Lemmy - RazBot

Thinking along the lines of Freeman's Mind, Neeb's Subnautica, Red vs Blue (their channel is locked behind some kind of 'join' thing... wtf...)

Anyway, nursing student here! ...it's melting my brain. I don't trust my time-management skills to actually fire up any games right now - the addiction is real, and I'll fuck up my grade; but the 'itch' is also real, so I'm trying to find something to give that gaming fix, but in little short bursts so I don't one-more-level my way out of the program.

Study up, give my brain a nice 10-20 min break, then get back to it.

Not really picky on the game or genre, just looking for something in-character. YouTube is absolutely STUFFED with videos of people just playing games, but hardly any focused on delivering an actual story. Or rather, I'm sure it's there, it's just lost in a sea of low quality slop.

Any recommendations on picking out the gems?

People-smugglers should be treated like terrorists, Keir Starmer will say on Monday, as he hosts an international summit on organised migration crime in London.

Starmer will urge representatives from more than 40 countries to cooperate across national borders to stop smugglers just as they did to stop terrorists when he was director of public prosecutions more than a decade ago.

The summit is the latest initiative in the government’s attempts to cut irregular migration by targeting organised crime. So far, however, the strategy has not paid off, with more people having crossed the Channel in small boats this year than had done so by this point in the previous three.

Starmer will say: “When I was the director of public prosecutions, we worked across borders throughout Europe and beyond to foil numerous plots, saving thousands of lives in the process. We prevented planes from being blown up over the Atlantic and brought the perpetrators to justice.

“I believe we should treat organised immigration crime in the same way.”

He will add: “I simply do not believe organised immigration crime cannot be tackled. We’ve got to combine our resources, share intelligence and tactics, and tackle the problem upstream at every step of the people smuggling routes.”

Ministers will mark the opening of the summit with a range of new policy measures, including £30m to tackle global trafficking routes and the flows of illicit money which fund them. A further £3m will go to the Crown Prosecution Service to help it expand its international work.

Officials from a number of countries will attend, including the US, Vietnam, Iraq and France. Meta and TikTok will also be there to talk about how to stop the online promotion of people smuggling.

Yvette Cooper said on Sunday the government would also change employment laws so companies can be punished for employing someone without the necessary visa even if they do so as a contractor rather than as staff.

The home secretary is targeting businesses such as restaurants, takeaways, barbers and beauty parlours, which often use irregular workers without checking their immigration status.

She added that the government is also considering the application of article eight of the Human Rights Act, which protects the right to a family life and is often used by migrants to argue they should be allowed to stay in the UK.

Cooper told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday: “We are reviewing this area to make sure that the immigration and asylum system works effectively in the way that parliament intended it to and make sure that there is a proper sense of control in the system.”

Starmer and Cooper scrapped the previous government’s Rwanda plan soon after coming to power last year and focused instead on cross-border action to tackle people smugglers.

Officials say the approach is working, highlighting a series of recent arrests of people they describe as “smuggling kingpins”. Three men were recently convicted in Belgium for being involved in people smuggling, for example, after being arrested in the UK.

The number of small boat crossings continues to rise, however. More than 5,000 people have made the crossing so far this year – a threshold which was met faster than in any year on record.

Cooper in part blamed the weather for the high number of crossings, saying on Sunday: “We cannot carry on with border security being so dependent on the number of calm days that happen in the Channel.

“But the reason that is happening is because the criminal gangs still have a deep hold.”

I realized that I haven't spent time on Pixelfed in a while, and that it would be great to find more content to add to my feed! So I logged in to my instance (social.photo) and then... hit a wall.

With Lemmy and Mastadon, it is super easy to peek at what is going on at other instances and find communities to subscribe to, but it looks like Pixelfed does not make this easy. The biggest issue I have run into is that many of the largest servers do not seem to let you explore what is on them unless you first create an account, and the main Pixelfed Server Directory at https://pixelfed.org/servers does not indicate which servers can be explored or not, so you have to click a few times (since the link takes you to the registration page) to even find this out for a given server. It also does not help that navigating to an instance does not show you the content for that instance, like it does for Lemmy or Mastadon, but for a login page that may or may not have an "Explore" tab at the top.

Am I missing something here? I just logged into Tumblr for the first time in years and my immediate next thought was, "Gee, I should be using Pixelfed instead!" But if in practice it is simply not possible to find content I am interested in without a great deal of hassle then it is not a realistic replacement. In particular, it seems like the way Pixelfed is set up requires me to register on particular instances to get a better view of what content is available (not just locally, but pulled in from other instances). This seems contrary to me to one of the biggest advantages of the Fediverse, which is that you are able and encouraged to pick an instance that best suits you rather than the one where all of the content lives; in particular I could not imagine self-hosting a Pixelfed instance without being left out of most of the content available.

And just to be clear, I am willing to put up with some degree of hassle resulting from the inherently decentralized model of the Fediverse, since I switched completely over to Lemmy from Reddit about a year and a half ago after the API fiasco (and the only reason why I do not use Mastadon more is because I was never that into Twitter-style content to begin with). But having to go out of my way to get through artificially constructed walls to even find content to subscribe is a bit much.

