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dqv

2,582 karma · joined September 4, 2016

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dqv··on No Sloptober
Abstaining from something you use for 11 months out of the year doesn't strike me as "bitter old engineer that is unable to learn and adapt as things change".
dqv··on What do Visa and Mastercard do? An intro to card networks
If the money is taken out of your checking account and you can't pay a bill or rent, you are in the same exact situation of having your credit/rental history ruined. The time horizon for that happening is just sooner. The credit card still wins.
dqv··on What do Visa and Mastercard do? An intro to card networks
This would also solve a major annoyance I have with card payments, which is no way to link a particular purchase back to a transaction.

With checks, you write a check and can write down the check number with a note about what the payment was for. When the payment posts, the check number is part of the transaction. With a card payment, they charge your card and, sometimes days later, there's a pre-authorization with some obscure transaction description. So many scary transaction descriptions that make me think "wait is this fraud".

With this method, the approval flow would also allow people to add a blurb for what the transaction is for.

dqv··on What do Visa and Mastercard do? An intro to card networks
> Practically, Reg E is essentially as strong as Reg Z.

Not even practically, but that's beside the point. The point is that with regulation E, I am potentially put in a position where I have to work to get my money back; I have to file a lawsuit against the bank if I think their determination is wrong (and that's assuming there isn't an arbitration provision, but many people don't realize they agreed to binding arbitration).

With regulation Z, the bank has to work to get their money back. They have to file the lawsuit against me if they really want the money. And it's $0 liability under many circumstances mandated through the regulation, not just a revocable promise from the bank.

dqv··on What do Visa and Mastercard do? An intro to card networks
> likely

> will

Which is why the credit card is still the better option. Especially given that the max liability on a credit card is always $50 if caught within the first 60 days, while the max liability on a debit card is $50 only if caught within the first two days, then up to $500 if reported after up to 60 days.

They may post a provisional credit when I report the fraud on the debit card or they can wait up to 10 days to do so. With a credit card, no money has left my account and I get the final say on whether I want to part ways with my real money. If the bank really wants to fuck me over by saying it's not fraud, I get to make it as unprofitable as possible for them, which includes forcing them to sue me if they really want the money.

I will take the ding to my credit report and a lawsuit over actual money taken directly out of my account any day.

dqv··on The revolt of the reader
Idk, it's more like "your writing is cliché and I don't feel like reading it because I've already read something that sounded similar countless times and it wasn't worth the read". The source of the clichés being an LLM. And maybe now humans are writing the same way as LLM output, I still am not going to read all that, sorry. If I see a sea of clichés, I'm going the other way.

I'm also not reading pumpkin spice murder mysteries for a similar reason. I'm also not reading stories where everybody clapped. Actually, I'm already familiar with petrichor, so unless someone has surrounded the word "petrichor" with non-cliché prose, I'm also not going to read all that.

dqv··on Google Antigravity TOS: 3rd party usage can get Google account suspended
Nah, we all pay for a lawyer with our taxes: the attorney general.

What you do is send Google your own correspondence, certified mail, giving them a heads up that you've contacted the attorney general. That usually gets an even quicker response than from a personal lawyer :)

It also gives the attorney general office a heads up if they need to be scrutinizing a company like Google more carefully if they're getting a lot of complaints.

Situations like this are exactly what they're here for.

https://www.naag.org/find-my-ag/

dqv··on AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late
That's why the "but it's illegal" propaganda is so unconvincing for me. It's really "but it's illegal (and we want to keep it that way)".
dqv··on AI companies destroy physical books – let's scan rare books before it's too late
The other thing they could be doing is using some of that lobbying money to try to reform copyright law to allow them to release the scans that are still covered.

