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posted by
janrinok
on Saturday February 03 2018, @05:40AM
from the you-don't-own-anything-anymore dept.
from the you-don't-own-anything-anymore dept.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8JCh0owT4w
When it comes to repair, farmers have always been self reliant. But the modernization of tractors and other farm equipment over the past few decades has left most farmers in the dust thanks to diagnostic software that large manufacturers hold a monopoly over.
Farmers using Eastern European cracking software for their tractors, and MS, Apple, etc. want to stop them.
Related: Right to Repair
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Tractor Hacking: The Farmers Breaking Big Tech's Repair Monopoly
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Two is not equal to three, even for large values of two.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 03 2018, @06:03AM (44 children)
Good way to lose website visitors. Nice.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 03 2018, @06:37AM (32 children)
Someone should mod this up, so it can be Spam modded. And why oh why is not the Minty Broussard hunting down these serial rapist murders and blocking them and turning their IP over to the FBI? Or at least to Devin Nunes, so he can release a memo on this!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 03 2018, @07:43AM (19 children)
I would offer our moderation system allow us to issue a spam mod to anything, instantly dropping it to -2... even if it was at -1.
One would have to have 40+ karma to do it though, and be willing to put it all on the line.
I think its gonna be a lot easier on everyone if we empower our most active users of these forums to take the trash out when the can's stinkin'. Basically, crowdsourcing the effort of keeping out place clean.
I think its asking a helluva lot of our TMB and other curators of this place to keep picking up the messes. We've already got the stinkin' POS on our screen, it could be just one keypress from oblivion, making it a helluva lot easier to get rid of than it was to post.
( I would also like to know why I go into my preferences, weight SPAM to -6, show only posts -1 and above, and still see posts moderated SPAM. If someone else thought it was SPAM, and was willing to put his karma behind him, I am quite sure he spoke for me as well. )
(Score: 2) by looorg on Saturday February 03 2018, @09:09AM (4 children)
This would be quite an interesting concept. If you invested part of your own Karma to just instantly drop these idiot posts down to the depths they came from. If you get the people in the 40+ range (or just unlock the roof so it doesn't stop at 50) and then if you want to just drop a post to -5 at once then do that so we can just purge all these AC spam posts. Should be easier the poor people that might have to do administrative tasks and weed out the idiot posts to just be able to instantly see these -5 or -6 posts and then check them to make sure it's just not some jackass that decided so try and sink some post they just didn't agree with for whatever reason.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday February 03 2018, @10:46AM (3 children)
If some jackass killed someone's post without damned good reason, that jackass would only do it Once. The curators of this place could easily restore the post to its former glory, and the jackass would lose all of his karma.
He may well have to wait a year or more before he would be trusted again - even if he came back under another handle.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday February 03 2018, @06:21PM (2 children)
All is too severe. Perhaps no more than 15 points. There can be honest disagreements.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday February 04 2018, @08:26AM (1 child)
If it is that close to flamebait or troll, it should be moderated thus... I feel this particular story comment base is full of good examples of spam.
I was a member of TheOilDrum.com, and we also had a problem with bad posts, but over there the moderators didn't think twice about flushing a turd post.
This was many years ago, I was a member of Slashdot, and I had proposed that I would promote TheOilDrum on Slashdot by putting it in my tagline; I was advised not to. They flat did not want 'em showing up at TheOilDrum.
Now, TheOilDrum itself is in archive status, as we had the world's top geologists and petroleum engineers over there, and there is a helluva lot of sciency talk about petroleum depletion issues... while other people referred to our group as "Doomer Porn".
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday February 04 2018, @06:48PM
If you need 50 points to "yank" something, and you put 15 on the line, you are putting nearly a third of the possible status. There are edge cases where there can be honest disagreement. That the particular one you are talking about isn't one of them is nearly irrelevant when you're talking about a system design change. You need to also consider the corner cases.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday February 03 2018, @09:42AM (5 children)
You have to be logged in to moderate. Imagine the fun to be had if any AC could just kill a point of view on a whim. Nope, we demand people with at least the guts to be accountable to make such actions.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday February 03 2018, @09:59AM
Of course you can be logged in yet still post anonymously using the corresponding option. Or you can post while not logged in, but moderate while logged in. You could even use proxies to have your moderation and anonymous comments come from different IPs.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Saturday February 03 2018, @10:42AM (3 children)
Exactly, jan... post obliteration is serious business, and one prankster could nail the entire site. Anyone with that kind of power needs to have his dog in the fight. In my mind, that means anyone who has contributed enough to this site to have accumulated that much karma, which does not come overnight. I might as well go for 50+, if the internal Karma limit was raised to, say 60, but the most that would display is still 50. Meaning one must have "perfect" karma to have the "Power of God" to strike down posts.
