dhork
@dhork@lemmy.world
- Comment on Shocked to hear ‘prompt engineer’ is not a real job 3 days ago:
I am a prompt engineer, I show up to work on time
- Comment on Meta's Reality Labs Has Now Lost Over $60 Billion Since 2020 - Slashdot 1 week ago:
I remembered my login, my UID is in the 200,000s so I’m not as cool as you.
The place doesn’t seem to have changed at all, and that’s not n3cessarily a good thing.
- Comment on Meta's Reality Labs Has Now Lost Over $60 Billion Since 2020 - Slashdot 1 week ago:
Wait, Slashdot is still around?
- Comment on The Anti-Capitalist Case for Standards 1 week ago:
I think these guys are overstating things a bit. The whole reason technical standards exist is to facilitate interoperability, and in most cases this interoperability leads to increased trade. It’s no accident that the first standards were developed during the industrial revolution, where we first started using machines to make parts, and they needed to fit together (like screws and nuts). Then, when the railroads came along, we needed new standards for things like track gague, because without it one countries’ trains couldn’t use the next countries’ track, making cross-border commerce more expensive. It’s also when we started to standardize time (because before the railroads, “noon” was whenever the sun was directly overhead, so varied by region).
These standards weren’t developed altruistically, they were developed to generate more trade. There is a cost to developing them, and companies spend that money in the hopes of making more later. In theory, anyone can access the standards that the ITU or IEEE create, but to participate you need to shiw up at their meetings, and there is a cost to that.
The standards process is anti-monopolist, though. The reason why they are as “open” as they are is to prevent a single entity from patenting key parts of the standard and gate-keeping access. There have been patented things in standards, but the SDO mandates that the parent-holder disclose it up front, and will not let it in the standard unless certain terms are met (which vary by SDO). It is not anti-capitalist, though, but rather it is a cabal of companies agreeing they won’t let any one of them gatekeep the rest.
- Comment on How Will We Know If The Trump Tariffs Were A Good Idea? 1 week ago:
- Comment on Fildena Double 200mg Tablets for Erectile Dysfunction: Understanding Its Effects on Liver Health 2 weeks ago:
Ads? In my Lemmy?
It’s more likely than you think!
- Comment on Why is the NFL draft day so "special"? 2 weeks ago:
Dude, you live in Green Bay. Shouldnt you have been fully indoctrinated in Packers Football by now? I thought they issued everyone a cheesehead hat at birth.
- Comment on New Jersey sue Software Company RealPage and 10 NJ Landlords for Alleged Collusion in Statewide Rent Raising Scheme; landlords set rents based on RealPage’s algorithmic pricing software. 2 weeks ago:
In recognition of this awesome development, I promise not to shit talk about NJ for the rest of the day. Hopefully I don’t have to make any left turns…
- Comment on Why hasn't congress passed a law saying that you can only deport people *back to their own country*? 2 weeks ago:
Well, justice is supposed to be blind, isn’t it? It’s supposed to deal with everything in a neutral manner. The Court is not supposed to pick sides, and they must operate within the system, because their legitimacy comes from it.
- Comment on Why hasn't congress passed a law saying that you can only deport people *back to their own country*? 2 weeks ago:
But that’s the Court’s job, to look at all the technicalities. The Administration sent him there erroneously, but since he is there now neither US courts nor the administration can compel his release. The Courts need to acknowledge that, while also acknowledging that the Administration likely did it this way on purpose, and the whole “administrative error” thing is a crock of shit. But they can’t come out and say that. And that gives Trump a wedge to split the whole thing apart.
Fascists are good at using the fact that their opponents need to uphold the law against them.
- Comment on Why hasn't congress passed a law saying that you can only deport people *back to their own country*? 2 weeks ago:
Right. That is why the Administration position on this has some merit which the courts need to defer to. As an El Salvadoran who is back in his home country, the US cannot compel his release. All the US can do is ask nicely.
But, they haven’t even done that. Which is why the courts are so pissed. They know all this, and they know that all the administration has to do is prove they asked, in good faith. They won’t even go that far. They did that performative thing where the El Salvadoran President said “We won’t send him back since he’s a criminal”, but the courts in the US don’t consider him a criminal.
