xmunk

@xmunk@sh.itjust.works

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xmunk ,

Works in open source charity driven software - he's having a ball.

Clearview AI is Offering a Stake in Its Company to the People Whose Photos It Stole ( petapixel.com )

Clearview AI, a facial recognition start-up that scraped more than 30 billion photos from social media, can’t afford to pay the settlement bill from its class-action lawsuit so is offering Americans a stake in its company instead....

xmunk ,

Their business is built entirely on stolen data so they're selling off a minority of shares.

Fuck these clowns.

xmunk ,

This is one of the reasons why the death penalty is fucking bullshit.

xmunk ,

Gaming laptops are far too prone to overheating - either your manufacturer has drastically limited clock speed, your machine will brick itself as soon as you try to launch a performance intensive game... or you spent 7k+ on getting something from a niche company that slapped a jet engine on that sucker.

xmunk ,

Yes. I can't talk about buckwheat in particular but, considering your face goes on it, I consider a good pillow case more important than a good set of sheets.

xmunk ,

It's up to us voters to act - but receiving AIPAC money is absolutely a red flag for me.

xmunk ,

Hopefully, when Fetterman is next up for election, we can flip his seat blue.

xmunk ,

Most parliamentary systems also allow snap elections - there is usually a maximum length allowed before the next election but the PM can always call one earlier.

This has happened pretty frequently up here in Canada and Trudeau will time elections after good news if the LPC polling particularly strongly.

I think this is an overall good thing, it means that as long as a party is delivering success about once every four years it can remain in power - while allowing it to do the unpopular but necessary things in the interim. A hated party can't survive in power, but a party that invests in the long term can thrive... it does have a dark side though. The party in power may engage in frivolous bullshit before the election (like unproductive handouts) to try and sway public opinion. It's up to the public to see through short term bullshit and judge a party more long-term.

xmunk ,

To be fair, it's a needlessly permanent and scary sounding term for a regular part of the functioning of a parliamentary democracy.

xmunk ,

Make skirts!

xmunk ,

Sigh, I wish I could get paid for it. I absolutely love building a compelling story, but I'm far too nervous with strangers.

xmunk ,

The program is based on discriminatory zoning... not just the color of folks' skin.

What a fucking bullshit bad faith argument.

xmunk ,

They'd flood the market with properties shifting us along the supply curve to allow younger people to afford properties?

Darn, that'd be so... awful? No, I was looking for awesome.

xmunk ,

The people enjoying the suddenly over-supplied market that used to pay way over mortgage to rent from these fucks.

xmunk ,

Hey, I remember my macroeconomics!

xmunk ,

Tech bros like authoritians because they all got there by stealing from others.

xmunk ,

I think you misread the (admittedly awful) title. Congress has a lot of control over veteran health benefits... this shitheel wants to prevent same-sex veteran couples from having access to IVF while retaining access to hetero veteran couples.

The bill in question wouldn't restrict anyone getting insurance without going through Tricare and the VHA/VA. Though I'm sure that's eventually this fuck's goal.

xmunk ,

Shock therapy produces a twitch in the economy. Whether we're reviving the dead or whether this is just an on-paper improvement has yet to be seen.

xmunk ,

I feel like there's a chance - not good odds, mind you - but a chance that America ends up sanctioned and diplomatically isolated.

xmunk ,

Honestly, they needed to import weapons and ammunition from North Korea - I think they've since retooled their economy but shit was desperate there for a while.

xmunk ,

The branches and bark pattern create a really neat stained glass effect!

xmunk ,

How? Are you counting the owl partially blocked by a branch in the bottom left as two? Is there an owl in the dead center of the picture?

I can clearly see three owl faces down the left side, one near the bottom, a bit right of center, and a final owl chilling in the top right.

When did you know a career was either the perfect or the worst match for your personality?

I'm trying to give someone advice on choosing a career that will suit them better than the one they're in and hate. I wanted to get together a list of good questions for them to ask themselves so they can use the answers to compare options like "do you prefer to work sitting or moving around," "do you want to not work weekends"...

xmunk ,

I went to university to study statistics, and I absolutely love statistics... but I was forced to learn SAS and, fucking hell, I hacked that program to shit... my presentations would have loads of pretty printing, multiple data ingest methods, proper error reporting...

So I switched into CS and liked it a lot... then I took a course on data modeling, which led to a course of Relational Algebra (essentially the abstract logical form of what you're typing in SQL to your RDBMS) then I went on to become a developer and, while I am multiskilled and able to build UIs and backends and even embedded systems... I absolutely adore data architecture and DB performance tuning.

I really can't understate how incredibly easy it is for me to look at a query over a system I understand and quickly identify likely bottlenecks and logical errors.

If you re-read my comment, you might notice there isn't a single "Eureka" moment but instead are a series of them - I think that's how most of come to be in careers we truly enjoy.

xmunk ,

Yea, Tom Porter. I worked at the community for a few springs/summers and participated in setting up for the Strawberry festival. My father was in turmoil after his mother died and it was revealed she was a foundling and his grandparents weren't actually his grandparents. There is some evidence she may have been mowhawk though my DNA test didn't show any trace... either way I got a crash course on American Indian culture and while I don't claim to be a tribal member I support the community when I can, especially in terms of cultural outreach and preservation.

War on Gaza: US courts must hold Biden accountable ( www.middleeasteye.net )

While President Joe Biden recently said that “no one is above the law”, in response to guilty verdicts in former President Donald Trump’s hush-money trial, his administration is seemingly committed to shielding Israel from accountability at any cost - even if that means tearing apart the rules-based international order....

xmunk ,

It's also important to realize that if Trump were currently the president it's likely we'd be sending even more support to Isreal to enact genocide.

xmunk ,

Voters will either elect Biden or Trump - which of those options do you think will stop the genocide.

xmunk ,

Eh, someone is going to be the president and everyone with the right to participate in the election bears some responsibility for the outcome of the election. If we were living in Russia with literal sham elections you can't do shit... in America we can't do much but we can do something.

