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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/27664878

Hello world,

Today we are starting an April Fools charity event called: Lemmy Silver! accessible to all users of Lemmy with an account made before today (also non-world users!).

From now on, every 24 hours, you can comment !lemmysilver under any post in participating communities (see: this post for more information), or send a PM to this bot account with (!lemmysilver [username]) to award the poster points. We will keep a score depending on the amount of votes you send and receive. More details can be found in this post.

In this post we will keep a live leaderboard. At the end of April the users with the highest score will get these prizes:

  1. €150 to a charity of choice
  2. €100 to a charity of choice
  3. €75 to a charity of choice
  4. €50 to a charity of choice
  5. €25 to a charity of choice

If you are a moderator and want to add your community to the whitelist, type !whitelistsilver in the comments or in a PM to the bot account to whitelist all the communities you moderate, or send a PM to me (Thekingoflorda).

The prize fund is made up by personal donations from members of the admin team and the moderation team, no money from the Fedihosting Foundation is used for this event. If you want to contribute to the prize fund, please send me a PM.

We also made a little survey for this event, so if you have 2 minutes, please fill it out: https://app.formbricks.com/s/cm8x96xjc022vvt01xr0z9tdp

Feel free to leave any feedback here in the comments, in [email protected] or by sending them to my PMs. The bot's PM will probably not be read. Please be honest, but respectful and keep the TOS in mind.

Thank you everyone! Hope you have fun.

PS. The bot might be a bit unstable in the beginning, so please send all your complaints my way so I can fix the inevitable bugs.

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/41325747

geteilt von: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/41324008

I have one of those shown and never knew that they can make my devices go boom...

Any other things that may cause a surprise bonfire in my cable drawer?

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Using something like Graphene OS or Lineage will result in less ad tech monitoring you, which may be useful in the event of sudden increased persecution (worse than what exists).

Keep your phone in airplane mode unless absolutely needed to avoid providing information about your routines that can be used maliciously by corrupt government forces. The government doesn't need to know your route home, so go into airplane mode!

KryptKey is an excellent FOSS App and that allows cryptography in regular text messages. If a conservative coalition blocked VPNs, KryptKey provides ways to communicate using traditional methods if certain servers for encryption Apps are blocked.

A low tech way of letting people know you aren't being held or killed is to update your voicemail with the date. For example. "Hi, it's me SATL. Today is April 2nd as of this recording and all is well. I'm still a Windows user not spending all my time on a Linux addictuon! Leave a message after the beep." A failure to update the message for an extended periods could indicate a problem. Because people can sometimes get arbitrarily banned on Facebook for no reason, relying on Facebook for this function is a bad idea.

Community Assistance Groups using SimpleXChat: create a group using SimpleXChat of other marginalized people and make certain agreements. In the event anyone is missing, the remaining group members will place at least 10 calls per day trying to find them, and if they know where they are they will continue to each spend at least 10 minutes per day trying to make contact. The reason for this is if you are locked up, you can only hope people are trying to find you, but a contract like this let's you know in advance people will be looking for you, providing comfort. The rules of the groups could be modified as needed.

Go Bag: everyone needs a good go bag. When you really need to flee, your ability to this plan is going to be diminished because of stress. Stress result in flight or fight: logic skills go down and running speed goes up. That's why you want your go to bag packed beforehand. You should know that when the emergency happens, you will always accidentally leave somethings behind. So a go to bag, in any easy to grab spot, helps and if it's economically possible don't take stuff in and out of the bag. It is very important to already have a different burner phone ready to go with a different IMEI, preferably with Graphene OS installed or Lineage. You must not connect to any accounts like Facebook with this phone. Instead, use SXC and invite your contacts to the burner phone before you leave or reach contacts using Signal, storing numbers in the Graphene phone using a notepad App. It maybe beneficial to get a non-Graphene phone with a removable battery so you can keep the battery out of your phone unless needed if you wish to be especially careful.

Plan to flee: if you plan to flee, having a go to bag isn't that helpful without a way to eat and sleep. Consider a sleeping bag or tent, car, and cash. Consider bags of rice, noodles, and oatmeal to keep locked in a car as well as plastic bowls. These items can be edible with gas station water given a long enough wait for them to become less hard and dry

Know the route to take: if you notice someone following you and expect you are being sent to an oppressive prison, you may wish to flee to Mexico or Canada and then depart from there to another country to avoid inhumane treatment. Have an exit plan in advance and know which way you intend to go.

The biggest threat marginalized people may face is if VPNs and other remote encryption technology are banned. A result of this could mean Signal Servers are banned, SimpleXChat servers are unreachable, and there is no way to send secret messages. This is why it's so important to download KryptKey now, not later.