It would likewise earn goodwill from a lot of people.

dqv··on I used to be excited about new tech, but I rarely am anymore
> It’s really refreshing to see their excitement about new technologies and the future

What new technologies are they excited about?

dqv··on Beef and dairy drive 41% of biodiversity damage linked to global farmland
Yes and doing regenerative practices all the way to the end would naturally force this reduction in consumption. It would be really good, because the land used to grow feed could be redirected to other more efficient uses.
dqv··on Beef and dairy drive 41% of biodiversity damage linked to global farmland
No, we slaughter that many each year.

And maximize how they're fed in the last months of their lives in feedlots.

They were certainly not killing 30 million bison each year.

The only answer here is less meat production, especially feedlot-finished, no matter how people try to twist it.

dqv··on Kinney Drugs pulls back AI phone assistant after hundreds of customer complaints
Yes, down to the false equivalence of "human hallucination" with AI hallucination. Except that a human who hallucinates too much will eventually be permanently discredited and especially so if that human is trying to be an expert in too many things. Yet we are asked over and over again to forgive the LLM's mistakes because of what it can do. Oh it can do this right, this was just one situation where it did something wrong. So tiresome.
dqv··on Kinney Drugs pulls back AI phone assistant after hundreds of customer complaints
AI customer service doesn't fucking listen. A few years ago, I noticed that my bank had an old address on file for only one of my accounts. When I clicked edit next to the old address, it would bring me to a page that had the correct address.

At the time, they had a real person handling their support. The real person told me this was just a glitch and that my correct address was on file and everything is fine.

That wasn't actually true. A new debit card to replace my expiring one ended up being sent to the old address a couple of months ago.

So I go back to the website to try to edit it one last time. Same problem.

I call them and get their fucking stupid AI slopbot.

Still, I explain the whole situation:

> I'm trying to update my address on the website. When I click the edit link next to the old address, it shows my new address instead. I need to remove the old address.

What did the slopbot decide to say? Oh well, I should go on the website and edit my address of course! I gave it two more chances by trying to explain it a different way and how this didn't work.

Did it accept that and escalate the issue to a human? No. It kept telling me to go to the website.

I had to say

> Hey you fucking bitch, how many times do I have to tell you that doesn't fucking work? Escalate this to a fucking human before I get the attorney general involved.

to finally get a live person to fix it (I actually had to do this twice, the first set of fucks, the slopbot forgot what problem I was having and needed a refresher!). Suffice it to say, I will never trust any large amount of money with this bank again. I'm highly skeptical of any company using AI CS now, because this is one of my many experiences where the slopbot is incapable of recognizing a complex situation outside of its capabilities.

I mean look at this situation: their AI slopbot turned this one mistake into 5 mistakes instead of just allowing it to be one that another human corrects.

It's gotten to the point where whenever I see someone lauding AI customer support, I just assume they have an investment/job that hinges on people liking it and/or their only experiences are using it as a glorified refund button.

dqv··on US beef prices have soared but farmers aren't making more money
You have to cut out feedlot finishing to get those benefits on a macro scale, which would drastically reduce beef output. It's the same problem organic has, but maybe even worse since 99%? of cows are feedlot-finished.

Which isn't really a negative to me, but I think people should be honest about what is actually necessary to get the benefits of this form of beef production.

dqv··on Nashville uses eminent domain to block data center near zoo
> The data centers in Aurora are surrounded with prairie green space

I'm skeptical that they're actually surrounded by American prairie. What are the addresses of some of the data centers you're talking about?

Edit: I just see traditional American landscaping surrounding the CyrusOne data center in Aurora. I don't really see any native forbs or native grasses and it has a bunch of trees... where's the prairie?

dqv··on No Data Centers in My Backyard
Some new ones might be.
dqv··on Thanks FedEx, This Is Why We Keep Getting Phished (2024)
For the past 2 years I've gotten backscatter from a phishing campaign that uses a domain I own in the from address. Every single domain they try to get the victims to click on is a .com

The most recent one is detention-unit.com, which probably does trick a lot of the people getting these phishing emails since the targets don't seem to speak English as a first language.

