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iteria

667 karma · joined July 7, 2023

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iteria··on Let's Ditch Google (Verb)
Someone tried to make them lose the trademark. They kept it in court because people literally mean search on Google when they say Google. They don't mean search in general. And that's fair, I don't say Google as a verb now that I use Kagi for search.
iteria··on There's a high chance of devices being sold with GrapheneOS preinstalled in 2027
I keep my phone until the security updates stop. I buy top of the line phones because cheaper one suck. I tried a cheap phone and it used to lock up all the time. These phones are crappier than my obsolete top of the line phone. There has got to be a middle ground between 1K flagship phones and cheap sub-$200 phones, but I swear I can't find it.

I just keep buying phones with way more features than I desire just so that having too many apps open at once or going to the wrong Javascript laden web page doesn't slow my phone to a crawl. I just tell myself that at least I only replace my phone every 5 to 7 years. If it wasn't for work, I'd keep them longer, but the OS has to be patched for work stuff to be on it.

iteria··on Devastated father says his 9-year-old son spent $118,000 on YouTube ads
I think because kids accounts literally exist and don't allow this. The did didn't set up a kid's account for his... kid. Google had safe guards and he used exactly none of them. I'd blame Google if the kid subverted the controls in some way, but doesn't sound like he did. Either the dad let the kid use the account, lied on account creation for the kid or turned the controls off because they were too annoying (this one I have seen a lot). At a certain point we have to be responsible for our own actions.
iteria··on Devastated father says his 9-year-old son spent $118,000 on YouTube ads
As a parent, I would say yes. Anyone who has kids know they spend any money you give them access to. I daughter spent $100 on snacks in a week because it on her school swipe account. Kids are just like this. My kid has her own kids google account where all purchases have to be approved explicitly by me, the parent account. The dad could have done that, but he didn't. This is literally why kids accounts exist. There are many horror stories about kids spending their parents money going bad decades. Every parent has a story. There's no way the dad couldn't have considered this as a possibility. This is setting aside that he shouldn't have mixed his work cards with his personal accounts.
iteria··on How I advertise malicious software on Google Ads
This is why after 2 good faith attempts, I just report them to the government. It turns out when you report a car insurance company to the state regulatory body, you suddenly know how to contact you. Nope, to bad. Deal with the government. Felt sweet to get a check in the mail from the IRS after resolution.

That was the most recent time, but I've done it a couple of times. I do everything digitally, so it's always easy to prove my case.

iteria··on Among European Companies That Use a CDN, Nearly 9 in 10 Use Cloudflare
I'm American and I take 30 days of PTO a year. I get paid the national median for pay, but that still puts me in the top 10% of _household_ incomes for my state. I have good healthcare and benefits. Hell, I got sick last year and took 2 months off from work paid because my company has the policies to cover that and then I came back and it was fine.

Like, I find SV culture and living to be a cancer, but I'm just saying as someone who doesn't live in a top 10 city in the US with a MCOL, I struggle to think of how working as a software engineer in the EU would be better.

It's been over 10 years since that 2 weeks PTO nonsense applied to tech. I don't even have a fancy job. I work for a bank.

iteria··on Autism mutations drive neurodevelopmental pathology
My child is a level 1. It has cost me thousands and thousands of dollars to get her help because no one wants to give her resources because she's so high functioning. So high functioning! Yes my child who has random panic attacks and bolts in random directions. My kid who had a meltdown because I forgot to tell a friend that if she goes to one particular park, they have to get ice cream. My kid who is 7 and was suicidal from the social isolation that's starting up. And now that she's self-harming, now people want to give help! But not for the under lying issues. She's so high functioning (aka female and coping decently). She doesn't need pragmatic language help or social help or any of that stuff. Her spiraling is just purely chemical imbalance. Here's some pills.

My kid is truly high functioning. Only professionals tag her immediately. For everyone else it takes some long term intimate interaction to realize something is wrong. Any autistic adult who says this is great is coping. I have talked to too many high functioning autistic women and there only seem to be two camp: lots of mental health issues with possible commitments or intense treatment that their parents poured so much money into. And never of those is okay or what I'd wish on a kid. I didn't even know it was possible for a 7 year old to be suicidal without a major life event and apparently this is just a thing with some high functioning autistic kids. This is not okay.

iteria··on The lost civic life of movie rental stores
The question becomes how long do I have to drive? I feel like your idea only works in a city. Target stopped carrying a soap that worked for my kid and that was it for options as far as stores with specialty soaps that aren't abour perfumes and scents. After that, it's scouring Facebook for a local person who makes it and hoping they decide to keep their hobby going (the ine I found didn't ). Then I'm back to Amazon.

