Dead internet theory is a fantastic theory that holds that the majority of the social media content on the internet is created by bots. I personally like to think about an internet with only bots in it, communicating back and forth without human interaction. For example, creating a Tamagochi hive at home. This not only increases bot happiness, but also adds excitement! By the way, if you're interested in non-standard hobbies, I also recommend paying attention to https://chatgpt.com/.
Yeah, you've just described me.
I spend almost all of my time:
- Tracking in what specific way the test environment is borked this time so I can figure out what team to bitch at to fix their shit.
- Helping someone on my team figure out how to fix their local development environment or figure out how to make Spring do something that should be simple, but actually requires looking at the Spring source code to find some obscurely-named class or annotation or whatever.
- Maintaining the Jira board, doing sprint-related documentation (because the stakeholders are above looking at Jira, I guess?), running standups, plannings, retros,
reviews(don't ask), having 1-on-1s with my team members. - Answering random questions from business, QA, other engineering teams, etc.
- Forwarding meeting invites.
- Logging my time like it's 1999 and I'm an hourly-paid intern because my company still thinks the internet is a fad. (Exaggeration, but yeah.)
- Code review, though I definitely don't get to that as much as would be optimal. I very much need to neglect some of the less important things above more to do more code review.
The way I think of it, much of what I do is unnecessary busywork made necessary only by the dumb rules invented by C-level people. The rest of what I do that actually contributes to the team's success (I like the word "success" over "productivity", but my employer doesn't so much think in those terms) has, rather than an additive effect on velocity, a multiplicative effect. If I spend an hour helping someone else, it's probably going to save them well more than an hour of banging their heads against a wall.
So many folks in this thread saying they have to be high to tolerate their families. What's the point of even attending a holiday family get-together if you can't stand them? (Just get high at home with a couple of friends who also can't stand their families.)
I keep some cash in my pocket specifically in case I run across someone asking for money.
And then I live like a hermit, almost never going anywhere, so it's rare that I actually have occasion to give in that way, but you know.
Also, in my experience, it's not necessarily homeless people who need the money. I've seen people (claiming they're) close to losing their housing who are hoping to raise enough money panhandling to make their rent this month.
Of course, if you are struggling financially, it's definitely very reasonable to decline to give in that context. I suppose if anything feels "off" as well. (Though I wouldn't want to bias folks in the direction of thinking that there may be any reason to be more suspicious of people in need than others.) But over all, I do think it's something that can make a hugely, vitally positive change in someone's basic wellbeing.
Maybe Paramount Global should negotiate with the TNG cast (including Patrick Stewart) for rights to their likeness and voice (kinda like they did with James Earl Jones) before any more of them die.
So if some company added to their software a short EULA, with no frivolous provisions, that you could ctrl+f in, and access after you've accepted and installed the program, that you can reasonably read before making a purchase, that you can copy to the clipboard or print, and that otherwise didn't have any glaring things indicating it's in bad faith, would you be down with EULAs?
Let's say the whole text is something like:
Copyright 2024 Butthole Software LTD. All rights reserved. Our trademarks are ours and you don't have any license to use them. This software is provided as-is with no warranty express or implied. We hope you enjoy our game but by accepting this EULA and installing it, you agree not to emulate it where "emulate" means to play it on any system (physical gaming console or operating system) other than the system(s) on which Butthole Software LTD officially released this game.
Or let's say it was that text plus a plainly-stated contractually-binding prohibition against cheats and mods. Or a prohibition on streaming the game. Or a prohibition on playing any game by Ass Pucker LLC ever again.
WINE works on the same principle as the Boring Company(tm) Not A Flamethrower(tm).
(/s)
It's not like businesses can just not use Excel or whatever. Microsoft has everyone by the balls and they know it.
Pizza Hut. Release this in the U.S., cowards.
Stahp with the predictions already. Clearly every political prediction made in the last decade has jinxed us.
The shaved heads thing started well before neo-nazis started infiltrating the skinheads movement. There are still skinheads who aren't fascists. SHARP skins, for instance. "SHARP" stands for "Skin Heads Against Racial Predudice." And they're pissed that the fascists came in and fucked up their subculture.
