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Joined 10 months ago
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Cake day: September 24th, 2023

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  • Not OP. I think it’s funny how you’re accusing them of “bullying” when their comments aren’t aggressive at all, just pointing out a practice they disagree with. But somehow your multi-paragraph, raging, sorry, uh… “laughing” comment filled with direct insults and patronizing dismissal, should NOT be considered “bullying.”

    Like, I don’t buy into the idea that anyone can bully someone else in an anonymous Internet forum, outside of doxxing or repeated harassment. But looking at this, one of you is clearly much more aggressive and bothered than the other here.


  • Jewish Federation Los Angeles meanwhile blamed the university’s chancellor for allowing “an environment to be created over many months that has made students feel unsafe”.

    The group demanded that the encampment be cleared and that UCLA meet leaders of the Jewish community.

    Fucking hell, this is such a callous response. In any other situation, the group representing the side that just had masked vigilantes attack peaceful demonstrators would make amends. “These people don’t represent our movement. We disavow them and what they stand for.” And so on.

    I see they’re taking a page from Israel’s book: refuse to apologize, defend unprovoked violence, and blame the victims on top of everything else.



  • Less than half of that plastic litter had discernible branding that could be traced back to the company that produced the packaging; the rest could not be accounted for or taken responsibility for.

    The branded half of the plastic was the responsibility of just 56 fast-moving consumer goods multinational companies, and a quarter of that was from just six companies.

    This seems to me like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Of course the biggest companies with the most easily identifiable packaging are going to be the ones identified in this study. The majority of the plastic, however, is not, and it’s difficult to tell who produced it.

    The article addresses this as well, mentioning that this is the reason we need traceability, so we can get the true metrics on who is creating and thus responsible for the bulk of plastic waste.

    The big players like Coke and others are obviously very much responsible for a big part of the problem. I just didn’t see people mentioning this part of the study in the comments, so I wanted to bring it up.


  • Even the title of this article asserts that this latest “tragedy” is part of a larger systemic problem than just the incident itself.

    “There seems to be a consistent pattern of utterly reckless behavior,” said Cobb-Smith, who helped investigate the Doctors Without Borders shelling.

    The whole point of this is the lack of accountability for Israel’s repeated “mistakes,” which they have no intention of correcting. The indiscriminate violence is a feature for Israel, not a bug.

    To try and excuse or deflect from Israel’s current missile strikes by bringing up the US’s own missile strikes is an odd choice here. Like, the same people who are calling for Israel to stop its indiscriminate bombardment are largely the same people who were calling for the same when the US was doing it.



  • The idea is that generative AI will enable Samsung products to get a better understanding of how consumers use the products – for example, an oven recognizing what is being cooked in it or a fridge recognizing what ingredients are inside. This could allow appliances to understand users’ needs and respond accordingly.

    “Understand users’ needs” being a euphemism for “spy on users’ habits and sell that info to advertisers.”

    We’ve gone full circle: from having a manual for your new appliance, to having a LLM confidently make up some incorrect info about how to use your new appliance.




  • Ok but remember when Republicans made up that Biden was going to “outlaw burgers” with the Green New Deal? And how even the made up idea that the govt would stop subsidizing meat caused half the nation to flip their shit, while the other half went “no don’t be silly, we would never ever touch your precious tendies.”

    Appealing to individuals is important because without shifting the public’s perception of meat as it relates to climate change, the government will be too terrified to enact those kind of changes for fear of getting voted out by the angry, barbecue-loving mobs.

    Until flexitarians, vegetarians, and vegans (I’m vegan btw, just need everyone to know that) become a sizable enough percentage of the voting population, these systemic changes are never going to even be considered by our leaders. So we should keep pressing the importance of these changes to collectively move ourselves closer to that tipping point.


  • The paper states that they studied the HTML form element interactions but “not the keystrokes or content.”

    There’s a big difference. Both are more invasive than we would like, but grabbing everything you type while in the app’s browser is much worse than measuring a true or false “did this person submit their comment or did they give up and leave it unsubmitted.”

    Tiktok is getting the content of the text, which could be sensitive info, and it grabs from every site you visit, not just the social platform itself.

    But I think the main issue is using the data for allegedly targeting of protestors and Chinese political opponents, more than the depth of the data collection itself.



  • When people claim that leaks “get people killed,” they’re referring to when undercover agents are identified while they’re in the field. The only secrets exposed in these leaks are the computer hacking techniques used by the US to spy remotely through compromised devices.

    The so-called Vault 7 leak revealed how the CIA hacked Apple and Android smartphones in overseas spying operations, and efforts to turn internet-connected televisions into listening devices.

    You could maybe say that closing off those surveillance channels prevented the CIA from learning about some attack, but that’s really tenuous. It also assumes that the CIA isn’t constantly developing new zero-day exploits so that they can continue to spy on just about everyone on the planet.


  • It’s funny, the US Marshalls interviewed for this are extremely forthright in explaining their methods, but clam up and say they “can’t explain these methods” as soon as they have any leads relating to cell phones. Probably because they’re using the US’s vast warrantless surveillance system to pull any possible info they can on her.

    For example, they “track[ed] down the phone number for an American businessman they believed had connected with Armstrong at some point,” and are cagey about how they got that number. I’d bet that they pulled her phone records and started cold calling everyone she’s ever contacted through her cell phone until they got someone who could give them a lead.

    Later, they set up the fake yoga instructor ad, and mention that they’re tracking the phone location of the person who answered the ad to make sure they’re at the sting location.

    It’s crazy that even with all those “methods the Marshalls won’t go into,” they almost gave up on finding her.



  • Hard agree with all of this. I’ve never been good at shooters, especially PvP, but the invasions always felt like more of a chess match than a true gun duel. Outsmarting some human player who’s a better shot than me made for super memorable and satisfying moments.

    I’ll also add that the voice acting and dialogue were great. Dishonored is infamous for having limited voice lines (“shall we meet for whiskey and cigars tonight?”), and in a game with a time loop mechanic and limited maps, I thought for sure it would be even worse. But I was pleasantly surprised. It’s still annoying for scripted events that repeat, but the Colt and Julianna banter kind of made up for it imo


  • I love leaving my standing desk and ergonomic equipment behind so that I can use objectively worse equipment with the promise that “renovations are coming to your team in the next few years.” My boss hunts for open seating in the neighboring office building so that they can actually use a standing desk on the days we have to come in, which is antithetical to the “spirit of collaboration” RTO is supposed to foster.

    Like either let us use our own setup or invest in an office setup that is tolerable for people to use. We all know that they don’t give a shit about employees, but they could at least pretend they’re considering our experience when forcing these decisions on us.