dhork
@dhork@lemmy.world
- Comment on Why doesn't phones numbers have a "DNS" servet so we can just type in words like we do with the internet? 5 days ago:
Because when the telephone system first was developed, all you had were dial phones, which could only send numbers 1 through 0 (10). So every call needed to be addressible using only numbers.
AT&T came up with the numbering system in the 40s…
- Comment on Why are there silly license requirements? 1 week ago:
When the State licenses things like that, it’s usually because whatever activity is being licensed utilizes shared resources, and the State has an interest in making sure those resources are used in the common interest.
Radio licenses are essential because the RF spectrum is a common resource. The State wants to make sure that certain frequencies are only used for certain purposes, and that those who use them have the proper training.
Some communities use pet licensing as a tool to make sure all pets are properly vaccinated, to reduce the spread of rabies (which really is a horrible way to go…)
Hunting and fish licenses are a way to help control the overall wild animal population, and make sure they are not overharvested and preserve rhe availability for future seasons.
- Comment on How can Doge access critical government infrastructure and fire people if it isn't even a real department? 2 weeks ago:
It is a real department, sort of. Trump used Legislation that was intended for an Obama Era “US Digital Service” and rebranded it “US DOGE Service”
en.m.wikipedia.org/…/United_States_DOGE_Service
They do, in fact, overstep their legal boundaries quite often. But the administration simply fires anyone who gets in the way until they get an acquiescent administrator who lets them grab the department by the pussy.
- Comment on Isn't having your own domain name for email very bad for privacy? And how do you pick a good domain name that doesn't sound goofy? 3 weeks ago:
Yeah, individual emails can be picked off at any point in the chain while in transit. And someone who has hacked key infrastructure in front of your server can see all emails on transit. But your server might have stored emails, so someone with clandestine access to that will be able to access part of your email history (perhaps all of it, if you use that server for permanent email storage), and they are not limited to emails in transit.
- Comment on Is anyone planning on doing anything about trump creating a concentration camp at guantanamo bay? 3 weeks ago:
I plan on complaining about it on the Internet. That’ll show 'em!
- Comment on Isn't having your own domain name for email very bad for privacy? And how do you pick a good domain name that doesn't sound goofy? 3 weeks ago:
I know a lot of people with their own domain names and email servers. From a privacy perspective, it is better because you know nobody is reading your emails. Your email address is a method to track regardless. But free email services are only free because they scrape your emails to figure out which ads to send. If you run your own mail server, you know no one is snooping.
The real issue is that you need to be fastidious about security, because your servers are exposed to the broader Internet and there are a lot of bad actors. You not only have to make sure your server doesn’t get hacked, but you also need to make sure the mail server application can’t act like an open relay. Spammers use misconfigured mail servers all the time to send tons of spam messages using someone else’s bandwidth.
And once your mail server is used as a spam relay, it might get IP blocked from major email providers, and I bet that is a pain to get resolved.
So it’s only worth it if you know what you are doing.
- Comment on Keep getting permanently banned on Reddit subs 3 weeks ago:
Only a matter of time before Trump renames them the Indians by Executive Order
- Comment on USA Question | How much is a dozen large eggs near you? 3 weeks ago:
$4.69 at Wegmans
- Comment on You have got to be kidding me... 3 weeks ago:
Unless God exercises His Ultimate Veto and cuts his term short.
- Comment on I feel stupid asking this. But cities and countries who have smog and a major amount of air pollution. Why doesn't the wind blow it away or move it overtime? Is there that much pollution? 4 weeks ago:
I went to Beijing several years ago on business. By a total coincidence, it happened to be just after the Golden Week festival, which is a national holiday and businesses were closed. I expected quite a bit of smog, but when I arrived everything seemed clear. My Chinese host took me out to see the Great Wall, and it was breathtaking, and also crystal clear. I was wondering if the dirty air I had heard so much about was a myth.
But then the work week started, and as the week went on and the factories started up again, I noticed that the air was getting dirtier. My Chinese host took me to see the Forbidden City at the end of the week, which was also extremely beautiful, but already the air was so thick that I couldn’t see the landscape anymore, only the buildings in front of me.
Nature does a good job at cleaning the local air itself, but when we spew so much crap in it Nature can’t keep up. So, yeah, smog happens because it constant pollution.
