LeonB · HackerLangs

vor 15 Tagendiscuss

Om shared with me some very personal thoughts and I think I’m not alone in considering his loss immeasurable.

vor 20 Tagendiscuss

That doesn’t seem right - off the top of my head I think it’s more like 4 years? maybe it should be “103*4/2/52” (not “/12”) ?

… hopefully the effective wait time is considerably shorter if a long line is taken as a demand signal, leading them to buy more.

LeonB

vor 21 Tagendiscuss

That definition hinges on their definition for “economical” - adding a qualifier like “excessively economical” would’ve been good I think.

LeonB

letzten Monatdiscuss

Herodotus wouldn’t have written it quite the same — no Jupyter notebook for example, Jupiter being a Roman term; the nearest equivalent for the Ancient Greeks was Zeus.

LeonB

vor 2 Monatendiscuss

Finally C# will have a more idiomatic way to represent this classic code example from “The Daily WTF” in 2005 —

    enum Bool 
    { 
        True, 
        False, 
        FileNotFound 
    };

See https://thedailywtf.com/articles/what_is_truth_0x3f_

LeonB

vor 2 Monatendiscuss

…months after it began.

LeonB

vor 5 Monatendiscuss

You must be referring to the abridged Strnk n Wyt

LeonB

vor 9 Monatendiscuss

In Superman III, the eponymous man straightens the leaning tower of Pisa, and in Superman II he spins the earth backwards to reverse time.

A better idea would be to un-tilt the earth’s axis, thus getting rid of variable day lengths, annual seasons, the need for DST etc, just one enjoyable spring day, every where, all year round.

LeonB

vor 9 Monatendiscuss

> Yurchick was one of 21 people that had been indicted for conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute kilogram quantities of methamphetamine in Texas and elsewhere from August 2019 to March 2021 … Yurchick subsequently pleaded guilty to that charge on February 1, 2022

From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icy_Blu

Feel free to dig deeper, I’ve only taken a shallow look.

LeonB

vor 9 Monatendiscuss

Interesting point.

It’s a kind of reframing (or consequence of) the bullshit asymmetry principle.

LeonB

vor 9 Monatendiscuss

Yes, absolutely.

The survey could say, “given that the existence of corporate monopolies demonstrates weak and non functional governments, should governments a) cede more power to the monopolies, or b) pretend to claw power back from the monopolies?”

LeonB

vor 9 Monatendiscuss

Absolutely.

They hand-wave tremendously complex questions, in such a way that the respondent is free to interpret them any way you wish.

A similar survey question might be:

> I am thinking of a number. Is it, a) too high or b) too low?

LeonB

vor 9 Monatendiscuss

A “ministry of truth” would (I assume) be a part of the executive branch of government.

Whereas the creation of laws and the interpretation of laws are powers that the executive branch does not have, and are held separately by the legislative and judicial branches.

In a, well, y’know “functioning” democracy. Apparently.

LeonB

vor 10 Monatendiscuss

> These days, American meat is absolutely overflowing with antibiotics. I don’t know if there’s any kind of serious effort to address that

There’s several clearly wrong claims in that paragraph alone.

Here’s one counter claim with sources:

https://www.health.state.mn.us/diseases/antibioticresistance...

“Less than 0.5% of all meat samples tested in 2018 contained detectable antibiotics (U.S. Residue Program). Farmers, processors, and regulatory agencies work together to get this number to zero.”

Please challenge the thoughts you carry around. Sometimes it’s isn’t so.

LeonB

vor 10 Monatendiscuss

Recently I had the screen replaced on my child’s iPad. The tech asked for passcode, and I refused to provide it. The tech complained and said when I came to pick it up he’d need to guide me through some things.

Indeed, there were some settings that needed to be set, to ”help” the new screen.

Having said that — I’ve previously documented a case (well over 10 years ago) where I caught a local PC repair company who used their access to a machine of mine they were repairing - to quickly scan through the thumbnails of our personal photos, and look closer at any image which showed any flesh.

People expect to be trusted but don’t act in a trustworthy manner.

LeonB

vor 3 Jahrendiscuss

Without getting into nda territory — the minority of Australians who used iPhones in 2017 represented a figure that far exceeded 50% of wealth held in Australian banks.

Thus apple had tremendous market power in “fact”, even if the raw numbers looked much smaller.

So long.

LeonB

vor 3 Jahrendiscuss

You’re missing the point.

There’s no magic percent of a market that proves or disproves the sort of behaviour that antitrust laws are designed to prevent.

LeonB

vor 3 Jahrendiscuss

> Apple didn’t force anyone to participate in Apple Pay

We’re on different planets.

> Banks got onboard because customers like the convenience

… Banks in Australia fought it for years.

Your point about 20% market share being enough demonstrates the point. There’s no set percentage of customers. The wielding of power alone demonstrates the issue.

LeonB

vor 3 Jahrendiscuss

Apple’s ability to wield its market power to force buyers or sellers to use its platform is firm evidence of the sort of power that anti trust laws (if they retained any teeth) are designed to prevent.

For example they were able to force banks to agree to support Apple Pay. And it’s the wielding itself that is sufficient proof of the trust violation.

LeonB

vor 3 Jahrendiscuss

There’s plenty of practical solutions to monopolies who abuse their power.

- First up, stop their tax avoidance by supporting governments that engage in strong international tax treaties.

- Support governments who will provide effective deterrents to Google (and Facebook) monetising scams. Day in day out there are scammy advertisers that I, one measley person, am capable of spotting… but they (Google and Facebook), with all their wisdom and money, are incapable of booting from their platforms.

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