lennivelkant

@lennivelkant@discuss.tchncs.de

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Who is the enemy?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Some house nearby must have one of those in their garden, because there’s a section of the road where I always catch that odour. Thanks for pointing it out to me, now I’ll look for the tree next time I have to pass through.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Who is the enemy?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  In the United States, a pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) is a third-party administrator of prescription drug programs.

  […]

  PBMs play a role as the middlemen between pharmacies, drug manufacturers, wholesalers, and health insurance plan companies.

  Parasites who make money off of ripping off patients and fucking over pharmacists. They are the rotten core of the US healthcare system and the primary facilitators of the exploitation machine turning your misery into profit.

  They negotiate cheap prices from the manufacturers, charge the pharmacies (and by extension the patients) an arm and a leg and pocket the difference.

  I believe they’re also the ones that argue with the pharmacist whether the patient really needs that expensive life-saving medication their insurance doesn’t want to cover, because they get kickbacks for saving them money. Sure, you might have cancer, but have you tried Yoga instead of chemo?

  Dr. Glaucomflecken has a nice video on it as part of his series on US healthcare.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Who is the enemy?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Bet MMA is making the list too

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Who is the enemy?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  We have one app where client management can’t globally disable update checks or notifications, but also, the updates aren’t critical enough to constantly validate and roll out.

  So we get that “update available” badge in the app and can’t do anything about it. Probably not an issue for most people, since they already do updates only when they’re forced to, but annoying to the few who even look at those notifications.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Who is the enemy?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Entitled customers of any flavour are awful. It’s one thing to know what you want and to decide whether something is worth your money, but it’s another to demand people cater to your specific taste and be a dick about it, as if the devs’ time and effort wasn’t worth anything.

  And particularly annoying in my opinion are those who think they know how to fix a given issue, call you an idiot for not “just” doing that and have no idea of the constraints and decisions that might preclude or complicate that “simple fix”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Who is the enemy?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I would never be able to explain coherently the difference between UX and UI people.

  In theory, UX deals with the psychology behind it: What do people want that our product can provide? Does our product communicate that it can do so? Do people understand how to use the product? Does the product guide them through usage helpfully? Are they satisfied with the result?

  Perhaps most nebulously: How do they feel before, while and after using the product, independent of the product itself, and how does that impact their experience? For instance, if you’re buying a train ticket, you might already be stressed and annoyed, so you’ll have less patience.

  Source: My wife, who had UX as the focus of her undergrad.

  In practice, a lot of people are like you in that they don’t really know or grasp the field, particularly managers who aren’t qualified to make the hiring decisions they do and accordingly there’s always gonna be people capitalising on that ambiguity and grifting their way to a cushy “I’m important and get to have a say, so pay me well” job.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨All while the skeletal, crumbling, dusty bones of an econ major pulls business backwards into hell.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  a historian should have a passing familiarity with scientific laws and mathematics

  A lot of history work is based on statistics and crunching numbers, apparently. For example, ACOUP is currently currently doing a series on the life of pre-modern peasants that involves a lot of calculating and modeling.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨All while the skeletal, crumbling, dusty bones of an econ major pulls business backwards into hell.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I guess the point is that MBA systematically trains you to be unethical in order to do well

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨All while the skeletal, crumbling, dusty bones of an econ major pulls business backwards into hell.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I work with one on the daily. I swear, his primary expertise is in buzzwords. Tried to tell me how much better a certain format for documenting requirements is because I can let the people that require something do the documenting for me.

  Never mind that this format is neither feasible outside his example case, nor even sufficient for this specific case.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨THE NEXT CLANKER BETTER DO MY GODDAMN DISHES⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Finding the silver linings, the rays of light, the diamonds in the mud is a skill to learn, and I think learning it is worthwhile. That doesn’t mean I close my eyes to the bad stuff, but spotting the good stuff definitely makes it all more bearable.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨THE NEXT CLANKER BETTER DO MY GODDAMN DISHES⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Gotta love the perennial “our kids are spoiled idiots” bit. That one never gets old. I bet at least one of Aritophanes’ plays will have made fun of the damn kids.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨makes more sense than this shit⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  That still doesn’t explain how this timeline would come to exist. Reality as it is is still insane, no matter how we got here.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨There's no wrong way to stroke it⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Someone else covered it in another reply, but moles have bald areas. Hairy Ball only applies when it’s entirely covered.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨There's no wrong way to stroke it⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I did not need to know that, but I respect the witty way you communicated it

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨p is for pHunky⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Fair, but also, you could look up XKCD comics by their name or transcript and link to them directly when you come across them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨kiwis!⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think if your organs are all tarred up, you have a problem

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Baldur's Gayte⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Homotopic: Having the same (homo-) topological properties (-topic)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Repent, ye clownish sinner⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m in the process of starting a fight with my neighbours. They complained (indirectly) about our garden being unkempt. I asked them for an appointment to talk directly so we can figure out just what the problem is. I’m not doing shit until they can tell me just what part of my little piece of nature is breaking any laws.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨what is north?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Tthat’s not south of Antarctica though. It’s below, in terms of the map’s perspective, but “absolute south” is the middle of the picture. Anywhere outside Antarctica is north of Antarctica.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨do you think freewill truly exists?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The fact that you launch into some part of your day doesn’t change that it’s gauging your mood on her end.

  Maybe not, but the fact that me launching into that is an accepted and expected part of the response does.

