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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • The police have gotten very effective at quashing effective movements, and we’ve had decades of concerted effort to make it more difficult to organize and to get people to actually oppose the concept of effective resistance in their own favor.
    People with power don’t want people threatening to destabilize that power. People who set media narratives need access to people with power, and so they don’t want to convey those destabilizing factors positively.
    This makes people view them negatively, if they even see them at all.

    America has never had a culling of the rich and powerful. The closest we got was when we decided to exchange a rich and powerful person far away for a few closer to home.
    As such, there’s no weight given to the morale of anyone who isn’t rich and powerful.
    Reporters, politicians and businesses people have never had to put their heads in the scale when making choices.


  • Android kinda has that. There’s call screen where the phone asks why you’re calling and the user can follow along, potentially pressing a button to prompt for more details, to pickup, or to send the caller to voicemail.

    It’s integrated into the spam blocking. Usually spam calls just don’t say anything so it hangs up on them, so I don’t actually know how it would handle a human telemarketer.


  • I can read why you’re calling in 3 seconds and it takes no mental energy if I don’t care. If I talk to you I need to use significantly more mental energy and it’s more disruptive to anything I was focusing on. The people I least want to talk to are the most likely to call, and are the ones who will be the least direct about why they’re calling and waste the most of my time.

    Not wanting to talk to you on the phone is not the same as not communicating. The vast majority of phone calls are basically someone saying “stop what you’re doing, what I want to talk to you about is more important” and they’re wrong.




  • Technically correct. The best kind of correct. :)

    I basically solved for shotgun, confirmed in was in the ~100V range and disregarded every other consideration for actually doing it.
    I’m pretty sure most hand sized capacitors would just pop if you actually tried to put that much in them.


  • Depends on the voltage it’s charged with, but household current would give it more energy than a shotgun has.

    Realistically one would not do that unless you were dealing with something industrial. You would use them otherwise for things like dampening lower voltage systems that need a lot of current.

    Closer to the danger level of someone holding two exposed wires plugged into the wall.



  • Is the implication that we shouldn’t be upset about bombing Iran because they’re also doing other awful things?

    Whenever they do anything people seem so eager to claim that it’s just a distraction from whatever it was that was just happening, which itself was also just a distraction.
    I’ve seen literally everything mentioned hear described as a distraction meant to draw your attention from something else.

    Maybe, just maybe , none of it’s a distraction, they don’t care what you care about or notice because it won’t change what they do and they’re just absolutely awful people working their way down their terrible agenda.


  • Multiple people is significantly more force than even a knife.

    Proportional force means the force must be proportional to the threat, not to the force the other person is using. If someone threatens death with their hands, you can use deadly force to defend against a deadly threat.

    One would be reasonable in concluding that masked people trying to force you or someone else into a van is an imminent threat of death, great bodily harm or sexual assault.

    You can’t use deadly force to defend against harassment, or theft because that’s disproportionate.


  • The US has a water system effectively comparable to the ones across Europe, FYI. That includes lead levels, since it wasn’t just the US that used lead pipes.

    In most circumstances lead pipes are safe to replace with different materials as part of routine maintenance. It’s only very notable incidents where things go wrong that have driven a push for greater haste, since it highlighted the consequences of things going wrong.




  • So, I wasn’t referring to enjoyment. I spoke of engagement or interest. It’s why programming is more appealing than data entry.

    You’re just doubling down on the false dichotomy I spoke of. It’s not at all uncommon to find someone with plenty of experience who can easily and honestly tell you why they think what the company they work for does is interesting.

    Asking someone why they think working at the job they’re applying for is appealing isn’t “hiring for enthusiasm”, and it’s honestly odd that you keep casting it that way.
    I get where you’re coming from, and I partly disagree. It doesn’t seem like you’re parsing what I’m saying because of this “either one or the other” attitude though.
    No offense intended, but it makes you come across as burnt out and sad. I don’t work for small companies, with inexperienced people, and I’m not constantly shipping broken code that needs rewriting. I’ve been doing this for roughly 15 years and I can honestly say “working in security in general is interesting because it forces you to think about your solution from a different perspective, the attacker, and working at $AuthenticationVendorYouQuitePossiblyUse in specific is appealing because you get to work on problems that are actually new at a scale where you can see it have an impact”.
    That’s not gushing with enthusiasm: it’s why I’m not bored everyday. If you’re actually just showing up to work everyday and indifferently waiting to be told what to do because it’s all just the same old slog… That’s sad, and I’m sorry.


