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.

The scheduling demand thing is referring specifically to the project manager going “we need this for an upcoming major product launch, so you need to fix this before the launch.” It feels like Microsoft cracking the whip to try getting free labor, because it is.

If they truly can’t do without it for their product launch, they can fork it and fix the bug themselves. Surely Microsoft has the resources and brainpower to do so. But the PM didn’t want to do that, because it means they’d be spending their own time and resources on it.

Voluntary deletion won’t remove forks, but a DMCA takedown will.

It’s because Yuzu was profiting off of their development with a Patreon. Keep emulators FOSS and there’s no profits to claim.

Also, because it’s a settlement and not a ruling, it’s not setting a precedent for future lawsuits. Courts historically put a lot of weight on legal precedent, to help make rulings consistent. If one court interprets a new case in a certain way, similar cases in the future will likely look to that first case’s ruling for guidance.

So if one ruling had decided that emulation is illegal, then subsequent lawsuits would have been much much easier for Nintendo. Because Nintendo could basically argue “we already proved emulation is illegal in that previous case, so now we don’t need to do that part again.”

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.

It’s not a crime per se, but it does open them up to civil litigation. Because it’s a contract of adhesion, where the consumer gains nothing from the additional terms, cannot negotiate the terms prior to acceptance, and is forced into accepting the terms on a take-it-or-leave-it basis.

In order for a contract to be enforceable, both sides need to be able to negotiate the terms, and both sides need to receive something meaningful from said contract.

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.

It’s easier than ever these days. The hardest part is figuring out how to configure your router to point devices to it. Because router manufacturers love to bury that setting somewhere deep. For actually setting up the pihole, it’s usually just a matter of flashing the memory card with the right image, then finding some decent block lists. But even the block lists are easy to find nowadays.

I blocked the servers with my pihole. Coincidentally, my two smart TVs are the two most blocked devices on my network. It’s not even close.

This was with only ~1 hour of TV watching, while the device in the third spot is my phone (which I had been using all day). And yet the second TV still had almost 3x as many blocked requests.

Smart TVs are fucking invasive.

This is actually why they include the personal anecdote. Supposedly it’s easier to copyright a recipe when some sort of creative writing is attached. Because the bare recipe isn’t creative or unique enough to be considered copyrightable.

There are plenty of (likely apocryphal) stories of new Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) recruits being fed C4 and chased around with a stun gun. The old timers tell the new recruit that electricity will cause C4 to detonate. In reality, it’s a potent laxative and will give them the shits in a matter of minutes. So the recruit is stuck running away from a taser that they think will make them explode, while desperately trying not to shit themselves.

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.

9 was skipped because there was concern with old/lazily coded programs running in compatibility mode for Windows 9x versions.

Basically, when the windows versions went from Win95/98/ME to 2000 and XP, some lazy programmers went “well by the time Windows 2090 rolls around I’ll be dead” and just had their programs check the windows version for a 9 when deciding whether or not to run in compatibility mode. If it detected a 9, then it would run in compatibility for 95/98/ME.

Microsoft wanted to avoid this potential issue, so they just skipped version 9 altogether and jumped straight to 10.

I’d be curious to see the results broken down by image generator. For instance, how many of the Midjourney images were correctly flagged as AI generated? How does that compare to DALL-E? Are there any statistically significant differences between the different generators?

Yup. They can’t take out interest-free loans to pay off their almost-interest-free loans. So now they’re scrambling to save money and build value the old fashioned way.

Yes, though it was unclear if that was a feature or a bug. Since their dev team was decimated, the site has been struggling to even do basic maintenance and security updates. It’s entirely possible that was a bug, especially since it only appeared to be happening with certain users and servers.

Yeah, I used to work a job where I was basically on call for 6 hours at a time, but didn’t need to do much unless something broke. I’d help set things up at the top of the day then tear things down at the end. But in between, I was basically just waiting for things to break. It’s safe to say that I used the fuck out of my gaming laptop and VPN at my desk. Because I obviously didn’t want to try playing games on a company computer.

I played a lot of single player and idle games at that job, because those are easy to walk away from at a moment’s notice. Just hit pause and you can give your full attention to whatever problem has popped up. Then once it’s resolved, you’re right back where you left off.

There has been a lot of progress recently due to the SteamDeck, but it’s still not as good as Windows gaming. There are a few outlier examples where games run better on linux, but those are few and far between. Give it another few years, and hopefully things will improve even more.

Open exactly one email. Don’t bother reading it; That would put you into overtime. But you can at least commit to opening the email and waiting for it to load before you clock out for the year.