[-] Zak@lemmy.world 24 points 3 hours ago

I remember getting a boarding pass from an airline that was only offered in their app or printed at the airport, no email/download image/PDF option. I didn't have to install their app, but I would have had to waste time at the airport otherwise. I removed it when I was done and left it a negative review.

[-] Zak@lemmy.world 13 points 3 hours ago

The number I remember seeing was that on average, app users are seven times more profitable than web users. Sorry, no citation.

I suspect there's some selection bias in that regular/loyal users of a particular product or service are more likely to install the app, but it also affords the company greater access to send notifications and collect data. On the rare occasion that I install some random company's app for a specific benefit, I remove it when I'm done.

[-] Zak@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

It's likely the harassers can be prosecuted for false imprisonment, a misdemeanor. It is illegal to use deadly force such as hitting people with cars to prevent/terminate a misdemeanor.

[-] Zak@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

here’s not really anything of that nature for tech stuff

The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act does not exclude tech stuff. The problem is that it's a lot harder to work on tech stuff without insider information than 1970s cars.

[-] Zak@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago

He can't. He's paralyzed and his exoskeleton is broken.

On a more serious note, the 404media article (login wall) reports the problem was that the wristwatch controller for the exoskeleton had its battery wire's solder joint break. They seem to be trying to frame it as a right to repair issue, but that's a trivial repair for anyone with basic electronics experience.

[-] Zak@lemmy.world 37 points 2 days ago

If I feel threatened in my car, I am not allowed to run over the person

You are not allowed to run people over merely because you feel threatened.

You are allowed to use deadly force, in the USA when you reasonably believe that it is necessary to prevent someone from unlawfully killing, causing serious physical injury, or committing a short list of violent felonies. The harassment described in the article probably does not rise to that level, though an ambitious lawyer might try to describe intentionally causing the car to stop as carjacking or kidnapping.

[-] Zak@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

PRNGs aren't random at all; they produce a deterministic sequence of numbers based on a seed value and an internal counter. Two PRNGs using the same algorithm and seed will produce the same sequence of numbers. The sequence is difficult to predict without knowing the algorithm and seed, and the values are close to evenly-distributed, which is enough like random numbers for a lot of use cases.

Here's an example in Ruby:

seed = Random.new_seed()
=> 142757148148443078663499575299582907518
prng_1 = Random.new(seed=seed)
prng_1.rand()
=> 0.6702742156250219
prng_2 = Random.new(seed=seed)
prng_2.rand()
=> 0.6702742156250219
prng_1.rand()
=> 0.9667236181962573
prng_2.rand()
=> 0.9667236181962573

If you run this yourself using 142757148148443078663499575299582907518 as the seed, your first two pseudorandom numbers will also be 0.6702742156250219 and 0.9667236181962573, assuming your version of Ruby hasn't changed its PRNG.

[-] Zak@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

typically portraits are taken with 50mm lenses

While photographers use a variety of focal lengths for portraits, the focal length that's most associated with portrait photography is 85mm. This article from lens review site Imaging Resource illustrates the point; most of the lenses are 85mm or equivalent (e.g. 42.5mm on m43 with a crop factor of 2 making the field of view equivalent to 85mm).

[-] Zak@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago

Only certain mirrorless lenses ate compatible with teleconverters, and that one isn't. Teleconverters are also surprisingly expensive. RF mount is also expensive because Canon banned third party lenses entirely until recently and continues to heavily restrict them.

[-] Zak@lemmy.world 18 points 5 days ago

I think the the least amount of BS from a major camera company is probably Panasonic:

  • Panasonic uses two lens mounts (micro four thirds and L-mount), both of which are shared with other body and lens manufacturers
  • Old bodies get firmware updates
  • Features are rarely artificially restricted for market segmentation
  • Third parties have written apps to talk to Panasonic cameras

The biggest downside to the brand is that until very recently, Panasonic bodies had only contrast-detection autofocus, which can pulse if used in video and doesn't track moving subjects very well.

[-] Zak@lemmy.world 1 points 6 days ago

I'm disappointed in Sofirn for not making the battery in their bike light field-replaceable without tools. They're a real flashlight company. They know how to do this.

[-] Zak@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Zebralight W51

You probably mean H51, or H51w. The H53 series is the current equivalent.

I think OP wants something with a little more power. Zebralight has a suitable offering in the SC700d HI. It is, by all accounts excellent, and it is priced accordingly.