However, again, maybe I am missing here. If someone is willing to point me to a resource that solves this problem problem and makes this entire rant sound completely ignorant then that would be great! 😀

Edit: Fixed silly typo.

I was thinking about personal data security and let my mind wander. I decided that if you were exceptionally paranoid then........

When thinking about personal data it may occur to you that, once you have implemented an adequate 3 stage backup system to avoid data loss, your main risk is the exfiltration and use of that data for nefarious purposes.

Personal data, e.g. the pictures or messages on your phone or pc, can imply many different things such as religion, sexual orientation, health details, political views etc. that could potentially be used against you by a bad actor.

As such, it would seem rather inadvisable to hold any data on any device that is not encrypted in a fashion whereby only you hold the encryption key.

Further, if you are going online using the device then, even if the device has a trusted os that implements full disk encryption, then it would also seem inadvisable to hold any data on the device that isn't seperately encrypted within the operating system. The data would be protected before first unlock by the os encryption and after first unlock by the seperate encryption.

As the password for this seperate encryption would neccessarily need to be complex you would be best storing this within a trusted password manager that employs zero-knowledge encryption or even better one that does not employ cloud-based syncing. You would also probably want to pepper the password with memorised additional digits.

You might then consider that, as encrypted data, while not especially useful now, may be seen as potentially more valuable should it be exfiltrated and stored for future decryption once technology allows, it may not be the best idea to store this encrypted personal data on any device that connects to the internet or even in a zero knowledge encrypted cloud-based storage solution.

You would then presumably decide that it is best to carry all the data you may wish to access at short notice encrypted on a portable simple data storage device that you could connect to any devices you wish to access the data on. You make the assumption that whoever mugs/holds you up/pickpockets and takes the data device is less likely to hold onto the encrypted data than an online attacker.

It is possible that you would then adjust your 3 stage backup system to be based on 3 non-internet-connected simple data storage devices kept in 3 seperate locations, one of which you carry around with you.

It was at this point that I decided to stop thinking about it. Lol. As noted, this train of thought would probably only occur if you were exceptionally paranoid and it could be theorised that at that point it is debateable whether you are more at danger from data exfiltration and exploitation or the very angry rabbits that want to know why you are so far down the rabbit hole. Lol.

Looking for the most privacy respecting baby monitor available. Doesn't have to be overly complicated, just the ability to watch a video feed from an app on my phone. It's a must have from the wife, so trying to find the best option and accepting some losses in privacy is likely necessary.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/27423053

[Video] ICE arrests PhD student

from the do-not-pass-go,-do-not-collect-$200 dept

I've got some smart home devices that need to be setup by another device on the same WiFi network, but it has to be 2.4ghz network. My modern android phone insists on connecting to the 5ghz network and so can't complete the setup.

Currently, I use an old android tablet that only connects to 2.4ghz to get round this, but it's clunky. Previously I've changed the WiFi network to produce seperate ssids for the two bands, but I'd rather not have to switch these settings around everytime I need to modify something.

What I want is a system setting in android or an app that forces my phone to turn off its wireless N capabilities and only use the 2.4ghz band. My searching and reading stackoverflow posts suggest this just isn't possible, but surely that's not true?! It seems like a simple enough option to have!

Tldr : how to force my phone to connect on 2.4hgz WiFi rather than 5ghz

Does anyone know of any resources regarding threat modeling worksheets? Specifically for individuals (as opposed to a corporation)

Is there a way to use a universal keyword blocking filter for all your #fediverse accounts?

Instead of having to create one from scratch every time. Like instead of one for Lemmy and one for Mastodon and one for Pixelfed, you just use one filter?

MAZANOKE is a simple image compressor and converter that runs entirely in your browser. No external uploads, works offline as a web app, and is powered by the "Browser Image Compression" library.

Github project page: https://github.com/civilblur/mazanoke

Features

• 🚀 Compress & Convert Images Instantly In Your Browser
  • Adjust image quality (0-100%).
  • Set a target file size.
  • Set max dimensions, to not exceed a certain width/height.
  • Convert between JPG, PNG, and WebP.
• 🌍 Installable Web App
  • Use as a Progressive Web App (PWA).
  • Dark and light mode.
  • Fully responsive for desktop, tablet, and mobile.
• 🔒 Privacy-Focused
  • Works offline.
  • All image processing happens locally.
  • No data is uploaded to external servers. Your files stay on your device.

Use case

This app is designed to compress smaller batches of images, aimed at casual users who need to compress and convert a few images at a time.

I created it primarily for friends and family who are less tech-savvy, to help them compress and convert images in a simple, safe, and private way.

Since the compression is handled in the browser, it won't cause any additional load on your server.

Additional notes

• I wanted it to be low-dependency, so it's built using pure HTML/CSS/JS.
• If you're wondering about the excessive amount of animations used, it's simply because I wanted to have fun working on this project. These types of animations are usually impractical for general purpose websites and are impractical to maintain.

What does someone have to do that means no amount of remorse or effort to fix things will get you to forgive them? I don't mean forgive and forget to the point where they can hurt you again. If someone repeatedly steals from you, forgiveness doesn't mean putting them in a position where they can steal again.

I'm asking this purely out of curiosity. I'm just wondering what the attitude in my corner of the internet is.