As an aside, an alarming number of server admins don't check SPF so these emails are actually getting into people's inboxes.

dqv··on AI poster wins Ohio State Fair contest
Yes, just like we accepted steroids in sports.
dqv··on 'Crush this lady': how eBay harassment campaign led to $56M payout
https://symbolic.ai/team
dqv··on A pharmacy chain in Vermont implemented AI for efficiency
You can try, but then a different group of people might come around and say it's editorializing.
dqv··on A pharmacy chain in Vermont implemented AI for efficiency
Unable to titlemax due to HN maxtitle rules.
dqv··on Why a $154B CEO just endorsed stripping most Americans of voting rights
Oh yeah, uh, sure it's hate speech. It's wealthism. One of the worst forms of prejudice. The wealthy live in constant fear for something that's not even their fault... they didn't choose to be wealthy, they were just born that way.

If you're seeing this violent sentiment spill over to HN, just imagine how the general population is starting to feel about billionaires.

dqv··on US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search
No, you're not.

And idk how people don't understand how "politeness" gets weaponized.

This video is an example

https://youtu.be/amSIcL3V5C4?is=hmlOx2t7dHg5j-lJ

Here, the only way this guy could've had a "good attitude" is if he had let the lady do whatever she wants with his service dog. This behavior is very common in situations where people feel entitled to something, but know the counterparty has the absolute right to refuse to cooperate. No matter how politely that information is conveyed, it's "rude" because they're being denied something they want.

The police don't like my attitude when I firmly say "no, sorry, I won't be unlocking my phone. I will only do what I am legally required to do."

People have a hard time understanding this because they are under the impression that they know how to be polite because they do what they think is polite. They are unaware that politeness is subjective and slippery and that people can and do use it to manipulate others into doing things they're uncomfortable with.

dqv··on GrapheneOS protections against data extraction from locked devices
Yes, it would be interesting if the question was formulated like "we're gonna need a password" and this ends up being a lawyerdog situation. https://blogs.illinois.edu/view/25/574827
dqv··on Possible invasive species superspreader event near Strait of Hormuz
Did you try reading the Biological Invasions article they link to? --> https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10530-026-038...

It's way past my bedtime, so I will have to read it in the morning, but it already seems to address several of your questions.

dqv··on Man convicted of child sex crime by added _ char "Fus Ro Dah" Skyrim username
There are a lot of people on HN who really don't like criticism of the police, but the surface-level reason will be "it's not technology-related".
dqv··on Kaiser nurses say AI, surveillance are making their jobs and patient care worse
I'm frowning upon your use of a good experience that one person had in a completely different context to overshadow a bad use of AI that affects hundreds of thousands of people. They both happened in healthcare, but other than that, they are different situations with different outcomes.

I made a single presumption: that the PCP's use of AI for this situation is not mandatory. Is it mandatory or is it not?

In 2024 when the AI empathy snakeoil machine was inflicted on the nurses, the nurses had no choice in the matter. And management has already established that they may do something like this again.

Your situation is completely different. It's a doctor overseeing their own tool. If the AI makes a mistake, the doctor is responsible and would presumably take responsibility. Who is responsible if an AI tool makes a mistake in a performance evaluation of an employee? The employee! The employee is guilty until proven innocent. But the employee gets no choice in whether that AI tool is used against them (absent a union agreement which dictates how AI tools can be used).

The reason I fear the misuse of AI is because it is so useful.

dqv··on Kaiser nurses say AI, surveillance are making their jobs and patient care worse
They already did a trial which used the trendy buzzword to surveil the nurses. The nurses want to implement controls on that trendy buzzword before it is further misused by management to cause harm to patients (by way of making the nurses focus on meeting some arbitrary performance metric rather than focusing on patient care).
dqv··on Kaiser nurses say AI, surveillance are making their jobs and patient care worse
... They're aware that it's individuals in management, which is why they want to use their union contract to dictate how management can use AI.
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