thanksforallthefish
@thanksforallthefish@literature.cafe
- Comment on ‘Massive’ increase in pensioner shoplifters in past year 1 day ago:
Well spotted, yes indeed
- Comment on ‘Massive’ increase in pensioner shoplifters in past year 1 day ago:
Food retailers have seen a “massive” increase in pensioner shoplifters over the last year, a security firm has said
While I am sympathetic to anyone who has to shoplift to eat, I’d suggest a little skepticism after noting two things:
One the time period (almost exactly lines up with the period that Labour has been in power) and,
Two the source - the Telegraph is nicknamed the Torygraph for a reason…they are the mouth piece for the conservative party and make no bones about it.
I’m no fan of the Blue Tories - Sir Keir would comfortably fit into the Conservative party of a decade ago (before their heads exploded) - I’m quite disappointed in their performance. But I’d counsel a little caution on taking what smells strongly of a propaganda piece at face value
- Comment on ‘The Worst Internet-Research Ethics Violation I Have Ever Seen’ | The most persuasive “people” on a popular subreddit turned out to be a front for a secret AI experiment. 1 week ago:
Users aren’t likely to point out a bot when the rules explicitly prevent them from doing that.
In fact one user commented that he had his comment calling out one of the bots as a bot deleted by mods for breaking that rule
- Comment on ‘The Worst Internet-Research Ethics Violation I Have Ever Seen’ | The most persuasive “people” on a popular subreddit turned out to be a front for a secret AI experiment. 1 week ago:
You may wish to reword. The unspecified “they” reads like you think Meta have strict ethical rules. Lol.
Meta have no ethics whatsoever, and yes I assume you meant universities have strict rules however the approval of this study marks even that as questionable
- Comment on ‘The Worst Internet-Research Ethics Violation I Have Ever Seen’ | The most persuasive “people” on a popular subreddit turned out to be a front for a secret AI experiment. 1 week ago:
While that is indeed what was reported, we and the researchers will never know if the posters with shifted opinions were human or in fact also AI bots.
The whole thing is dodgy for lack of controls, this isn’t science it’s marketing
- Comment on Washington’s Right to Repair Bill Heads to the Governor 1 week ago:
That’s not only quite defeatist it’s not really true. Everything can be reverse engineered, obviously in some cases it’s not economical, but John Deere tractors and their obnoxious lockdowns are a classic case of where this leads to genuine value for people. JD robbing the farmers of the ability to perform simple repairs and charging huge bucks to do them ends up with costs on your grocery bill. This bill doesn’t directly impact that I don’t believe but it’s the simplest clearest example of why this is important.
This is brilliant news - we’re all better off for it.
- Comment on Washington’s Right to Repair Bill Heads to the Governor 1 week ago:
Great news. About time something good happened politically.
- Comment on Moving servers and rack equipment 1 week ago:
Nice, glad it worked for you
- Comment on Moving servers and rack equipment 1 week ago:
Fair enough - racks in entirety/untouched dramatically reduces the risk of not being able to get stuff back up because of miscabling or missed cabling. I could see that approach being sensible if you’re moving across town.
I personally wouldnt if moving between cities, YMMV of course.
- Comment on Moving servers and rack equipment 1 week ago:
I’ve been in charge of relocating several data centres.
We tore everything down, servers out of racks etc.
All servers, fabric switches drive arrays etc were individually wrapped in bubble wrap then the heavy removalists cloth then into the large metal moving boxes (1500mmx1500mmx1500mm roughly) before being stacked so they couldn’t move around, followed by ratchet straps securing groups of kit together.
All this was done by professional removalists - no reason you can’t do it though.
Basically the principle is flexible padding (bubble wrap) to allow for movement close to the device without impacting it, heavy shock absorbing material (the felt), then put into a robust container (metal box) so limiting impact risk.
I’d strongly recommend NOT to leave them in the rack - a couple of screws vibrate loose and then that device drops onto the one below it, bounces up and down through the journey and wrecks them both.
If it’s a mile up the road, sure, you’ll probably be fine and get away with it, multiple hours on the road ? It’s not surviving it.
- Comment on Tesla Board Opened Search for a CEO to Succeed Elon Musk 1 week ago:
This won’t actually work, but you can’t blame them for considering it.
