Facebook, now it’s your turn…

It’s the “stringing it all together” that could be problematic.

If you have multiple clients (desktop/cellphone) modifying the same entry (or even different entries in the same “database” ). You need something smart enough to gracefully handle this or atleast tell you about it.

I did the whole “syncing” KeePass and it was functional, but it also meant I needed to handle conflicts - which was annoying. I switched and really appreciate the whole “it just works” with self-hosted bitwarden.

From the OP

The China-backed intruders, referred to as Storm-0558, broke into Microsoft’s network and stole a digital skeleton key that allowed the hackers unfettered access to U.S. government emails stored in Microsoft’s cloud. According to a government-issued postmortem of the cyberattack, the State Department identified the intrusions because it paid for a higher-tier Microsoft license that granted access to security logs for its cloud products, which many other hacked U.S. government agencies did not have.

Following the China-backed hacks, Microsoft said it would start providing logs to its lower-paid cloud accounts from September 2023.

Oh great! Until this incident, security is considered a “premium feature”. I really want off this “up sell to premium” ride.

Roku is horrible. I bought a Roku Soundbar (speakers) for my TV and for reasons unknown, I had to (temporarily) hook it up to the internet to “activate” and download the firmware.

It’s such a horrible glimpse of the consumers future.

In addition, you can force your cellphone to GSM/2G (ie: super slow internet).

Depending on what your TV does when it “activates”, if it just needs to “activate/register” - it should be fine. If it needs to “update/upgrade/add a bunch of crapware” - Your internet will be so slow, you can turn it off before it’s finished (note: there is a slim chance that, this could also put your TV in a broken state - if it does, simply do a factory reset and try again)

Oh, I absolutely agree. Licensing is where the big difference is at, but that makes sense though, as ARM and RISC-V are both RISC based processors.

It’s loosely akin to comparing AMD vs Intel. Of course, you cannot pop-out an RISC-V and replace it with an ARM. However, the PCB’s should contain all the same parts, meaning they’ll have both have a similar price.

Unlike Intel/AMD, which you’d need extra capacitor, heat sinks, whatever - to help it handle all that extra power those CISC processors need (which results in heat).

Yeah, but RISC-V also costs 1/10th the price of a Pi.

I don’t want PCs to be like smartphones. I don’t want locked bootloaders.

I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but since Microsoft made TPM mandatory for Windows 11+, locked down bootloader are on their way.

Basically, TPM allows (Windows) software to validate/verify the integrity of the OS and hardware. This also (could) include the bootloader/bios if Microsoft chooses to do so.

TPM is the equivalent of attestation on Android, which is the exact reason why your Banking App won’t work on your rooted/custom Android Phone.

That being said, we should embrace ARM. X86/AMD has 30+ years worth of “history” baked into each ( CISC) chip. This complexity is why your PC draws soooo much power and generates soooo much heat.

Windows Mixed Reality (ie: Windows VR) was deprecated and removed from Windows 11.

So, if you have a WMR VR Set, you’re going to be stuck with Windows 10 (or an even lesser supported Version of windows 11 - v 23H2).

It really sucks, given the price point I’ve throughly enjoying my Odyssey+. I’ve had it for 4 years, but now I’d need to decide if I dual boot (which sucks) or see if another VR headset reaches my price point (which is also dumb, because I don’t find the O+ to be “that bad”).

Welp, I guess this means something bad is gonna happen and Spez is trying to get in front of the inevitable protests.

I wonder what it could be…

There has to be a better way to keep the strengths of federating without partitioning the community smaller and smaller until there is no community left.

Can you imagine Lemmy with a similar amount of Reddit users? Anytime you’d post, you’d have to replicate it between X number of instances (for visibility). Conversations would be fragemented and duplicated, votes would be duplicated. To me this almost sounds like “work”…

There has to be something better.

For example, instead of “every instance is an island”. Meaning the current hierarchy is “instance” - > “community” - > “post” - > “threads”. We could instead have “community (ie: asklemmy)” - > “post (ie: this post)” - > “instance (Lemmy.ml, Lemmy.world, etc)” - > “threads (this comment)”.

From a technical perspective, it would mean that each instance would replicate the community names and posts. Which is already beginning done (this post is a perfect example), but as long as each instance would share a unique identifier to associate the two communities/posts as “the same thing” (and this could simply be the hash of the community /post name). Everything else would be UX. Each instance would take ownership of the copy of the community and post, which means they could moderate it according to their standards.

I fixed the link. For some reason the Lemmy Client (Voyager) keeps generating ‘.ml’ links (even though I’m on Lemm.ee)

This whole identical thread really confused Voyager, I thought I was seeing double.