Given the choice you own the responsibility of how much worse whoever is elected than the other.

xmunk ,

In the long term we can vote for better local and state politicians so we can get generally better people in to the Senate and House.

In the short term you can ask yourself who would be a less awful president out of Biden and Trump and vote for that person.

xmunk ,

I see a lot more progressives in the house and senate than I used to. We're slowly pushing out the blue dog democrats... We're just not there yet.

xmunk ,

We have far better discussions on Lemmy, but there are some really niche communities I follow on Reddit still because there aren't enough interested folks here on Lemmy.

xmunk ,

Can I ask why you dislike /s?

xmunk ,

It's really a nice feeling when strangers on the internet can read your comment and get what you'd written in the right context - even if that context is an obscure in-joke. But there are a lot of people on the internet and a lot of real assholes that might non-sarcastically say whatever crazy thing you're joking at...

Especially when it comes to neuro-divergent folks, I think the /s is quite helpful. People want to be in on your joke. It's fun to connect with humor on the internet... and omitting a /s makes it extremely unlikely that some folks, especially those on the autism spectrum, will be able to share that moment with you... instead, it's more likely to be read as an attack or at least yet another disappointing failure of humanity and compassion playing out over the web.

So if people don't seem to get your joke when you omit the /s, please do realize that you've made your speech less accessible and some people are getting offended by your speech and it isn't their fault - it's yours. That said, if you enjoy having more arcane jokes and occasionally being downvoted into oblivion, then nobody is going to force you to /s.

xmunk ,

I strongly suspect Biden's campaign to try and pin Trump on supporting or disowning Project 2025 as part of an October surprise.

xmunk ,

Yea, this is precisely what I suspect they'll try so uh... expect some Project 2025 opinion pieces in the NYT in mid-september. And then we'd likely see some direct questions, in theory Trump might be concerned about rejecting Project 2025 because it'd alienate his base, but the outcome Democrats would be hoping for is for him to embrace it.

xmunk ,

Gabbard is clearly just in it for the money. It'd be nice if they could go away now.

xmunk ,

I celebrate the performance, but the BJP is still the plurality party. Unless a left wing coalition can form a majority (and I'm not nearly familiar enough with any parties outside the BJP and INC) Modi will still be the prime minister just with vastly reduced power.

I'd qualify this less as "fighting" and more "stopping the bleeding."

xmunk ,

A "worker led" anything is possible. Look at how much fucking money private investors and executives remove from companies - companies are always far healthier when run by employee collectives and unions, while far less effective, still significantly improve long term prospects.

xmunk ,

She doesn't know shit, she doesn't care about governing... she just wants fame and attention. I have conservative relatives in AZ and while I'm sure they'd vote for her they continuously bitch about her.

xmunk ,

He's a prominent black radio host who likely has a decently good impression of the political leanings of his listeners and is observing a contrast between the polling and his experience on the ground.

Is his listener base representative of the black community - good question.

But I think his opinion is probably relatively informative.

xmunk ,

What a whiney little bitch.

Why Assassin's Creed has lost its identity?

Remember those iconic games before 2014? The OG, while dated was really unique for its time, the Ezio Auditore Trilogy that became the standard for the franchise, 3, that was very ambitious (probably too much) with it's setting and story telling. Even 4, although it was the first time AC escaped from the base of what an...

xmunk ,

Valhalla will feel a lot like Odyssey, though I would mention that they were much more careful about reusing layouts. Odyssey suffered from so many of the forts and environments being literal carbon copies of one another which is fine (I guess) for a glory fighter but really destroys the puzzle aspect.

Japan’s births just fell to a new record low. Tokyo hopes a dating app can turn that around ( www.cnn.com )

Japan’s fertility rate, which has seen a precipitous fall for many years, has reached another record low as the government ramps up efforts to encourage young people to get married and start families — even launching its own dating app....

xmunk ,

In its current form, I agree, but national borders only exist to cause inequality.

xmunk ,

Yup, it fucking sucks. Now, imagine how bad it will get if Putin starts embedding FSD agents into the migrants to intentionally attack officers or set off small explosives in the crowds.

The people who will end up the most screwed are the migrants themselves as they're used as cover.

xmunk ,

Modern Monetary Theory is this big idea... and if it's right the US national debt is meaningless and we should suspend actual debt servicing. If it's wrong we're absolutely fucked.

Right now America is generally operating under the fiction that MMT is "actually like totally true guys" but we refuse to use QE to reduce the debt because, actually, we know it's fucking bullshit.

Does it matter that we owe 50 billion vs. 50 trillion dollars - not purely from the number - it matters that we're constantly transferring a huge chunk of our national revenue to debt holders. If we bit the bullet and QE'd that debt into oblivion that'd be fine, but everyone with an actual brain knows that's a terrible idea.

Paul Krugman is kind of a legendary wrong idiot.

xmunk ,

So... can we impeach her yet?

xmunk ,

Draw a straight line. I've got an essential tremor.

xmunk ,

They've always hated the other... it's just that who the other is has changed (sort of... obviously African Americans have been on the republican shit list since before Reagan).

xmunk ,

Also to be clear, we're not actually rebuilding it, we're just putting on a fresh coat of paint. Lives have been irreparably damaged and this pittance isn't nearly enough to help revitalize the area.

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