I tried doing that in the early 2010s. Even back then it didn't work (github broke for example). If you did it today, you'd likely be blocked by a lot of major websites for "lying" about your user agent. Cloudflare turnstiles will stop working, you'll get captcha'd to death, and so on.
Even tor-browser doesn't dare to modify the user agent string in any major way. It's almost impossible to lie about because trackers don't actually care about your user agent. They're identifying your device/OS through side channels (canvas, webgl, fonts, etc).
Wrt/ Tor browser, it's not that they don't dare to, it's that they don't want to. One of the goals of that browser is to not stick out too much, and changing the user agent would do just that, so they don't do it.
Then the ideal would be to normalize the user agent string to look identical on every platform. My point is: they can't do that. e.g. A linux machine identifying itself as windows would be spotted immediately. Instead, they have to reduce entropy by bucketing you according to your device/OS/arch.
I don't think there is a point there. In case of the Tor browser, they use the user agent to blend in, so they are not a good candidate to do anything about how stupid the user agent is.
It's the current heavyweights who could change it for the better: Google and Apple. If either introduced a major change in how they present the user agent, websites would be very quick to adapt (if they need to in the first place...), or else. Otherwise, no change will happen - and I think this will be the case, same as with the HTTP "Referer" (misspell of "referrer").
Fun fact, non-browsers actually have much nicer user strings. I run an internet radio, and there is a lot of clients like
Linux UPnP/1.0 Sonos/85.0-64200 (ZPS1) Nullsoft Winamp3 version 3.0 (compatible)
> In case of the Tor browser, they use the user agent to blend in, so they are not a good candidate to do anything about how stupid the user agent is.
No. They don't use it to blend in. If they wanted to blend in they would be modifying every platform's user agent string to look like Windows x86_64 or something. They don't do that because there's no way they could possibly get away with it.
Instead, they're resigned to simply censoring the minor version number of the browser to reduce entropy.
> Fun fact, non-browsers actually have much nicer user strings. I run an internet radio, and there is a lot of clients like
And those tools will get blocked by various CDNs for not having a browser user agent string, not having a browser-like TLS handshake, etc. This is why projects like curl-impersonate and golang's utls had to be created.
I don't think it's a strange comment. He's mostly right (and so are you, but I think you're talking past each other). There's nothing wrong with SRS, and I agree with you that it's basically like cheat codes for memorization, but there is a limit to what most people can do. i.e. most people do tend to drop off.
I remember reading some stats from WaniKani (Japanese SRS app) a while back...
WaniKani has 60 "levels" to learn 2000+ kanji. Each level takes about a week (there's no skipping ahead), so the material takes about a year of study to complete -- that's if you're going at breakneck pace, which most people aren't.
According to the numbers I saw on the WK forums, ~8% of users reach level 30 and less than 1% reach level 60... and that's just to learn as much kanji as a 9th grader. That's to say nothing of the grammar and the 20,000+ vocab words you'll need to SRS to truly learn the language, or the thousands of hours you'll have to spend speaking/listening/reading, immersing yourself in native content, etc.
People give up very easily. The language learning community often gives year estimates to reach "near-native level" in a language based on frequency of study. In reality, the process takes a lifetime. I don't know if people truly know what they're signing up for when install those apps and begin studying. It's a lifelong commitment. It's just something you do now, every day.
You can stop at any time of course, and most people do (more than 99% of them apparently).
Learning a language as a hobby is tough. If you don't need the language to communicate and survive in your environment then you have essentially zero real motivation to learn it.
The problem with spaced repetition systems is that it doesn't supply that extra motivation. You're still just memorizing things in a vacuum. If you truly want to learn a language you need to use it to communicate. That means making friends, travelling, reading books, and consuming other media in that language.
You can also be motivated because you like to consume media in the language (relevant for English and Japanese), because you think it will be useful for a job (English) or for travel (French, Spanish, etc.), or simply because you like the language.
If you don’t have any of these reasons to motivate you, the question arises of why you’re bothering in the first place.
I started learning Mandarin on Duolingo while dating a Chinese woman. After we broke up I continued with it just because I found it fun.
Now I have several Chinese friends and I'm learning Chinese cooking. I'm motivated to continue learning about Chinese food and Chinese culture, and the important role food plays within it.
The article specifically points out WaniKani as an example of a very bad implementation of spaced repetition (see the "FSRS in practice" heading, under the paragraph "for Japanese language learning specifically...").
This brings back memories. I haven't looked at it in a while, but I'm glad to see the fork[1] of my fork[2] from 12 years ago is still thriving. Looks like it's been mostly rewritten. Probably for the better.
He is not imposing anything on anyone. He has the same right to express his opinions as anybody else has, and his platform clearly allows everyone else to do the same - in contrast with what the previous executives of Twitter did.
That sounds a lot like copium to justify an authoritarian action by the state because it benefits you personally.
Notably, they said "the science" which has nothing to do with science. "The science", as I've seen it used, is almost always an appeal to authority and has very little to do with the scientific method.
So maybe their statement is accurate: people aren't mad at science, they're mad at the science -- the authoritarian technocratic regime that locked everyone inside for a year and force-fed them a "safe and effective" vaccine the next.
Not sure how that was your conclusion. To be clear: I'm a fan of vaccines. I'm not a fan of a rushed experimental vaccine forced on a populace through government and corporate tyranny.
But it was just like that, depending on the country! I was forced to "vax" by my employer. The police would have come into my home if I would have for example had people over, since that was illegal. It was illegal for me to go outside for a walk - alone. And I would have been sued for that. I was not allowed in some doctors offices - although I pay about 1K per month. And so on...