And be held totally responsible with ones own karma, which may have taken a year to accumulate, at stake. I do not think its unreasonable to ask any of us to be a member of this site for at least a year, maybe 3 to 5, before being given that kind of authority, given the temptation for abuse.
I think it would make it easier on all of us, as the curators of this place aren't constantly watching each and every forum, and hundreds of us are online and reading at any given time. If we already have the offensive post on our screen, just one button press from any of us would "flush the turd" so the rest of us will never even see it.
Due to the severity of the mod, our curators need to have a log of every post so deleted, and who dunnit, so if any of us do get power-happy, they won't do it again for at least another year or so.
I would say give us "free" spam mods, but that would be way too dangerous. Just one guy could nail the whole site with a script. Best limit the damage to ten per moderator, as is presently done. If we do get a problem moderator, undoing his doings is probably not nearly as bad as trying to wade through all these spam posts.
I hardly consider offtopic or trolls to be sufficient grounds for obliteration - I think we all know what kind of posts I am referring to.
If nothing else, try it for a while, keep backups, and see what happens?
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday February 03 2018, @12:32PM (2 children)
Those who are logged in can already mark a post down to below the normal viewing threshold such that it should not become a problem for normal discussion to take place. Nervertheless, I'll point your post out to others on the staff and hopefully create a discussion on your suggestion, but I suspect that there will be downsides to your suggestion that neither you nor I have spotted. Still, it will be good to air the matter again and see if any views have changed.
There are also a small number of our community having high levels of karma who are, from time to time, prone to acting before thinking. The current system has some built in safeguards that prevent the majority of potential abuse from becoming a reality.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Saturday February 03 2018, @01:07PM (1 child)
I tried to ferret out just posts moderated "Spam" in my preferences, and nail them with a strong negative number, so I would no longer see them, but I still wanted to see the other negatively moderated posts. There is probably a way for me to do it by giving the other negatively moderated posts positive bias.
I guess what I am asking about is the possibility of having one more level of "bad" that can only be reached by Spam.
I normally cruise at -1, because I still want to see offtopic and troll posts - some are quite good. I often "rescue" them. I'm sure you have logs that show how users use their modpoints.
I really hate to negatively moderate anyone...as they are just jumping at the chance to vent their feelings about something, but I will nail a spam pretty fast. I will even positively moderate posts I do not agree with - because he brought up a good point and made me think a bit.
I have been known to post several lengthy religious diatribes here as well, as I am curious as to what other people will say about it. Offtopic as all getout. Especially this group. I can't get a rational discussion in the church, believe me. They are terrified to talk about anything but canon and the doctrine they have been told to respond with.
I feel this place would just look a lot better if any of us could kill off these spam posts, so the rest of us don't have to see them as well. Like I said before, crowdsourcing the janitorial work.
If anyone really wants to see it all, cruise at the sewer level: -2.
I see our TMB has posted some of his take on this. I appreciate you guys considering it. I thought I would run the idea up the flagpole and see if anyone saluted.
I concede to your observations - as you are running this place and see a helluva lotta stuff I am not privy to.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday February 03 2018, @03:05PM
There are 2 parts to this problem. The first is - "there is no such thing as a small software change" - particularly when it comes to moderation! This is beyond my area of expertise so I will leave it to the 'coding team' to let us know the what is actually possible (TMB at the moment!).
Secondly, we will have to think the entire problem through to see if it has consequences that are not immediately apparent. But you have explained what you want to see clearly so we have plenty to chew on and we can kick the idea around on IRC before coming up with our ideas.
We sometimes put those ideas out to the community for a bit more discussion so the entire process is unlikely to be fixed in the short term. TMB has plenty on his plate at the moment and he will have to prioritise this along with all of the other stuff he has to work on. He also has a life no matter how unlikely that sounds!