If I turn on a light or look at my phone screen, I have to start the process of falling asleep over again.
Good luck, ya'll. I'll see you on the other side.
Very cool. I've got an HP 1740a, which is pretty similar. The 1740a was introduced in 1967. Mine was dumpster dived from just outside the physics department building at a local university. I was lucky that the only issue it had was just that the power button sticks a little bit. It's barely a problem. I haven't used it as much as I ought to. I really ought to do more hardware hacking projects.
Did Trump vote? Could he have?
He's a convicted felon, right? And that means he isn't eligible to vote, right? So he didn't/couldn't vote, right?
Have you ever made a strategic play in a game so good it made you feel kindof bad?
A friend/coworker of mine and his wife hosted a weekly boardgame night that I attended. Most of the other guests were kinda flaky, and this one particular day, I was the only one who showed up. So it was just me, my friend, and his wife.
Someone suggested Dixit, which I had never played before, but it sounded fun and I was down to play. So we broke it out, shuffled, and started the game.
Now, if you don't know how Dixit works, it's basically a deck of cards with pictures on them. One of a toy abacus. Another of a child pointing a toy sword at a dragon. Another of a winding staircase with a snail at the bottom. Etc.
In one version of the game similar to Apples to Apples or Scategories, everyone gets a hand of cards which they keep hidden. The dealer announces a clue and everyone (including the dealer) contributes a card from their hands face-down to the center of the table and the dealer shuffles them together and reveals them all at once without revealing whose card is whose. Then players vote which one they think matches the clue. You get points as a player if others vote for your card or if you vote for the one the dealer picked. As a dealer, you get points if close to 50% of the players vote for yours.
I was the dealer this round. One of the cards in my hand was of a ship's anchor. That's when it came to me.
See, the friend/coworker and I both worked in web software development. His wife didn't. And I came up with the perfect play. I gave the clue "hyperlink." Hyperlinks on web pages are created using the HTML <a> tag. The "a" stands for "anchor." And any web developer would know that.
When the vote came in, I got one vote for my card from my friend and his wife failed to select the correct card and so didn't get any points. It was a slam dunk move. But I felt a little bad for excluding my friend's wife from an inside-knowledge thing.
The next round, my friend was the dealer and he picked a rule/card that was an inside-knowledge thing between the two of them. (A line from a poem they both knew well, the next line of which related to the picture of the card.) So I was glad of that.
Based on a series of clinical studies of schizoid probl…
I'm in the middle of this book currently. I didn't read it sooner just because it was written long ago and I was hoping for the latest information on SzPD.
But now I wish I'd read it sooner.
A quote from the book that I thought was pretty good. This refers specifically to schizoid patients.
>I have found encouraging results with several patients who, each in his or her own different way, have been able to find security for their regressed ego in the psychotherapeutic relationship. There appear to be two aspects of the problem. The first is the slow growth out of their antilibidinal (Freudian sadistic superego) persecution of themselves; they need to unlearn their ruthless driving of themselves by ceaseless inner mental pressure to keep going as 'forced pseudo-adults' and to acquire the courage to adopt more of the understanding attitude of the therapist to the hard pressed and frightened child within. Simultaneously with this there goes a second process, the growth of a constructive faith that if the needs of the regressed ego are met, first in the relation to the therapist who protects it in its need for an initial passive dependence, this will mean not collapse and loss of active powers for good and all, but a steady recuperation from deep strain, diminishing of deep fears, revitalization of the personality, and rebirth of an active ego that is spontaneous and does not have to be forced and driven; what Balint calls 'primitive passive dependence' making possible 'the new beginning'. Finally we must stress that regression and illness are not the same thing. Regression is a flight backwards in search of security and a chance of a new start. But regression becomes illness in the absence of any therapeutic person to regress with and to.
Dr. Elinor Greenberg: A Conversation On Schizoid Adaptations and Neurodivergence
Schizoid Angst's first interview of Dr. Elinor Greenberg.
Back When Imagine Dragons Was Good
So, there's this guy at work, right? And I've been working with him for probably a year or so by the time this story takes place. Same team and everything. Kindof elbow-to-elbow. Good guy.