Briar can work via Bluetooth even if cellular technology is down. It should be in every emergency phone.

Financial prudence: with prices going up and the economy being difficult, sometimes just surviving is a victory. But if you can, be careful to save, lower expenses, and be strategic with money so that you can be more ready for emergencies.

What can less marginalized folks do to help? Offering an coffee/sleepover area for any of your friends to stop by is a wonderful way to connect with your neighbor, like a modern day salon! You can get the games and crackers and snacks in advance and have pillows waiting for anyone who needs to stay the night, as well as some pre-selexted philosophical topics. "Do parallel universes exist? What is the best food and why? Do NPCs really exist? Why or why not?"

Please add suggests or criticisms.

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Okay so im really curious about these AI powered shopping assistants that keep popping up everywhere like how do they actually work and whats so special about them? I get that they use AI powered shopping tech to suggest products but what makes them different from just regular search filters do they actually learn my style or is it all just clever marketing? Like can they really understand what I want better than I do or do they just follow trends also are they tracking my every click or what? And what about privacy with all this AI powered shopping stuff going on is my data safe or should I be worried? Honestly im kinda torn between thinking its super helpful or maybe just another way to get me to spend more money... does anyone else feel this way or am I overthinking it?

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Last November, The Bookseller reported Dutch publisher Veen Bosch & Keuning, owned by publishing titan Simon & Schuster, was testing the use of artificial intelligence to help translate several of its books to English.

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A federal judge struck down Arkansas' Social Media Safety Act, ruling it unconstitutional for broadly restricting both adult and minor speech and imposing vague requirements on platforms. Engadget reports:

In a ruling (PDF), Judge Timothy Brooks said that the law, known as Act 689 (PDF), was overly broad. "Act 689 is a content-based restriction on speech, and it is not targeted to address the harms the State has identified," Brooks wrote in his decision. "Arkansas takes a hatchet to adults' and minors' protected speech alike though the Constitution demands it use a scalpel." Brooks also highlighted the "unconstitutionally vague" applicability of the law, which seemingly created obligations for some online services, but may have exempted services which had the "predominant or exclusive function [of]... direct messaging" like Snapchat.

"The court confirms what we have been arguing from the start: laws restricting access to protected speech violate the First Amendment," NetChoice's Chris Marchese said in a statement. "This ruling protects Americans from having to hand over their IDs or biometric data just to access constitutionally protected speech online." It's not clear if state officials in Arkansas will appeal the ruling. "I respect the court's decision, and we are evaluating our options," Arkansas Attorney general Tim Griffin said in a statement.

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Tech manufacturers continue misleading consumers with impressive-sounding but less useful specs like milliamp-hours and megahertz, while hiding the one measurement that matters most: watts. The Verge argues that the watt provides the clearest picture of a device's true capabilities by showing how much power courses through chips and how quickly batteries drain. With elementary math, consumers could easily calculate battery life by dividing watt-hours by power consumption. The Verge:

The Steam Deck gaming handheld is my go-to example of how handy watts can be. With a 15-watt maximum processor wattage and up to 9 watts of overhead for other components, a strenuous game drains its 49Wh battery in roughly two hours flat. My eight-year-old can do that math: 15 plus 9 is 24, and 24 times 2 is 48. You can fit two hour-long 24-watt sessions into 48Wh, and because you have 49Wh, you're almost sure to get it.

With the least strenuous games, I'll sometimes see my Steam Deck draining the battery at a speed of just 6 watts -- which means I can get eight hours of gameplay because 6 watts times 8 hours is 48Wh, with 1Wh remaining in the 49Wh battery.

Unlike megahertz, wattage also indicates sustained performance capability, revealing whether a processor can maintain high speeds or will throttle due to thermal constraints. Watts is also already familiar to consumers through light bulbs and power bills, but manufacturers persist with less transparent metrics that make direct comparisons difficult.

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TL;DR: Self-Driving Teslas Rear-End Motorcyclists, Killing at Least 5

Brevity is the spirit of wit, and I am just not that witty. This is a long article, here is the gist of it:

  • The NHTSA’s self-driving crash data reveals that Tesla’s self-driving technology is, by far, the most dangerous for motorcyclists, with five fatal crashes that we know of.
  • This issue is unique to Tesla. Other self-driving manufacturers have logged zero motorcycle fatalities with the NHTSA in the same time frame.
  • The crashes are overwhelmingly Teslas rear-ending motorcyclists.

Read our full analysis as we go case-by-case and connect the heavily redacted government data to news reports and police documents.

Oh, and read our thoughts about what this means for the robotaxi launch that is slated for Austin in less than 60 days.

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