And the whole human body, brain and all, can run on ~100 watts. Truly astounding.

There’s no mention of anything like zero-days in that article. They only mention that it can target all major OSes, with no mention of cutting edge versions also being vulnerable.

Hilariously, the article directly supports my position as well:

The good news for some, at least: it likely poses a minimal threat to most people, considering the multi-million-dollar price tag and other requirements for developing a surveillance campaign using Sherlock

That’s a big part of my whole point. People who don’t do even a modicum of actual thought about a practical threat model for themselves love pretending that ad blocking isn’t primarily just about not wanting to see ads.

If Israel or some other highly capable attacker is coming after you, then fine, you really do need ad blocking. In that case malware in ads is going to be the least of your concerns.

Attacks that cast such a wide net as to be the concern of all web users are necessarily less dangerous because exploits need to be kept secret to avoid being patched.

There’s nothing wrong with taking extra precautions; I’m certainly not saying blocking ads is a bad idea. It’s the apparent confusion that an informed, tech-savvy person might choose not to block ads that makes me laugh.

Huh? The point of this discussion is that I don’t need to block them to keep myself safe in sketchy corners of the web.

You say with such confidence. Is it so hard to imagine people can defend themselves with means other than ad blocking?

Drive-by malware tends not to be zero-days though. I’ve stayed safe for decades just by keeping my software up to date.

Of course; I’m just a lot more worried about the systemic problems of mass surveillance than any practical risk to me individially.

The way people talk about people who don’t block ads is so funny.

I understand and respect the reasons people choose to use blockers, but ads honestly just aren’t that problematic for me in practice and are easy to avoid and ignore.

Who’s barring cannabis users? Red Cross at least only has a problem if your decision-making appears impaired. They don’t even ask you to wait between smoking and donating as long as you’re thinking clearly enough.

A masterpiece.

Nothing but flavor 😎

There’s something to be said for coercion. Most people have no option to live without ‘agreeing’ to such a sharing model.

PiHole is the most common way I hear of network-level ad blocking these days.

Liquid coolers are by definition just an extra heat exchange step unless you’re venting heat into the ocean or something like a nuclear plant. Otherwise, the atmosphere is your final heat sink either way.

Unless a liquid cooling radiator is significantly larger than the air cooler that would fit directly on the CPU there’s no point whatsoever.

What’s being discussed here is the hiring of engineers rather than consumer choices. Hiring an engineer is absolutely an expression of trust. The business trusts that the engineer will be able to concretely realize abstract business goals, and that they will be able to troubleshoot any deviations.

AI writing code is one thing, but intuitively trusting that an AI will figure out what you want for you and keep things running is a long way off.

Gentoo: not even once.

I don’t buy that it’s the vast majority. None of the sports fans I’ve ever known have had any interest in it.

Interesting!

Why not ‘Empress’, I wonder? Nothing actually wrong with any of the options, just rings strangely to my ears.

Emperoratrix sounds really clunky to me, -atrix is the feminine counterpart to -ator. Imperator, dominator, navigator, etc. I’m particularly fond of the overextension that is ‘alligatrix’ myself.

I always answer, and I still only occasionally get spam calls. I wonder whether I’m just very lucky or if wasting their time consistently gets you put on lists of a different kind.