majestic

Thanks, ChatGPT.

The US government just making up numbers reminds me of our former right-wing star populist Jörg Haider, who did exactly that - just 30 years ago. Went to interviews with little cards having numbers on them, holding them into the camera. "This is the amount of crimes committed by Chechnian refugees in Carinthia", then the next one "this is the amount of money we spend on Chechnian refugees per year" and so on and so forth. The numbers were all just made up. At the time there were grand total of zero Chechnian refuguess in Carinthia. The meteoric rise of his party was only halted for a bit when internal problems caused a schism and split into two parties, and ultimately when he was involved in a deadly car accident - driving way too fast and drunk out of his mind (alternatively he was killed by the Mossad). Just last year they got the majority of votes, but failed to find partners for a coalition government.

DJT makes DJT look so bad none of his goons can keep up. Guess that means this time, their jobs are pretty safe. Unless they suggest to stop the tariffs, like Musk did.

0/5, no Jubilost.

Yeah, happy Easter guys.

The short answer is simply: yes, it is, and it has been known for a while. The longer answer is that there are actually two issues. The first one is that WinRing0 is a generic driver capable of working in Windows' Ring 0 (hence the name), i.e. it is a function library/SDK pretending to be a Kernel Mode driver that allows regular application access to hardware that would otherwise be restricted. The reason why its use is so widespread is because it has an ages old legacy signature from a less interconnected and more naive time where security concerns and potential damages were not as great (and therefore cared about) as they are now. If you are a small developer team it was actually a good way to directly talk to hardware without going through the expensive and for many small teams unfeasible process of having to develop your own driver and having it digitally signed, meaning modern Windows versions would install and run it. It's a bit like Doctor Who's psychic paper insofar as that it lets software using it pretend to be trusted even if it should maybe not be. If you want an (imperfect, but still, it is just meant to illustrate) analogy, imagine you have a house with a side entrance for trusted people and services (imagine that like an employee and delivery service entrance). In order to be allowed to use the side entrance companies need to register as trusted service contractors. This more or less guarantees - not beyond the shadow of any doubt, as problems an always crop up - that these service contractors are not going to wreck your building. Signing up as trusted contractor takes time and money and comes with significant bureaucratic hurdles. Smaller service contractors have a hard time applying for the permits, so WinRing0, a service contractor still registerted as trusted contractor with a registration from ages ago when the process was much simpler, basically gives out their access badge to anyone who asks them to. So, you give access to WinRing0 (by installing it on your lock system) and now every service contractor with a WinRing0 key can access your side entrance if they're invited to your estate. That would already be bad enough and explains why Hiyohiyo thinks WinRing0 shouldn't even exist. There should not be a service out there that provides trusted access to your side entrance for anyone who wants it. The whole reason why your side entrance is locked and only trusted contractors are allowed in in the first place is provide a measure of security that WinRing0 simply bypasses. It would be much better for the provider of your locking system to actually come up with a secure and easy way to handle applications for keys (i.e. by Microsoft creating an API for RGB and fan controls). Still, there's the other issue, and arguably the actual problem: the version of WingRing0's lock and key system used by most contractors is broken in a way that allows the keys to not just open the side entrance and the areas you want to give them access to, but simply everything in your real estate, including highly sensitive areas like your jewelry lockbox, safe and filing cabinets. Thanks to the exploits and the fact that WinRing0 has not been maintained for years upon years outside of having the digital signature renewed it means that if you have the driver installed and a malicious piece of software like SteelFox finds its way onto your computer, it finds a readily and easily exploitable way to ASSUME DIRECT CONTROL over everything on your computer that potentially avoids every other security system you also have in place. It does have a key to your system, after all. On its own, having WinRing0 installed doesn't mean you can get hacked from the outside. You still need to buzz the maintenance guy in through your gates before he can just use his keys to steal your data, passwords and cryptowallets. SteelFox doesn't magically appear on your computer, but it was and is widely distributed in cracks for software, for instance. You still need to run malicious software on your computer - but thanks to WinRing0 it can do its job in a way that you - and especially your anti-virus software - might not find suspicious if it isn't already aware of the specific code used. Even if you only install software from trustworthy sources, you're not necessarily safe. There have been numerous occasions of compromised download servers and even Steam distributing malware through games. edit: your link provides a decent example, in some way. Gigabyte's mainboards used to come with an exploitable programm that quietly installed itself on your Windows if it was enabled in BIOS/UEFI (which it was by default) which could have been used to install malware without you even noticing. Pretty sure there are plenty of users with Gigabyte mainboards out there who don't even realize that they're sitting on a digital bomb. You can run driverquery from the command prompt (win + r, type in cmd, hit enter) to see if you have it installed. If so, you would need to find out which software installed it and remove it. There's some fun irony to be found in WinRing0's last version with a digital signature being one full of exploits as Hiyohiyo and others could not get signatures for maintained/fixed versions because Microsoft (understandably) made the process much harder to go through. It's the sort of thing that happens to Microsoft so often because the widespread use of their software means they need to carry an awful lot of legacy code and software with them. You're not going to sell your new version of Windows if it breaks everything your company needs to do its work, after all.