Thanks for raising the issue though. Without the feedback we probably wouldn't even be looking at the problem. It does seem that we are seeing more spam and crap postings than we did a while back but that is probably because we are attracting more readers - although most are not signing up for accounts. And also we actually support freedom of speech so we intentionally do not stamp on comments and/or submissions with a pair of heavy boots, despite what some in our community might think.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday February 03 2018, @11:32AM (7 children)
I don't believe current logic allows for a post's karma value to be treated as anything outside the range of -1 to +5. I'll look into it after tonight's update but it'll take a significant amount of hunting down, fixing, and debugging to make sure we don't bugger things up changing that logic.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 03 2018, @01:48PM (4 children)
Some people like to fart in public. Is that such a big thing? This place is pretty clean the way it is. Let's not ruin it just because some special snowflake takes offense every time they see "penis" and "pussy". If people can moderate posts that result in deletions, that system will definitely be abused. Besides, some of those "spam" posts are pretty funny, if even they aren't original. Like our dear friend realDonaldTrump, a fart's a fart. They still make me laugh. And I don't consider them spam at all. Advertisers, the kind that occasionally leak into the journal section, those guys are spam.
I still insist that the moderation system here and in the green site are probably the best in the business (much better here for its generosity in points given). Especially for sites that are this open with real anonymous posting. Please, don't rock the boat. Just teach people the magic of the "PgDn" key and the scroll bar.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday February 03 2018, @05:04PM (2 children)
All I'm currently thinking about is allowing people to assign a per-user adjustment to Spam moderated comments that'll take them below -1 and collapse them even if they're browsing at -1. Some of the recent Spam has been overly verbose and I'd rather spend a week coding and debugging than the time it takes to click the "-" button on that post. I'm weird like that.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 03 2018, @06:08PM (1 child)
Don't we allow -6 to +6 to be applied to mod reasons including spam? That's the point (the custom prefs for anons, new users, mod reasons, comment length, etc.) at which it would be good to blow the -1 and +5 caps. Before customizations, keep -1 to +5 range as usual.
But we could have comments with -34 or +69 karma with that change which would necessitate a new negative infinity option for displaying all comments.
- t
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday February 03 2018, @10:06PM
That's the idea, yep. Only for Spam at this point though. Someone annoying us by being right when we're wrong or vice versa doesn't warrant the ability to hide their posts when you're browsing at the floor IMO. On the other hand, it'd probably be easier to just set anything with a Spam moderation it to collapsed after the normal collapsed/expanded checks have been done for that comment.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday February 04 2018, @08:43AM
Good point... maybe having it so we can nail anything moderated as spam and be done with it... and fix it so if so desired, by setting the spam mod modifier to -1 in our message preferences, it would drop a spam so low that anyone surfing at -1 would see all -1 but spam, which due to the additional -1 assigned in the preferences, drops it to -2, below the threshold.
I would still like to see some way of further moderating anything other than spam to spam, so that any of us that have the karma, and willing to back our decision up with our karma, can fix it so everyone else can set their machines to not display it.
Either that, or have another level down, the sewer level, that only spam mods can go.
Its just a time waster of crap for me... kinda like a TV ad I have absolutely no interest in. I would not want to be caught at work with SN on my screen, with what shows up here showing up there.
In other words, this is a tech site, we oughta be safe for work.
I could name you many sites that have lots and lots of porn... with pictures! But not here.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by isj on Saturday February 03 2018, @03:53PM (1 child)
Another thing that would help is to not allow AC to make the first post. That would make it harder for AC trolls to get noticed and also reduce the problem with "first" posts.
The downside is that if an AC had a valuable insight then he would have to wait until someone non-AC had made the first post, but I think that would be acceptable - if the insight is valuable it will get modded up and noticed by a larger audience.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 03 2018, @09:36PM
I think that's unnecessarily restrictive, for a very small problem. There are very few articles with a spammy first post.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 03 2018, @07:45AM (2 children)
The monster in my cock jumped to even greater attention as I realized I
wanted to kill her, that I was going to kill her.
Yes. Yes. Kill the bitch.
She fought as best she could as I ripped the dress from her totally. The
fabric of her panties tore easily.
Look at the fucking teen whore's cunt. She's almost shaved bare, too. A thin
little arrow of close cropped brown hair points to her clitoris. She's naked
now and I can smell her body, smell her fear.
I liked the smell.