There is no better definition of “contempt of court” then what the US is doing right now.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 weeks ago:
Do you know if your dad has been snipped? If not, you had better move out if you are able to. Because otherwise you will end up being free child care in about a year …
- Comment on Is there enough filament to complete the print? 3 weeks ago:
But if you know how much filament you have, it takes all the fun out of playing Filament Chicken…
- Comment on Do you hate French people too? If so, why? 3 weeks ago:
I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelled of elderberries!
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
In some places, there is still a social expectation that your mode of dress should be an indication of how seriously you take whatever is going on. People used to get dressed up in suits just to simply go outside. Nobody expects that anymore but some might still expect students to look somewhat put together in a college setting.
Now, I don’t think the professor should have mentioned anything (particularly about your hairy pits, lol). But, they may have been doing you a favor, because they expressed to you directly that they find it objectionable. While that shouldnt have an effect on your grade, professors are only human and this one signaled that he doesn’t think you take their class seriously based on your mode of dress. How many others do, and are just not telling you?
- Comment on As a US citizen who was born in the UK, how risky is it to leave and reenter the US right now? 4 weeks ago:
You are now an American citizen, so you should have the rights the rest of us have. You should be fine. They haven’t gotten around to threatening to denaturalize people yet. When they do, they will concentrate first on people from countries they don’t like, that used old policies they have since rescinded. And they will have to use more due process than they are using on these non-citizens.
The one thing I would be cautious of, though, is the state of your cell phone. They are very thin-skinned when it comes to criticism lately, and may decide to look through your phone’s social media to decide if you are insufficiently loyal. They have broad powers to do that when you re-enter the country. As a US citizen they cannot deny you entry, but they can still make your life difficult on entry. And this group doesn’t exactly pay attention to laws, do they?
At minimum, you might want to shut down your cell phone before getting off the plane. Explain it by saying it is a long flight, and you wanted to save your battery for arrival. If they confiscate a phone and try to dump all its data, they are more limited if the phone has just rebooted. They would basically need the PIN to do anything. If you want to go further, you can also log out of all of your social media accounts and remove their apps before the flight, so they even if they force you to divulge the PIN they won’t find your social media history.
That may all be too paranoid, but we live in stupid times.
- Comment on Sensitive financial data feared stolen from US bank watchdog: OCC mum on who broke into email, but Treasury fingered China in similar hack months ago. 4 weeks ago:
Check Elon’s basement
- Comment on Can I sue my apartment management company? 4 weeks ago:
Assuming you are in the US, you can sue over anything you want to. But there is a cost to that, and your management company may be banking on that cost being higher than your rent.
Also, if you have all the documents, you should be able to read those and learn what stipulations there are if the lease terminates and you are a month-to-month situation. It could be that you needed to give them more notice. They could have buried it in the fine print. It would suck to pay a lawyer money only to be told “yup, they can do it”, and now you are out more money.
- Comment on Why is there steam coming out of the streets in New York 4 weeks ago:
Ooh. I know this one. Parts of NYC still use a steam heating system that was first designed in the late 1800’s:
- Comment on [deleted] 5 weeks ago:
Since you are a professional who has happened to make it with some level of success, you know firsthand that there are a lot of excellent people who didn’t manage it for one reason or another. (And it’s not always because of lack of talent, they might have just gotten the wrong injury). How did they manage things when they finally came to terms with the fact they wouldn’t make a living doing that? What did they have to fall back on? Are they coaching? Teaching? Selling real estate or insurance?
There is nothing wrong with him chasing his dream, but make sure he has an alternative planned. Make him talk to some of those people, and find his own path. Hope for the best, plan for the worst.
- Comment on How did Mahmoud Khalil managed to challenge his (pending) deportation at all, while others were deported without due process? What makes Mahmoud Khalil's case different? 5 weeks ago:
If I had to guess, it’s probably because his family was able to lawyer up quickly (either because they could afford it, or knew someone who would work the case for free). Courts can’t act here unless someone files a case over it. There might be other people with valid legal cases to challenge their detention, but if they can’t get their hands on timely legal advice they’re just screwed.