- Comment on Tesla Board Opened Search for a CEO to Succeed Elon Musk 1 week ago:
it requires near-90% approval of all non-musk held voting shares to make ‘major’ changes like ousting a board member or ceo.
No, you’re thinking of News Corp and Murdoch’s shenanigans.
Tesla has a standard structure. He doesn’t own a majority of shares, but he does own a significatn percentage and investors aligned with him combined have enough for him not to be at any significant risk.
The directors however have a fiduciary duty to act in the interests of all shareholders, so going through the motions of considering a replacement ticks that box.
- Comment on The year housing turned toxic was captured in a talkback chat with PM 3 weeks ago:
If you’re making the group then your call, but the name sounds too sunny & positive to anyone who doesn’t have context to hear the irony.
Also housing crisis is what it’s referred to in many places internationally.
- Comment on The year housing turned toxic was captured in a talkback chat with PM 3 weeks ago:
I’d suggest “housing crisis” if you want it to get subscribers. Too much subtlety and it’s just going to be ignored, imnsho.
- Comment on French newspaper: The British elites always talk about their special-relationship. They claim the americans are their lovely cousins. But do US elites actually respect them ? 3 weeks ago:
Without even reading the article I’ll bet Betterridge’s law of headlines applies
en.wikipedia.org/…/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines
Betteridge’s law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.
- Comment on How one man created 6 million Wikipedia articles, and why he stopped 4 weeks ago:
The Scots wiki had the same problem. A teenage American who didn’t speak Scots edited and created 10s of thousands of entries
For those not aware Scots is a Germanic language that split from Old English back about 700-800 years ago - closely related to modern english like frisian is, but also retaining many words lost to english (some of which are retained in Swedish / Dutch etc). It is distinct from standard scottish english.
- Comment on Adobe Gets Bullied Off Bluesky 4 weeks ago:
Oh lord, what now ?
- Comment on Adobe Gets Bullied Off Bluesky 4 weeks ago:
That’s weird. The bluesky links in the article work fine for me, and I don’t have a bluesky account.
Ahh hang on, this one doesn’t work but all the rest do
bsky.app/profile/…/3lmdz2tu6xk2x
Ahh here we go: it’s a user made setting not a bluesky one
“Sign-in Required This user has requested that their content only be shown to signed-in users. This label was applied by the author.”
- Comment on Tax cut for Musk, Bezos and other tech billionaires on the table, Starmer confirms 4 weeks ago:
That’s not actually correct. The missiles (the rocket part) are indeed leased from the US, and the maintenance every few years is thus done by them - which keeps the cost down. The warheads are the UKs.
A freshly serviced trident missile should be good for 5-7 years (although they currently get serviced more frequently).
If the UK falls out with the US then we have a number of years to either build or own replacement or buy/lease them off another country - France for example has several options in this space that could be easily adapted.
We are where we are because nobody could imagine the US going rogue like this, a failure of imagination for sure but our nukes are in fact in our control
…org.uk/heres-how-britains-nukes-are-operationall…
- Comment on "Tesla protesters are planning their “biggest day of action” yet, aiming for 500 demonstrations at Tesla showrooms across the world on March 29th..." 1 month ago:
globally. They got nothing at all to worry about
What’s that supposed to mean ? You think we’re not pissed off at the Tangerine Palpatine and Poundshop Goebbels in Europe ? Or do you think Europeans don’t protest ?
If it’s the latter I suggest a little googling try “French protest gilet jaunes” for a starter. Or you could just google the protest Tesla has already been experiencing for the last month
- Comment on Mullvad's privacy-focused search engine Leta is now free for all users | Leta acts as a proxy for Google and Brave search results 2 months ago:
When you search google it fingerprints your browser then attachs that to the other information it amasses from tracking your other activities from other websites.
By not giving them the search content you reduce what they know.
Scenario a) you search up particular health issues on google, for the US say “how do I know I’m pregnant” then you go to an online pharmacy (Walgreen is the big US one I think) and order “plan b” (anti pregnancy drug). Google doesnt even need to know from walgreens what you ordered it will infer a pregnancy test and/or plan b then from later activity
Scenario b) you use proxy and thus google knows nothing of your search, then you go to walgreens, for all google knows you ordered makeup or hayfever tablets.