- Comment on Would not adding a stamp and return address on a letter give you free postage 4 weeks ago:
- Comment on Is there anything stopping constant impeachment votes? 4 weeks ago:
Impeachment must start in the House, and the rules of the House are heavily tilted toward majority rule. So it would need a majority vote to even get started, and it would be referred to a committee with a Republican majority. If, somehow, the investigation done there is fair and a recommendation to impeach passes the committee, it still needs to pass in the House again.
But then, it goes to the Senate, where a 2/3 majority (67/100) is required to convicted. So now we have gone from needing a handful of Republican defectors on the House (including at least one committee member) to needing 22 of 53 Republican Senators to agree to convict. That is an extremely high bar. If you were a Republican who is on the fence about Trump, it is simply not worth openly defying him unless you were certain Republican Senators would convict.
- Comment on Why did trump go after the Gulf of Mexico rather than New Mexico? 4 weeks ago:
New Mexico has an actual constitution, as well as three whole branches of government, who have the official say on what is called. The Gulf of Mexico just has some fish and oil rigs.
- Comment on Meta Censors #Democrat when searched for 4 weeks ago:
It’s been a common trick for a long time on the right to equate simple disagreement with censorship, and use that as an excuse to practice actual censorship when they take over.
- Comment on Dragonsweeper: A nicely challenging Minesweeper/roguelike combo 4 weeks ago:
I have been playing this all night, thanks. I did beat it once so far, now I’m trying to clear the board
- Comment on Why is Tesla market cap so high ? 5 weeks ago:
The price of very large publically traded companies is set entirely by supply and demand. Yes, those shares do represent a tiny share of ownership in the company, which means a share in the profits and assets of the company. But there is no law tying them together. Tesla’s market value is so high because there are more buyers than sellers, it’s as simple as that.
- Comment on Dunkin' added achievements to their mobile app 5 weeks ago:
They do it because it works. Not only does it lead to more direct sales, but the app is scraping data that can be further used to generate sales, either to the user directly or sale of their data to third parties. And people who don’t like their habits being gamified will simply not install the app.
How many people are going to say “I refuse to go to Dunkin because they went too far gamifying their rewards program in their shitty app I never use”? Probably close to zero. So, the cost of doing it is whatever they pay their offshore contractors, who probably can’t afford to come visit the US, much less go to Dunkin for awful coffee every day.
- Comment on We got several more inches of snow last night after getting over seven a few days ago. I went to my local newspaper's website to find out if there was anything I should know. This was their top story. 5 weeks ago:
Yeah, that is more incompetence than I am used to. When we get driving bans and other emergency declarations, the local news will put that crawly thing on the bottom of the screen letting us know what’s up. I bet they get complaints when it covers up the score of the game.
- Comment on We got several more inches of snow last night after getting over seven a few days ago. I went to my local newspaper's website to find out if there was anything I should know. This was their top story. 5 weeks ago:
I live in an area that gets snow regularly. When we get a storm, there are precisely three things the news can report on:
- When will it stop
- Are the roads driveable
- Are there school or business closings
If there is nothing to report in those three topics, then it’s just another slow news day. Just be glad they’re not making TV news reports about trending Social Media topics, that’s what our local news gets into when they run out of Sinclair propaganda (or Bills highlights) to run.
- Comment on If the United States has Cuba banned from things, how does Guantanamo Bay exist? 1 month ago:
slate.com/…/how-did-the-u-s-get-a-naval-base-in-c…
The US took the area by force during the Spanish-American War, and then signed a “lease” with no end date with the Cuban government at the time.
I bet every time Cuba says they want to take it back, the US says “Yeah? You and what army?”
- Comment on There's fucking ads in board games now 1 month ago:
where air should be monetized
- Comment on There is a fee to close my HSA account 1 month ago:
This is because you are not the customer. Your employer is the customer, they are the ones who get to choose the HSA provider for their employees. You are the goods to be sold. The HSA provider is simply harvesting profits.
- Comment on If investing in the S&P 500 is such a surefire way to make money, then why isn't everyone doing it? 1 month ago:
It’s not entirely without risk. 2002 and 2008 both saw the S&P lose over 30% for the year. But it is up more often than down year-to-year, and it is usually up by at least 10%.
