dan

@dan@upvote.au

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨From now on, I wish to be addressed as Lt. Commodre Squid⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago⁩:

  I used to work for an Australian company that produced HR software - recruitment, 360 reviews, etc. We had a fairly standard list of titles (Mr, Mrs, Miss, Mr, Dr, and maybe one or two others) that nearly all clients were happy with. However, a university asked us to add maybe 60 more, much like the list in this screenshot. We had to special-case it so that this one client got the huge list, while all other clients got the regular list.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Forgive them, for they know not what they do⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  I love paying double in rent what I would pay for a market-rate mortgage

  It’s totally different where I live (in the San Francisco Bay Area)… Renting is cheaper than buying here. A lot of the landlords bought their property a long time ago when it was cheaper.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Amazon Artificially Discounting Items $0.01 Below the Free Shipping Limit⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  AWS didn’t exist until after Amazon became profitable. They were already making good long-term decisions before AWS.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Amazon Artificially Discounting Items $0.01 Below the Free Shipping Limit⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I still sometimes find cheap things that are reasonably priced. These keystone wall plates for Ethernet/HDMI/etc are 99 cents for example: a.co/d/hAYsejh

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Amazon Artificially Discounting Items $0.01 Below the Free Shipping Limit⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  now it’s almost all overpriced junk items sold by shady sellers now.

  It’s not too bad if you avoid all third-party sellers and only buy items sold by Amazon directly.

  Unfortunately, other stores are going in the same direction. Walmart’s and Target’s sites both have third-party sellers on them now too, and you need to remember to filter them out.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Amazon Artificially Discounting Items $0.01 Below the Free Shipping Limit⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  In my area I can order something at midnight and receive it by 10am. They do next day, same day, and overnight on a lot of items.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Amazon Artificially Discounting Items $0.01 Below the Free Shipping Limit⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Amazon, the store. the store that sells stuff at “unbeatable” prices and has convenient fast shipping options. exists because Amazon, the corporation, makes most of its money through platforms that are NOT the store.

  They were also famously unprofitable for a very long time, longer than most businesses would consider reasonable. They were founded in 1994 and it took until 2001 to make a profit.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Amazon Artificially Discounting Items $0.01 Below the Free Shipping Limit⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Target also have free 2 day shipping and 5% cash back if you use their “Red Card”, which is available as a debit or credit card. I’m using the debit card version. Some items do require a $25 minimum order, but not all of them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨guys... :(⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Why are there that many beans near a computer? I’m so confused lol

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨guys... :(⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  This is beans! This is food!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Metrics are usually tracked using a tracking pixel, which is invisible. They don’t need a visible share button to do that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨BDSM⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t think Windows will ever fully escape Win32 cruft. One of the major features of Windows is backwards compatibility.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hulu quizzing about the ads played⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  How old are you? The reason I ask is because it was very common to watch movies with ads via free-to-air TV in the 90s, at least in families that didn’t have cable TV.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨They just don't understand⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I use these keystone jacks: a.co/d/2sl6M8I. A bit expensive ($60 for 50) but they’re toolless and work better than other toolless designs. Haven’t had any issues with them.

  For faceplates, I usually use some like these Legrand On-Q ones, which are usually $0.99 each: a.co/d/ieAqlSq

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨They just don't understand⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Cat7 doesn’t use RJ45 connectors, so it’s not useful for residential use. Any Cat7 with RJ45 connectors is fake.

  Cat8 isn’t worth it for residential usage, and IMO 6A isn’t worth it either. Cat6 will do 10Gbps. For anything faster than 10Gbps, I’d use fiber.

  The one place I’d always use fiber instead of Cat6, regardless of distance, is when connecting to a different building. There’s risks with lightning strikes, ground loops, etc that fiber avoids since it’s just light.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨They just don't understand⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  shielded

  FYI, the shield only does something if you ground it, and you need to be very careful to only ground one end so as to not introduce a ground loop. If it wasn’t grounded then regular unshielded Cat6 probably would have performed the same.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I'd play it⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  at the Olympic games

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Time to chop wood⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  extract fees for the convenience of allowing you to pay a bill online.