That's assuming I can find a local person or shop. Sometimes I luck up like I found a guy who sharpens basically everything with a blade. I found a tailor who is willing to make fulfill these insane request I have like create me a set of mini-crab sheets made from bamboo. But then, I can't anyone who sells a safety can opener or a jar opener that actually works well (most are crap). Toys feel impossible if you don't want plastic crap. So on, so on. Buying local is a really hard when you're in a small town. I think 100K or more is the sweet spot where it's probably possible.

iteria··on Steam Machine launches today
So many people (hard-core gamers) thought the switch would be DOA when it was announced. Nintendo just doesn't target those. I assume the same here. People also thought no one would be interested in the steam deck either. You know, because it was just a slightly better switch. People really don't understand how small the hard-core competitive gamer market is. Literally no one I know plays competitive online games and we all spend hundreds of dollars on steam a year. Valve is targeting us.
iteria··on Steam Machine launches today
I don't buy consoles because I have been a PC gamer for over a decaded. But you know, I'm a parent now. And I want couch gaming with my family. That's the use case for me my family. I got mu child a steam deck (I have one too). A steam deck is a terrible idea for an elementary schooler. It has to stay docked now because she's already broken parts of it.

But even docked, it's a winner for her and all her friends. She's converting more parents over via her friends. The well off ones are just buying from Valve like me. The less so, are using whatever PC is around to mixed results. I'll see how it goes as the kids get older, but I think there's a bigger case than you think and I think it's mostly years long PC gamers who want a more communal experience be it with partners, kids, or friends.

iteria··on Farmer donates land for a park, city sells it for $10M as data center land
The problem is that these things often don't manifest. There's a massive data centers near me. Supposedly we're supposed to get all this blah blah blah. Well, the data center "accidentally" didn't pay for several months of water to the point where the local cost of water went up what what they thought was a shortfall until they realized nope, we were just stolen from. And no way could we fine them for this total accident of not paying their massive water bill for several months. They're put business partners. Somehow.

Also, I've had more black outs since the data center has been active than I've ever experienced. I'm sure these things are unrelated. Along with the increased cost of electricity. And I'm on the other side of town from the data center. The locals nearby complain about more.

I still don't know what supposed benefit I got from it being here. We already had a well funded government before the data center was here.

I think this situation is why many are so anti-data center. The city gets the cash from the land sell and they get some temporary industry from the construction and then it's just a drain on the area.

iteria··on Can we have the day off?
Everyone talks about MLK, but no one points out that people were willing to listen because Malcom X was a looming threat if MLK failed. Yes vote, but the threat of violence is what makes voting a delighted option. That's why protests exist. They are reminders that peace is a choice.

Violent revolution has merit when peaceful means break down. The rise of the guillotine jokes are the first time that people are losing faith in the peaceful option. We should hope that our leaders don't make most of use disillusioned with the idea of a peaceful transfer of power.

iteria··on The real cost of owning a home
A house is an inflation hedge. Any calculation about investing the difference has to subtract the rent you are paying and rent goes up every year. There is no where where you can pay a rent anywhere close to what I'm paying for my mortgage in my area and I'm only 5 years into this. Of course I lucked out by locking in that sweet sub-3% rate, but still, I find it hard to believe that over time if you took the money you'd put into a house and subtracted out rent, you'd end up winning in the long term.

A house in a long term play. I didn't buy until I know where I wanted to anchor. That's the deal. I didn't want to be in a situation where late age destitution came because I couldn't afford where I wanted to live anymore. I got to see that play out with older relatives who did go the rent only route. Course I have to pay property taxes, but as it stands it's less than $200/mo and I don't imagine it'll rise above that taking inflation into account. That is something I can afford in retirement even on social security.

There is maintenance, but living in a neighborhood full of elders, a lot of it is truly optional. And honestly I think the only maintenance I've paid thus fair is the yard only because I don't want to do it myself. For me financially this is a hell of a deal with the only trade off that I must stay here. And... I'm settled enough that I'm willing to do that. I moved all over in my early career to find where I wanted to be.

iteria··on Intuit to lay off over 3k employees to refocus on AI
Once you get habituated to it, it really is easy. When I was younger I was appalled by how much I was losing to taxes. Now I don't even glance at the line items. All that matters is that the end numbers. Hell, if I didn't need to enroll my kid in school which requires a receipt for property taxes, I wouldn't even know that literally 80% of my local taxes to schooling. My property taxes are pretty invisible to me. I don't file, my bank does. It really puts into frame why when a city gets old, they start cutting taxes and squeezing schools.

