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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • On the other side of the same coin: When I mass edited my comments before quitting Reddit, I got site-banned. Basically, my first account’s automated edit got me auto-banned from several subs with pro-spez mods. Some subs had set their automod to detect when people were using the more popular methods of auto-editing, and set the automod to ban for using them. Then when I did the same with my second (and third, and fourth, and fifth, etc…) account, it almost immediately got site-banned for ban evasion.

    Basically, account 1 was banned from a sub, so when account 2 started doing the same thing on the same IP address, it was flagged as ban evasion. And ban evasion is one of the few things that will get you banned site-wide instead of just from a specific sub.

    I went back and checked a few months ago, and all of those site bans were lifted and the edits were undone. Likely because a site ban prevents the comments from showing up (which hurts Reddit’s bottom line, because they show up as a bunch of [removed] comments instead,) but also prevented any of the edits from actually being published. So when they lifted the site ban (to get those old comments to show back up again) it was as if I had never edited them at all. I had probably a million karma spread across my various accounts. I was extremely active at one point, so Reddit had a direct incentive to unban those accounts with literal thousands of comments.


  • Yup. Rand() chooses a random float value for each entry. By default I believe it’s anywhere between 0 and 1. So it may divide the first bill by .76, then the second by .23, then the third by 0.63, etc… So you’d end up with a completely garbage database because you can’t even undo it by multiplying all of the numbers by a set value.






  • Tesla routes pretty much everything through the center console. I’m surprised they haven’t tried to route the blinkers through it.

    It’s because their wiring system basically just daisy chains everything together with network cable. So it’s a lot less cabling, because they aren’t running six wires for six different systems. But it also means that when one system fails, they all fail in a cascade because everything behind that system in the chain is also affected.

    That’s why automakers have traditionally used individual wires for each system, because they have prioritized safety over easier wiring; You don’t want your airbags to fail just because your wipers are having an issue, for instance. So each system is essentially isolated to its own wiring.

    Tesla is a good example of people not understanding why things are done a certain way. Elon just saw modern wiring harnesses and went “lol that’s dumb just use network cables.” And on the surface it sounds fine, because it’s less wiring. But it fails to understand why each system is wired independently. And now Teslas have frequent issues with cascading system failures.



  • the arbitration companies are usually fairly friendly towards whatever corporation is being challenged being paid directly by the company they’re arbitrating for, and therefore have a direct financial incentive to rule in favor of the corporation.

    FTFY. It’s way worse than just “being friendly” with corps. They’re on the corps’ payroll (indirectly, because the corp is paying for the arbitration,) and they know that if they continue to rule in the corps’ favor then the corp will continue calling them for future arbitration. There’s a tacit understanding between the arbiter and corporation, where if the arbiter favors the plaintiff then the arbiter won’t get called when the corporation goes to arbitration the next time.


  • Just never connect it to the internet, or (even better) set up a PiHole and block the TV’s telemetry requests. I say the PiHole is better because then you still get all of the benefits of a smart TV (like native streaming apps) without all of the horribly invasive data mining.

    If you want the benefits of a smart TV without connecting it to the internet, then maybe a connected PC would be a better solution. Something like an Nvidia shield connected to the TV, while the TV remains offline. That way you can maintain control over the computer, instead of trying to control what the TV collects and sends.





  • That’s because the Switch’s USB port isn’t actually a USB-C. Their port falls outside of the standard size/dimension specs, because they wanted the Switch to slide smoothly into the dock instead of having a positive click like a standard USB-C should.

    This is why using a standard USB-C on your Switch can actually brick the device. Since the port is non-standard, the pins are much easier to accidentally short when plugging a standard USB-C into it. There was a big string of people complaining about bricked devices shortly after the Switch launched, and eventually players just learned to only use the official Switch chargers. But that’s only necessary because Nintendo told the USB-C standard to go fuck itself, and made a port that is almost the same (and will technically accept a standard USB-C port) but does everything slightly differently.

    The Switch charger also has a power switching option, since the Switch draws more power when it’s docked than when you plug it in directly. So the power supply is set up to detect whether or not the dock is connected, so it can supply more power.


  • Exactly. The biggest hurdle to getting new FOSS off the ground is adoption. It’s really hard to gain inertia when the vast majority of users refuse to switch. When they already know how to use the closed-source version, they’ll be resistant to change. Even if the closed-source version is less user friendly and more annoying to use, people will still continue to use it because they don’t want to start learning something new. Unity did Godot a massive favor, by scaring all of their users away and leading them straight into Godot’s open arms.

    It would be like if Microsoft did something stupid enough to cause 50% of Windows users to switch to Linux overnight. Even if Microsoft later rolled those changes back, a lot of users have already installed (and started to learn) Linux, and aren’t going to go through the trouble of switching back again. And by that point Linux will have an established user base and will be able to maintain and grow that population much easier.


  • That would be a dumb move on his part. Stock manipulation that blatant would have the SEC chewing on his entrails in a matter of minutes.

    The most likely scenario is that he was paid at least partially in company stock. This is fairly common for the C-level, because it allows them to loosely tie their income to the company’s stock price. When the company does well, the C-level makes more money.

    So he likely had an automated recurring sale set up, to sell off part of what he was being paid. So if he’s paid 25 stocks per pay period, maybe he sells off 15 automatically and keeps 10. This allows him to remain more liquid (or diversify his investment portfolio by reinvesting that money into other companies’ stock,) so he isn’t keeping all of his eggs in one basket. It’s the smart thing to do, but can also be bad PR if the stock for your company tanks right after your automated sale goes through.

    At most, he could’ve timed the announcement to happen right after his stock sale. So he can automatically sell when the price is still good, then watch it tank immediately after the sale. That’s not stock market manipulation per the current rules, (because he didn’t actually change how much he was selling, or change when the sale would happen) but it’s still scummy.