busy eating waffles brb

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 19th, 2023

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  • The server might always send a modified script that just uploads the plaintext private key.

    Yeah, you’d need a way to validate the client code before it’s executed to solve that issue

    Section “2. Client application security” of MEGA’s Security Whitepaper discusses this exact problem. Their best solution to that issue is to just cram the whole frontend in a signed web extension and not serve any code to the user when the extension is active, which is not very user friendly but works for those who want an extra layer of protection

    I just can’t find a good user-friendly implementation, sorry for not being of more help. The web just isn’t E2EE-friendly ig :/


  • Yeah, I’m not used to E2EE in the browser either and StackExchange seems to agree that there’s no nice solution :/

    The sanest option in terms of user practicality to me appears to be storing the private key on the server, maybe encrypted with the user’s password, and sending it to the user on successful login where it would be decrypted client side. It seems like it’s more or less what MEGA is doing since they have a similar issue

    If the server having temporary access to the user’s password is an issue maybe the password could be partially pre-hashed before being sent?

    It’s be interesting to talk about it with someone with more experience, especially since implementing all of that will be a pain so it can’t be redone every Thursday









  • Yup! In that case, this is not an answer that can be solved “mathematically” as you asked: convincing a large group of total strangers to do something for you is within the realm of crowd psychology.

    If r/place showed us anything, it’s that you can get people to work hard together if you make them feel part of a community. Maybe creating a Lemmy community whose goal is to keep all posts within that community at 69% would work?

    Not sure if that’s the answer you wanted but that’s how I’ve understood your question so don’t hesitate to correct me :)


  • Is your question “what is the probability for one of my post to have 69% upvotes”? This should be answered by a binomial distribution!

    According to this website, for p=0.5; n=100; and x=69 the probability should be ~0.005%.

    This means that if 100 people vote your post perfectly randomly, the chance of getting 69% upvotes is ~0.005%. This number will also become smaller if more people start voting since given an infinite amount of votes, the ratio of upvotes should converge towards the chance that a person gives your post an upvote (aka. 50%) so we’d get even further from our 69% target.

    Basically, if people vote perfectly randomly it’s unlikely to get to exactly 69%. Such is the fate of us mortals :(



  • It’s time to accept that with every passing second, your body irreversibly degrades. In every instant of life, death becomes closer and closer until it eventually consumes your consciousness and turns you into a lump of organic matter.

    Which is like 3:45 pm. You’re welcome! :)





  • No. If you want to run an algorithm you should run it on your computer and not on somebody else’s.

    Ignoring the fact that having a proper recommendation AI for every single user would be environmentally disastrous, it would also place much more burden on the ones hosting instances. Keep in mind that most instances are hosted by people who do not earn anything from them and that many bigger instances already had to rent bigger servers because of the influx of people. Adding computationally expansive algorithms in the mix would just increase the cost for the volunteers on top of signing the death of some smaller instances run on a tight budget.

    It would also be prone to recreating the SEO mess that we can see today on social medias like youtube where, if you want to grow your community, satisfying the algorithm becomes more important than the actual content of your posts.

    However, I would have no issues with an algorithm that a user of an instance could run on their devices and tweak to their liking. This solution would probably be less convenient but would avoid most of the mess.

    EDIT: Sorry if my comment came out as too aggressive and thank you for making this post. I think that’s an important issue to discuss and, as thanks for bringing it up, you have my upvote :)


  • Preposterous.

    Just like humans, waffles are social creatures. They simply rely on toppings to become a better version of themselves. They are accepting of all cultures, be it sugar, syrup, chocolate or even strawberry jam. This is because as Friedrich Nietzsche said: “There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.” One topping simply cannot be the true topping.

    Once a topping is placed on the waffle, it becomes part of the waffle. Part of its taste, part of its existence. It completes it. Therefore to say that a waffle is bland because it has no topping is like saying that a human is incapable of anything because you once saw a lone human in nature get eaten by a wolf.

    Waffles are a reflection of humanity and you are simply running away.