The last time humanity forced something like that, the world later came together and executed those in charge. And I'll never stop being furious that this is now being swept under the rug. Inhuman crimes happened
I'm getting various numbers from different sources on this. Some sources claim 70% of the US population are vaccinated, some say as high as 81%. Whichever it is, it was a minority of people that had the ability to opt out. I suspect a significant number of those who got the vaccination did so under duress. The coercion used in this campaign often threatened peoples' livelihoods and ability to travel, among other things.
Personally, I was lucky enough to have a job which did not require vaccination, and I was able to avoid anything that required a vaccination card up until restrictions were lifted. I'm grateful the "vaccine passport" was never brought to fruition during this period of time. I think they realized they pushed too hard with that one and pulled back. I suspect they'll try again eventually though.
Many people would lose their jobs if they refused by "opting out", and many people did. Kissing your job goodbye, in a pandemic, where the government forcefully shuttered many business, was not some free choice to make.
That was my first interaction with you. I just wanted to point out how it was financially forced for many people. Being here, I suspect you, like I, had a choice. It's really bending reality to say everyone had that choice in any sort of equal capacity. Again, you should really look into this more. Your experience, clearly, does not match the reality of many others.
Don't ignore the rest. To save you effort, I'm a totally new person. Don't just apologize. You didn't acknowledge completely valid points.
Your misrepresentation deserves attention as well. Weasel arguments like this are so annoying to observe.
'Be the whole bitch.' I want you to realize you were on shit ground to begin with. The wrong person getting your ire is a distraction.
You went off on the slightest bit of hyperbole. The claim wasn't wrong, people were forced by the government and their employers to comply.
If you didn't want to suddenly risk your life being turned over, you had to participate in a grand social experiment. Individual risk assessment be damned.
Every reader deserves an apology for you, and now, me.
I'll close with an anecdote, why I care so much. I'm the un-monitored control group. I had absolutely no risk to the disease. Young, able bodied, living/working remotely in the woods for years.
Yet, to maintain employment and frankly, my standard of living, I had to endure additional risk. Because someone else has risk? How did this help?
I can't edit now, but to add/clarify... When I say no risk - I really mean it. I have receipts. I was a shut-in before it was cool. I participate in society only as much as I have to - employment, bills, voting, whatever.
To be direct: I don't generally go out and do things. I sleep, work, and pay. Complete subsistence.
My frustration comes from the imposition when I've already moved myself so far away, in every sense.
To be sporting I contracted it/recovered before the vaccine. As you can probably tell, I'm not worried about my own outcome. It wasn't that bad.
I could've handled the immaculate infection received in isolation. Without that, and being pulled back into society for the jab, I couldn't have infected anyone.
The point is plenty of us couldn't opt out, when really, we could - with the powers that be having the slightest bit of grace, tact, or whatever.
That's the problem. It was ham-fisted. That's politics. Once objectified, reason went out the window. End of.
An excellent case for the road to hell being paved with good intentions. This isn't singular; others and myself have all told 'nitwit005' similar stories.
You know that mRNA vaccines have been in development, testing, and use long before COVID happened? that's part of the reason it could be deployed so fast.
Yes, I'm aware of mRNA and its history. I'm also aware of Moderna and the purpose of their
existence. The covid vaccine was the first approved and widely deployed mRNA vaccine, and R&D is a far cry from injecting such a substance into human beings on the scale of billions.
I'm pretty sure I test my software more than they tested that particular vaccine before deployment, and I personally don't like the idea of being a guinea pig.
That's disappointing. I thought it was a proper stylesheet update for a second. I've been using this[1] user stylesheet for a while now. See the github repo[2] for the amount of insanity required to make this work (it breaks every now and then when wikipedia updates their html/css).
I'm not sure why people keep misidentifying the problem as "lack of funding". Lasse Collin was doing fine as a maintainer up until Jia Tan showed up. He was psy-op'd into believing there was a crowd of angry people eagerly awaiting a new release when there wasn't. No real person was unhappy with the way he'd been maintaining xz.
In fact, there was no issue with Lasse Collin maintaining xz as a single individual, and creating a false impression to the contrary was the primary tactic used by the antagonist to gain access to the project.
I'm not saying money would absolutely fix the issue, but I could also see it helping. If Collin was approached by a government that said "Hey, the thing you're maintaining is important, if you want, we'll fund 2 additional full-time maintainers that can contribute based on your guidance", maybe Collin would be in a better position to ensure the Jia Tan contributions were genuine and proper.
There's probably a number of things that could improve the situation. Mindlessly throwing money and government at a problem almost never improves things.
Which government bureaucracy decides how much Lasse Collin should be paid? Based on what metrics? This is a giant can of worms.
If I was the maintainer and was approached by government telling me, "hey, here are two folks who're going to be two new full-time maintainers and we're funding them" I certainly would be worried.
Similarly, if the government approached me and said "Here, embed this black-box binary into your build process", I'd be worried too. But luckily, no one suggested this, nor what you wrote about :)
IIRC the xz package was maintained by an individual in a place with at least some socialized healthcare, but correct me if I'm wrong (I'm not trying to be snarky here, please do).
Okay, sure, but rather than trying to solve a problem by throwing money at it (or worse, trying to solve it with government intervention), maybe it's better to think of other mitigations.
For example, maybe developers need to be made aware of potential psyops by attackers (the publicity surrounding this issue probably made some progress on that front).
I’ve been in similar burnout situations, and the difference between work and side projects did not matter to my mental health. The money was not an issue, it was headspace and fatigue.
Even tor-browser doesn't dare to modify the user agent string in any major way. It's almost impossible to lie about because trackers don't actually care about your user agent. They're identifying your device/OS through side channels (canvas, webgl, fonts, etc).