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dr_faustus

1,141 karma · joined June 27, 2012

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dr_faustus··on Blizzard Revives 'StarCraft' Franchise with Open-World Sci-Fi Shooter
WARHAMMER 40.000: SPACE MARINE 5 (i guess real studios will crank out two more of those before this one is released...)
dr_faustus··on Anthropic tells investors it will be profitable for second straight quarter
Pathetic! At my company, we have a 100% margin before accounting for cost!
dr_faustus··on Full Scale Foldable Wing Extensions
Let's hope, it doesn't fall off...
dr_faustus··on Caffeine, cocaine, and painkillers detected in sharks from The Bahamas
Thank god, it's not microplastic!
dr_faustus··on Resistance training load does not determine hypertrophy
Has this not been common knowledge for a long time? The argument for high load/low reps has always been that it a) saves time and b) will increase your strength (vs. muscle size) more. Both of which are important factors, especially if you are doing strength training not for cosmetic but health reasons. The number of 8-12 reps to muscle failure has been promoted because a too low number of reps (too high load) seems not to induce as much hypertrophy and is bad for your joints, etc..
dr_faustus··on Security issues with electronic invoices
Your statements about Germany are not correct: Factur-X is not common in Germany at all, the German version of this standard (albeit very closely related to Factur-X) is called Zugferd and it is by no means mandatory in Germany.

Actually, most governmental agencies (which have required e-invoices for many years), only accept the pure XML files. Zugferd is a bit of an interim solution until everybody is familiar with an e-invoice visualizer. There are already many free (as in beer and source) solutions available for that. Zugferd (X-Factur) is a problematic standard, because there can be discrepancies between the PDF and the embedded file and its unclear, which is authorative. Concerning the platforms: I don't know about France, but in Germany, sending e-invoices by e-mail is explicitly permitted by the government.

dr_faustus··on As U.S. and E.U. Retreat on Climate, China Takes the Leadership Role
Well, as they should, because they are now by far the biggest emitter with higher CO2 emissions than the EU and US combined. Even their per capita emissions have surpassed countries like Germany.
dr_faustus··on Microsoft will change how 'Call of Duty' is sold
Didn't they promise regulators, that they wouldn't exclude other platforms from Activision games, CoD in particular? So if they now give it away to the users of their platform but users of other platforms have to pay top dollar, is that not more or the less the same as excluding them. They basically use the Activision franchise to force users on their platform.
dr_faustus··on Hetzner GPU Server
Trustpilot is a scam which encourages bad reviews to force companies to buy their paid plan to “manage” those bad reviews and to feed it good reviews.
dr_faustus··on Amazon on the hook for revolting use of concealed clothes hook spy cam
I don’t know about the US, but at least in Germany, Amazon has lost control of its inventory many years ago. Fake products, fake reviews, empty boxes, etc. have been very common. There are also many products having no or faked safety certificates. So it’s not surprising that you can buy stuff like spy cams intended for illicit use on there.
dr_faustus··on Why we’re dropping Basecamp
One might call it: first world problems…
dr_faustus··on Okta hit by third-party breach, stealing employee data
Be it as it may, it does not really matter, whether it came from a Okta database or of any other company. It further compromises Okta's security which is pretty bad because being secure is basically their primary service proposition.
dr_faustus··on Okta hit by third-party breach, stealing employee data
I don’t know why people are all pretending like this is irrelevant to Okta's security.

An employee list like that is a goldmine for all sorts of social engineering and phishing attacks.

dr_faustus··on X.org Hit by New Security Vulnerabilities – Two Date Back to 1988 with X11R2
I really hope they rename themselves to Twitter.org, soon. I had to click on the link to realize its not the website but the display server...
dr_faustus··on Satya Nadella Says Copilot Will Be as Significant as the PC
Only in the metaverse…
dr_faustus··on OnlyOffice: Free open source office suite with business productivity tools
Be is it may, there are companies like iText (Java PDF library) which are actively harassing companies which use their software, even if the use is perfectly legal (e.g. internal server software). So it's not only Google spreading FUD but companies which try to use AGPL as a trojan horse and then strong-arm users into commercial licenses.

The problem with AGPL is, that the definitions are very open to interpretation. What is a network, how many systems do have to be between to the end user and the software component to still count as "interacting over a network", etc.

So I would also not recommend to use AGPL in your company...

dr_faustus··on There are now two types of PayPal dollars, and one is better than the other
Well the argument completely hinges on the assumption, that this Paxos outfit is not the same kind of shit show practically all the other crypto exchanges/issuers/brokers/funds are. Since the majority of major crypto companies have to be shown to be either incompetent or fraudulent, I for one would not bet on that.

