[-] tal@lemmy.today 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Yes. I wouldn't be preemptively worried about it, though.

Your scan is going to try to read and maybe write each sector and see if the drive returns an error for that operation. In theory, the adapter could respond with a read or write error even if a read or write worked or even return some kind of bogus data instead of an error.

But I wouldn't expect this to likely actually arise or be particularly worried about the prospect. It's sort of a "could my grocery store checkout counter person murder me" thing. Theoretically yes, but I wouldn't worry about it unless I had some reason to believe that that was the case.

[-] tal@lemmy.today 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Trump's run on pretty anti-immigrant speech, but he's pretty moderate in most other respects. He's probably the least-religious president we've ever had, and ran for the "religion party" ticket; he had to run with Pence to make up for lack of appeal to social conservatives. He advocated for (well, or at least gave the impression of) fairly-protectionist policy and ran for the free trade party's ticket. Since the start of the Cold War, the GOP's tended to be the hawkish party, and he ran on a relatively noninterventionist platform (though I'll concede that there's always been a paleoconservative isolationist faction, but it's been relatively weak for quite some decades).

Trump constantly says outrageous stuff -- he definitely makes it a point to be politically incorrect -- but his policy is actually not especially exciting.

I looked at his website way back in the 2016 election before his campaign had built up any steam. This was back when Hillary was running a nice, typical website, long list of issues, you know what campaign websites normally look like. At that point in time, he -- hillariously -- had only three issues on his campaign website. And none of his actual positions represented much of a change from the status quo:

  • Opposition to FTAs; at the time, we had been negotiating TPP with the Pacific Rim countries and TTIP with the EU. Both had effectively failed already at this point. Trump gave the public the impression that he was responsible for this, but it was something that was going to happen under Obama or not. He also spent a long time complaining about NAFTA. Thing is, I already had listened to speeches from a few politicians who had played this game with NAFTA (e.g. Ron Paul complains a lot about NAFTA but is quieter about why he opposed it, because it wasn't permissive enough, whereas most people listening to him are upset that it isn't restrictive enough). I had a pretty good guess that Trump was going to pull similar shennanigans on policy, looked at his white paper and sure enough, no specific changes, just lots of fluffy emotional text giving the impression that he was in opposition. And in office, he took NAFTA, negotiated a few minor changes, and then renamed it to USMCA. Having kicked the legs out from decades of time that manufacturing unions had built public opposition to NAFTA, he left the thing alone. So, he advocated for a position that sounded unusually close to the position that the folks on the left side of the spectrum wanted and, in fact, essentially left existing policy alone.

  • Opposition to immigration. Now, you could make a fair argument that he worked pretty hard to sell a nativist image. But his actual policy also wasn't particularly notable. He put through one regulation that SCOTUS was pretty sure to shoot down and kept it a constant source of political theater for a significant chunk of his term. He made an enormous deal out of his wall, kept it in the news, gave the impression without ever saying so that he was going to build a wall along the entire border. But this isn't even a new game to play from Trump. Bush Jr used the same shtick back when he ran. In his case, it was a "fence" and played a less-prominent role in his campaign.

  • Gun rights. He has no specifics and this is trivial to do: just don't involve yourself in additional restrictions. This has been a pretty stock generic Republican point because it costs nothing to do ever since the Democrats did the federal Assault Weapon Ban, which was not popular and sunsetted; it's something that every candidate just slaps on their page.

Hell, Trump was a Democrat back when Bush Jr was in office.

But Trump is far right. The news says so.

If you read news media that favors the Democratic Party, it will say that Trump is far right. If your regular news sources favor the Democratic Party, you have probably read a lot of articles over past years that say that.

If you read news media that favors the Republican Party, you will find plenty of material that will say that Biden is far left.

But Biden's not far left! That's ridiculous!

Yup. But presenting someone as being extreme is a good way to make them less appealing. You can find people who will self-identify as "left-of center" or "right-of-center", even "left" or "right". But very few politicians will call themselves "far left" or "far right". That's usually a label used by the media favoring the other side.