I tried forcing her legs open, trying to force my cock inside her young
cunt, but injured and beaten as she was, she managed to scratch me with
fingernails that matched the deep red of her painted lips. I grabbed the
wrist of the arm that scratched me, twisting it as I stood up and over her.
"Dirty filty whore!" I growled as I raised my leg and stomped hard into the
middle of the humerus. I was greeted with the sound of snapping bone and the
thrill of Sarah's first real scream since the crying tires and busting
glass.
The scream was quickly stomped out of her as my foot next came down on her
already injured ribs. I felt like Alex, from Clockwork Orange, the laughing,
sociopathic demons of my soul surronding me like my own private street gang
of rapacious droogs, cheering me on to rape, pillage and murder. For the fun
of it, for the sheer thrill, for the pussy. "Viddy well ill, me sister," I
laughed as I fell on her again and spread her legs."Viddy well ill."
Her pussy was mine. I spit on it, positioned and viciously rammed my cock
inside of her as deeply as it could go with the first thrust. She grunted,
trembled and shook. I wrapped my hands around her lovely teenaged neck as I
began to pump her.
I put my face into her's, kissing those Liv Tyler lips as I strangled her,
looking into those beautiful Natalie Portman eyes as I worked my cock
savagely in and out of her, smelling the aroma of her still clean Posh Spice
hair as I relished the feel of her young flesh trembling beneath me. I
licked and kissed her face, her neck, working my way to her ears as she
began to gag and her eyes bulge. I could feel her cunt muscles convulsing in
epeliptic like fits, dancing around my cock, squeezing it just as tightly as
I squeezed her throat. Gods of Darkness, it felt wonderful. Best fuck I had
ever had.
"Wanna' know a secret, Sarah Hood?" I whispered in ear as I raped her.
"Beth's already dead. She was dead when I found her." I stuck my tongue in
her ear, probing deeply and juicily. "I had sex with her dead body. Yes. It
was good." My shaft sank into her slit. "When you die, I won't be done with
you either, baby." Her eyes bulged and drool came from the corners of her
mouth. I licked up the drool and kissed those Liv Tyler lips again. My penis
pulled out from her clenching pussy and rammed back in again. Those
beautiful brown
eyes rolled up to the top of her head and suddenly I smelled shit.
"Fucking cunt!" I had read about the shit syndrome when they die, so I
should have been prepared. I quickly recovered my wits and became
overwhelmed with the fact that I was living out two of my most vivid
fantasies in one night, fucking a dead girl and killing a girl while I
fucked her, an astoundingly beautiful girl, a girl whose dead body I was
still fucking. I wrapped my arms around Sarah and let go. Sucking, biting,
groping, molesting while I rammed and rammed into her lovely limp form.
Letting go. Knowing that, now that I had crossed this borderline, she would
not be the last.
Finally the monster in my cock spewed its demon seed into Sarah's now
useless womb and I collapsed onto the beautiful teenager's lifeless body,
trembling with the delightful sensations of the greatest orgasm I had ever
had in my life.
I held her close and kissed her our last kiss. I'd found the love that I
knew I would miss. We were out in the dark and I held my baby tight. I'd
lost my love - and her life - that night.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 03 2018, @08:47AM (1 child)
Had this been dropped to -2, neither me nor the rest of us here would have seen this after the first moderator to mark it as spam did so.
But it would have showed up on one of TMB's logs so he could verify none of us was abusing the privilege.
( Same AC as lengthy suggestion above. )
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday February 03 2018, @11:41AM
Scroll up a bit for my reply about that.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday February 03 2018, @09:29AM (8 children)
We don't record your IP and so have nothing to give to the FBI. We do store a hash of it but we cannot convert that back into an IP. When the site was first established this was discussed at some length. You own your comments, you are responsible for them, and we do not have the information identifying you (if you are an AC) to give to anyone if they should they ask for it.
However, some ACs do not follow very good security practices and as a result give themselves away. That is their own problem...
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday February 03 2018, @09:56AM (5 children)
What I always wondered: If you are logged in and use the "Post Anonymously" option, is it stored internally who posted it?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by beckett on Saturday February 03 2018, @10:46AM (2 children)
iirc slashcode sets anonymous_coward_uid to 1.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Saturday February 03 2018, @10:52AM (1 child)
Then how does this site know not to give me moderation options for the AC posts I made while logged in?