  If a manager calls me about a project and asks how I am, they don’t want me recounting an earlier frustrating interaction. As you say, they’re trying to gauge my mood, but ultimately my mood or how it came to be are irrelevant because we’re here to talk business. If I omit my headache, they don’t care.

  If my GF asks me, she actually wants a response. If I omit my headache and she finds out later, she’ll be upset: “Why didn’t you say so earlier?”

  That expectation is the difference.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Airbuddy 🦛⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Only for bipedals. Quadrupedal animals can well keep a leg on the ground at all times even when moving at speed. To borrow from another comment here: Would you call a stampeding elephant “walking”?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon gains a superpower⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Sauron still has a physical form during the events of LOTR. Frodo sees him through the tower window when walking towards Mount Doom, and Gollum remarks he was personally tortured by him, and that his hand has 4 fingers.

  I tended to interpret that more like “appearing as a spirit”, but you may actually be right. It would explain how he was able to orchestrate and dominate his forces. There is no precedent I’m aware of that any of the Ainur would be able to influence the physical world without a physical presence.

  When Isildur slew him, I believe his physical form was destroyed, but as long as a token of his power remained, it makes sense that he would be able to eventually recover enough strength to reincorporate.

  Either way, without the Ring, his power was still limited. I’ll update my comment, thanks for pointing that out.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨do you think freewill truly exists?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  If a colleague asks me “Hi, how’re you doing?” it’s small talk and I’ll respond something like “Oh you know, the usual.” If my partner asks me “Hi, how was your day?” it’s a genuine question and I will respond “That fucking dickhead at work that always plays nice and personable came around with another set of “urgent” requests and no fucking clue what he’s actually asking for, whether it’s possible or why I told him last week it isn’t.”

  The difference is in how serious I take the question.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon discovers cigarettes⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  One of my colleagues will even occasionally ask me “Heading for a smoke, wanna come along?” I just love chatting with him, I’ll try to stand upwind so I don’t catch as much second-hand smoke, he gets some company too, everyone’s happy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon gains a superpower⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It does, in fact, turn humans invisible too. Isildur being the obvious example, but even the nine rings given to humans had that effect, shifting them to the spiritual / unseen world. That’s a whole different ramble, but for now, let’s sum it up that there is an unseen world not everyone can sense and influence, but the Maiar (including Sauron) are inherently spiritual beings that took physical shape in the seen world in order to interact with it.

  For Sauron, so much of his power was poured into the One Ring that he was no longer able to take physical form without it (though he evidently still had some ability to twist minds even without it). Through the Ring, he had also dominated the nine human Ring bearers and bound them to him, moving them into the spiritual world. Given that they were originally of the seen world, they could take physical form more easily than him, but as his power waned, so did theirs and they eventually disappeared until his power grew once more and allowed them to reappear.

  The reason they could still “see” Frodo is that they were attuned to the unseen and could sense him there, with their power over it manifesting in them stabbing his physical form even though it was invisible to mortal eyes.

  There is still the question of the Dwarven rings. They were forged first, and it’s possible they weren’t as refined yet, though the dwarves are also described as more resilient at resisting the dominating effect. My guess is that the fact they were created by Aulë, Smith of the Valar, rendered them less susceptible to the craft of a lesser spirit (Sauron), but I have no evidence.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Black Mirror AI⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s war. That has been the nature of war and deterrence policy ever since industrial manufacture has escalated both the scale of deployments and the cost and destructive power of weaponry. Make it too expensive for the other side to continue fighting (or, in the case of deterrence, to even attack in the first place). If the payoff for scraping no longer justifies the investment of power and processing time, maybe the smaller ones will give up and leave you in peace.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Let's put an end to the discussion; what is the best way?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Let’s put an end to the discussion

  lol
  lmao

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Einstein-Landauer culinary units⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  When referencing another person’s comment, it can be helpful to link to that comment or the article you mentioned.

  I’d also like to point out that many Wikipedia articles, particularly those written by experts on a given scientific subject, tend to be daunting rather than helpful for people not yet familiar with that subject.

  Explanations like the one you offered in this comment and the next reply can help make topics more approachable, so I very much appreciate that.

  To illustrate my point:

  In this case, the article first describes the principle as “pertaining to a lower theoretical limit of energy consumption of computation”, which doesn’t directly highlight the connection to information storage. The next sentence then mentions “irreversible change in information” and “merging two computational paths”, both of which are non-trivial.

  From a brief glance at the article on reversible computing linked further on, I gather that “irreversible” here doesn’t mean “you can’t flip the bit again” but rather something like “you can’t deterministically figure out the previous calculation from its result”, so the phrase boils down to “storing a piece of information” for our context. The example of “merging computational paths” probably has no particular bearing on the energy value of information either and can be ignored as well.

  Figuring out the resulting logic that you so kindly laid out – again, thank you for that! – requires a degree of subject-specific understanding to know what parts of the explanation can be safely ignored.

  Of course, experts want to be accurate and tend to think in terms they’re familiar with, so I don’t fault them for that. The unfortunate result is that their writings are often rather intransparent to laypeople and linking to Wikipedia articles isn’t always the best way to convey an understanding.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Polar bears⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Maybe the targeted advertising got your location wrong?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Cardinals most likely to be the pope⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean, this is the Catholic Church we’re talking about. They’re not particularly known for fair hiring policies.