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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 3rd, 2025

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  • Take a look at Revolut and/or Wise (non-referal links used).

    With either, you’ll get a plastic debit visa/master card.

    Anything you’d pay for you’d just use your card, each transaction they will do the currency exchange based on the immediate forex exchange rate.

    The other option is that (depending on the foreign currency) you can create an “account” in that foreign currency and exchange money to/from that foreign currency whenever you want. Any transactions made will be automatically pulled from that foreign account. If you don’t have enough to cover it, whatever foreign currency you have will be used and the difference will be pulled from your primary currency.

    The same rules apply to ATM withdraws. You don’t need to pay ATM fees, because there is no currency conversions.

    So, if I’m planning a trip abroad, I’ll just look for a favorable at the exchange rate convert some currencies and when I come back, I’ll convert the left over back.

    Caveats:

    • ATM withdraws have a monthly limit, that you can withdraw w/o paying revolut/wise a fee (as they make their money from the cc purchase).
    • You might need to “shop around” and find a foreign bank/ATM that won’t try to ding you with stupid fees
    • Do not do currency transfers on the weekend, either have a foreign account and/or enough local cash. As the exchange/forex markets are closed during the weekends, wise/revolut have worse exchange rates on Sat/Sun (but still probably better than your bank)
    • You may want to get both Wise and Revolut, as there are some places Revolut won’t work at, but Wise will (and the opposite is true).
    • For me Revolut offers more “value”, but they’re following the enshitification mantra… so, I’ll be happy to dump them as soon as something " better" is available.

  • I’ll concede that labeling it as “not bad” was too harsh/critical.

    When the movie was released, the movie, the plot, the soundtrack, the special effects - were fantastic.

    You’re absolutely right, it did a fantastic job of capturing “nerd culture” for that time.

    It’s not that I feel the movie aged badly, but it’s not as “unique” or relevant as it was in 2010. Other films have picked apart pieces of what made SPvW such a unique experience (for example: Free Guy).

    Additionally, the current “nerd culture” has changed. You’ll be hard pressed to find younger gamers play pixel graphic games (although, they are missing out).

    Certainly, not all topics are outdated (ie: LGBTQ), but enough of is.

    The film is a perfect nerdy time capsule for 2010, but the soundtrack with that dirty grunge sound will be around for a lot longer.

    We are sex bob-omb. 1…2…3…4…



  • Are you accessing these through your web browser? If so, do you check the “Leave me logged in” button enabled?

    As others have suggested, maybe your OS is compromised and the attacker is stealing those authorization cookies from your browser and/or dedicated clients (ie: discord).

    You might want to log out of all your other browsers/clients and either try something like LibreWolf (maybe the portable installation) and configure it to remove cookies or use incognito sessions.

    The other suggestion (rather then doing an immediate reformat - as others have suggested) would be to create a second windows account and see if that improves the situation.

    If you do decide to reformat (and keep windows), I’d suggest using windows pro (you can buy a grey market license, if the price is too high and you’re okay with the moral and technical risks). As windows pro allows you to have multiple users. Then create an Admin user, which you will only use to create a non-admin user for yourself, as your daily driver account.

    You can still use the non-admin user to install apps, but each time you’ll need to type in the Admin password. It basically turns windows into a quasi “Ubuntu sudo” access. The upshot is that if your non-admin account is compromised, your OS should still be rather secure and you can use the Admin account to either explore the compromised account or create a new non-admin account.

    Good luck


  • If you’re placing your MFA, passwords, and security keys into the same password manager: this would be an ideal attack vector.

    …also, if you’re keeping your MFA separated from you passwords, but using the same technology (ie: two accounts: one for MFA and a second for passwords, both stored in bitwarden/vaultwarden): that technology could be an attack vector (ie: a weakness in the client or browser extension).


  • I don’t like it, but imho it’s a reflection of an architectural flaw of Lemmy.

    The fediverse should have distributed channels. …but “distributed” doesn’t need to mean, every channel sits on an isolated instance/island and the only way to share a message between instances/islands - is to duplicate content.

    A better solution would be that channels would be globally unique (ie there would be just one “til” channel). People would subscribe to it, and each instance would be the “custodian” or keeper of their users comments and posts. The “custodians” could/would moderate their users posts and could “defederate” from other instances (if they don’t like how others are moderating their users).

    This would avoid situations where one channel gains popularity, but the instance closes shop and the fediverse is left scrambling to fill in the gaps.



  • Bingo!

    It was always believed that Windows OS was a “loss leader” for Microsoft.

    Windows OS will never show a profit, when you take into account the development and testing time and effort. I mean, a one time purchase that’s expected to be supported for years!?!

    Side note: This also explains why Windows 11 is de-evolving into an AI generated, ad ridden, telemetry gathering, cesspool of an OS (“we gotta make money somehow - think of the share holders”)

    But, what Windows had done is create a platform for Microsoft to upsell (and vendor lock-in) profitable applications like Office, Outlook, Teams, etc.

    However, that business model doesn’t work anymore. As, all of Microsoft’s products are now in the cloud. They’re all subscription bases, which means predictable and indefinite revenue. User’s don’t need to be running on Windows - they just need a web-browser or thin-client. Microsoft already has people (brainwashed into) wanting Office - they don’t need to _force _ people into trying Office.

    tl;dr: Developing and supporting Windows OS is a financial drain for Microsoft, and they’re doing everything they can to scuttle it.





  • Yikes, this is spooky stuff.

    In the blog post, the author mentioned that their AI agent found the malicious payload.

    That reminded me of people writing malicious AI prompts. I find it shocking , that you really cannot trust 3rd party code and cannot safely use AI as a tool to quickly audit said code.

    I wonder if interviewing will come full circle and we’ll go back to resumes, phone interview, then in-person interviews. Rather, than the whole “take home project” crap (well… at least I have another reason to opt of them).


  • Naw, this’ll just be fed to potential investors as chum to sharks.

    AFAIK, Anthropic’s IPO is mid-october. So, until then it’ll frequently hit the news how “Anthropic is ‘trying’ to release Fable 5, but it’s just sooooo good that the government won’t allow it” and all the drama and concessions in between.

    Then around the beginning of October, (weeks before the IPO) they’ll have a " breakthrough " and will receive the blessing of the government to release it. This could be in the form of mandatory citizenship checks, better “safeguards”, etc.

    Regardless, all this’ll happen shortly before the IPO. It’ll be a Christmas Miracle /s! People won’t have enough time to know if Fable 5 meets the hype, but it won’t stop investors from buying stock in a nonprofitable company.




  • Oh, it’s simple (but a total invasion of privacy): they use the same Age Check validation needed by Sony/PlayStation/whatever, but now you need to upload your passport or birth certificate, and take a picture of yourself. The API access token will be created under the name of that account owner.

    …and don’t think for a moment that even if you are “eligible” to use this, Anthropic won’t be building a profile on you based on whatever sensitive information you provide (ya, know - to make a better UX. Trust me, bro /s).