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merc

@ merc @sh.itjust.works

Posts
4
Comments
1674
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • Mark Zuckerberg's Pivot to AI Is Blowing Up in His Face Spectacularly

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  • And Google built a search engine. Everything else they've tried to build has failed, other than maybe Gmail which was just a Yahoo Mail / Hotmail clone. Everything else that has been successful has been an acquisition: Maps (Keyhole), YouTube, Android, Google Photos (Picasa), Doubleclick...

    We really need robust antitrust. How many of these acquisitions would be thriving companies in their own right, competing with the big tech giants if the tech giants hadn't been able to absorb them.

    Google+ is an example of what happens when companies have to compete instead of acquiring other companies. Google poured billions into it and it flopped completely.

  • Welcome to America, where you’re never quite sure if your senator is dead or not

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  • Dunno, I don't see an "about" link or something.

  • Welcome to America, where you’re never quite sure if your senator is dead or not

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  • My instance got rid of the tesseract frontend, and I don't much like the default frontend. I was using the old-reddit style frontend, but it was having massive issues. It was not posting comments at all, then double posting comments, not loading comments, etc.

    Funny enough, that was actually familiar from the old Reddit days... though it was never quite that bad.

    Anyhow, I abandoned the old-reddit frontend for now because it was just too buggy.

  • Welcome to America, where you’re never quite sure if your senator is dead or not

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  • So are all Americans who live outside the USA, and are taxed but receive no representation.

  • Welcome to America, where you’re never quite sure if your senator is dead or not

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  • Indeed, if McConnell were in perfect health and a Democratic senator were in this position, McConnell would be leading the charge to ensure they resigned.

    No, McConnell wouldn't "ensure someone resigned", he'd use some procedural trick to remove them from office and have a Republican of his choosing fill the seat. And, he'd do it even if he knew full well that the person was alive, conscious, fully in possession of their faculties, but somehow unable to defend against that kind of a dirty trick.

    The governor of Kentucky should simply replace McConnell, and if it turns out that McConnell is, in fact, up to continuing to serve in the senate, he can fight to get his seat back.

  • Welcome to America, where you’re never quite sure if your senator is dead or not

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  • Indeed, if McConnell were in perfect health and a Democratic senator were in this position, McConnell would be leading the charge to ensure they resigned.

    No, McConnell wouldn't "ensure someone resigned", he'd use some procedural trick to remove them from office and have a Republican of his choosing fill the seat. And, he'd do it even if he knew full well that the person was alive, conscious, fully in possession of their faculties, but somehow unable to defend against that kind of a dirty trick.

    The governor of Kentucky should simply replace McConnell, and if it turns out that McConnell is, in fact, up to continuing to serve in the senate, he can fight to get his seat back.

  • Turns out we blew up all those boats in the Caribbean for nothing

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  • That's not a real name, however Go-fast boat is a real term that people use.

  • Turns out we blew up all those boats in the Caribbean for nothing

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  • That's not a real name, however Go-fast boat is a real term that people use.

  • Turns out we blew up all those boats in the Caribbean for nothing

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  • That's not a real name, however Go-fast boat is a real term that people use.

  • take their money and arrest those responsible

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  • My sister has that as a tattoo (or some variation on that wording).

    And yet, it seems to have become an excuse for why she's allowed to buy a big gas-guzzling SUV, and drive it whenever she wants, wherever she wants, and fly around the world for fun.

    If she's ever asked, she's an environmentalist who loves nature. But, she avoids ever having to make tough choices about her own lifestyle because she allows herself the grace to just do what she can do, and not agonize over the rest.

  • take their money and arrest those responsible

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  • "I'm not a monster for choosing to drive a gas-guzzling SUV, it's the evil oil companies!"

    I'm not pretending these companies are blameless. They certainly lobby to reduce people's alternatives. They probably break any environmental regulation they can get around, and just pay a fine if caught.

    But, fundamentally, they're a business. They wouldn't be pumping oil out of the ground if people weren't buying it.

  • take their money and arrest those responsible

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  • Or, better yet, people who "love nature", so they drive an SUV every weekend for an hour to get to a cottage / camp / cabin. Or go camping, or canoeing, or whatever.

  • Q, continuing his study of humans

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  • John de Lancie's way of delivering lines is so theatrical that it's hard to believe he ever plays / played some regular dude. The guy is born to strut on a stage. If he's not doing theatre, the only kinds of roles that seem to make sense with that voice and that style are gods.

    Even in that MacGyver episode MacGyver sounds calm and laid back, but de Lancie's character seems like he's about to give a speech.

