🤔 Question Of the Day...

How AI chatbots may be talking people out of climate action

Across 28,800 prompts, models were 7.5 times more likely to advise “stay the course” than “change,” even when the status quo is anti-climate.

Keyboard early review:

I just purchased a Keychron K2 HE Special Edition and wanted to share my impressions so far after a day of use.

• The typing experience with the HE "banana" switches is a big step up from my first-run Matias Quiet Pro, however I expected a bit more tactility and less noise. On the plus side the key presses feel smooth and not mushy.

• Noise: Keychron has a lot of credibility among keyboard enthusiasts, but the specific ways the V2 HE keys make noise gives me pause... If you hit a key with a very specific range of energy, it snaps✴️ on the upward return. A softer or harder press will seem fairly silent. This adds inconsistency to the typing experience; other brands have done much better.

• Layout: Mostly good, but there is a 'lightbulb' key where Del should be. I guess I'll change that at a later date. The Fn-key messups are related to layout, I think. I like that they kept the full home/end/pgup/pgdown set on this compact model.

• I'm on the fence about the OSA shaped key caps. Initial impression is the surface area is a bit too small, and yet here I am typing away more comfortably and faster than I have in years.

• The build quality is impressive for the price, and it looks good.

• Features: Many more than I'll use. I would have deleted wireless if I could, but at least wired is selectable with a simple hardware switch. There is one special key combo (maybe its a macro) I can't quite figure out that is easily triggered by the side of my right hand; I think it is triggering Fn+something which results in in web browser deleting my typed text and opening a new window.

Further notes below...

If I could be granted one magical wish for the Internet it would be to change every web browser so that it refuses to access a site until the user adds it to their bookmarks, and the bookmark dialog will show the site domain/https in bold 24pt font and it will have a delay so the user cannot just click-through.

I would also change domain name rendering so that characters which don't belong to the language of the first character in the domain show up as boxed or bright pink etc. This makes homoglyph attacks look obvious and inauthentic.

A little could go a very long way...

Israeli Zero-Click Spyware Is Infecting Phones via Targeted Ads

"Linux/BSD is going to conquer the non-techie users" bs is very tired.

Listen to yourselves: You are asking users to identify with a component buried deep in the stack, to navigate a bewildering forest of different package formats and user interfaces. And because of the UI-agnosticism, they have to adjust to receiving tech advice centered on the CLI, oftentimes leading down rabbit holes that include instructions for patching and compiling.

This get-users-to-love-unix-clones model hasn't worked for the past 30y, and it isn't going to now. Putting candy over the chaos still leaves users with chaos, and they're not up for your tech-adventurism. At most, it can succeed with tech enthusiasts and govt/corp environments where the UI and package choices are locked down.

If a product or movement identifies as "a Linux", its dead in terms of mass appeal.

I'm going to start blocking the kids-must-be-hooked-up-to-servers stampede of nincompoops. They are just as bad as the verify-everyones-age idiots, and in fact these two groups need each other.

The underlying assumption for both is: Everything private and young and innocent is going to be connected anyway... there is no stopping cyber invasion.

I question whether that is a culture worth saving, one which cannot expect guardians in the home to say 'no' to anything. Its like having no culture at all.