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Pxtl

17,597 karmajoined 13 years ago
https://www.pxtl.ca/

Submissions

Flesh-eating screwworm returns to U.S. after 60 years, threatening cattle herd

nbcnews.com
5 points·by Pxtl·last month·1 comments

Applying machine learning to identify unrecognized Covid-19 deaths in the US

science.org
11 points·by Pxtl·3 months ago·7 comments

Trump calls off Canada trade talks after Ontario's Reagan-based antitariff ad

cbc.ca
5 points·by Pxtl·9 months ago·1 comments

comments

Pxtl
·3 days ago·discuss
I thought that was mostly about coincidentally similar names.

Does it change when one is explicitly a reference to the copyrighted work? It's not like Thiel just thinks that Valar and Palantir and Anduril etc are all just nice sounding words, he's built a brand out of companies named after Tolkien's stuff.
Pxtl
·3 days ago·discuss
Haven't tried them but there are ways to wire a coding agent to slack, that gives you a multi-user session right there doesn't it?

Or you could use tmux and a shared login and any tui agent harness.

Obviously they would be very flawed but a place to start.
Pxtl
·3 days ago·discuss
But killing innocent bystanders is freedom!
Pxtl
·3 days ago·discuss
Can Tolkien's estate please do something?
Pxtl
·3 days ago·discuss
Depends on the company. If it's a respectable Asian brand? I'm safe.

If it's an old and established US mark like Philips or Maytag or something? ZGGCD is the way to go.
Pxtl
·4 days ago·discuss
Exactly. While there isn't much of a legal distinction between regulatory capture and consumer protection, there's obviously an ethical one. Uber was ignoring rules that apparently mostly protected established investors rather than end-users of car-hiring services.
Pxtl
·4 days ago·discuss
Yeah, I think we all remember how Hunter Biden tried to get tips from white-house associated UFC organizers about whether the fight was rigged or if there were any injuries that would help him know how to bet on the fight.

Oh wait, I'm sorry, my mistake, that was Eric Trump.

https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/pic-eric-trump-requests-in...
Pxtl
·5 days ago·discuss
I think it was kind of a chain reaction... gambling liberalization and bitcoin happened around the same time, and then people figured out "Oh this thing we do with buying bitcoin and then talking everybody else into buying bitcoin... we can just do that with regular securities can't we" and then the hyper-valuation of Tesla and Gamestop happened.

Now everything is either gambling or a scam or both.
Pxtl
·5 days ago·discuss
Right, but as exploitive as those things are, they're still regulated and taxed as gambling. The regs may be a joke, but they exist. Like in some places they're required to remind the player about addiction concerns and direct them to help for it, and to fund those programs. And part of the reason that states (and provinces here in Canada) were so gung-ho on the liberalization of gambling is that they take a fat cut.

aside: recreational gambling should require a federal ID with losses tracked online, and if you're down more than 10% of last year's after-tax income you're cut off for the rest of the year, but I assume the Canadian and especially US constitutions rules against doing good things federally make that impossible.
Pxtl
·5 days ago·discuss
It's amazing how naked it is that laws just don't apply to certain people. Kalshi et al are obviously gambling, and yet somehow all the laws about gambling have been politely forgotten by law enforcement.
Pxtl
·5 days ago·discuss
I was obsessed with the Arcade Game Construction Kit on the C64.
Pxtl
·7 days ago·discuss
I mean they're still using Inno Setup which was pretty cool in 2004.
Pxtl
·8 days ago·discuss
Every time I have to cycle through the SirusXM hardcoded ad in the AM->FM->Bluetooth->SirusXM cycle of my car stereo's mode picker, I get angry at Toyota.
Pxtl
·8 days ago·discuss
I'm still angry that I can't just run Android Auto directly anymore on my phone when I'm in a vehicle that doesn't have Android Auto support and my phone is just dash-mounted (or handlebar-mounted).

Usedtacould.
Pxtl
·8 days ago·discuss
What I find confusing is that I know an infinite plethora of companies have geolocation data in everyone.... But I look at my fairly-stock Pixel phone and the only things with background geolocation permissions are Google apps, and I know google famously hoards that data like a dragon.

Is it just that people are happily allowing every app access to live geoloc data even in background? Is there some edge where "while in use" apps are "in use" during cases you wouldn't think they are? Is it my Samsung watch?
Pxtl
·9 days ago·discuss
Maybe I've too much faith in Google, but a part of me wonders if Google doesn't want to get sued for this change. After all, their competitors have similar systems. While Microsoft's is circumventable with a few click-throughs, it's particularly nasty in that their code-signing certs are comparatively brutally expensive, too much so for hobbyist projects generally.

If Google is looking at a world where all of their competitors are using first-party-controlled signing, it makes sense for them to wonder "why not us". And if they get sued for this, that would set the precedent for all of their competitors too.

At that point the playing field would be level and platforms would be properly open.
Pxtl
·9 days ago·discuss
Because the reviewer is not magical. If there was something in the code the author couldn't see, the reviewer probably won't see it either.

The way to confirm that code does not have bugs is testing. So the reviewer is not looking at the code saying "this will work", they're looking at the code saying "I understand how this works, it makes sense."

Evidence that the code is safe is something that also should be provided in the PR, but it is not the main code. It is ideally test automation that is just as understandable as the feature code, but failing that ad-hoc test evidence or a specific step-by-step plan with evidence of execution is good too.
Pxtl
·9 days ago·discuss
Well, the code review should also be reviewing the provided test code or test plan or whatever that will prove it does not have bugs.

You're not reviewing the code to confirm that the code is bug free... you're reviewing the additional code that confirms that the feature-code is bug free.

Any process that has a step of "we'll get to that later" is a failure. That includes testing. Until there is some provided content that will be able to provide evidence that that code is safe to merge, it's not done.

But yeah, I need to be able to understand what every line does.
Pxtl
·9 days ago·discuss
I'm really looking forward to Thundermail.
Pxtl
·9 days ago·discuss
The idea would be that an NFT would provide a platform-agnostic proof-of-ownership to show that you have the right to download the game from a download provider and to satisfy its DRM protection. Basically a replacement for a license key. License keys are not transferable once redeemed, NFTs are. Modern software ownership models allow the software company to write whatever copyright law they choose, controlling length of ownership, terms of use, transferrability, backups, etc.