I’m guessing the reason for most things forcing you to use an app is less because of data harvesting, and more because it increases repeated use.

When you have to go to your browser and remember to check a website it’s harder to create a habit. If you have an icon flashing on your home screen every day it’s much easier to remember to go to their site. Sure you can “Add to Home screen” functionality, but average users don’t even know that exists.

It also feels like a bespoke app is more “professional” than a website, despite many apps secretly just being a website anyway.

That said, they are definitely harvesting your data. I just don’t think that’s the main reason for most apps.

TLDR: number of possible passwords is x^y where x is the size of your alphabet and y is the password length. Increasing y is better than increasing x.

It’s not immediately obvious, but it is pretty straightforward math. It has to do with password length vs alphabet size.

Let’s look at an 8 letter lowercase only password. Each time you increase the minimum length, you increase the maximum number of passwords by 26 (the number of letters in the alphabet). So it would be 26x26x26x26x26x26x26x26 or 26^8 which is 208,827,064,576. This is a lot of passwords, but pretty easy for a computer to brute force.

Let’s add the ! symbol. This means there are 27 options or 27^8. The total number of passwords is now 282,429,536,481. A bigger number, but not by much.

If we only have lowercase letters but increase it to 9 letters long, then it increases to 26^9 which equals 5,429,503,678,976. We’ve jumped from millions of passwords to billions with passwords only 1 character more.

If you allow all symbols and numbers, but also increase minimum length, you get the best of both without creating difficult to remember passwords.

This of course ignores the primary way people get past passwords: by asking the user for their password. It also ignores that an intruder is going to check the most common passwords and not just try them all. Adding numbers and symbols doesn’t really change the most common passwords though, since dragon just turns into Dragon1!

I recommend the video “In Search of a Flat Earth” by Dan Olson, aka Folding Ideas

All software is now AI. The sensor that tells your fridge to turn off when it’s cold enough? Well that makes a decision of some kind, so AI. The cook timer on your microwave? AI. Your thermostat? Definitely AI.

Capitalism is in a permanent prisoners dilemma.

Overall they need to treat their employees well so that there’s growth in the economy, since no one to buy things means no market to sell things. However, they can also choose to screw over their employees with bad pay, terrible conditions, or in this case, automating their workforce and firing people.

If no one screws their employees, the economy expands with modest growth.

If one or few corporations screw their workers while everyone else doesn’t, they become fabulously rich and the rest get outcompeted.

If everyone screws their workers, then the economy collapses because there’s no growth, and everyone eventually goes out of business.

Retractable wings doesn’t change the fact it uses airplane technology to fly

Airplane*

Valid. I’m not huge on going out with coworkers either unless we click on mutual interests.

Very fair. That said, going into the office isn’t going to help that.

Socialization is always brought up as an excuse not to allow WFH. The thing is though, replacing real socialization with work fucking blows. Talking to a coworker to get the latest TPS report isn’t socialization. It’s work. The only time you do any real socialization is after work ends. And there’s nothing stopping you from going out to dinner with coworkers when you work from home.

“I can’t be as innovative over zoom”

Fixed that for you

Companies that threaten to leave as an attempt to influence legislation should be immediately seized and liquidated

For now. We get crazier every year.

If Comcast hates it, it must be the best solution. In fact, I think we America should run all laws by Comcast executives

Honestly the time you can put your laptop to sleep is the least interesting part, but it’s hard the explain the other benefits to regular users

But it could also have huge ramifications

This doesn’t make sense unless you sign up for every service. And at that point, are you an idiot or something? Just cancel subscriptions that you aren’t watching a show on.

That said, I’m not defending streaming services. Having so many of the damn things sucks. Just don’t pay for all of them.

It’s not social media in general that’s harmful, it’s the algorithms that feed you garbage

Dog damn, can we not call it doxxing? Laws shouldn’t use 4chan slang.

We don’t need to become Reddit