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I don't know why you are getting dogged on for this. Yeah, it was probably annoying in a variety of ways to those people, but it demonstrates how easy it is to manipulate us when we are in an agitated state. This is the number one weapon of modern scammers.

As an aside-but-related experiment, I worked in a bookstore in an American mall when I was young. It was always rather quiet in our store compared to the rest of the mall, so when someone purchased something, our cash register noise could be heard through the whole bookstore. After awhile, I realized every time someone made a purchase, I'd end up with a line formed almost immediately behind them. It seemed like the cash register noise triggered some Pavlovian response to the customers still browsing in the store, as though they needed to hurry up and get it line before it got too long.

So, I tried an experiment. When nobody was in line and we had customers milling about, I'd run a mid-day report from my register which sounded similar to someone making a purchase. Lo and behold, people lined up, almost absent-mindedly. Every customer did not come when called by the register, but most did. I'd be hard-pressed to repeat the experiment today with the tap payments and touchscreens, though.

Same mall, a few years later, we also realized that if we stood outside a store or kiosk in very specific spots where traffic flowed certain ways, people would would begin to line up. Never did figure that one out, but the mall was two levels with these wide open spaces where you could look down from the top, making for an excellent observation deck on human movement. We'd send a friend down to stand in one of the designated spots and sure enough, there'd be a few more distracted people behind him just waiting for nothing.

Maybe humans secretly love to queue :)

Haven't heard of them at all, that's what's wrong.

They may be great services, of course, being that I, a single consumer, am not a barometer for the success of a payment platform. But whoever they are, they're not being used by major retailers, distributors or manufacturers that I shop with both personally and professionally.

What's the best alternative?

It's easy to say "don't use PayPal" but if you're going to say it, you need to do the hard part of suggesting a viable alternative for eCommerce that has as broad a reach and acceptance as PayPal. Stripe? Almost none of the outlets I do business with use it. Venmo? Same company as PayPal. Back to using credit card numbers? The more we spread those around online, the higher the chance they get stolen and used, probably in refund scams like the one OP describes.

People need an alternative with some degree of trust and most consumers, by my reckoning anyway, would prefer a single entity that is accepted everywhere. Right now, that's unfortunately PayPal.

Sure we know that we should not trust anything Musk or X claims? By now? I mean, come on.

That one's taken, I think.

Thanks. It was the domain for an old blog that I took down awhile ago.

If you were trying to contact me privately for some reason, I can provide a working email if you give me a brief idea of what you wanted to discuss in a comment.

I get what you're saying. It's difficult to convey this to some people. I've been through a lot of jobs in quite a few different fields over the decades and have the appearance of being restless if I am not careful about how I craft my resume.

I've been asked "okay, but what do you _like_ to do?" which just puts me in a position to have to explain that I have a passion for learning new things and experimentation, but nobody is going to pay me to read books and play around in a workshop all day, since those jobs are few and definitely already filled.

So, it's a hobby, instead.

return TEST_SUCCESS

I've heard what you're describing phrase as follows:

"If you want to know who truly values you, look for the people who would not be able to replace you with someone else."

That usually has us pointing to friends and family, with the odd exception.

That's also perfectly valid.

Maybe it's a saturation thing. The people I call my friends are plenty ready to chat about philosophy, psychology, politics, money, television or books they like, maybe play some games...but they kinda just glaze over when I want to talk about computers or some silly electronics project I'm futzing with. I could see the opposite being true, as well.

Balance in all things, I suppose.

Agreed, and I've always hated that phrase since it seems like it has two different meanings, depending on who is uttering it;

1. People who use "do what you love" to mean "love what you do," as though you can force yourself to enjoy anything. This is only true for people who lie to themselves and compromise regularly against their own interests.

2. The Lucky Ones™ who happened to accidentally align an enjoyable hobby with a career and think because they "did it," anyone can, without acknowledging that they were simply in the right place at the right time with the right skills, or that the stars don't exactly align the same way for the rest of us.

Sort of. We have to understand what a SARA project is, how and where DSP would be employed, etc...hence why I mentioned its pretty niche. Radio astronomy, from my outsider understanding, is not something a newbie just walks in the door and picks up on. You have to have some experience with typical SDR use, data collection, etc.