I found some good charts here, even though it is a EU site:
curvo.eu/backtest/en/market-index/sp-500
If you are investing for the long haul , you will take the occasional 30% haircut if you can get 10-20% the rest of the time. But it would suck if you got that 30% haircut just before you needed to sell…
- Comment on Why is Trump orange? 2 months ago:
Have you ever looked at the makeup that theater or TV performers use? It is layered on super thick, so that it looks good from far away, but up close it looks overly made up.
Trump has been on TV so much that he knows all about that. He wants to project an image of vitality, so he layers that stuff on as thick as he can to mask his natural pallor.
- Comment on FedEx has absolutely no clue what 'economy' means. 2 months ago:
I bet there is a hidden lower bound to the size of packages their Economy rate, so you are essentially paying the same rate for this Economy letter as you would for a small box. While the First Class rates have separate rates for letters vs. small boxes.
- Comment on Related to the recent question: A family member has told me that my inheritance after they're gone is for becoming a live-with landlord. Is that ethical? 2 months ago:
Yes, it is possible to be a “landlord” in this fashion and keep your ethics intact. Just don’t be an asshole about it.
Charge a reasonable rent for the other apartment, don’t harass them if they are a fewdays lats with rent, keep the place updated and well maintained. And certainly don’t let an AI tell you what to charge. The best possible situation is to rent to a young person just starting out or a young family, who can use the time renting from you in a non-predatory fashion to build up savings to buy a place of their own, then rinse and repeat. Wouldn’t that be fulfilling?
On the other hand, though, look into the basic tenant law in your ares so you know what you’re getting into. Some locales are notoriously tenant friendly. You might rent out your space to someone who signs all the paperwork saying that they will pay rent, and then when the time comes they never pay. This might persist even after their lease is up, and not move out when required to. But as a landlord, it will be totally your choice to decide what to do in that situation. While the law may allow you to evict that person, you don’t have to escalate that far on day 1. The choices would be up to you. You can choose grace and patience if you want. It may not always be enougn.
Your relative is doing this to give you a sustainable path to a better, more stable life. While this path is not for everyone, it doesn’t automatically make you exploitative.
- Comment on Why are Republicans struggling in Swing State Elections? 2 months ago:
It’s simply because they are not paying attention. And I don’t mean that as a put-down, I simply mean that Trump has their attention, not the broader GOP, nor anything about the government. They don’t care about the GOP Agenda, beyond a few of Trump’s sound bites. Many of them have an inherent distrust of politicians yet trust Donald Trump completely.
- Comment on Is there any point for current US-based "skilled immigrants" to stay in the US? 2 months ago:
The sad part is that the brunt of this will likely be borne by nationals from countries that the US President has officially deemed “shithole countries”. Or, in other words, not white. You only have to look at his “Muslim ban” from last time, and know that he will expand it, to see how bad things are gonna get.
You may think you have some protection if you are a permanent resident. And you may have some protection if you are in a state that will not assist the Federal government in rounding people up. But you will continue to deal with the hassle every time you enter or leave the country. Which state you live in doesn’t matter at the border.
In my uninformed opinion, if you decide to stay, you shouldn’t make any plans to leave the country, because you will never really know if your authorization to stay in the country will be arbitrarily denied while you are away. It is probably better to just leave. We will, unfortunately, not be very hospitable to you for the next 4 years (and maybe longer). Unless you are white. Which is all sorts of wrong. But the way it is these days.
- Comment on Found this while going through old stuff. I'm terrible at chess, but I would play expecting to lose just to watch the animations. 2 months ago:
System 7 Ready!
- Comment on If Orange Dickhead dies before taking his oath again will sucession still be applicable? Like Vance the new pres and Johnson the new VP? 2 months ago:
It has never happened before, so we don’t really know. What I think would happen is that Vance would just get immediately sworn in as the President on Jan 20 if God exercises His Ultimate Veto on Trump’s second term.
But the Presidential Succession Act only covers vacancies for the Presidency. Once the office of the President is filled again, nothing else happens. It’s not like everyone else “moves up” a slot. Mike Johnson would probably see the VP position as a demotion honestly.
The Office of the VP would remain vacant until President Vance nominates a candidate, and then it must be approved by both houses of Congress in order for the position to be filled.
