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Cake day: April 24th, 2024

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  • https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddle_point

    Basically, its a mathematical function where if you start at 0,0, you might falsely believe you are at the (or a) maximum or minimum of the function, as the slope at 0,0 is 0.

    But, if you go any direction in the x axis, your function value rises, any direction in the y axis, your function value falls.

    Thus a saddle point is an illusory, false impression of being at the extreme extent of a function, when in fact you are not.

    The idea is that there is more to determining if you’re truly at a global max or min of a function than only finding a single point where the slope is 0.




  • … Its a Korean beauty contest. The country with the highest rates of cosmetic plastic surgery in the world.

    I… I get what you’re driving at, that people in general shouldn’t be so driven toward perfection in outward appearance.

    But its a beauty contest, in a society where over 25% of women under 40 have had some kind of plastic surgery. and a huge cultural emphasis on perfection of physical appearance, where using AI enhanced filters is also hugely prevalent.

    I’m not saying this is good, I personally don’t like beauty contests, I don’t like widespread unrealistic beauty standards… but I don’t see how this question, absent its fumbled lingo adding overt sexual connotations, is surprising at all.

    It’s like being a vegan who is confused and angered by someone asking contestants at a hot dog eating contest how they prep before the contest:

    Why isn’t the issue of meat eating being addressed at this meat eating contest?

    Context should answer your question of ‘why do people at a beauty contest get asked how they would improve their beauty?’


  • So, the goal here is to prevent ghosting by making ghosting minutely costly to the ghoster.

    They pick from an array of multiple reasons why, and the app formulates an exceptionally kindly worded explanation to send to the ghosted person.

    I don’t see this as dangerous to people who are ghosting potentially dangerous people.

    Instead of getting nothing, and formulating whatever cockamamie explanation in their own minds (or maybe just going ‘sigh, oh well’), they at least get a facsimile of closure from a canned response.

    Obviously this does not magically solve the many problems of dating apps, but I fail to see how this is more dangerous than just ghosting on its own.

    The problem is that its minutely time consuming to provide a ghosting explanation.

    This ghost explanation requirement requires people to actually explain themselves, and that’s gonna be very cumbersome to people who are not really looking for a serious, long term relationship.

    It makes it very annoying to use the app in a scattershot approach for rapid fire hookups, with tons of potentials on deck, as you’ll be forced to consistently ‘tend’ to all of your simultaneous matches, or drop them…

    …and for people who think they’re looking for a serious, monogamous relationship, but consistently ghost people, it will basically cause uncomfortable cognitive dissonance when they realize they don’t like having to do a modicum if effort to explain why no one seems to meet their standards or is due their attention, even though they previously thought they were interested.

    Basically, the problem I see with this app is that it forces users toward being honest with themselves.





  • Firstly, yeah… RDRO is utterly plauged with all sorts of cheaters using trainers and all kinds of cheats is full of crap, at least for PC.

    The standard strategy you basically have to employ is that whenever you see something nonsense like that happen is you have to jump to another instance/lobby. Depending on your luck, you may have to do this every 15 to 60 minutes aaaand some cheats allow the cheater to follow you to your new lobby.

    Secondly…

    A few years back I was in RDRO and was attacked by a cheater.

    I had a broke ass level 15ish character with the just a few of the least expensive guns.

    They had infinite ammo. Teleport hopping. Spawned 10 additional NPCs versions of themselves, then of my character, then zombies, then legendary animals (basically fucking monsters).

    All the while they’re scrambling their name in the scoreboard every minute and create spoofs to make it harder to actually do a report or have the grievance system actually work correctly.

    I killed them all. I died over and over again, but I kept killing them. Whittled down the fake names and spoofs and kept doing the grievance thing until it was actually landing on one consistent name.

    Then the cheater began spawning gigantic props like boats attached to their character, which rotated and hit with physics force when they rotated, which they could shoot out of but I could not shoot into.

    But uh, I managed to juke my way through cracks in the collision mesh, then shoot him.

    He got tired of this at some point… and just turned himself invisible.

    But, by this point I’d been killed enough times that I’d managed to get him showing up on my radar.

    I’d by then long since run out of ammo… and began stalking him, via radar, with just a knife and lasso, sometimes the running tackle with the lasso that leads into a hogtie, other times actually managing to sneak up behind him, executing an invisible foe.

    After an hour and a half of this, he started slipping up, and I could see him attempting to flee me, teleport half a klik away and just stand there for 30 seconds, then move a bit, then pause again, presumably fiddling around in his menus.

    I killed him a few more times in this state, and he quit, he left.

    … I would have just jumped to another instance if he had not killed my horse.

    Do not fuck with a man’s horse lol.

    … anyway, yeah. hung up my hat after that. fucking nonsense.


  • According to Mutahar:

    1. The Anti Cheat has already been bypassed by a free cheat menu on Windows.

    2. He’s fairly sure he has figured out some kind of way to temporarily bypass (as in, it’ll probably get caught in a few weeks) the linux block by some kind of custom virtualization method (requiring only one GPU) that he says he may explain in detail at some point.

    In general, he’s done with playing GTO.

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eMSagozpKPs&pp=ygUSbXV0YWhhciBndGEgb25saW5l

    But yeah, obligatory reminder for BattleEye and EasyAntiCheat games that refuse to allow linux play:

    All these game devs have to do is flip a switch, click a few options in their developer portals, to allow BattleEye or EAC to work on linux, through Proton.

    And its been that way for 3 years, since 2021.

    There is literally no reason for games that use these services to not work on linux, the devs just don’t fucking care.