  • My "Battlestation" of Spices. 🤌🏻👩🏼‍🍳

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  • Oh, interesting!

    Apparently Cream of Tartar is Potassium bitartrate, a potassium acid salt. And baking powder is basically an acid (Cream of Tartar for example), mixed with a base (Baking Soda, or Sodium Bicarbonate) and a desiccant like corn starch to prevent the two from reacting by getting wet.

    When they do mix, an acid/base reaction occurs releasing CO2, which is why it's useful in baking because it makes pockets in the dough.

    Apparently cream of tartar was a naturally occurring byproduct of wine making, and has been known for thousands of years, but was only used for baking in the last few hundred years.

    The word "tartar" seems to be basically as old as wine making. The latin word "tartarum" has its roots in Byzantine Greek. But, it doesn't seem to be connected etymologically to tartar sauce.

  • My "Battlestation" of Spices. 🤌🏻👩🏼‍🍳

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  • Ah, ok. I don't do much baking, and when I do it's just bread / focaccia, so that's probably why I've never used Cream of tartar. To me it sounds like tartar sauce, which I think is used with fish... so it's strange it's something for cookies.

  • I Reviewed Late-2000s Digital Cameras. Allow Me to Remind You Why We All Switched to iPhones.

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  • The ergonomics aren't great compared to a dedicated camera. The camera sensor not being in the middle is annoying unless your subject is far away. Having to hold the phone so that you don't accidentally touch the screen, accidentally block the camera, etc. is not ideal. The shutter is never in a great position, even if you do something like use the volume button as a shutter.

    Even flip phone cameras were more convenient than that. With those the camera was roughly in the middle, and you could hold the phone in a way that felt less awkward.

    OTOH, the thing that killed cameras for me was the ergonomics of getting the pictures off the camera and backed up online. You either needed to remove the memory card from the camera, make sure you had a USB to memory card adapter, plug it into a computer, drag the files somewhere, etc. then wait for that to complete, and remember to put the memory card back into the camera.

    For a short while, the cameras claimed to have WiFi, but it wasn't like you could just connect them to your home router and let the camera connect to the Internet and upload the photos. No, the camera created its own WiFi hotspot and you had to connect your laptop or something to that hotspot and transfer the files that way.

    To me, the killer feature of phone cameras (aside from always being in my pocket) was that to back up the pictures I'd taken I had to... do nothing. I'd get home, use my phone as normal, and within half an hour, the photos were already online and backed up.

  • My "Battlestation" of Spices. 🤌🏻👩🏼‍🍳

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  • How often do you actually use things like Celery salt, Celery seeds, Freeze dried chives, Cream of tartar, Dill weed, Flax seed, Popcorn salt and Taco seasoning?

    My approach has always been that something can't go into the spice drawer unless I've actually used it in a recipe. I've seen things like Cream of Tartar in a lot of spice drawers, but I have no idea what it is, or what kind of recipe might call for it.

  • The Fourth Circuit Says Border Agents Can Search Your Phone By Hand, No Suspicion Required

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  • oof

  • The Fourth Circuit Says Border Agents Can Search Your Phone By Hand, No Suspicion Required

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  • Even before Trump border control officers already had way too much power.

    I worked for a company that considered the US border only second to the Chinese border in terms of a risk to confidential information. If you went to China, you had to sign out a special laptop that was wiped clean of anything confidential. Going to the US, you were allowed to take your own work laptop, but they had special briefings detailing what to do in various situations to try to keep the company's data confidential while complying with the warrantless searches at the border.

    What it comes down to is who cares. In this case, the general public doesn't care. The TSA / Homeland Security wants to be seen to be doing everything possible. At first it was about terrorism, then it became about child sex abuse imagery that apparently people were going to take across the border, unencrypted on their work laptops. So, the boundaries of what was reasonable to search for just kept getting expanded. A few civil rights orgs. and people who cared about privacy tried to push back, but even though they cared a lot about this issue, the general public didn't care, so Homeland Security got even more rights to search.

    IMO it's the same reason why the US is essentially the only country that does citizenship-based taxation rather than residency-based taxation. The vast majority of citizens don't care because they never work outside the US. The government cares because it's free money, and sometimes they get to take money from mildly rich people who try to evade US taxes by moving to a tax haven. But, the vast majority of people who have to deal with these taxes are low and middle-income people who have dual citizenship and live in Canada, or are Americans who took a job overseas. They all hate having to file these taxes, and think they're completely unfair, but it's just too small a group for the government to care about.