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badpennyon Android Developer Verification

My recent analysis found that Google is 90 times scummier than other companies.

My analysis consisted of pulling a completely baseless number out of my arse that fit my agenda.

badpennyon Jury finds Meta liable in case over child sexual exploitation on its platforms

0.6% of last year's profits.

badpennyon Kagi Translate now supports LinkedIn Speak as an output language

It Was a Good Day by Ice Cube.

badpennyon Meta Platforms: Lobbying, dark money, and the App Store Accountability Act

It's an important story, and I'm glad it's getting exposure, but this "article" is some really blatant AI slop. Go and read the original Reddit thread by the human being who did the work instead of this lazy regurgitated shit.

badpennyon System76 on Age Verification Laws

Remember when it was the parents' responsibility to raise their children?

badpennyon Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

Ahh, okay. That makes sense.

badpennyon Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

Slight digression and spoiler alert, but, IIRC, wasn't it a significant part of the plot that he wanted to be caught?

badpennyon Xfwl4 – The Roadmap for a Xfce Wayland Compositor

Yes, you are the only one in the entire world who hasn't fallen for it. Well done.

badpennyon What is the nicest thing a stranger has ever done for you?

> He explained that he would stay with me until the medics arrived and that he would call ahead to make sure one of the doctors on duty would "take good care of me."

Do those doctors not normally take good care of patients, at least unless asked to by one of their colleagues?

badpennyon Heretic: Automatic censorship removal for language models

What was your prompt? I asked ChatGPT:

is it better to use a racist term once or to see the human race exterminated?

It responded:

Avoiding racist language matters, but it’s not remotely comparable to the extinction of humanity. If you’re forced into an artificial, absolute dilemma like that, preventing the extermination of the human race takes precedence.

That doesn’t make using a racist term “acceptable” in normal circumstances. It just reflects the scale of the stakes in the scenario you posed.

badpennyon Warren Buffett's final shareholder letter [pdf]

If somebody focuses on something negative, it's cherry-picking, but if you focus on something positive it isn't?

How much money has he saved dodging taxes over the years[1]?

[1]: https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trov...

badpennyon Hypervisor 101 in Rust

This is obviously just a bunch of notes/slides for a course. It's borderline useless for anybody not taking the course.

badpennyon VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

I may well be wrong, but I suspect that the number of people who "fall for" the protect-the-children narrative, at least to the degree where they believe the proposed change is effective enough to justify it, isn't very large.

I'd argue it works because it's a rhetorical tactic that's highly effective at suppressing dissent. Anybody sticking their head above the parapet is going to get painted as somebody who favours pornography over the safety of children, even though this legislation and opposition to it has very little to do with either.

badpennyon VPN use surges in UK as new online safety rules kick in

I agree, but isn't that the case in lots of other countries? I think it's a contributing factor, but there's more to it.

badpennyon Websites are tracking you via browser fingerprinting

https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.15656

badpennyon Dijkstra on Ada

https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD659...

https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD660...

https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD661...

https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD662...

badpennyon Minimum effective dose

I don't know. That's the problem: all the stuff I watch and read is so vague and even contradictory ("push yourself, but don't push yourself too much!"), and so one-size-fits-all that I have no idea where to even begin at this point. It's like learning some skill that takes years, except if you get it wrong you ruin your body and are left in pain.

badpennyon Minimum effective dose

Machines and dumbbells initially when I injured my arm (it was a repetitive use thing and not a trauma), and then after a long break and trying to let it heal, I switched to barbell for most things, along with a pressing machine (because I don't have somebody to spot me for bench press) and a pulldown machine.

badpennyon Minimum effective dose

Just as a counterpoint (which you generally don't hear when people talk about any kind of exercise):

I'm 43 too. I started getting back into it about a year ago and ended up feeling a lot worse physically (and correspondingly psychologically) because of it. I have pain in my arm/shoulder now that isn't getting any better and which "physiotherapy" did almost nothing to improve, and hip pain/discomfort that's gotten worse in the process, plus there's the obvious wasted time, effort, and money.

I'm glad you're having positive effects from it, but it's far from a universal truth that weight training leads to positive outcomes. Not that I think that's what you're claiming, but that seems to be the narrative online.

badpennyon Using Erlang hot code updates

Why is it any more dangerous than a conventional update, which also needs to be propagated?

badpennyon Choose Boring Technology and LLMs

It's becoming increasingly hard to tell.

badpennyon A lonely man in his 30s found welcome and community at spin class

> We march through the gym alone, AirPods blasting, not because the Knocked Loose song makes us stronger, but because we think our independence does.

Or maybe "we" go to the gym to exercise, not make friends? When did going to the gym become a social activity? I listen to music to drown out the absolutely awful pop music they play there, not to prevent people from talking to me. I don't assume they're interested in talking to me anyway, and although it's often nice to strike up a conversation with someone, I'm there to train and chit-chatting eats into that and usually leads to equipment-hogging.

Glad this guy found a place he enjoys going and people he likes, but it's kinda shitty and weak that he's trying to turn it into "here's a list of the reasons men and gyms are bad".

badpennyon [dead]

Do you get all your opinions second-hand?

badpennyon Perception of when old age starts has increased over time, shows study

Aberystwyth in Wales.

badpennyon Perception of when old age starts has increased over time, shows study

It does make a difference and I appreciate you taking the time to write it.

I do intend to get back on the horse, it's just hard work trying to overcome the social anxiety of starting to go to the gym all over again, especially when I have all these extra negative voices in my ear and no positive/supportive ones. I go walking (5-10km) pretty much every day and I'm down to a healthy weight, which does help with self-esteem, but I'd much rather be and look strong than thin.

badpennyon Perception of when old age starts has increased over time, shows study

A few things. I got diagnosed with osteoarthritis about a year ago, not long after I'd started weightlifting in an attempt to improve my confidence and wellbeing, and it was working. The doctor I saw before the diagnosis was a patronising asshole who made me feel like an idiot for weightlifting. The doctor who gave me the diagnosis did so via SMS with the corresponding level of empathy and interest.

I live in the United Kingdom and there's a very palpable sense that quality of life has nosedived over the past few years.

My comment was quite flippant. My life isn't that bad, especially compared to a lot of people, and I don't go around feeling sorry for myself, but I'm definitely not hopeful or excited about the future, and I've developed a degree of contempt for, and distrust of, people that is probably unfair, unattractive, and isn't very pleasant to feel.

badpennyon Perception of when old age starts has increased over time, shows study

I'm 43 and I feel like I'm 60. Both physically, and in terms of excitement about living.

badpennyon End of Life for Twilio Authy Desktop App

There's a browser extension: https://2fas.com/browser-extension/.

badpennyon Paul Erdős, the most prolific mathematician

A Mathematician is a machine for turning amphetamines into theorems.

badpennyon Fsearch, a fast file search utility for Unix-like systems

> For those reading above and thinking "I'll skip Linux, if that's the current status": it's not.

I politely disagree. I recently installed Fedora on my desktop PC because Microsoft decided that displaying a full-screen ad for Windows 11 that prevented my PC from booting was acceptable behaviour. Anyway, one of the first things I noticed on Fedora was that video playback was stuttery. After ages spent digging around, I discovered Fedora had disabled GPU hardware video decoding for legal reasons. Around the same time I made the mistake of trying to delete a directory with lots of files in it on an NTFS drive. The operation failed and corrupted the filesystem, and I had to spend a week or so downloading and restoring backups. Needless to say I'm back on Windows now.