There are a lot of things that I don't like about Trump. But they mostly deal with his presentation and the tactics he uses. I dislike his willingness to make contradictory statements. I don't like the fact that he tries to piss people off about someone else -- especially via dishonest claims -- and exploit that anger. I dislike his willingness to disregard the political-consensus-building role that elections have, to concede, though I'll grant that maybe if there's a problem there, it needs to be fixed in the underlying system. But he's extraordinary mostly in his presentation, not in the policy that he's adopted. We had him for four years. US policy didn't change much, certainly not from mainstream Republican Party policy.

When Trump first ran for office, I remember Bill Kristol -- a conservative commentator who really dislikes Trump -- stating that most of what Trump says is misdirection. Basically, Trump can't force the media to say what he wants. But he can make a colossal amount of noise about something outrageous that they cannot resist covering, so that they talk about that instead of whatever meaningful actual policy stuff is going on. The coverage may not be positive, but it lets him direct the media narrative -- it's all about whatever outrageous thing he said on Twitter. I was a bit skeptical at the time. I could believe that Trump wouldn't change much on NAFTA because I'd seen other Republican politicians play the same game he was, but had a harder time buying that on immigration. But that was, I think, pretty accurate as an assessment. Most of what is unusual about Trump are the outrageous things that come out of his mouth when he's politicking. It's not really his policy.

[-] tal@lemmy.today 6 points 2 days ago

I believe that candidates from a given area are expected to perform disproportionately-strongly in the state that they're coming from. Sometimes I've seen Presidential candidates coming from large states, with commentary that they'll bring that state's support to the table.

That being said, I don't have numbers available.

[-] tal@lemmy.today 10 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

the TL;DR is that the party can’t just replace Biden.

The Democratic Party can run whoever it wants. The primaries and party nomination are (mostly) party-internal processes. They could say "now the rules are we choose a random US citizen". They don't have to do a primary at all. Some parties don't. There was a point in time in US history when primaries weren't a thing, and parties were quite happily doing their thing back then.

kagis for a starting date

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_election

The direct primary became important in the United States at the state level starting in the 1890s and at the local level in the 1900s.[17] The first primary elections came in the Democratic Party in the South in the 1890s starting in Louisiana in 1892.

The United States is one of a handful of countries to select candidates through popular vote in a primary election system;[12] most other countries rely on party leaders or party members to select candidates, as was previously the case in the U.S.[13]

EDIT: As a good example, the Libertarian Party -- though much smaller than the Big Two -- is the next closest. Under their rules, they participate in primaries, but they treat the primary simply as a way to obtain the preference of the electorate; the primary doesn't bind the party, under their rules.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Libertarian_Party_presidential_primaries

The Green Party has a mix of conventions and primaries, depending upon state; a random member of the electorate may-or-may-not directly vote to select their party's candidate.

https://www.gp.org/2024_nomination_process

[-] tal@lemmy.today 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

However, even if that strategy is somehow successful, again, and Biden does manage to get reelected, the Democrats MUST nominate a better candidate in 2028.

The Constitution mandates a maximum of two terms for a President. If he wins, he can't run again. He can technically additionally serve up to half of a term without "using up" one of his terms if he's vice-president and the serving President dies.

The two-term limit was originally purely a convention that had been set by George Washington, who was getting on in years, wasn't many years away from his death, really wanted to retire to his plantation (as in, he didn't even want to serve a second term, and was only convinced to do so by politicians arguing that without him, there might not be sufficient unity), and was also extremely popular and would have been re-elected again.

That convention held until FDR broke it and ran for four terms. In response to that, the Twenty-second Amendment was passed, prohibiting anyone from having more than two terms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

[-] tal@lemmy.today 10 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

and the U.S. is considering not re-installing it unless aid begins flowing out into the population again, several U.S. officials said Friday.