  You just need a credit card with higher cashback than the fees.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google is now forcing gemini in their gmail app⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The code is public and they could definitely write automated tests to check all they need to check, and at every single commit

  The other thing they’d need to verify is that the app that’s uploaded to the Play Store or whatever other platform it’s on matches the code, which can be hard to deal if the build isn’t reproducible (that is, if every build produces a binary that differs in some way, like if there’s a timestamp embedded in it). This is one reason I like F-Droid - F-Droid build and package the apps on their end, so you can guarantee that the compiled app matches the source code.

  For google drive integration, i saw that most devs are just removing support for it

  I’ve worked on both sides of this (a big tech company providing an API to access data, and a smaller company or open source project utilizing said API) so I understand both arguments.

  In addition to cost, there’s also complexity, as often the big tech company’s compliance issues/requirements become the small developer’s compliance requirements too. For example, there can be issues with storing data from European users outside of the EU, you may need a terms of service or privacy policy that explains what you do with the data, you need to handle erasing the data if the user deletes their Google account, etc. Other companies like Facebook have similar concerns, and the Facebook Graph API is relatively restrictive as a result (to prevent third party apps from abusing data, like what happened with Cambridge Analytica)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Ordering coffee in the USA triggers me⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  So these comments aren’t going the way you thought they’d go…

  I have never heard of this in any other country

  Which countries give you more coffee than you paid for just because you asked for less ice?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google is now forcing gemini in their gmail app⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I used to use FairEmail, and IMO it’s one of the best email clients available on any platform, but it started acting weird as my account got larger. Taking forever to sync, not sending emails (just keeping them in the outbox), etc. I switched to K9 Mail, which has now become Thunderbird for Android.

  Main problem is that now google requires developers of email clients to give $4000 in annual fees (level 3? or level 2 for just $500 is enough?) at their friends at KPMG to do yearly audits of the code

  On one hand, I think audits are a reasonable idea. Some of the most sensitive data is in people’s emails, and most accounts can have their passwords reset via email. You really wouldn’t want malicious code touching that stuff. On the other hand, that’s definitely a large expense for an open source project :/

  I’m glad some providers are moving towards OAuth or OIDC for logging in to email. Regular auth is very outdated and doesn’t support two-factor auth. It’ll just take a while to get there.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hollywood stars and geeks unite to billionaire-proof social media⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Mastodon already does this

  That’s only for showing a domain on your profile. What I meant is using a domain as your username, so if you own example.com and used that as your username people would mention you by writing @example.com. A DNS record delegates the domain to the right server.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hollywood stars and geeks unite to billionaire-proof social media⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Interesting, I hadn’t heard of that. Does everyone who’s following the old account automatically refollow you when you do that?

  IMO it’d still be useful to be able to use an identity you control, like a domain name. I’ll have to find those proposals you mentioned.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hollywood stars and geeks unite to billionaire-proof social media⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Mastodon and Lemmy (and Pixelfed and many others) use a protocol called ActivityPub. Not all of the Fediverse uses it - for example, the original Fediverse apps like Identica and StatusNet used Activity Streams or OStatus.

  AT Protocol is another protocol, created specifically for Bluesky, although there’s no reason other apps couldn’t use it, once Bluesky actually enable decentralization.

  It does have some useful features that ActivityPub doesn’t have, like identity portability - you can move a profile from one server to another without having to change username or refollow everyone. AT Protocol lets you use your own domain name as your username, even if you don’t host your own instance. With Mastodon and Lemmy, your identity is tightly coupled to the instance you use, which makes it a pain to move to a different one.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Enemies⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Bots are much easier on Lemmy compared to Reddit, so I’m surprised we don’t see a huge number of them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Enemies⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m from Australia and remember when gas hit $1/litre in the 90s. The pumps could handle it, but the signs only had space for two digits (cents) so petrol stations (as we call them in Australia) had a hand-painted “1” at the start of the price, until they could upgrade the signs.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The lost days⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  True, but the common libraries for date/time handling are widely used and heavily tested.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨They fucking geoblocked blahaj.zone⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Sure, but anyone can just spin up a new instance that federates with the large instances. Also, if that were to happen, Lemmy could be modified to restrict it so that only admins could see that list.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The lost days⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Most developers don’t write their own date handling code; they instead use code that someone else already wrote.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨They fucking geoblocked blahaj.zone⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The good thing about Lemmy is that due to its distributed and federated nature, it can’t be fully blocked. You can just use a different instance and see all the same content (assuming no instance blocks between the instances).