial scanning system to better speed the process.

Welcome to capitalism children!

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

ah, i see, pic.twitter.com/Rj0EN4GNkF

— Joe Groff (@jckarter) October 6, 2021

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Originally Posted by Kamilah Hauptmann

I don’t know who needs to hear this but, when you’re using your phone, stop using your pinky as an anchor. It’s destroying your wrist and aggravating your ulnar nerve.

— MrsBundrige (@MrsBundrige) October 18, 2021

Or not. Smartphone pinkie: Can holding an iPhone like this really hurt your hand and wrist?

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Meanwhile, in Houston, TX... pic.twitter.com/Mz9xaEHWIL

— Best of Nextdoor (@bestofnextdoor) October 24, 2021

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Look, the only use for cryptocurrency is A) buying drugs, B) buying child pornography, or C) fleecing other people into buying your cryptocurrency, generally to finance A) or B). If you get really into NFTs everyone around you is left speculating which one you're doing.

— Abby Denton is 9'2", so show some respect (@mizabitha) October 30, 2021

[Ari]

Answer: Crypto-currency, Microdosing, Veganism.
Question: Name three things that if someone is into you will know because they will tell you?

[Ensign Steve]

CROSSFIT

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

I am once again begging the tech industry to hire some women https://t.co/eJmBXx9qn0

— Brianna Wu (@BriannaWu) November 2, 2021

[Ensign Steve]

Does anyone want to talk about NFTs? I kinda do, but I don't really understand it enough to start a productive conversation. But if anyone ( Ari ) wants to get into it, I'll make the effort.

For now, suffice to say it's like TikTok. I don't have to understand it to find it hilarious.

[Ari]

Haha, um, well the best I can say about NFTs is at least some people who have become unexpected Memes have been able to get some money from having their image all over the interwebs.

So longish run down of NFTs,

NFTs are essentially block chain applied to the rich people’s art market. In rich people’s art markets the actual painting doesn’t matter, it’s the combination of exclusivity and envy. There are only so many Van Gough’s people want them, value them and are envious of those who have them. So buying a Van Gough is buying the ability to say “Haha I’m rich enough to have a Van Gough, here is my proof *the Van Gough*” It’s often pretty hilarious to see the mishmash of the uncurated rich person’s art collection, especially those who lack any sort of taste.

(There’s also a decent amount of money laundering that NFTs don’t quite match, as any smart rich criminal will have some of their illegal gains tied up in art, as the art dweebs who care about it are generally more interested in the piece still existing than exactly how someone came about getting it so no one asks deep questions).

Digital works though are infinitely copiable, there’s ways to limit them but ultimately the only way to display that you have a digital work is either to never display the full work or just accept that people can copy your exact work and claim themselves as the original owner and there’s no way to prove otherwise.

Block chain to the rescue! NFTs are a way to serialize digital works. So while I could have stored the exact same image of firebug girl, and even own an NFT of firebug girl, only one person can own the first sold NFT of firebug girl and every subsequence NFT of firebug girl will each have their own unique ID, traceable as being the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc time it’s been stamped with a serial number. Instead of trusting a separate database that says oh “Serial number 10598762 matches to firebug girl” the NFTs just store the image/data along with the unique serial number. To put exclusivity back into the digital art market.

Of course, since it’s the NFT that people are buying, it lends to a whole lot of people just stealing digital work, stamping an NFT on it and selling it like it was theirs.

[Ensign Steve]

Okay, so the main reason I asked was because of this twitter thread:

every stated advantage of NFTs, dismantled by the very people shilling them:
- they were stolen
- centralized platforms blacklisted them (they can't be resold), based on the former owner's word
- the former owner still uses the avatar they lost, insisting it's still theirs really https://t.co/Fp1TvQsQBp

— eevee (@eevee) November 2, 2021

I just ... I just don't have anything to add that isn't already in the replies.

"Going to the FBI about your money-laundering scheme is like calling the police because someone stole your cocaine."

Seriously, though, wtf is happening here?

[ChuckF]

That is the dumbest thing I have read so far this month.