Since there is almost no money to be made with the "stablecoin" business model (at least compared to the profits/illicit gains of other crypto business models), the probability that something shady is going on is unfortunately quite high.

dr_faustus··on German military's mission impossible, attracting recruits
Another problem is the reputation of veterans. While many countries with a closer relationship between military and population (e.g. USA and UK) have managed to make a military career a great feature on your resume, in Germany it‘s almost assumed that you weren’t able to get a proper job and therefore ended up in the Bundeswehr. Enlisting for a couple of years is more or less career suicide so almost noone with a sought after degree would consider it.
dr_faustus··on Quench of LHC inner triplet magnet causes a small leak with major consequences
Just reading that gives you an inkling of an idea what kind of amazing feat of engineering the LHC is. I really hope governments keep funding basic research like that because it teaches us not only about nature but also how to built those incredible machines.
dr_faustus··on Meta fined $1.3B over data transfers to U.S.
Those fines are ridiculously low considering VW had to pay 30$ billion in fines and other compensatory payments for the diesel emission standard violations (1). So anyone who thinks its the EU which is using fines compensate for tax evasion should have a hard look at what the US has been doing for years (and mostly to companies, which actually ARE paying taxes on their profits albeit not in the US)

(1) https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/judge-approves-larges...

dr_faustus··on Ryuichi Sakamoto’s newly released final playlist, played at his funeral
As one would expect from any serious composer: lots of Bach…
dr_faustus··on Pushup Offers Speed of Go in Web Development Framework
I wonder if the template syntax with no explicit terminator for variables and expressions is a good idea. I can see many footguns for the user and the parser…
dr_faustus··on Apple Music Classical is now available from the App Store
I think, it's great and it will probably make me switch from Spotify to Apple Music. Spotify is a complete shit show if it comes to classical. The search results are mostly useless and the lack of standardization in the naming of classical "songs" makes it very hard to find different performances of the same piece.

Also whether and in which meta data field you can find the composer, soloist, conductor, etc. is also quite random. They don't enforce any standards on the meta data they get from the labels and the labels don't seem to care, either.

From what I've seen in the Apple Music Classical app, the do a very good job in aggregating and cleaning up the meta data. I don't find the interface to be super intuitive, but it's good enough.

Spotify also mangles the audio quality to such a degree that often the same recording on YouTube has better quality than the Spotify one (which I pay for...).

I just hope that Apple can convince some of the missing labels which have been holding out (looking at you, Hyperion).

dr_faustus··on Pgrok – Poor Man’s Ngrok
We’ve used https://github.com/antoniomika/sish quite successfully. It‘s very easy to setup with docker compose and even supports letsencrypt wildcard certificates.
dr_faustus··on The Dogs of Chernobyl
If you came here for 3-eyed dogs, you will be sorely disappointed!
dr_faustus··on Pope Francis nationalizes all assets and property owned by the Vatican
The 600 billion figure is almost certainly false. The estimates vary by a lot but most figures are in the ball park of 30 billion.
dr_faustus··on Toxic Exposure: The True Story Behind the Monsanto Trials
Next up: "The will say anything for money: The true story of how expert witnesses made up all kinds of bullshit over the years and got paid handsomely for it."

Expert witnesses caused all sorts of suffering by giving misleading or plainly false testimony and forced the first lyme disease vaccine of the market (https://time.com/6073576/lyme-disease-vaccine/). Just one example.

dr_faustus··on Smoking is associated with lower cognitive function in older adults
The question is: are people stupid because they are smoking or are they smoking because they are stupid.

From the press release, it does not seem that they took any measures to establish causation (like comparing IQ tests from the time before people started smoking). I would wager that people with higher cognitive abilities might be more amenable to the advice of their doctors.

dr_faustus··on Microsoft to lay off 11k employees
Not to offend anyone affected, but considering the cost/profit structure of those big companies has not really changed that much (except, maybe, Meta), I get the feeling, that this round of layoffs is in some ways welcomed by those companies.

In many cases, they are basically returning to pre-pandemic levels and instead of an actual financial need, these layoffs are probably a result of the fact that you cannot effectively incorporate an headcount increase of 20% in a high-tech company within 1-2 years. It seems like they hired to please investors because everyone else was also hiring like mad. Since the shareholder expectations have reversed, the companies are using the "opportunity" to return to manageable numbers of engineers and administrators.

dr_faustus··on [dead]
So more proof that atomic bombs just aren‘t as bad as they always say!
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