- Comment on Why Do Sites Keep Shoving Features We Don’t Want Down Our Throats? 5 weeks ago:
They are trying to push engagement. But not just any engagement. You might think that they would prefer active engagement, when you search for a thing and watch the entire thing. But you are actually more likely to skip ads when you do that.
What they prefer is more passive engagement, when you just accept the best thing the algorithm pushes. Because then you are not only more likely to passively consume ads, but also be served content that they were paid to promote.
TikTok, Shorts, and all the things like that seem to be specifically engineered to exhaust your ability to request more things and let the algorithm take over what you watch next. That’s their endgame.
- Comment on What kind of CAPTCHA is this? 5 weeks ago:
Yeah, doesn’t mshta run JavaScript locally on Windows? This looks like a way to force you to run their script
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
That’s very generous of you, but I would advise against doing this secretly, for a few reasons.
First of all, the information needed to do this (like their loan account number) is considered personal financial information whose disclosure is protected. There is nothing preventing them from giving you the info willingly, but if you try and find it out without their knowledge you may be breaking the law.
Also, technically any gifts between people who aren’t directly related are treated as income by the US government, and there is technically tax owed on it. And yes, paying off a loan would still count as a gift. The threshold to trigger tax on a gift is high ($19k for 2025), but the tax is the liability of the giver, not the receiver. Depending on how big the gift is, you could be inadvertently opening yourself up for scrutiny by the US IRS. But if you are open about the gift and plan it with the recipient ahead of time, you can also do all the required tax planning to make sure you don’t run afoul of the IRS.
I don’t think I need to remind you that the legal climate regarding foreigners in the US on student visas is precarious right now. It would suck if your attempt at a secret gift ended up backfiring on your plans in the US.
- Comment on U.S. Government Removes Tornado Cash Sanctions 1 month ago:
I know plenty of people with a critical outlook on crypto who have a clue what they are talking about.
- Comment on U.S. Government Removes Tornado Cash Sanctions 1 month ago:
I shouldn’t feed the troll, but there is a teachable moment here.
Crypto transactions that are direct on a Blockchain, by design, are immutable. Once they are validated in a block, and future blocks are validated on top of that, it is impossible for any entity to change that history unless they control a majority of the validation power of that network. Yes, even the NSA can’t do it. It’s math.
Yes, if the government wants your crypto, it will get it. But the only way to do that is to obtain your private keys. It cannot reverse a transaction, nor reverse-engineer your private keys from a transaction. Yes, not even the NSA can do it. It’s math.
Governments do have other tools at their disposal. But those tools must center on obtaining the key. They cannot “hack” it any other way.
- Comment on U.S. Government Removes Tornado Cash Sanctions 1 month ago:
Well, nothing anyone says is going to convince you, because you’re obviously correct. How silly of me to question you!
- Comment on U.S. Government Removes Tornado Cash Sanctions 1 month ago:
No, but if the US government sends money into your bank account, they can just as easily take it back.
forbes.com/…/trump-administration-takes-back-80-m…
Crypto was designed to be a peer-to-peer method for immutable transactions. Crypto transactions are irreversible, even for governments.
- Comment on U.S. Government Removes Tornado Cash Sanctions 1 month ago:
I’ve used crypto for legitimate transactions in the past. It bailed me out once, big time, when I had to top up a foreign SIM card while abroad and their website wouldn’t take ny US credit card. I found a site selling top-up codes that took crypto and sent some from my phone, and I was back in business. But this was back when people were still using it to transact.
The worst thing that ever happened to law-abiding people using crypto was when it’s price zoomed up. Because for all those early adopters, every individual transaction now has a considerble capital gain attached. That’s why people don’t spend crypto anymore, because it’s been turned by the market into a Store of Value. (And by developers, but that’s a different thread).
- Comment on U.S. Government Removes Tornado Cash Sanctions 1 month ago:
This seems to be all about a technicality involving how these sanctions are applied. Sanctions are meant to be applied to people and the companies they run, and a US court ruled that these sanctions couldn’t be applied to a smart contract. This ruling was made back in November, they are just getting around now to removing the sanctions. From what I can tell, the sanctions against the people involved in running the service are still in effect.
