TWeaK

joined 2 years ago
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[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago

No worries, your comment was at least a little more than just a hollow "source?", as you stated what you were unsure about, so I gave an explanation of why the connection would be feasible.

It also isn't really my job to prove my comment, this isn't a place where people write academic papers that must be cited, it's casual internet conversation. We're all on an equal playing field. You have just as much of an obligation to disprove my comment as I have to prove it.

If I give detailed reasoning, that's a form of evidence, and you should at least provide counter-reasoning instead of just disregarding it because I haven't spoonfed you a source. Not that it seems like you completely disregarded it, but you did latch onto the fact that I didn't do a search on your behalf.

Appologies if I'm still coming off as a little hostile, it isn't personal, this is just something that really bugs me about online chat - when someone puts effort in and then others dismiss it without putting any effort in themselves.

The service has been tested in late 2023 and proven working, at least while the satellites are overhead (at the time there were fewer that had the capability). Starlink also have partnerships with various telecoms companies in countries over the world - the technology will essentially relay from ground based towers on their network to the user via the satellites. They also have no issue turning the system off when they need to as satellites pass over territories, as they have demonstrated over various warzones. However, such a facility could easily be configured to turn on, and even without an agreement from a telecoms company there's no reason they couldn't be run unauthorised, like a Stingray phone tracker. This is the issue I'm raising, one that I don't think anyone else is really talking about yet.

Here's an article from 2 days ago that shows the service is already operational for emergency calls in the US: https://www.econotimes.com/Starlinks-Direct-to-Cell-to-Launch-Free-Global-Emergency-Services-with-T-Mobile-1685521 That was the first result in the news banner in a search for "Starlink direct to cell". Like I say, it really isn't hard to find the information you're looking for.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

Ah I wasn't aware of that shortcut, one of the main reasons DDG wasn't working for me was because I thought I could only do !g and then go to the Google page, and Google had been making it more difficult to go from the main search page to Maps.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago (5 children)

Maybe, other articles seem to have more recent photos where he doesn't look so crazy fat.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago

Not that I'm aware of. Your best bet is to save the post and come back later, or if you're in a browser leave the tab open in the background.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

The page you link to talks about the search results that come at the top of the page, eg a Wikipedia or Trip Advisor result. The actual search itself comes from Bing, and it's more than likely that the top page banner also is processed via Bing.

Edit: However, the Wikipedia page does provide more detail, which proves you right and my assumption wrong:

DuckDuckGo's results are a compilation of "over 400" sources according to itself, including Bing, Yahoo! Search BOSS, Wolfram Alpha, Yandex, and its own web crawler (the DuckDuckBot); but none from Google. It also uses data from crowdsourced sites such as Wikipedia, to populate knowledge panel boxes to the right of the search results.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

If I understand DDG correctly, they use Microsoft Bing as their backend for search results. So while they may be branded DDG, the results are in fact out of DDG’a control. It also means we are more subject to Microsoft’s privacy policy than we are to DDG’s.

This is exactly right. DDG is basically a front end that's supposed to strip out identifying information and then submit your request to Microsoft. [Edit:] Apparently they have expanded from this, according to their Wikipedia page. [/E]

However, after seeing TV ads for DDG not that long ago I kind of lost what faith I had left in them. As a rule of thumb, I've never trusted products and services advertised on TV - TV advertising is expensive, and the business expects to make that expense back and then some from their customers.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago (2 children)

DuckDuckGo is also feeding your search terms into AI development now. I've tried it again recently but prefer Ecosia, at least Ecosia lets me more easily get to Google Maps when I want to, rather than trying to push Apple Maps.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

This is the folly of representative democracy. It inevitably becomes less about policy and instead a popularity contest between figureheads.

Representative democracy has run its course, and the problems it solved (the fact that it's not practical for everyone to attend places of government from far away) have all but been solved by technology. Bring on direct democracy.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago (15 children)

They have at least moved away from the twitter.com URL, up until then it was hard to argue that it wasn't still Twitter. However, until they come up with a new name for "tweets" I think the original name should still stand.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 6 months ago (6 children)

Law isn't defined just by legislation, it is also defined by case law. A judge's ruling on a previous case makes that ruling law.

Now, I'm not saying this ruling is appropriate - I simply don't know enough about how it came to be. But if Brazil made laws about social media companies and then a judge made a ruling based on that law requiring social media companies have a representative, then that absolutely is valid law.

To draw an example, the EU never made a law about cookie splash screens. The EU made GDPR law (well, strictly speaking they made a directive, then member states make laws that must meet or exceed that directive), and then a judge interpreted that law and made it a requirement to have cookie splash screens. I would personally argue that the judge was trying to shove a square peg through a round hole there, when really he should have identified that data collection is in fact a secondary transaction hidden in the fine print (rather than an exchange of data for access to the service, this isn't how the deal is presented to the user; the service is offered free of charge but the fine print says your data is surrendered free of charge), and he should have made it such that users get paid for the data that's being collected. However, the judge's ruling stands as law now.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I've already put a lot more effort in the discussion than you have. Is it too much for you to just search for it yourself?

https://direct.starlink.com

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Booo, someone already stole my username :(

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