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 4, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday February 03 2018, @11:49AM
The guys who did the writing before we got our hands on the code get credit for that. One-way hashs of your IP address and subnet are compared to those of every comment. If either matches, you don't get to moderate it. It can make debugging moderation a pain but I'm happy with how it works for a live site.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday February 03 2018, @10:47AM
It is stored, at least temporarily. I did an AC post, read more articles, came back to the article in which I posted AC, read new comments, and moderated a couple. Out of curiosity, I checked to see if I could moderate my own AC comment. Unpossible. I don't know if it's done on my own machine, or on the server, but the information is stored somewhere. When the wife isn't on her machine, maybe I'll post AC from it, then see if I can moderate it from my own machine. You've got me curious enough that I might remember to try . . .
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday February 03 2018, @11:45AM
No, but the IPID (one-way hashed IP address) will be the same for your logged in self and the AC post. It's one click for an admin to pull up that IPID's page and see who's been using it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 03 2018, @04:30PM (1 child)
I hope you hash a random string into that at least.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday February 03 2018, @05:13PM
Random? No. Whatever salt we use, we'd need to reuse it for that address quite a lot of times most likely. So, it either has to be saved next to an actual copy of their IP address which would not be good or it has to be programmatically created in such a way as to get the same salt every time for a given IP address. Or you just use one salt for everyone like we do. None of the above are any more secure than the other, though they could waste up to five minutes of some fed's time.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday February 03 2018, @12:25PM (10 children)
If someone being a jackass once or twice a day on average is going to butthurt a visitor enough that they don't come back, they wouldn't have enjoyed their experience here anyway. We're not a cute and cuddly bunch.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday February 03 2018, @01:15PM
Maybe we are not so cute and cuddly, but most of us here have absolutely great bullshit detectors, and don't filter the output very much!
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Saturday February 03 2018, @08:23PM (8 children)
It isn't necessarily a matter of being butthurt. Some of these trolls post stuff that is so long, like several screenfulls, and then the same again and again in the same thread, that it becomes hard work for the reader to dig out the real discussion. I am a regular, not butthurt by trolls posting about Gayniggers etc, but l have given up reading threads before now because it became too tedious to sort through the trolls.
Some other forums have a permanent troll/spam thead or section to which admins or moderators can move stuff. Stopping AC first posts is a good idea, as first post titles tends to be perpetuated thoough most of the discussion, to the satisfaction of the troll if he wrote it.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday February 03 2018, @10:09PM (7 children)
Sounds like setting anything moderated Spam to an initial collapsed state regardless of its score would solve that. I'm really leaning towards that as a solution at the moment.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday February 04 2018, @08:57AM (6 children)
Interesting. That oughta work. Maybe set by the preferences|comments menu: spam set to -1 modifier - which would take the spam and drop it to -2 karma, below the -1 threshold?
So, if someone reads at -1, uncut and raw, with the spam modifier set to -1, they will see everything but spam.
( I tried to do that before I posted, did not work for me, I got those spams anyway )
A lot of stuff that should be moderated spam is not moderated thus and still gets through... but I can't change the moderation as its at -1 already, and its gotta be upmoderated back up to zero before anyone else can downmoderate it as spam.
Maybe let us moderate even an existing -1 post to be spam, if nothing else, to get the spam designator in place, even if it does not affect the post's karma.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday February 04 2018, @11:21AM (5 children)
Also a good idea. One that's been brought up by takyon several times.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday February 04 2018, @12:37PM (4 children)
Sure is better to not jump and do stuff before thinking about it a bit, eh? I have spent more time building junk that way. Gotta be busy, but hadn't thought it out well yet.
Sure is an odd hour you mess with this stuff... before bed, or first thing in the morning? ( for me, before bed... I am really bad about staying awake all night... cuz I'm not sleepy ).
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday February 04 2018, @12:41PM (2 children)
Oh, incidentally, the preferences|comments menu does not show up for me now... did you disable it?
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday February 04 2018, @01:18PM
Shit. No, we broke it apparently. Sigh, there goes my morning of vidya.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday February 04 2018, @02:23PM
Fixed. The template_tool utility was shitting itself over the é in Touché.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday February 04 2018, @01:16PM
5-11AM generally for coding. That's when the Adderall I take for my ADHD is working best. Deployments we mostly do on weekend evenings/nights because there are less people to annoy with them around then.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.