Honestly, this was a ludicrously cost-ineffective way to transport aid. We built the thing remotely, floated it in, and it was only there for a few weeks before a storm caused damage and grounded multiple ships. We repair it. Then the UN decided that they weren't going to use it for delivery because one of their warehouses had been hit (just dump it on the beach at Rafah, guys, if you don't want to use the warehouses, has to be better than not bringing it in).

[-] tal@lemmy.today 3 points 2 days ago

I mean, if you want to play a game made by volunteers, that's where Team Fortress came from.

There originally was the Quake-based Team Fortress mod.

There was Weapons Factory for Quake II, which was similar.

The TF team was hired by Valve to do the confusingly-named Team Fortress Classic for Valve's Half-Life, itself based on Quake II.

And Valve did Team Fortress 2.

[-] tal@lemmy.today 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Only HR, IT, and management are believed to be unaffected by the cuts, which reportedly would see the developer's title, 2016's Disney Magic Kingdoms, transferred to Gameloft's studio in Kharkiv, Ukraine.

Kharkiv? Damn. I mean, Kharkiv is an active war zone. As in "I read regular news reports about fighting there".

This was today:

https://kyivindependent.com/russia-attacks-kharkiv-with-fab-500-bomb-for-first-time-injuring-4/

Russia attacks Kharkiv with FAB-500 gliding bomb for first time, injuring 4

searches further

And it's not just casually using the term to refer to Kharkiv Oblast, either. The studio is in the city, slightly on the Russia side.

10 Nezalezhnosti Ave, BC Kvartal, 61022 Kharkiv, Ukraine

EDIT: They aren't in the district that was bombed above, but they're one block away from said district.

[-] tal@lemmy.today 12 points 3 days ago

Does he ever offer any reasoning behind these veteos?

I haven't followed this issue, but if I were governor of a state that had a major beach tourism industry, I probably wouldn't be out trying to increase the profile of any pollution issues.

[-] tal@lemmy.today 30 points 3 days ago

Well, I've called for it on here. Now this'll put it to the test -- we'll see how Californian students perform before-and-after the introduction of the classes and relative to states that don't make it part of their core curriculum.

I hope this works.

Skimming their material, looks like it also deals with countering some sales tactics and the like, like companies aiming to exploit fear-of-missing-out to sell product.

[-] tal@lemmy.today 44 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I don't really care that much about tarantulas, but IIRC from some videos on tarantula-handling, tarantulas are big and heavy enough that unlike some smaller spiders which have a terminal velocity that isn't going to hurt then -- they can fall as far as they want -- tarantulas can't really handle being dropped very well. So throwing a tarantula probably is kind of a dick move from the tarantula's standpoint.

kagis

https://spidersplanet.com/what-happens-if-you-drop-a-tarantula

Unfortunately, dropping a tarantula poses serious risks to the spider, with potential consequences influenced by factors such as fall height, landing surface, tarantula species, and the spider’s health and age.

The higher the fall, the greater the impact force, making even a small drop potentially fatal.

A solid landing surface, like concrete, increases the likelihood of severe injuries compared to softer surfaces.

Different tarantula species exhibit varying affecting levels and their ability to survive a fall. Young or molting tarantulas with soft exoskeletons are more vulnerable.

If a big tarantula falls, it can go really fast, and its belly might break open, causing internal damage and, in the worst case, death.

That is why heavier spiders usually stay on the ground, while lighter ones prefer living in trees to avoid serious injuries from falls.

Potential consequences of dropping a tarantula include:

Abdominal Rupture: The gravest consequence, often resulting in fatality. The tarantula’s soft abdomen houses its internal organs, and a rupture can lead to organ spillage and death.

Internal Injuries: Even without abdominal rupture, the tarantula may experience internal injuries, such as bleeding or organ damage due to the impact.

Broken Limbs: The fragile legs of a tarantula can easily break upon landing on a hard surface.

And that's aside from what a (large, powerful) human who suddenly gets a large spider thrown at them is likely to do to the spider in instinctual self-defense.

Tarantulas aren't native to Minnesota, so this was probably someone's pet. I don't have a lot of affection for large spiders, but to someone, that was probably kind of like a dog or cat.

