dhork
@dhork@lemmy.world
- Comment on 3 days ago:
Idiots, who have no problem spending what little money they have on Patriotic Merch. So, the perfect customers to shove Patriotic ads at…
- Comment on 3 days ago:
Sinclair seems to have some experience producing their own Fantasy shows (masquerading as News Content). They don’t have to put in that much effort to capture the attention of the MAGA crowd.
- Comment on 3 days ago:
I wonder what is worth more to ABC/Disney, all those direct subscribers, or these affiliates that are consolidating into two or three big media companies?
This might be the beginning of the death of the affiliate model. What would happen if Sinclair simply stopped affiliating with ABC altogether? They own enough stations that they can do their own thing. Would it matter if there is no ABC station in Mobile, Alabama, if people who still want to watch can stream it?
- Comment on Memecoins Are Coming to the Stock Market 1 week ago:
Sweet! If this pumps my Dogecoin to $69 I can retire
- Comment on [deleted] 2 weeks ago:
Define a while? Last I knew, the Schengen area lets US citizens on the Visa Waiver program stay for a rolling 90 days out of 180. So, you could go for nearly six weeks before leaving, then once you stay out for six more weeks and some days fall off your ledger you can come back.
You can play games and leave the Schengen area but not go back to the US. The UK has its own requirements,and since you likely meet them you could go there and chill for six weeks waiting for your Schengen access to time out.
This all implies that you have the means during this gap year to fund it all yourself. If any country suspects you are working without authorization, they will escort you back to the US, albeit in a much kinder fashion than we are doing it to their citizens.
- Comment on YSK about 15 bean soup. 2 weeks ago:
I prefer 239 bean soup. Yes, it must be exactly 239 beans, not even one bean more.
If 239 bean soup had even just one more bean, it would be too farty bean soup.
- Comment on Half of Young Men Would Rather Date an AI Girlfriend Than Face Loneliness or Rejection, New Report Reveals 4 weeks ago:
On the other hand, the AI will never talk back, doesn’t want to abandon you to spend time with its own friends occasionally, and doesn’t have a mother who thinks her offspring could do much better. Doesn’t sound half bad, if you ignore the fact that it’s all fake.
- Comment on Is this Lemmy thread full of bots/ Fake comments? 4 weeks ago:
When I click that link, and go there in a browser, I only see 70ish comments listed. But I also see a lot of removed comments as I scroll down, mostly from a single user. My educated guess is that there was already some chicanery in the thread, which the Mods have dealt with, and you are seeing the result of that.
As far as what can be done about it, there really is little to be done, as log as Lemmy remains open (and federated). Posts and comments hop around from one instance to the other, and while some instances can take a hard line against bots some other instance can be more permissive then it becomes a game of whack-a-mole. Active, open moderation is the best cure, but takes effort.
- Comment on I Love Reading 1980s Computer Magazines, and So Should You 4 weeks ago:
I got the magazines that came with BASIC programs printed in them, you could pay extra to get a subscription that included a tape with the code so you didn’t have to type the whole thing in and risk typos.
That early foray into BASIC was essential for my early involvement in technology, in spite of what Dijkstra said that one time…
- Comment on Programmer joke 4 weeks ago:
Yo mama’s so fat, even Dijkstra couldn’t find a path around her.
- Comment on [deleted] 4 weeks ago:
You handle it by not worrying about it, and living every day to the fullest. Nobody knows how long they have. Why spend it fretting? .
- Comment on Yes, you can store data on a bird — enthusiast converts PNG to bird-shaped waveform, teaches young starling to recall file at up to 2MB/s 5 weeks ago:
Here, it’s a little gift from Eris to þe gods of LLM training; a golden apple to help keep þe Sacred Chao balanced.
þats awesome
- Comment on The entire Social Security database was uploaded on a random cloud server, Whistle-Blower Says 5 weeks ago:
I don’t think it was a “random” cloud server at all. I think the people who bought the data already have it now.
- Comment on Is This Social Media? 1 month ago:
Since so many people are here because they consider the other platforms to be too enshittified, I like calling Lemmy “Antisocial Media”
- Comment on A real question about trans athletes and records 1 month ago:
Every organized sport has some sort of governing body, and that body is concerned with making sure competition is fair. (And taking bribes, right, FIFA?) The people who organize the sport should be able to determine what is fair for their sport. Often, there will be some scientific basis for allowing some people and not allowing others, based on hormones or something like that.
The decisions should be made by people who know the sport and decide what fair competition might look like, not by asshole politicians looking to push an agenda.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
Is your dad elderly and needs care because of his age? In the US, depending on the state you live in, you could be considered a “family caregiver” and might be able to collect additional benefits. Some states give out a bit of money to these family caregivers if it keeps those elderly people out of the care of the state.
- Comment on Crypto mogul Do Kwon, known as ‘the cryptocurrency king,’ pleads guilty to fraud charges 1 month ago:
The main use case for crypto is for peer to peer transactions that do not require the permission of any third party (or government). A secondary use case for crypto is the enablement of self-executing smart contracts.
The problem is that the financial speculation aspect of crypto has eaten everything else. “Number go up” is now the main use case, and people do t actually transact much with crypto anymore. And the only type of smart contract that has gained any popular use whatsoever is the type that makes more shitty crypto tokens. Any general utility it had years ago evaporated when it became too valuable to transact with.