So, apparently, Paapa Essiedu is going to play Severus Snape in HBO's upcoming Harry Potter series. Sometimes studios do the darndest things. I mean... I don't really care about Snape being black just because he was described as Whitey McCracker with long, greasy hair in the books, but out of all the Harry Potter teachers they could have turned into a token black guy they pick the one person who gets hung from a tree by the Marauders? That's going to be one unfortunate scene, unless it gets dropped quietly - although it is a huge part o the reason for Snape's animosity towards Potter, so they can't really drop it. I mean sure they could, but not without changing the entire character dynamic between Snape and Potter, which is one of the best character bits in the books. Has anyone on the creative team read the books before making the casting choices? Why not cast a Morgan Freeman-esque actor as Dumbledore? That would have been something.

Black Mirror, season 7, episode 1: "Common People" Yeah, so a while back (actually a long while back, given the time in between seasons of this series) I said that Black Mirror is like a more hopeful version of the 90ies Outer Limits remake. Similar storylines, but a lot less grim. I commented on the board that there are not enough downer endings in the series to scratch that itch Outer Limits left. There's two things to say about the opening episode of the new season. It's a complete riot that it is on Netflix due to its subject matter of subscription services getting worse all the time while costing ever more, and it is incredibly dystopic and bleak. Much like Nosedive it is also a great commentary on the cyberpunkish dystopia our modern world is spiralling towards. This episode does more than just scratch an Outer Limits remake itch. It's bleak, dystopian, funny, terrifying and horrifying, all at the same time, it does feature a downer ending and - what is more than Outer Limits episodes could claim, most of the time - it is relevant social commentary. Very, very strong opening. Don't know if that bodes well for the rest of the season or just sets an unpassable bar for the other episodes.

Common symptom of the big C even if you have no others. Hit me as well, the first time I got it (but not the second and third time). Ended up eating ham already gone bad because I couldn't smell it, which was pretty "fun" for two days afterwards.

Uhm, like, far as I know, all air breathing slugs are hermaphrodites.

Went to the theater for A MINECRAFT MOVIE, because my nephew really wanted to go. So far I thought watching him play Minecraft was the worst thing. Then he started to watch Minecraft YouTubers, and I thought, wow, it can't get any worse. Oh how wrong I was. The best moment of the film came from an older woman a few seats away, having been dragged to the theater by what was probably her grandchild. When the credits rolled, she very loudly exclaimed: THANK GOD IT IS OVER.

Oh, trips down memory lane, and about schools, yay, I love those. Let's see. High school, or at least the sort-of equivalent that I signed up for (grades 8 to 13, 5 year course), had 50 minute teaching units. Five minute breaks between each unit, with a a 50 minute break (for lunch) after four or five classes. Most of the days started at 08:15 and ended 16:25. We had some school days ending at 17:20, and some started at 07:20. With my commute times being what they were, I left home at 06:35 (5:35 at the insane days that started earlier than normal) and was at home ~18:15 at the earliest, shortly before 20:00 at the worst. Homework and assignments usually took another hour, longer on days with accounting and maths, as those had teachers who delighted in giving out a lot of assignments. Right, in between we were supposed to study too, I guess. During 2nd and 4th grades we had to apply for a summer internship. Students were not allowed to proceed to the next grade without them. The busiest schedule we had in 11th grade, clocking in at 14 or 15 separate classes, including "voluntary" extracurricular activities. Least busy was the final grade with 8 classes, but we had a year long project for the finals and a paper* to write. By least busy I mean we "only" had 30 units per week in the final grade, as opposed to 36 + ECs. Projects were picked or assigned from a pool of projects submitted by companies, government agencies and NGOs. Most students wanted company projects because they were an easy way to find a job (and the companies had free talent to check out for a year) - plenty of us who had a company project actually worked part time for those companies during the final year, so the ones from the agencies and NGOs ended up being assigned. My group got their project from the school board: digitising administrative processes at schools. Pretty neat topic that no one else took seriously, although I suppose the idea came a bit too early (talking late 1990ies/early 00s here). For the paper we were provided a massive set of anonymized data from our school: students' grades in each class and the amount of classes they missed each year. The basic idea was pretty simple, we were to find a correlation between the grades and missed classes. It seems logical enough, I suppose, students who miss a lot of classes should generally have worse grades than those who don't, except try as we might, we could not find any meaningful correlation, it was near zero. One of our teachers was so baffled by the results that she went over our calculations. Three times, in as many weeks. The only thing we could show was that there were certain classes and teachers where lower attendence in genereal tended to lead to worse grades, but that is logical, we had classes where the grade directly depended on attendence, like PE, or teachers that factored attendence into their grades. Needless to say, the presentation of our results did not go over too well. The obvious problem is the small sample size, and that one needed to pass an SAT to even get into the school in the first place, and even then, the dropout rate in the first year is above 50%, and of everyone who started the same year as I did, less than 15% actually graduated. Once past the first grade you're left with students easily capable of making up any missed time, and missing classes is not the leading cause of the high dropout rate in the first year. *Not to scientific writing standards, but it did include research pertaining (at least superficially) to the project for the final exams. Im dichten Fichtendickicht sind dicke Fichten wichtig. *scnr*

Yeah, I'm also a total Eora lore buff. Personally, I, like, totally love how Eowyn faked his death at the hands of Priest Padraic. What did you like best?