90
submitted 3 months ago by Zak@lemmy.world to c/edc@sopuli.xyz
  • Old leather wallet
  • Flashlight (Skilhunt H150)
  • Knife (Spyderco UKPK)
  • Pepper spray (Sabre Red, with a pocket clip from a random flashlight)
  • Phone (Pixel 4A)
  • Keys, and another flashlight (Skilhunt EK1)
  • Flash drive (Sandisk 128gb)
  • 1.38€
23
submitted 3 months ago by Zak@lemmy.world to c/flashlight@lemmy.world
15
submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by Zak@lemmy.world to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

I've been self-hosting email with Maddy for a bit, but haven't shared any of the addresses widely yet in part because I haven't set up a spam filter. I'm pleased with Maddy; there's much less to learn to get a server up and running with sane default behavior than with the email software of old.

Ideally, I'd like to go beyond just spam filtering and have something with arbitrary categories like newsletters and password resets. I would prefer that it learn categories when I move messages to IMAP folders from a mail client. Maddy can feed messages into arbitrary programs and pick a destination folder based on their output.

Web searches turn up a ton of classification programs, most of which seem to be more interested in playing accuracy golf with well-known corpora than expanding functionality beyond simple spam filtering.

39
submitted 5 months ago by Zak@lemmy.world to c/support@lemmy.world

I often use a commercial VPN service, which I suspect is not rare among Lemmy users. Most of the time, I'm able to post to lemmy.world, but on occasion I am not. The default web UI provides zero feedback, just a spinning submit button forever, but if I look in the browser dev tools, I can see it's being blocked.

I understand that some limitations are necessary to prevent spam and other abuse, however this is a very blunt instrument. The fact that I have a 10 month old account with consistent activity should outweigh any IP address reputation issues.

Perhaps the VPN limitations could be narrowed in scope to cover only account creation and posts from young accounts.

20
submitted 6 months ago by Zak@lemmy.world to c/flashlight@lemmy.world
24
submitted 9 months ago by Zak@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

If I want to quickly pitch "you should follow X, Y, and Z using RSS because [problems with social media]" to people who have never heard of RSS, what readers should I recommend?

I want at least web (not self-hosted), Android, and iOS options. Native apps for Mac and Windows would be nice as well. Linux users probably already know what RSS is.

There absolutely must be a free option good for at least 25 feeds because unfamiliar tech is a hard enough sell without having to pay. I'll grudgingly accept ads if that's the tradeoff for something beginner-friendly.

12
submitted 1 year ago by Zak@lemmy.world to c/support@lemmy.world

When I attempt to upload images to lemmy.world via the desktop web UI, I get the following error message:

SyntaxError: JSON.parse: unexpected character at line 1 column 1 of the JSON data

Looking at network traffic in dev tools, I see that I'm getting a 403 page from Cloudflare saying:

Sorry, you have been blocked You are unable to access lemmy.world Why have I been blocked? This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks....

I also get error messages when trying to upload images using Connect and Sync on an Android device. I successfully uploaded images in the past.

136
submitted 1 year ago by Zak@lemmy.world to c/flashlight@lemmy.world

We just hit 2000 subscribers! I’d like to thank everyone for showing up here to create a new community, and what better way than giving stuff away?

I’m giving away the Nitecore MH10 v2 I reviewed. I can ship it anywhere in the USA or EU, but EU winners will have to wait until mid September. This is a basic, beginner-friendly flashlight that can accept almost all 18650 and 21700 batteries.

To enter, leave a top-level comment on this post before midnight UTC on Sunday, August 27, 2023. Only accounts that have posted or commented on /c/flashlight prior to this being posted are eligible to win.

14
submitted 1 year ago by Zak@lemmy.world to c/flashlight@lemmy.world
2
10
submitted 1 year ago by Zak@lemmy.world to c/edc@sopuli.xyz
  • Skilhunt M150 v2 (519A swap)
  • Kershaw Launch 5
15
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Zak@lemmy.world to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

I just updated my Mastodon server to the latest version due to a security vulnerability. I got a 500 page and error:0308010C:digital envelope routines::unsupported in the logs from mastodon-web.

I could reproduce by running bin/webpack from the command line. Some searching led me to try Node 16 LTS, but then I get an apparently blank page when I load the site and call to eval() blocked by CSP in the browser console.

The API works normally; this only affects the website.

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Zak

joined 1 year ago
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