There's a threshold where they won't because the buy-in will outweigh the "just for fun" aspect of it. I'm interested in watching your site to see if we reach that point. It's possible that you may have created a tool to help study decision theory :)

To be honest, I don't want another social media platform. I just want a group of people that I can talk computers, old tech and projects with and zero risk of politics, religion, or any of the various -isms entering the fray.

If anyone sees this No Starch book (which is decent, btw, as one can expect from No Starch) and wants to dive in, start here: https://www.rtl-sdr.com/rtl-sdr-quick-start-guide/

There's a lot of garbage equipment out there and it's easy to buy something that does not work or creates spurious emissions or other weird interference and incompatibilities. Unless you know how to mitigate these issues with a deeper understanding of electronics and RF, you're going to struggle to get good results.

That site is easily the most comprehensive starting point for beginners, but read through it carefully before purchasing a dongle.

It's a bit niche in the radio hobby, but very cool. That said, it is marketed to a very specific type of radio hobbyist which is probably best explained by looking at the first few sections of the manual, specifically around section 2a if you want to get a better sense of who this is for

User Manual: https://rasdr.org/release/1.2.4/RASDR-Users-manual-v1.7.5.pd...

It's not just you. I won't call it wrong, but does it draw out some of the worst qualities in people? Absolutely.

One good thing you can do now is start unloading some of your own estate so you can enjoy a bit of the cash that comes from it, maybe spending it on a fun activity or experience istead of just buying more stuff. Or, donate useful items to local shelters so that people in need can benefit a bit from your excess, mild as though it may be. We don't have to be wealthy to help someone else out and when we unburden ourselves from our dust-collecting stuff, we also unburden the person who has to deal with it when we die.

Huge difference between me saying manufacturers will cut corners in any way they can (maybe you're taking this as consumer vs manufacterer?) and the person who replied to me saying I don't work a job that encounters "real" (read intentionally vague and diminutive) QC standars. One is a blanket statement that is backed by easily accessed and very public evidence, the other is personal attack.

Please do not conflate the two.

That's great! What country are you in?

For context, I am in the US and in a position to see what goes on behind the scenes in most of the major auto-maker factories and some aerospace, but that's about as far as I can talk about it, since some of them are DoD contracters.

Quality Control is a valuable tool when deployed correctly and, itself, monitored for consistency and areas where improvement can happen. There is what I consider a limp-wristed effort to improve QC in the US, but in the end, it's really about checking some bureaucratic box as opposed to actually making better product, although sometimes we get lucky and the two align.

Your comment is adversarial for no reason. "Real" QC? I work for people who make vehicles on the ground and in the air that hold passengers expecting to be delivered safely. Some of them even make parts for very large structures that are expected to remain standing when the wind blows too hard or the ground shakes too much. Let's talk about "real" QC and these other imagined types that must exist to you.

Can you define the differences between "real" QC and other versions? Does this imply a "fake" QC? Does that mean that our auto and aerospace manufacturers can't hold themselves to the same quality standards as Big Pharma, since both are ultimately trying to achieve the same goal in avoiding the litigation that comes with putting your customers at risk?

Let's not pretend that pharma co's have never side-stepped regulation or made decisions that put swaths of the population in a position to harm themselves.

My argument was dispelling the general idea that just because rules are in place, they are being followed. Believe me, I'd love to live in that world, but have seen little evidence that we do.

> Any manufacturing process is subject to quality controls.

A few things on this illusion:

* Any manufacturer will do everything in their power to avoid meeting anything but the barest minimums of standards due to budget concerns

* QA workers are often pressured to let small things fly and cave easily because they simply do not get paid enough to care and know they won't win that fight unless their employer's product causes some major catastrophe that costs lives

* Most common goods and infrastructure are built by the lowest bidder with the cheapest materials using underpaid labor, so as for "quality" we're already starting at the bottom.

There is this notion that because things like ISO and QC standards exist, people follow them. The enforcement of quality is weak and the reach of any enforcing bodies is extremely short when pushed up against the wall by the teams of lawyers afforded to companies like Boeing or Stellantis.