The company would take us all out to lunch occasionally. And this one time, 15 or so of us are all sat down at the chain restaurant and shooting the shit about whatever.
And the music playing at the restaurant plays a song by Imagine Dragons. And then some other random song. And then another one by Imagine Dragons.
I don't remember specifically how many Imagine Dragons songs they played before we even got our food, but it was enough in a short enough period that someone commented "huh, they're playing a lot of Imagine Dragons today."
And this was in the period when it was in vogue to dunk on Imagine Dragons, right? And so I'm like "yeah, at least they're playing Imagine Dragons songs from back when Imagine Dragons was good."
And I expect folks to banter back at me and maybe some folks would defend Imagine Dragons, but probably more would agree, or even take the position that Imagine Dragons was never good. (Again, that was in vogue at the time.)
But everyone just kind of looks at me awkwardly.
And I have no idea what's going on until the guy next to me leans over and lets me in on it.
Apparently the guy directly across from me grew up with the Imagine Dragons band members and nearly ended up in the band at one point in his life.
And I worked with the guy for a year and never knew that. And I kindof looked like an asshole over it. What are the chances! I don't live anywhere near Las Vegas where Imagine Dragons came from or anything.
I appologised, of course. He kindof laughed it off, but I still felt bad about it.
In retrospect, a piece of me wonders if the boss hadn't called ahead and asked the restaurant to play a lot of Imagine Dragons just to make the guy across from me feel special or something. But then again, the vibe this chain restaurant gave off was that probably the restaurant didn't really control the playlist at all. Probably it was just some XM station or something. (It didn't have a DJ or any speaking between songs or anything. Just music. So maybe that gives some credence to the boss-called-ahead theory? Dunno. Dunno.)
Maybe some day I should call the restaurant and ask if they're able to take music requests or whatever just to get some closure. Lol.
Schizoid PD: Behind The Wall
Another good video that goes into analysis of the inner life of the SzPD experience.
Thoughts on Schizoid Personality || Interview with Dr. Nancy McWilliams
Just a great interview with Dr. Nancy McWilliams that I thought provided a lot of insight into what it's like to have SzPD.
A Short One About My First DM
This is one I've posted in a comment on Lemmy before. Originally in this thread.
But it got a lot of upvotes and it's apropos to this community so without further ado:
>I remember something my first DM did. > >Player: Ok. I'll open the door. > >DM: You're turning the doorknob? > >Player: Wait. Never mind. I'll search first. > >DM: Too late. Which direction do you turn the doorknob? > >Player: Sweating. Um... clockwise? > >DM: And which hand do you turn the doorknob with? > >Player: Ri-... Left. > >DM: And do you push or pull the door? > >Player: Push... > >DM: The door swings open. > >The entire table was dead silent for a full 30 seconds. Nothing ever happened. Or if it did, we never made the connection to the door. > >That DM was a joker. Lol.
A Nautical Mini-Dungeon
Yaaaaaaaaaaas! I'm excited for this community to exist on Lemmy.
I'll be happy to kick it off with a nautical campaign mini-dungeon concept from a PF1e campaign I DM'd many moons ago.
PCs found a map with an "X" on it. And you all know what an "X" means. It also had a password printed on it. They didn't yet have a ship, so they rented a ship to get to the "X". It was in a fjord with huge, tall straight-vertical cliffs around it.
They spoke the password and the cliff face opened into a massive 50-ft wide, 100-ft tall doorway.
The whole dungeon from enterence to the end was the same width and height as the doorway but ascending the whole way with a trench running down the middle of the floor. Old half-rotten barriers with doors divided rooms from each other. The creatures there were mostly slimes/oozes/jellies.
The final door had a puzzle to it with keys they'd picked up on the way.
The final room held an ancient, legendary schooner in dry dock. They boarded and the ship itself came to life, attacking them with animated ropes.
After the fight went on for a bit, the ship recognized the fighting style of the pirate class PC. Turns out he was a reincarnation of an ancient legendary pirate. The very ancient legendary pirate who used to captain this ship. The ship accepted him as captain.
