Linux server admin, MySQL/TSQL database admin, Python programmer, Linux gaming enthusiast and a forever GM.

  • 1 post
  • 20 comments
Joined 3 years ago
Cake day: June 8th, 2023
  • I’m one of those nano weirdos. I mean, I get why people use vi/vim, but I’m a lazy man who has the nano shortcuts hardwired into my muscle memory. It’s definitely not as full-featured as vim, but it does what I need it to do quickly and easily. If I need to just quickly drop into a file and do a find/replace, takes me maybe 3 seconds.

    Also, to share an ancient joke from the dawn of computing: emacs is a great OS, I just hope someone makes a decent text editor for it eventually.

  • Here’s an absolute classic unix koan about the terminal:

    One evening, Master Foo and Nubi attended a gathering of programmers who had met to learn from each other. One of the programmers asked Nubi to what school he and his master belonged. Upon being told they were followers of the Great Way of Unix, the programmer grew scornful.

    “The command-line tools of Unix are crude and backward,” he scoffed. “Modern, properly designed operating systems do everything through a graphical user interface.”

    Master Foo said nothing, but pointed at the moon. A nearby dog began to bark at the master’s hand.

    “I don’t understand you!” said the programmer.

    Master Foo remained silent, and pointed at an image of the Buddha. Then he pointed at a window.

    “What are you trying to tell me?” asked the programmer.

    Master Foo pointed at the programmer’s head. Then he pointed at a rock.

    “Why can’t you make yourself clear?” demanded the programmer.

    Master Foo frowned thoughtfully, tapped the programmer twice on the nose, and dropped him in a nearby trashcan.

    As the programmer was attempting to extricate himself from the garbage, the dog wandered over and piddled on him.

    At that moment, the programmer achieved enlightenment

    Source: https://catb.org/~esr/writings/unix-koans/gui-programmer.html

  • I know someone who got had by a spearfishing call. They knew all the details about his phone contract, sounded 100% legit. The scammer got thousands of dollars in prepaid SIM cards from his account.

    After the police investigation, turned out that the scammer was actually a former employee of the phone company who downloaded a copy of the customer list when he got fired.

  • Yup. As someone who’s worked a little bit on GDPR compliance, it’s not some magic wand you wave at your data. Any data they receive after the request is also not covered by that request. Also, only EU citizens and residents are legally entitled to make a request. A company may choose to comply with non-EU users, but that’s purely their choice.

    Comments that contain any info about where you live, your ethnicity, disabilities (cognitive or physical), gender, where you work, etc must be deleted as part of a forget request, so that might impact LLM training data.

    Personally identifying information can be somewhat of a grey area in some situations as well. If I were to say I’m from New York, that’d be personally identifying. If I were to say I’m a fan of a sports team in New York, that’s not (even if that implies my location). If I were to say I’m a fan of a New York sports team, my favourite pizza place is in New York, my favourite park is in New York, etc etc, that might arguably be identifying, even if each of the pieces by itself is not.

    EDIT: Oh, and I forgot one of the most important parts: it’s not like there are any spot checks or anything. You’d need someone to actually lodge a formal complaint, with some kind of evidence they haven’t done what they’re supposed to, and the procedures are different for every EU country. They are normally very involved and complex. Essentially, you’d need to lawyer up and care enough to slowly and painfully shove it through the legal system.