It would be interesting if you could share your thoughts as to why. I'm neither particularily versed in teaching techniques (modern or otherwise) nor with your school system, so I am left guessing as to what exactly you think is so crazy. I might also not have the best perspective, given what the last five years of my school life looked like. We certainly never got a homework amnesty week, but plenty of projects over breaks and holidays. Edit: Well, whoever the person is, they are coming across as a major douchewaffle, so there's that.

You clearly need to git gud, nub.

Speaking of healthy food: Was pretty good.

Preordered the Switch 2. I need to make an effort to use it more than my old OLED Switch, which sits mostly unused in the dock.

So, I suppose Trump is actually the head of the PANICAN party?

So, what do you like about Tiny Fishing that makes it worthwhile to play? I am currnetly playing We Are Warriors on my phone, which is a great idle game with just a smidgen of strategy involved. You can unlock cool skills and fun heroes, and best of all, if you're stuck - as it is normal with idle games - you can just open your wallet and buy yourself progression. The best part is how that progression is random, so you don't even know if you can proceed after buying in-game currency. If you get unlucky it'll just increase your units' hitpoints, and not their damage. But! During events you can just buy additional points for the skill tree. And they're only 2.49€ per piece. What a great deal!

Elon Musk, seeing how he already suggested a zero tariff policy between the US and EU.

Cut the man some slack y'all, will you, he's a stable genius who saw that trade and economic relations no longer guarantee peace when Putin's Russia invaded the Ukraine and how COVID affected global supply chains. He's also seen how little materiel the West can really produce when needed, and rightly attempts to bring back manufacturing to the US. In case of an all out war against the Chinese, the industrial base and all the resources need to be at home to win a protracted war of attrition. Which is actually be a sensible position to have, and the Biden administration had that on the agenda, at least in some ways. It's just that the US has an deranged idiot at the helm who surrounded himself with lickspittles and yes-men, and now nobody's left to tell him that the emperor is naked. Trying to make sure that any eventualities in a potential conflict with China are planned for is a good thing. Alienating all your allies and trade partners in a block of equal economic and purchasing power or on those who whold a monopoly in certain goods is not. Taiwan, IIRC, as already stated that they are not going to react to the tariffs. Sitting on a de-facto monopoly, they can afford to. What are the US companies going to do, stop buying from TSMC? Now, if only there'd been some incentives act aimed at breaking that monopoly. Can't quite put my finger on it. Must be something that the libtards wasted money on. Just because Trump thinks this should have been done decades ago, does not mean it will work now. The world's a much different place, and while the United States is still a large chunk of the global trading volume and GDP, it is no longer as relevant or consequential as they used to be. That could backfire very hard, very quickly. Plus it just proves that the word of the president of the United States is worth nothing, and no treaty with the US is worth the paper it is written on. Which has always been the case in some ways (ask the Kurds), but never like this, and never that much and directly against the inner circle. I mean they even pissed off the otherwise nice Canadians, and that takes some doing.

Just like actors in real life, they're all reptilians. Game is a psy-op.

Serious headphones warning for this one. Christ, the audio is bad.

Indeed, they just added two greek letters and cancelled them out so it looks more sophisticated than what they actually did. Trump and his voters will look at the formula and go "Woah, this is complicatid stuff. Liek nucular science! Covfefe!", while in reality it just expresses the trade deficit in relation to the imports. Take times 100 for the percentage value and fiddle a little to the numbers to make them look nice (the trade deficit between the US and the EU was more like 37% in 2024, but who knows which year they took their numbers from) and put them on the giant tariff sheet Trump read from to show how mean everyone else is to the United States, and you're done. I'm somewhat surprised that the more fringe MAGA elements (the conspiracy kind) is so cool with a Jew running US commerce. Weren't they the ones behind the forest fires with their space lasers and trying to the establish the New World Order? Or is Lutnick a good Jew fighting the good fight against his people? Questions, questions...

Observe, if you will, the reason why Alfred Nobel ignored economics when founding the Nobel prize: it is voodoo and crystal ball gazing. It also doesn't explain why there's a 10% minimum tariff on nations with balanced trade - or no trade at all, due to being populated by penguins. Although that's probably becuase they look better in a suit than Trump.