eclipse

Pro birth, not pro life.

My problem is with the influence that a hostile foreign state actor has with TikTok.

Google is an independent company; I'm 99% certain their motivation is to make money and I'm confident their algorithms are tailored purely for engagement and profit. Whilst I'm sure they have some back room deals with US intelligence organisations I suspect that it's a case of providing data vs providing influence (though I would not rule it out).

TikTok is controlled by the Chinese government. That's not up for debate; if you have an entity in China it has to work that way. Imagine the damage they could do if they actively decided to increase, for example, messages of reunification with Taiwan in their algorithm by just 1% on a global scale. That frightens me and I'm not convinced it isn't happening already on specific topics of concern to China's foreign policy.

And that's putting aside the amount of data that the Chinese are getting without even exerting any influence. They can likely discern worldwide sentiment on a range of topics and adjust political posture accordingly.

I'm not saying Google is perfect. I hate social media in general for the way it's warping the zeitgeist. But I personally consider TikTok to be a huge threat to the world.

Your comment is painful to read.

I'd say more likely to be able to declare a capital loss on taxes.

I'm assuming you're in the US.

Do non profit or cooperative insurance companies exist? They would seem like a less evil option if available.

What industry do you work in? Or of more relevance: what industry experience do you have?

The US seems to have this weird obsession with SMS and iMessage.

Name and shame the airline.

I fly a lot for work, internationally most of the time. Haven't seen this in many years.

I'd prefer they make it fatter if the battery would last more than a day as consequence.

Twitter silently backing into the bushes

They're not more effective. They might assist with speed of absorption but that's it.

I used Netscape "back in the day". With some interim transition attempts including the likes of Opera, I eventually switched to Chrome because it was genuinely more featureful and faster.

I was a happy Chrome user until they decided to deprecate manifest V2 and fuck up my ad blocker, at which point I switched to Firefox and haven't looked back.

Everything in this industry is circular I guess.

I feel like I'm the exact opposite of what this article proposed however the entire thing confuses me.

I'm not rich but relatively well off, and, without doubt in the best financial position of my immediate group of friends.

If I happen to be the one that picks up the bill I often have people chasing me to pay me. I actually think that is a problem because they feel obliged to do the right thing, however I'm unmotivated because I don't care about the outcome -- I don't need the money. This is my fault and I feel poorly for it but the reality is that after I've had a nice evening I don't really care. In terms of the debt: honestly I probably wouldn't bother asking.

The very concept of asking someone for 4 bucks seems abhorrent to me. To be clear, I say this personally; I'm not struggling to pay rent/mortgage/utilities/whatever. If you're in a position where those are concerns then please absolutely follow up.

Chasing a $4 debt won't make you rich, ever. Even if you do it all the time. Anyone well off chasing this kind of cash is deluding themselves.

Generally speaking my friends and I operate over a long term fairness principle. "Bob got the last round, I'll get the next"; they won't be even but our assumption is that it'll balance in the long term. That applies to more than just the pub.

I realise the US uses FPTP, but can someone explain to me why this comment is being downvoted? I'd think participating in the democratic process would be considered a good thing regardless.

Where on earth are you buying HP Mini machines for so cheap? Even the older gen seem to be 5 times as expensive as your estimate.

I actually disagree. I only know a little of Crowdstrike internals but they're a company that is trying to do the whole DevOps/agile bullshit the right way. Unfortunately they've undermined the practice for the rest of us working for dinosaurs trying to catch up.

Crowdstrike's problem wasn't a quality escape; that'll always happen eventually. Their problem was with their rollout processes.

There shouldn't have been a circumstance where the same code got delivered worldwide in the course of a day. If you were sane you'd canary it at first and exponentially increase rollout from thereon. Any initial error should have meant a halt in further deployments.

Canary isn't the only way to solve it, by the way. Just an easy fix in this case.

Unfortunately what is likely to happen is that they'll find the poor engineer that made the commit that led to this and fire them as a scapegoat, instead of inspecting the culture and processes that allowed it to happen and fixing those.