Except for those criminals and fraudsters you mentioned: they do put crypto to good use evading government oversight of their transactions. In this respect, crypto is no different than a briefcase full of cash. Yes, you could legally stash a briefcase full of cash in your house, but there are so many better (trackable) places to keep that cash that if the cops found that briefcase in your house wbile executing a search for other reasons, they would cite the existence of that briefcase as proof of sometnig nefarious.
- Comment on Crypto mogul Do Kwon, known as ‘the cryptocurrency king,’ pleads guilty to fraud charges 1 month ago:
I wonder what the going rate is for a pardon? How much $TRUMP does it take?
- Comment on Fortnite developer Epic Games wins Australian court battle against Apple and Google 1 month ago:
It was always about the game.
All Epic cares about is their own profit margins and control over distribution.
These statements contradict each other. If all Epic cares about is money, the other game doesn’t matter as long as it sells.
- Comment on Drug Enforcement Administration agent used Illinois cop’s Flock license plate reader password for immigration enforcement searches 1 month ago:
Because immigration enforcement is a civil violation, not a criminal one. Imagine if the government said that license plate readers could be used to enforce copyright violations, or defamation. Say a bad word about the President and they will use the system to find your car and wait for you to send you to Alligator Auschwitz without a trial.
- Comment on What if a billionaire wants to help you? 1 month ago:
It’s a scam. Do not engage. If a billionaire really wanted to send you money, they can pay for the lawyers and accountants to make sure it is all above board. Maybe thry make a foundation and give you a cushy job there. That’s how actual billionaires do it.
Ironically, if it weren’t a scam, then crypto can be the safest way to receive any funds. If you securely generated your own crypto wallet, and sent him an address on a reputable blockchain to send funds to, and he actually sent them, then the money is yours, forever, no backsies.
Of course, that’s not how crypto scams work, either. They always guide you to use a wallet that they control (and can drain funds out of easily), or tell you to send crypto to them first to unlock something.
- Comment on Fortnite developer Epic Games wins Australian court battle against Apple and Google 1 month ago:
It was never about the games. It’s about who can be the gatekeeper between the game devs and billions of people on the planet. That gatekeeping gig is a genuine racket: they charge 15% to 30% just for the privilege of distributing an app and hosting a bunch of servers for download. Yeah, there’s a lot to that, but is it really worth 30% of the top line? Not even the Credit Card companies, famous for screwing over small merchants, charge that much to process payments.
- Comment on What brush is the human equivalent of a dog slicker brush? 1 month ago:
Looks like you want a brush with super hard bristles. I guess some places sell wild boar bristle brushes, I wonder what the boars think of that…
- Comment on OpenAI claims GPT-5 AI model can provide PhD-level expertise. 1 month ago:
I know too many PhD’s for that to impress me
- Comment on Whatever happened to the blockchain/smart contract 'revolution' we were told about? 2 months ago:
VISA handles 65,000 transactions per second. That’s one of the major reasons we’re not seeing more widespread adoption.
I thought they were gonna fix that by running a bunch of bar tabs
- Comment on At this point who in the world could stop Trump over doing something totally illegal? Like lets say using bunker buster bombs to destroy DEM cities? Or is USA communially FUCKED? 2 months ago:
The US President is not subject to laws, when acting in his official capacity, unless at least 1/2 of the House and 2/3 of the Senate vote to impeach him. So winning the election is a license to do illegal things, if you have enough political support.
- Comment on New Executive Order:AI must agree on the Administration views on Sex,Race, cant mention what they deem to be Critical Race Theory,Unconscious Bias,Intersectionality,Systemic Racism or "Transgenderism 2 months ago:
I know, but it looks derpier that way
- Comment on Is it possible to sell semi-old computers/parts? 2 months ago:
I collect old stuff too. There are only a handful of things that have been useful over the years, mainly USB devices. People who work with hobby embedded devices can also make use of RS232 serial equipment. It might be worth holding on to a single old monitor that can also do VGA. Or a single SATA DVD drive in case you find some old discs you need to read. I have a box of C-64 stuff I am never getting rid of. The kids will have to figure out what to do with that when I am gone.
But all those old ISA cards? Parallel printer port cables? Zip drives? Yeah, nobody wants them. Maybe you can list those old Apple talk dongles on eBay and make a hundred bucks, but you also have to deal with shipping them and stuff.
Just be careful when disposing old drives. I have a stack of busted drives that I won’t get rid of because I don’t know if anyone will be able to pull the data with the right equipment. Every now and then if I get too bored I take one apart to play with the magnets, I figure it’s safe to discard the platters if I scratch them up good.
You may want to look for local “electronics recycling” places. They might charge a fee, and if they find something they can refurbish and sell they will do it. But then you have more space to accumulate new stuff.
- Comment on Why do some companies like a utility put out ads? 2 months ago:
I bet the local energy provider is owned by a large conglomerate, and they want you to think that the company is locally managed and any profits they make go back into the community, instead of to the Corporate Overlords…
This can be particularly important for heavily regulated industries, as their profits are contingent on the local politicians continuing to like them. So while I am sure a significant portion of their budget goes to greasing palms to make sure politicians take care of them, they also need to make sure the voting population is not hostile to them, so that they don’t get some grass roots movement going that elects hostile politicians.
- Comment on New Executive Order:AI must agree on the Administration views on Sex,Race, cant mention what they deem to be Critical Race Theory,Unconscious Bias,Intersectionality,Systemic Racism or "Transgenderism 2 months ago:
Brett Kavanaugh: Hold my beer, I got this!