I see it too regularly at my job to not call out this idea that quality control is anything but smoke and mirrors, deployed with minimal effort and maximum reluctance. Hell, it's arguably the reason why I have a job since about 75% of the machines I walk in their doors to fix broke because they were improperly maintained, poorly implemented or sabotaged by an inept operator. It leaves me embittered, to be honest, because it doesn't have to be this way and the only reason why it is boils down to greed and mismanagement.

What's even more wild is that many users, even on HN, don't seem to pick up on the fact that the alternatives to Firefox are either Chrome or Chrome in different colored trenchcoats. Firefox is like the last bastion of user choice when it comes to deciding how we interact with the Internet, a choice that has been subtly but steadily stripped from us for years.

My question to the FOSS community is why Firefox is not used to build more independent browsers the way Chrome is? While I stand fast on the ground that Google wants to monopolize our web experience, it really seems like the community at large is just...letting it happen. The only strong contender that I've seen built from FF is Iceweasel/cat which works fine for my needs, but is definitely not winning any popularity contests despite actively knocking out those non-free parts of FF.

This is a concise and informative answer, thanks. I'll revisit my assumptions about the differences as a result.

This is a nice looking tool, but I need a reason why I should sign-up/sign-in before I hand over credentials. Does having an account allow me to save search history, create links between articles, etc?

What is a runtime environment if not just another word for "framework?" If this guy wants to move away from the clunk and junk of web frameworks, how about actually building from scratch using pure HTML and CSS?

Businesses would. The problem with that is you have decision makers in said businesses who don't know any better, so Microsoft-all-the-things gets pushed down the line. Offices are all trapped on Windows 10/11 and using Teams/Outlook with Exchange/Entra/Azure chugging along in all its misconfigured glory. Heck, half the MSPs I work side-by-side with seem to only offer support on Windows machines.

It gets worse. When we go to the manufacturing side of the building, there's a high chance they're still using Windows 7. Yeah, still! And IT or Controls has no idea what to do with it since, well, it's still working. Is it secure? They don't know because the team is comprised of kids who memorized the CompTIA exams and use Windows 11 at home.

Trying to get the business world to switch to Linux with all that in mind is an impossible task. It's the same as asking an American city to rip out all its old infrastructure at once and replace it with new instead of patching the old. The cost and knowledge required for such a task is unthinkable, to them. Believe me, I've tried.

Microsoft was quite brilliant in the way that they shoehorned their way into the fabric of the way we do business, not just in the US, but on a global scale.

If you can and are willing, join Skywarn and help with weather spotting in your area.

You do not need a radio license as things can be called in by phone, too.

https://www.weather.gov/skywarn/

And there it is. The massive scam culture of Meta is profitable for Meta, without them having to actively participate in the scams, and therefore it will remain. This problem exists for the same reason we have crooked cops in every major police department in the US; when you pay someone to turn a blind-eye to certain activities, they will probably take the money. Meta gets so much engagement from scams, AI content and misinformation that their empire would collapse without it, at this point.

This is so important as we move forward with tech, but we can't forget to look back, too.

As an enthusiast of vintage tech who enjoys repairing them when I can, it is getting harder and harder to find original or compatible parts in a lot of cases, simply because the company that made them 30-40 years ago no longer exists (or, sometimes, still exists but operates in an entirely different capacity).

A recent example I encountered of adversarial interoperability was having to order a product from Glitch Works on Tindie.com. They make a modern-hardware replacement for an outdated Dallas DSXXXX security chip that was put in some old bar-top video game machines, something I enjoy fixing now and then. For those below a certain age, these big CRT video game machines sat on the counter in bars, patrons feeding in dollars to play video poker or slots using a handful of physical buttons built into the cabinet.

The Dallas chips have a battery epoxied into them, so when that dies, so does the machine, the idea being that you replace the chip and the machine works again. Except when you can't find a replacement chip to purchase, or the new-old stock you find is the same age, complete with dead battery. That Dallas had planned from the start to keep customers locked in to their product line is, in my experience, creating an adversarial relationship with the consumer.

Glitch Works makes a replacement that sits in the slot with an exposed coin cell that is easy to replace...aka, how it should have been made to begin with. So, the last bar-top game I worked on was able to run like new again with a modern part that took about three minutes to install.

Fark feels like the echo of a dream these days. It's like the Friendster of news aggregators; it came on the scene first, set the tone for everything that followed, then faded from memory.