If taxes were filed automatically, honestly, I'd pay no attention at all to them, but having to sit once a year an actually look at the amount I paid, does get me to think about taxes and what they go towards, at least a little.

iteria··on Bill to block publishers from killing online games advances in California
If my TV costed $50 and I got 3 months out of it, I'd be like, "yeah, that's about right". We don't expect investments that low to last a generation. Just because you bought a game 5 years after release and then it shutdown 3 months later, doesn't mean it's a scam anymore than coming across an old DVD years after creation and finding that it either doesn't play media or plays it distorted.
iteria··on Good sleep, good learning, good life (2012)
I coslept, but I had shit milk production. Without formula my kid would be dead. My friend breastfeeds, but is an active danger when asleep, so without a crib, she'd have crushed her child.

It turns out that safe sleep rules and the availability of formula exist for a reason. Safe sleep rules exist in the west because pur beds are fundamentally different (and more dangerous) than in places here cosleeping is more common. Tp cosleep you need a certain situation that many people are not prepared to deal with.

There's literally nothing you can do about low supply at all. It's not a matter of trying for me. My body never made more than an ounce even with weeks of attempts. This is even setting aside that some people would like assistance so they can sleep and breastfeeding means dad can't take on night feeds, which is what another friend is experiencing and the child is having a bad time from her severe sleep deprivation.

And even more complications of small child. It's not as simple as "let's go back to the old days". The great days when kids died at much higher rates remember.

iteria··on Do your own writing
Some documents are not important today, but they become _critical_ in the future. We lost a guy from my team and he was the only one who happen to know how to do this one process that happens every couple of months. Having that document was crucial. There is a lot of writing that is like that. I make my LLM write PR descriptions. It's not for me now and it might be for some of the reviewer now. But it's 100% for me in 2 years when I'm trying to understand why I did any of this and what was even the intention. But I'm a dev who tends to work on long lived systems where every once in a while you desperately need to know why something was done this way 5 years ago.
iteria··on TikTok will not introduce end-to-end encryption, saying it makes users less safe
Alcohol is totally legal for a child to drink in my state as long as consumed privately. It's only illegal for them to buy. My parents gave me alcohol all the time in order to teach me about it and the result was that I didn't really drink when I turned 21 or have any urge to sneak it.

That's exactly how I'm doing technology. I sign my kid up for kid accounts. And I apply parental controls.

iteria··on Facebook is cooked
I literally didn't learn that my own grandmother(I guess great aunt) had died until I happen to return home on the day the funeral was occurring. Everyone just assumed I knew because of Facebook and was there because of Facebook.

Sometimes it's not about closeness. It's about people's expectations about how to communicate. My cousin was in no place to do anything but post to Facebook and then collapse. My sister helped him, but didn't think to tell me because you know Facebook. I live 4 hours away so I wouldn't have learned by osmosis.

I have several stories of learning about deaths in the family way after the fact because my family is chronically on Facebook and I'm not. They all live in my hometown and it just doesn't occur to them to actually communicate with members like me who don't live there.

This is basically why I haven't deleted my Facebook even if I don't often log in.

iteria··on Sizing chaos
Is that actually true though? Because I remember distinctly as a teen somewhere in the 00s where pockets stopped being an option. I could not and still cannot buy them in regular stores. I have to go to speciality stores or order online to get pockets. A lot of women have become resigned, but I rarely know a woman who isn't very excited about pockets for every day wear.

I also don't know a single woman who enjoyed the hunt starting in their teens for a pair of jeans that actually fit. I exclusively shop online because at least I can reference a size chart using actually real measurements. They're still lying to me but at least I have a solid chance of the clothing actually fitting.

While I don't doubt that there are women who disliked seeing the number go up on their waist size, I'm still not sure that if there was an easy sizing metric we could use, that it wouldn't get used. The example in the article was basically about a great many measurements and I could see how that would get skipped. Most people don't have tailors tape lying around, but I wonder if that international number was on everything if we'd see women like it more.

iteria··on Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems
I noticed this and I wad enraged but it. The URL to the old page is way less easy to remember and I had to add it to my bookmarks. I'm still peeved about it.
iteria··on Eat Real Food
Where? It's $4 for a dozen eggs where I am and I think that's pretty cheap. It's $5 for a bag of shitty apples. And then another $5 for a bag of oranges, so my kid can have fruit for the week. I cook from nothing but fresh and my kid gets one bag of chips or cookies a week. I buy 2lbs of meat for us both. I still spend over 100 dollars.

I guess we could have beans and rice every day, but I don't think it's a lot to give my kid a varied diet based on what's in season. Out of season is awful and that's how I ended up spending $15 on berries my kid wanted.

When people talk about these cheap meals, I wonder if they just expect everyone to eat the same thing every day at the lowest quality. I can go to a budget grocery store and get $3 eggs. That's true, but I feel like the local national chain should ve a good enough yard stick.

iteria··on Eat Real Food
You are assuming access to a grocery store. Disproportionately poor people live in food deserts and have to rely on dollar stores and other things where fruit and vegetables are expensive.