  • I’m lucky that after all these years still get those moments of great enjoyment when at the end of doing something insanelly complex it all works

    I just think it’s worth pointing out that that is an example of the work being engaging.

    No one is so naive as to think that you work a job for anything other than money. The original post doesn’t even seem to convey that it’s bad to ask about the pay and benefits. It’s saying that if, when directly asked, the candidate has no answer to what seems interesting about the job they might not be a good fit.

    You seem to be an experienced software developer. You’re easily qualified to do basic manual data entry. Same working environment, same basic activity. Would you be interested in changing roles to do data entry for $1 more salary?
    I’m also a software developer, and I can entirely honestly say I would not, even though it would be less responsibility and significantly easier work.
    Even the boring parts of my work are vaguely interesting and require some mental engagement.

    It seems there’s this false dichotomy that either you’re a cold mercenary working 9 to 5 and refusing to acknowledge your coworkers during your entitled lunch break, or you’re a starry eyed child working for candy and corporate swag. You can ask for fair money, do only the work you’re paid for, have a cordial relationship with coworkers, and also find your work some manner of engaging.

    It’s not unreasonable for an employer to ask how you feel about the work, just like it’s not unreasonable for a candidate to ask about the details of the work.


  • Sure. I wouldn’t disqualify someone for being ambivalent towards what we’re working on, but the person who seems interested is gonna be better to work with.

    Likewise when looking for a place to work, if the tangibles are equivalent I’ll prefer the place with better intangibles.

    I’m not in HR or management, so I don’t care about cost effectiveness or productivity beyond “not screwing me over”. From that perspective, it’s generally nicer to work with someone who finds it interesting than with someone who doesn’t.

    There’s no point asking “why do you want to work here”, because the answer is obviously a combination of money and benefits, and how food and healthcare keeps you from being dead.
    I can’t fault an interviewer who’s clearly trying not to ask the obvious question and instead actually ask how the candidate feels about the work instead of disqualifying them for not volunteering the right answer.

    It’s not unreasonable for an employer to ask a candidate how they feel about the work anymore than it’s unreasonable for the candidate to ask about the working environment.


  • I actually kinda agree with both here.

    It sucks working with someone who is utterly disinterested in the work, if it’s anything above rote work.
    Asking the candidate what they found interesting about it is at least a basically fine idea. If they can’t answer when you ask, that actually is kinda concerning.
    Big difference between asking and expecting them to volunteer the information.

    At the same time, if the people interviewing you can’t even pretend to show basic conversational courtesy by asking some basic “what do you do for fun” style questions or anything that shows they’re gonna be interested in the person they’re looking to work with, that’s a major concern.


  • I didn’t mention buying a microwave, I mentioned finding one for free. If you buy a microwave you’re a customer and your desire for ethical products can be impactful to some degree.
    If you find a microwave there’s no feedback, and if there were feedback they wouldn’t care because you’re not a customer.

    The way you establish feedback in this field is by making it a viable market, and then giving your money to the most ethical company. I don’t think that any of the companies offer or will offer a product that will be worth the cost or resource investment. Ergo: I don’t give them money or use their products.

    Downloading a model doesn’t change that feedback. It’s digital, so once the resources are spent copies have no additional cost. They don’t get metrics or usage patterns, or even know I have it.

    It’s not quite, but kinda, like saying that you should only shoplift fair trade coffee. This doesn’t signal to anyone that they should invest in making their coffee more equitable.


  • That’s far from saying they’re negligible. What they’re saying is inline with my point. If you find a microwave are you going to research how green it’s manufacturing was so you can ensure you only find good ones for free in the future?

    Irrelevant or moot is different from negligible. One says it’s small enough to not matter, and the other says it doesn’t affect your actions.

    I play with AI models on my own computer. I think the training costs are far from negligible and for the most part shouldn’t have been bothered with. (I’m very tolerant of research models that are then made public. Even though the tech isn’t scalable or as world changing as some think doesn’t mean it isn’t worth understanding or that it won’t lead to something more viable later. Churning it over and over without open results or novelty isn’t worth it though). I also think that the training costs are irrelevant with regards to how I use it at home. They’re spent before I knew it existed, and they never have or will see information or feedback from me.
    My home usage had less impact than using my computer for games has.