[-] tal@lemmy.today 43 points 3 days ago

I don't really understand the attack vector the ISP is using, unless it's exploiting some kind of flaw in higher-level software than BitTorrent itself.

A torrent should be identified uniquely by a hash in a magnet URL.

When a BitTorrent user obtains a hash, as long as it's from an https webpage, the ISP shouldn't be able to spoof the hash. You'd have to either get your own key added to a browser's keystore or have access to one of the trusted CA's keys for that.

Once you have the hash, you should be able to find and validate the Merkle hash tree from the DHT. Unless you've broken SHA and can generate collisions -- which an ISP isn't going to -- you shouldn't be able to feed a user a bogus hash tree from the DHT.

Once you have the hash tree, you shouldn't be able to feed a user any complete chunks that are bogus unless you've broken the hash function in BitTorrent's tree (which I think is also SHA). You can feed them up to one byte short of a chunk, try and sandbag a download, but once they get all the data, they should be able to reject a chunk that doesn't hash to the expected value in the tree.

I don't see how you can reasonably attack the BitTorrent protocol, ISP or no, to try and inject malware. Maybe some higher level protocol or software package.

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submitted 1 month ago by tal@lemmy.today to c/news@lemmy.world

Low-cost carrier Ryanair on Monday reported its best-ever annual profit, as passenger and revenue growth offset sharply higher operating costs, but flagged a weaker pricing environment in the current quarter.

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submitted 1 month ago by tal@lemmy.today to c/games@sh.itjust.works

The average video gamer is now 36 years old — but Gen Alpha and Gen Z are most likely to play games.

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submitted 1 month ago by tal@lemmy.today to c/technology@lemmy.world

On Tuesday at Google I/O 2024, Google announced Veo, a new AI video-synthesis model that can create HD videos from text, image, or video prompts, similar to OpenAI's Sora. It can generate 1080p videos lasting over a minute and edit videos from written instructions, but it has not yet been released for broad use.

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At least four car companies’ data collection and sharing practices are under investigation by the Texas attorney general’s office for potentially violating state law on deceptive trade practices, according to documents obtained by Recorded Future News.

Kia, General Motors, Subaru and Mitsubishi received “civil investigative demand” letters from the office's consumer protection division in late April.

It’s the first known request for documents from connected car companies by a state investigative body as part of an enforcement review, experts say.

The California Privacy Protection Agency announced it would probe the data collection and sharing practices of connected-car companies and technologies in July, but the status of that inquiry is unknown.

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submitted 1 month ago by tal@lemmy.today to c/news@lemmy.world

There are few things more heartwarming than videos of children with deafness gaining the ability to hear, showing them happily turning their heads at the sound of their parents' voices and joyfully bobbing to newly discovered music. Thanks to recent advances in gene therapy, more kids are getting those sweet and triumphant moments—with no hearing aids or cochlear implants needed.

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submitted 1 month ago by tal@lemmy.today to c/news@lemmy.world

A survey of more than 2.4 million people finds that being online can have a positive effect on welfare.

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submitted 1 month ago by tal@lemmy.today to c/news@lemmy.world

Streaming services like Netflix and Peacock have already found multiple ways to aggravate paying subscribers this week.

The streaming industry has been heating up. As media giants rush to establish a successful video streaming business, they often make platform changes that test subscribers' patience and the value of streaming.

Below is a look at the most exasperating news from streaming services from this week. The scale of this article demonstrates how fast and frequently disappointing streaming news arises. Coincidentally, as we wrote this article, another price hike was announced.

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submitted 1 month ago by tal@lemmy.today to c/news@lemmy.world

A controversial bill that would require all new cars to be fitted with AM radios looks set to become a law in the near future. Yesterday, Senator Edward Markey (D-Mass) revealed that the "AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act" now has the support of 60 US Senators, as well as 246 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives, making its passage an almost sure thing. Should that happen, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration would be required to ensure that all new cars sold in the US had AM radios at no extra cost.

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tal

joined 9 months ago