People fuck up and make mistakes. If you don't expect that in your business you're doing it wrong. This is not to say you shouldn't trust people; if they work at your company you should assume they are competent and have good intent. The guard rails are there to prevent mistakes, not bad/incompetent actors. It just so happens they often catch the latter.

Where do you think GPT got this data?

Anti-depressants.

At the cost of leg room.

I have never understood curling to this day. I'm still not sure I do but I'd like to thank you for this amazing explanation.

I used to deliver a keynote to 3-400 people, twice a month as part of corporate onboarding.

Absolutely this.

Obviously my experience was not as high stakes as a SOTU, but it was fucking exhausting. I knew the content well enough that I could deliver it in my sleep and actively did so when I was sick, hungover, generally tired and (usually) just okay.

Regardless of my initial state, I was at my tether after 90 minutes of being "switched on" and engaged. I am not an octogenarian.

That was with the benefit of delivering repeated content. Biden doesn't deliver this same speech twice a month. I'm sure he practiced but it's still a big ask regardless of age.

This book helped me out significantly:

https://www.saltfatacidheat.com/

Just beware of their reclamation policy:

https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/FreeTier/freetier_topic-Always_Free_Resources.htm#compute__idleinstances

I'm curious as to thoughts regarding documenting intent which cross over with what in my opinion.

Regarding self documenting: I agree, but I also think that means potentially using 5 lines when 1 would do if it makes maintenance more straightforward. This crazy perl one liner makes perfect sense today but not in 3 years.

Sorry, all you get is images of a maxi pad to indicate enormous damage for what was likely a graze.

An attempt on a former president's life is a big deal, whether I think he's a human dumpster fire or not.

However, the way he played this up was and is ridiculous. He didn't need to prove anything. Someone shot at him and that's not in doubt. Instead he chose to milk it and I personally find that ludicrous given the circumstances.

It won't matter. His supporters will just ignore anything they disagree with. It won't even be reported in the media they consume.

A former treasurer of Australia solved it. You just need to get a good job.

Arguably advertising is already a problem and I can't believe everyone is voting in their own best interest.

I disagree. Compulsory voting removes many forms of voter suppression which seems to be a huge problem over in the US.

“They all looked like Silicon Valley startups,”

This hits too close to home.

https://youtu.be/FiDY2nXVLZ0?si=LYjbmf5sgeUlIFNM

https://youtu.be/pSlG_m-bbGM?si=iaAzX_pNlNBbdOnz

Yes.

Never trust the network in any circumstance. If you start from that basis then life becomes easier.

Google has a good approach to this: https://cloud.google.com/beyondcorp

EDIT:

I'd like to add a tangential rant about companies still using shit like IP AllowLists and VPNs. They're just implementing eggshell security.

Legitimate question: is there no benefit to voting for a party if they won't win?

Do they get any future election funding or... anything?

As other comments have alluded to, a sharpening stone is a far better investment and only takes a half hour to learn.

Even if you do a bad job it'll likely be a better result and better for your knives. Most sharpeners absolutely destroy knives and take far too much material off.

1000 grit is a good place to start.

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

I appreciate the info, but I am not a patient man. :)

I'd probably turn off the power first especially if I didn't already know what was behind it and whether it is properly grounded.

If the cast iron is well seasoned you're fine.

The acid in the tomato will attack the coating you've developed but if you use it and season it regularly there is nothing to worry about.

The great thing about cast iron is even if you "wreck it" it's pretty much always possible to fix.

I don't see any fundamental difference in this context. A group of individuals pay into a communal fund and access it when in need.

Some take more than others, but everyone has a safety net to access.

You could argue about premiums and co-pays but the model is the same. The only difference is whether it is taken out of taxes or paid directly.

I apologise if we are approaching this from different viewpoints and I am not understanding properly.

Raising tax revenue and funding some variation of single payer health care or socialised medicine are not mutually exclusive.