technology

I am not especially tech-literate and very clumsy. I want to buy a thinkpad that I can set up as a privacy machine. I mostly use my computer for web browsing and messaging and don't need something especially powerful, just something that can run bloated web pages easily and I won't have to think about again for at least half a decade.

Ideally, I want something around $300. Does anyone have recommendations for models to shop for? Anything the size of the T-Series would be adequate. I'm not a gamer or do video editing so no graphics card requirements.

I am thinking something like the T470 but wonder how futureproof that would be.

Anyone here tried this out? It looks potentially very useful, but idk.

It's safe.

This should be horrifying news to anyone who knows about Roblox's abuses of child developers and appalling content moderation policy. Here's hoping these are just empty corporate promises and not something more.

I've never touched SQL but some friends said that its a language you can basically learn in an afternoon, so I put it on my CV and applied to some jobs that say they want SQL lol. But now I've actually gotten an interview and I'd like to not get caught out as bullshitting - is it as easy as my friends say and do any of yall have some good resources about learning/using it? In the past I've had pdfs that take you from nothing to profiecency in a language and I'd love something similar, but now that I've graduated I don't have access to stuff like that anymore. I have a shittonne of experience in python if that helps (although at a glance nothing i'm seeing online looks much like python, but i'm told that you can implement it through python or something?)

Most stuff I can find quickly either try to make you pay for it or they're videos instead of text and that doesn't really play well with the adhd. Do you guys have anything? Thanks for the help scamming a corporation comrades

I remembered this gimmick today when I was thinking of the game Phantasy Star Online which used Internet Time in-game. Confusing as all hell to me and my 24hr brain

US big mad

Mental health apps also bad for privacy

From a comment on the recent LWN.net article that links to this:

I quite liked Kia’s privacy policy states it may process “special categories” of data, including ... “trade union membership”. But then I don't own a Kia (or any other kind of car).

i hate this country

Best rant I've heard in some time.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20230831/one-of-largest-known-lithium-deposits-found-in-ex-volcano-on-nevada-oregon-border-1113030534.html

However, Lithium Americas has faced stiff resistance from local groups since it bought the concession in 2017, including the Great Basin Resource Watch and several local Native American tribes, who argue mining threatens their local water sources, sensitive wildlife, and sacred sites. In July, a federal court rejected their challenge, approving the mining company’s project.

AntiFascist Linux, folks. Get your fresh AntiFascist Linux right here!

Primer for those who don't know what AntiX Linux is: It's a Debian derivative without Systemd. There are sysVinit and Runit versions available. AntiX can be used on newer computers, obviously, with the new release and up-to-date Linux kernel. But it is probably one of the best choices for extremely low spec hardware today, like if you have a computer you're running from the mid 2000s and insist on keeping it going.

Its default desktop is run with IceWM. It will leave something to be desired, it's not the prettiest thing, but it is an extremely lean base system. Your CPU and RAM will all get blown up the moment you launch a modern web browser, of course.

Preferably free.

Excerpt

What will happen to AI is boring old capitalism. Its staying power will come in the form of replacing competent, expensive humans with crappy, cheap robots. LLMs are a pretty good advance over Markov chains, and stable diffusion can generate images which are only somewhat uncanny with sufficient manipulation of the prompt. Mediocre programmers will use GitHub Copilot to write trivial code and boilerplate for them (trivial code is tautologically uninteresting), and ML will probably remain useful for writing cover letters for you. Self-driving cars might show up Any Day Now™, which is going to be great for sci-fi enthusiasts and technocrats, but much worse in every respect than, say, building more trains.

The biggest lasting changes from machine learning will be more like the following:

• A reduction in the labor force for skilled creative work
• The complete elimination of humans in customer-support roles
• More convincing spam and phishing content, more scalable scams
• SEO hacking content farms dominating search results
• Book farms (both eBooks and paper) flooding the market
• AI-generated content overwhelming social media
• Widespread propaganda and astroturfing, both in politics and advertising

This convinced me to finally delete my bird corpse account. They say this shit is optional and even "premium" for now but I for one don't want to be doxxed by a whoopsie automatic opt-in to scrape data off my device.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-66679922.amp

Used to think it was petite bougie shit for techbros to feel cool but it actually helps with my eye strain I get after prolonged sessions on the puter. Now I wish every site had it, criminal that some don't.