Off-topic: Lemmy really needs better crosspost functionality.

Lemmy is a small group of people, let’s not divide it further by having the exact same conversation in two (or more) places.

edit: Fixed the link.

Begins?!? Docker Inc was waist deep in enshittification the moment they started rate limiting docker hub, which was nearly 3 or 4 years ago.

This is just another step towards the deep end. Companies that could easily move away from docker hub, did so years ago. The companies that remain struggle to leave and will continue to pay.

Innevitably whatever public transportation you use the route will end up in the ghetteo.

This is a mindset that many people in the U.S. will need to get over before the “quality” of public transport improves: that busses, trains, subways are for “the poor”.

I’ve been on the subways in New York and busses and trains elsewhere in the States. They’re gross. Especially, compared to most of Europe (Italy, Denmark, Germany, etc). In Asia, they’re also a clean. The mindset in Asia and Europe is “this is what people (not just the poor) take to get from point A to point B”. There aren’t school busses, the kids just take the same city bus/train/subway that all the other people take to get to work.

I’ve spent 45 minutes in the States on my daily commute staring at (and riding on) the bumper of the car in front of me. I’ve also spent 45 minutes, in Europe, peacefully riding the subway to work. I’m able to surf the web, watch a video, relax. I definitely enjoy/recommend the later experience.

One of your questions I didn’t see answered:

And after doing my research I found out americans file taxes every year. I haven’t done it the last 18 years of working. Should I just not file?

You have two choices:

1. Full Disclosure : you tell the IRS, you haven’t filled and ask them to help you rectify the situation. This could mean penalties and fines for filing late or based on your situation, they might let is slide (as it was an honest oversight). Once you’ve gone through this, then your back in the IRS’ good graces (assuming you still file your taxes and fbar annually)

2. A “stealth” disclosure : (there’s a better name but I forgot was it’s called) basically, you just start to file your 2023 taxes and pretend that nothing has happened during the last 18 years… if you do this for the next 5 years (or 7 years?) and the IRS does not say anything, then you’re back in the IRS good graces (they can only penalize you for x number of years) . But if the IRS decides to contact you, then they could throw the book at you (more than if you went with option 1).

Ultimately, it’s a gamble with a risk. However, if you’ve recently learned of your citizenship and got a passport. I think it’s quite plausible to get some lienency, both for the full disclosure and the stealth disclosure.

Well… there is also Eritrea, a small country in West Africa.

The U. S. Taxes is based on the country you’re living in. If there are double taxation treaties between the two countries (ie: Europe and the U. S.), then the IRS would tax you on the amount you’ve earned over a certain limit (it was 100k usd, but I think was increased). Meaning, if you earned 110k usd, you’d be taxes on the 10k. If you earn less then 100k, you’d pay no U. S. Taxes.

If there isn’t a treaty, which is often the case in countries that tax their citizens less than the U. S. , then you’d basically be charged taxes in the U. S. (based on your worldwide income) minus whatever you paid the country you’re living in.

OP read this, they’re absolutely right - lawyer up!

Cause in the U. S. if you want to renounce your U. S. citizenship, you must settle your debts - which includes filing your U. S. Taxes.

… and yes, as a U. S. Citizen you need to file U. S. Taxes *even if you’ve never set foot in the U. S. *.

Note: there are double taxation laws between the U. S. and Germany, which prevent you from needing to pay taxes in U. S. (up to 100k / year or so), but you still must file them.

Also, as a U. S. Citizen, you’ll need to file annually a FBAR with the IRS. This is basically a disclosure to the IRS that you have non-u.s. bank accounts (that exceed, in total, 20k usd / year).

The point being is that, in theory, there could be fines for not doing this, which (in theory) you would have to pay before being allowed to renounce your citizenship.

In practice, the IRS is pretty approachable - so you probably won’t have an issue, but you’ll definitely want decide if you want to keep the U. S. Citizenship (and the work associated with it: annual taxes and fbar) or renounce it.

The (only) upshot of filing U. S. taxes abroad if you have kids is that you qualify for a Child Tax Credit. Which amounts to 1000 usd / kid / year (I don’t know if the kids need to have U. S. Citizenship or not)

Thanks for the write-up. I think Santa will be bringing me a Firestick Max for Xmas… and I’ve already got a real-Debrid subscription (which I highly recommend). I look forward in trying to plug them together.

I expect to have some website compatibility issues with Firefox/librewolf, as it does have a 3% share of the global browser market - so, website development energy is focused on the chrome/safari experience. However, 8+ years ago I felt I needed to use chrome at least every other day to view certain websites - it was frustrating.

I’m hoping (and willing to try it out) to see if this has improved.