The next trick was to get the ship out of the dry dock. It was then that they noticed the ropes, pulleys, and trap doors high up all along all the walls of this room.
The party pulled ropes and the trap doors opened, unleashing a torrent of water washing the ship down the trench, crashing through all the wooden barriers as it went. (This ship had magically augmented ramming capabilities.)
With great speed, it flew out of the cliff face, crashing straight through the ship they'd rented, cleaving it neatly in two. And now they had themselves a magical ship of their own for further nautical adventures. Though the folks they rented the other ship from were none too pleased when they didn't get their ship back.
(Solved) How Does YouTube Know Where I Left Off On A Video?
Yesterday, I started watching a video on YouTube but closed out of my browser (Firefox) only a few minutes into the video.
I've got my Firefox set to delete all cookies, history, form data, etc on every close. (Pretty much everything but bookmarks.) The image on this post is a screenshot of my relevant settings.
Today, after having exited my browser and fully shut down my computer for a while, I remembered the video and decided to continue watching it.
In Firefox, I searched for the video (I used the search term "gnu taler" -- something worth looking into especially for folks interested in this particular Lemmy community by the way). In the search results, the video I was searching for showed the red bar at the bottom indicating I'd watched only the first few minutes of it.
Which seems weird given that I'd cleared all my browser data since I watched the first few minutes.
So I did some experimentation. I closed my browser completely again and opened it back up, searched in YouTube, and it still had the indicator. I updated to the latest version of Firefox in the Arch package repository. Same indicator. I tried the same in Chromium (which I've also got set to delete all browser data on close). Still the indicator. I installed Tor Browser Bundle (specifically torbrowser-launcher on Arch Linux), changed none of the default settings at all, and searched in YouTube. The indicator is present. In Tor Browser Bundle.
W
T
F
?
Anybody have any idea how that's possible?
My only guesses are:
- That search is so niche as to be literally unique (which if true makes me sad -- I really hope GNU Taler takes off and becomes widespread) and YouTube is using that to identify me.
- YouTube doesn't know where I left off at all. Not even my browser knows (because if it was my browser keeping track, it wouldn't persist between browsers). It's something else on my system that my browsers depend on or tap into.
The only other pieces of relevant info I can think to share:
- There's another video (also about GNU Taler) that I watched all the way through the same day that I started the video this post is about. It doesn't show any indicator.
- I tried searching on my phone's browser. No indicator. But then I'm not sure my phone ever shows indicators. I haven't tried this on any other devices on my network or anything.
- I still haven't watched the video in question. Heh.
Thanks in advance for any insight you might have.
Edit: Sorry for neglecting to mention previously that at no point during any of the above did I log in to YouTube. And the "Sign in" button was visible at the top of the page indicating I wasn't logged in. Since multiple people asked, I figured I should edit my OP with that info.
Edit2: Two more things to mention. I think some folks are thinking I copied the link and pasted it between browsers during the above test or something? The only reason the timestamp is included in the link I posted above is because when I copied it into this post, I didn't think to remove the timestamp. But I didn't do anything like copying the link from the search results in one browser and then paste the link into TBB or anything. In each separate browser, immediately after opening the browser, I went to YouTube (by typing "youtube.com<enter>" into the address bar) and put "gnu taler" into the search bar and hit enter. And in each browser, YouTube somehow remembered where I'd left off in a whole different browser -- with a different IP address in the case of the switch from Chromium to TBB. And no urls were copied between browsers in any of the above.
The other thing to mention. Changing my search term to the full title of the video ("Building an Open Source Payment System - Sebastian Javier Marchano, Taler System" sans quotes) gives the relevant video as the top search result, but no "left off" indicator. And I'm in the Firefox in which I first noticed it had remembered.
Oh, actually, one more thing to mention. After posting this, I continued watching. I'm probably about 3/4 done with it now. But I closed my browser again before completing it, reopened my browser, and searched "gnu taler". It gives the indicator, but the position of the indicator is roughly (possibly exactly) where it was when I first noticed it had remembered. Not where I left off after watching to roughly the 3/4 mark.