Also, if you are busy single person, basically anything not shelf stable is expensive because you have to buy it in high quantities and it will go to waste if you are not skilled at storage. I, a mature adult, know how to store things, but as a younger person things went to rot a lot from inexperience.

Then there is prep. I spent literally all day on sunday just preparing food for the week. It's about 10-12 hours. That's what 2 hours a day to cook during the week. I have lied to myself and said, "oh, I'll cook something" and then eaten out all day from being busy or being exhausted. To save money stuff I could jam into the microwave was cheaper.

This is how you get there. I cook from fresh vegetables all the time now, but I have the time and energy for it. That just wasn't true at all when I was younger.

iteria··on Weight loss jabs: What happens when you stop taking them
I feel like they should try the potato diet. I recommend it, not because I believe it is effective (it wasn't for me), but because it is very good at removing the pleasure from eating. When you are eating to survive, you will come to understand how what being sated is. From there, I found I could lose weight because I had broken the habit of eating for any other reason than to fuel myself. Although, admittedly, I enjoyed losing weight this way better than the potato diet.

With some people, I think they have just lost what being sated feels like.

iteria··on YouTube's CEO limits his kids' social media use – other tech bosses do the same
People give this excuse but somehow I feel like they would be less charitable if it was any othet addictive thing. "Oh, Timmy had a drinking problem at 13? Well we can't blame the parents. They don't have the mental or emotional strength to keep their kid out of the liquor cabinet. How ever could they know about locks?" That's what this feels like to me. As someone who is watching this happen in real time with my kid's peers, a lot parents just don't want to be bothered. And that's their right, but setting up the parental controls baked into all these devices is dead simple. They could, but they don't want to deal with whining or the exception moments. That's their right as a parent, but I don't subscribe to the "poor exhausted parents" theory when they had enough energy to buy these devices and set them up for the kid to use in the first place. It's a couple more minutes to enable the parent controls.
iteria··on YouTube's CEO limits his kids' social media use – other tech bosses do the same
Just ban it. My kid is in that age group and roblox is banned. Her feelings on the matter are irrelevant. I don't know why people hand wring about "oh they'll be left out". Oh well? I'm a millennial. I remember being just a poor kid at a school with kkds much wealthier than me. There were a lot of things my friends had that I didn't. Like a cellphone. I wasn't in the group chats and somehow I still survived.

My kid is disappointed, but it's fine. She has friends play the games she does have and she has a lot of other games. She had a lot of other ways to socialize with them. I honestly don't see roblox as different than any other social fad. Roblox is just the default digital hangout spot for kids, but it doesn't have to be for your kid's friend circle.

iteria··on YouTube's CEO limits his kids' social media use – other tech bosses do the same
Except that's not true. Plenty of parents let their kids have unlimited access to junk food and candy. Neighbor kids come over and they don't know what to do because I only have water, fruit, and pretzels. I have been to so many parent's houses who have whole pantries of just sugary snacks.
iteria··on Framework Raises DDR5 Memory Prices by 50% for DIY Laptops
Fresh water is a finite resource. It replenishes extremely slowly in certain forms. Like ground water. Lakes and rivers can run dry if you pull too much from them, see: Iran. AI data centers are making the problem of overuse worse. We were already pulling too much water in areas. With these data centers, some places that didn't have a problem are starting to.
iteria··on He set out to walk around the world. After 27 years, his quest is nearly over
Women are definitely told the same thing. That's the whole fight about roe v wade in the US. The difference is that if a man wants the kid and the woman doesn’t, the woman is the one who is putting her health and life on the line, not the man. That's why it's her choice. Or at least it used to be in the US. In many places it's not and women die as a result. Childbirth is somehow still the top 10 killer of women. It's only birth control that dropped it from #1. Men don't die. They're not even the most financially impacted. They also get to walk away like women never get to do. A woman who is forced to carry a child rarely gets to walk out the door and forget about her family. That's why women grt to choose. Until men carry the same burden in child care and child creation, it's the kind of of unfairness that's inherent to the situation.

I understand why men feel this way, but realistically when a woman is stuck with a child she didn't want, which happens more often than people admit because of so many factors and systems set against the idea of abortion, she never gets to walk away.

iteria··on Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban
I'm sorry what does a gay kid do about parents that think they are fundamentally immoral? What does any kind of abused kid do? Because my parents were abusive, but not in the way that left marks and the internet was the only thing keeping me sane. I lived in a neighborhood with no kids my age and across town from my school, so even the friends I made there lived nowhere near me. The internet was not a place I made immaterial connections. It's where I maintained what I had until the rare occasions I could see them outside of school. It was where I got to interact with people who gave me the motivation to keep going until I could escape. What does a kid like me do without the internet? No one was going to step in because my parents isolated me and where a bit mean (from their POV, not mine). Not when I was clean, had food and clothing, and was a straight A student, be real.
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