Almighty Algorithms, ew.

Thanks!

Do you have any links to the alleged bad history? I couldn’t find anything, partly because the recent political theatre makes it hard to be informed.

You sure you’re not confusing TP-Link with D-Link? The latter has been the common attack surface I’m familiar with, and the former has been a staple for enthusiasts and as a tool for pentesters.

My company actually pushes referrals and even offers a bonus for a successful hire to whoever recommended them, but the candidate still has to pass a bunch of interview hurdles, so it’s rare that it all works out anyway.

I think referrals can work out, if your interview process is grueling to begin with.

Fix the system so people don’t have to make money by stealing copper.

And yet, here we are with billionaires in charge—robber barons v2.0.

Person of the Year is Musk, and the cover is him sitting behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/07/media/time-magazine-elon-musk-cover-trump/index.html

I bet they’re going to use it for AI.

I saw elsewhere that Signal has already addressed this problem and issued an update. If your app is up to date as of now, you should be good to go.

This is a very uninformed take. Giant corporations don’t “enjoy” making people mad any more than they enjoy making a product or offering a service. It’s about money, and the fact of the matter is, fascism makes a very small few very wealthy behind a facade of populism.

Also, companies didn’t follow “Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion” or “Environmental, Social and Governance” policies because they enjoyed it. They didn’t do it, because they enjoyed making misogynists, racists, and climate denialists mad. They did it because they would have faced punishment from the judiciary if they didn’t comply. Those kinds of initiatives aren’t profitable.

Now that the guardrails are gone and the wheels are off, they can profiteer and discriminate and otherwise abuse the rest of us with virtual impunity—all to “make the line go up.”

I read the article, because I’ve been trying to do better about not skimming headlines, and it’s money.

An interesting thing they said, though, has me a little frustrated, because they left out vital context.

Time magazine, co-owned by Benioff and his wife, crowned Trump Person of the Year for 2024.

Hitler was Person of the Year, too. It’s not about popularity, it’s about global effect and influence, and it’s no secret that most of the world has decided they want in on his brand of corporate-led fascism.

The FBI, before Trump and Musk got their grubby little claws into it, warned everyone in the US to switch to E2EE messaging, and they explicitly mentioned Signal by name as one of several options.

This was/is due to the still-ongoing Salt Typhoon hack, and if the government is telling people they need to hide their info—an entity with agencies and bills set up to spy on its citizens— it’s probably something everyone should be doing yesterday.

So yes, you should be using Signal, SimpleX, a Matrix client, etc.

I appreciate your perspective!

Sounds to me that some maintainers need to learn how to say “no.” I get that certain people use their software in critical applications, but sometimes a “fuck you, no. I’m not doing that right now” is well deserved or even necessary. You can even go a step further and cite their belligerence, if that’s warranted.

The beauty of open source is that people can fork software if things aren’t getting fixed or moving in a direction they like. And if they don’t and still complain, bring out the ol’ “fuck you, no.”

Cosgrove said, "I’m afraid it’ll take a significant project falling over to convince them [the users] that paying for open source maintainers is worthwhile and, in fact, may actually be a requirement.

“I don’t want to see that happen because the fallout will be ugly and gross, but I’m concerned that that’s what it’ll take.”

I disagree that it will take money. If you’re a maintainer, it’s your passion project. Tell people to fuck off once in a while. The people who really care will either join you to improve things or make something better out of spite.

Shush. Why must you rain on their parade, when there’s venture capital to be gained! /s

As a sidenote, do tip your instance operators, especially if you’re on a small instance. Upkeep isn’t free.

Enshittification? Man, who could have seen that coming?

/s

Gotcha, thanks. It doesn’t sound particularly revolutionary as far as energy capture goes, since 40W is probably negligible on today’s cars.

NGL though, on an old '75 Honda motorcycle I used to own, an extra 40W would have been amazing. The alternator was too tiny to keep the electronics running and battery charged, and I had to turn the headlight off whenever possible to keep the battery charging.

I thought turbos converted air (exhaust) kinetic energy into mechanical energy, not the heat itself. If exhaust was cold, the turbo would still work, no?

Not saying that these Peltier devices are going to be game changers, but it sounds like they do something different from turbos in that they are capturing additional wasted energy.

No, silly! Laws exist only to punish people like you and me. They get to do what they want, because they give money to the legislators!

(I wish any of that was a joke.)