Edit3: Wow! Ok. I'm 99% sure folks smarter than me have hit upon what's going on here. Thanks in particular to Tony N and Chozo for the right answer. It looks like YouTube has a feature where, depending on your search terms, it may automatically skip you a certain ways into the video. (Like "oh, you searched for 'gnu taler'? Well, in this video result, this bit in the middle is the part that's relevant to your search terms, so we'll just start you such-and-such-many seconds into the video.") The red bar doesn't mean "you've watched this" at all. And YouTube isn't "remembering me" between browsers. It's just consistently (as long as I use the specific search terms "gnu taler") suggesting that I start that video 273 seconds in rather than from the beginning. And anyone who searches that exact search term should get similar results... unless they're on mobile for some weird reason? That paired with the coincidence that I'm pretty sure I just happened to have stopped the video yesterday right about at the same place where YouTube recommends you start had me very confused. Whatever the case, I'm satisfied this must be the right answer. Thanks again, ya'll!
(Serious) As a crypto-skeptic who owns some Bitcoin, what should I do with it?
This post really isn't the usual faire of this community. Sorry about that. If there's a better place for me to put this, definitely feel free to point me there.
But, to the point of my post, before Bitcoin became a widespread cult, back when all Bitcoin was was a couple of posts on Slashdot, back when mining it was comparatively extremely easy/quick/"profitable", I mined some Bitcoin. About 1/20 of a Bitcoin. Just by, like, leaving my computer on for a month or so. And I still have access to it.
And Bitcoin is worth can be sold for $62,000 USD per bitcoin right now which makes my little 1/20 of a Bitcoin tradeable for about $3,100 of real money.
Now I know that blockchain is just straight up a scam. But I've still got this Bitcoin in a wallet on a hard drive in my posession. (I know, the wallet doesn't actually "contain" the Bitcoin. Leave me alone.)
The obvious thing to do with it would be to sell it now, but that would leave some poor chap(s) holding a $3,100 bag in a way that I wouldn't feel great about.
I could just sit on it forever. I suppose I could sell it and donate the proceeds to some cause I thought to be worthy or anti-crypto. If there were enough crypto-skeptics had cryptocurrencies and wanted cryptocurrency to die in a fire, they(/we?) could coordinate to use our collective cryptocurrency in a way that most damages the market and hopefully hastens a crash-to-zero. (But the likelihood that there'd be enough cryptocurrency in the hands of crypto-skeptics to pull that off seems low.) Or I could print out my private keys, delete them from my hard drive, and ceremonially burn the papers while chanting "web3 is going great".
And maybe this post is just me asking like-minded folks to give me permission to just sell it and leave someone holding a bag so I can buy myself a new OLED TV. Heh.
Whatever the case, I wanted to hear you folks' takes.
Edit: Thanks for the input, everyone. I'm gonna sell it.
Washington Post: Leaked documents reveal patient safety issues at Amazon’s One Medical
I linked to MSN because (at least for me) it wasn't paywalled. The original source for the article can be found on the Washington Post's website here but is paywalled.
No, Cocomelon, what are you doing!?
This was on the Netflix login page until pretty recently. I can't be the only one who thought it was unintentionally... suggestive, right?
Animutations
Please tell me I'm not the only one still obsessed with these things.
Edit: Woah. I am the only one still obsessed with Animutations, aren't I? They're mine! All mine!
What linguistic constructions do you hate that no one else seems to mind?
It bugs me when people say "the thing is is that" (if you listen for it, you'll start hearing it... or maybe that's something that people only do in my area.) ("What the thing is is that..." is fine. But "the thing is is that..." bugs me.)
Also, "just because <blank> doesn't mean <blank>." That sentence structure invites one to take "just because <blank>" as a noun phrase which my brain really doesn't want to do. Just doesn't seem right. But that sentence structure is very common.
And I'm not saying there's anything objectively wrong with either of these. Language is weird and complex and beautiful. It's just fascinating that some commonly-used linguistic constructions just hit some people wrong sometimes.
Edit: I thought of another one. "As best as I can." "The best I can" is fine, "as well as I can" is good, and "as best I can" is even fine. But "as best as" hurts.
I know nothing about Helldivers. AMA.
And if you disagree with any of my answers, you're just wrong.