Scenario a is or will be illegal in some US states - best not to leak it.
Not a perfect example, i can poke holes in it. The point is searches are usually sensitive info, keeping them out of the hands of the most egregious activity collator keeps more privacy then if you don’t. The proxy buries your senstive search in with thousands of others that can’t be attached to you
- Comment on Mullvad's privacy-focused search engine Leta is now free for all users | Leta acts as a proxy for Google and Brave search results 2 months ago:
It’s not, but it is better than using google
- Comment on Why can't we go back to small phones? 2 months ago:
I can’t trust anything made by google. It’s a company that literally makes its money capturing everything everyone does on the internet…and yet the phone they make is the ONLY phone immune to having everything captured…
Sorry. Not buying it. There will be a chip in there phoning home we’ll find out about in a decade.
- Comment on Why can't we go back to small phones? 2 months ago:
Fairphone
- Comment on Microsoft Outlook servers down, reports say 2 months ago:
Theoretically the major cloud providers like MS have redundant geographically dispersed servers that mean there should only be an outage if the individual user can’t reach the internet.
In practise however those promises are hollow for a number of reasons, cost usually. Legal issues like GDPR also impinge (EU data being allowed to be in the US has been blocked by the courts the other day for example). In addition there’s a long list of other configuration reasons which almost always come back to cost indirectly.
Theoretically an ideally configured cloud solution is far superior to on-prem.
In the real world, not so much: corners cut, pennies saved by non technical managers not understanding the ramifications of their choices & etc
On prem is certainly better in the real world if you’re big enough to afford proper redundancy and to hire and keep good techs.
Many many firms can’t tick those boxes though and so you get to imperfect world optimisation where what is good for coy. A is bad for coy. B
- Comment on Google Chrome disables uBlock Origin for some in Manifest v3 rollout 2 months ago:
Download fennec it’s the fork of ff mobile with less of the cruft.
I don’t know if it has fixed that specific problem, but I can’t recall seeing it
- Comment on US could cut Ukraine's access to Starlink internet services over minerals, say sources. 2 months ago:
Given there is going to be serious economic disruption there is a lot be said for diversifying your assets. If most of your assets are currently in the US moving your pension fund into assets held outside it is a strong de-risking move, particularly if you can move it out of the country totally using a foreign prover as well as holding non-US assets(not sure if that last is legally possible, don’t know much about your pension system).
Note you may get poorer performance - it’s really up in the air just yet what the short term impacts will be economically (depends what King Mango ends up deciding, it’s mostly speculation right now)
- Comment on US could cut Ukraine's access to Starlink internet services over minerals, say sources. 2 months ago:
He may have been a russian asset since 2004 (I don’t know either way) but it certainly was nothing to do with that SpaceX meeting. He went there to try and buy Russian rocket engines, they told him to pound sand. He was forced to do it the hard way and hire a team and they designed what are now the Falcon 9 engines.
I don’t understand why people keep making stuff up (not just this post, it’s one of many), he’s evil enough on the actual facts
- Comment on Trump tariffs result in 10% laptop price hike in U.S. says Acer CEO 2 months ago:
Ok, but this isn’t a betting site, this is an options contract, which given the current price split of 73c:28c is not a good buy (winning isn’t profitable and you’re tying your money up for 2years).
The price however is inline with my statement - that market considers a GOP win a near certainty.
I’ve checked the mainstream betting sites and GOP are solidly odds on (4/6 on through 8/13on) which isnt hugely profitable but I guess it’ll shorten even further
- Comment on Trump tariffs result in 10% laptop price hike in U.S. says Acer CEO 2 months ago:
Oh they won’t stop / block the elections initially they’ll hold that first one & just conveniently get 75+% of the vote like every dictator before him.
I’m happy to put money on it if you can find a market. I’ve been unfortunately right too much, not because I’m smart but because you can literally pull out a history of Nazi rise and map it onto MAGA and the last 10 years. The only hard bit is guessing the timings, not what, just when.
I’d really like you guys to break out of this and prove me wrong