  • Yep, I’m only 35 and remember when almost all drivers generally only used hibeams in situations of serious low visibility due to fog or snow or rain, or a totally unlit road at night out in the middle of no where, and where it was common courtesy to turn your hibeams off when someone is coming toward you on the other side of the road, turn em back on when they pass.

    Seems like basically no one does this at all any more, barring some longhaul truckers.

    Its just super brights all the time.

    If you have an astigmatism, just get fucked, crash and die I guess.


  • We’ve gone from ‘Wait, the cars are not the dominant life form of the planet, they’re constructed devices of the dominant lifeform of the planet that destroys the environment to facilitate their daily movement between different boxes?’

    To ‘No actually the cars are actually the dominant lifeform, they have more rights and priority than 99% of their operators.’

    Hope the dolphins take over soon.

    EDIT: Has anyone made some kind of online map for the whole US that compares minimum wage to hourly parking rates?


  • It can and does happen to men, and trans and intersex people as well, but its far more commonly associated with women.

    Most of the market for prostitutes globally is men seeking women… but not always.

    It… also happens with children of all sexes.

    Its unfortunately not uncommon for a child to be either abducted or lured into sex slavery, though being technical that now becomes child sex trafficking or sex trafficking of a minor, which usually has even more harsh punishments.



  • sp3tr4l@lemmy.ziptoTechnology@lemmy.world*Permanently Deleted*
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    12 days ago

    Now now, they innovated by turning Facebook from the way you could see what your friends were doing on your feed into algorithmically determining exactly which batshit insane ‘news’ stories from cranks and posts from crazy people would be the most effective rage bait to specifically you once they figured out that anger and rage are the most effective way to cause retention and engagement.

    They basically scientifically perfected trolling, and figured out how to monetize it.

    Sure it widely proliferated dangerous anti science nonsense, bigotry, racism, sexism, homophobia, fostered the Q Anon insanity mind plague and facilitated it going mainstream, but hey, hate sells.


  • Sex trafficking is basically when you break immigration laws and/or forcibly transport people against their will, or in some kind of unescapable debt/slavery type of arrangement, where you yourself know that the people you are illegally moving are going to be forced into sex work, often for little to no pay, often with the sex trafficked people having no practical ability to leave due to withholding their passports or bank accounts from them.

    EDIT: And also often getting the sex trafficking victims addicted to drugs.

    Its human trafficking + facilitating or operating a business of prostitution or non consensual pornography production.

    Unless you are going to be forcing your gf into prostitution as her pimp following your out of state dinner, then no, what you have described is not sex trafficking.

    If she is unhappy with going to an out of state restaurant but ultimately consents to this, and then consents to sex afterward, this is just an awkward relationship with you being pretty weird and controlling, but its probably not a crime.

    If, however you threaten her or force her or drug her to get to this out of state dinner, and the do the same to coercively have sex with her without her consent, then that’s interstate kidnapping and rape… still not sex trafficking though.


  • A decade ago I was contracting for MSFT as a database admin / data analyst.

    A far older and more experienced contractor told me that he had been part of a team in Saudi Arabia, in 1990, that intercepted computer and electronic equipment bound for Iraq’s air defense command and control systems, flashing the firmware with exploits and backdoors as fast as they could before they were sent to Iraq.

    Supply chain interception has been a thing for a while.

    EDIT: This is a total off topic aside, but hearing about and seeing shit like that at the various tech jobs I’ve worked is why I laugh when people say ‘oh but alexa only activates on keywords’ or ‘no its totally impossible for phones to listen to your convos and then give that data to advertisement systems’.

    Call me paranoid, I don’t care: If you don’t have a hardware disconnect for your microphone and personally have the source code to every bit of software, at every level, then we just have to take the giant tech corpos at their word.


  • On the one hand, I am glad this is finally happening.

    On the other hand, I am 99% certain my father, who’s worked at variously the Everett and Renton plants his entire adult life, is continuing to be a scab, as he has also done his entire adult life.

    Raised me on Rush Limbaugh, last I talked to him he was a Q Anon nut that believed Antifa did Jan 6th and Tom Hanks’ son rapes and kills children for their adrenochrome.

    The 1% uncertainty is not from a 1% chance he might actually also be striking, its the 1% chance he’s either retired or died from a heart attack since I last spoke to him.

    Either way, fuck Boeing.


  • So, the article isn’t specific enough to explain whether or not the 5 rounds actually fired or cooked off.

    Normally, ammo is said to ‘cook off’ (the irony in this specific situation is literally physically painful to me) when the gunpowder in the cartridge is heated enough that it deflagrates, usually with less of a total and rapid burn than when a gun is normally fired.

    This is because primers (the substance that is actually struck by the firing pin and actually explodes, thus setting off the rest of the gunpowder to deflagrate) typically have much higher temperature thresholds before they will react than the gunpowder itself.

    Basically what this usually means is that when ammo cooks off, it is still quite dangerous, but the bullets will have lower velocities than normal, less predictable trajectories.

    I’d be curious to know whether the round in the chamber cooking off actually successfully had enough energy to cycle the action and load a subsequent round, or if half of them just exited from the magazine and handgrip.

    Either way this is an extraordinarily stupid thing to do, jfc.

    I thought it was bad when my idiot roommate left a pan of nachos and the plastic spatula in the oven after telling me she cleaned the kitchen. Went to preheat the next day and… oh. She did not clean the kitchen, now our spatula is molten and my chance of getting cancer has increased somewhat.

    I guess thats not as bad as a fucking gun.