_bug0ut

_bug0ut , 6 months ago

Of course - Cymatics entire business model is harassing the hell out of people via email to either look at their new sample packs or buy them on discount.

If you pay attention, they give away free packs + will have promos where they give you credits for free packs and then put a bunch of packs up for discount. I’m not particularly fond of their samples, but free is free and I’ve found stuff I like in their collection.

_bug0ut , 6 months ago

Right, for example, your email address so they can harass the hell out of you (if you stumble onto the site and see the “FREE SAMPLE PACKS” link). Or the free packs are just partial and they’re supposed to entice you to buy the whole pack (where the actual good samples are). Or the packs lead you to their not-free VSTs (which I’m also not terribly interested in, but I’m not their target for that stuff).

_bug0ut , 7 months ago

• George Costanza

_bug0ut , 7 months ago

I mean, that’s not entirely accurate - a vote for a presidential candidate is a vote for the slate of electors tied to said candidate - effectively a vote for your candidate, albeit indirectly. Electors can, however, be required to vote according to popular vote as required by the state they’re electors in. Or they could have pledged to vote according to specific party. I don’t know for sure, but I assume state elector requirements override party pledges.

My understanding is that when it was devised, it was a compromise between direct democracy (which would honestly be potentially dangerous - how many people do you know where you can’t help but go, “Fuck… This guy can vote.”) and election via congressional vote. It certainly ain’t perfect and I have no bias towards it, but it’s a system like anything else that people tend to point at and blame when things don’t go their way or just ignore or even defend when things do go their way.

_bug0ut , 7 months ago

The long, drawn out metaphorical explanation was unnecessary and frankly kind of condescending.

I’m not over here trying to be some champion of the electoral college and I’d be more interested in seeing a real push for ranked choice or one of its cousins.

The point I was making was that if you sat at home and didn’t vote at all, your chosen candidate would never see the inside of the oval office and I went into my understanding of why it is the way it is. Ultimately, voting under the current system is not entirely worthless as you seemed to claim in the original post I responded to.

We’ve had something like 59 elections in total and 5 of them involved the winning candidate losing the popular vote but winning the election by way of the electoral college. Only one of those elections - the very first - involved anything even remotely close to your example (but still not42.3% vs 31.6%). The other 4 had a difference of like 2% or less between the two leading candidates.

The electoral college was devised as a compromise between direct democracy and congressional voting and I’m sure it was done in good faith to try to make sure everyone was represented, but this system seems to truly show its cracks when we’re facing an insanely stark national split like we see today and there’s no argument that we should probably shake things up and get rid of it.

_bug0ut , 8 months ago

I can’t remember what it was specifically, but friend basically ruined a major plot point in Witcher 3 for me fully knowing I was a good ways out from discovering it on my own. As a kneejerk reaction and knowing he was about 20 or 30 hours into Fallout 4, I told him who tuns the Institute and what relation that individual has to the protagonist.

He was angrier than I was because I had assumed Witcher 3 turned out the way he revealed, but my spoiler absolutely blindsided him. He never ruined anything for me again.

_bug0ut , 8 months ago

If you’re envisioning a sloppily torn of paper with “KILL EVERY1” scrawled on it with crayon, I could see where you’re coming from, but paper battle maps with points of interest/focus being used by a pretty primitive (comparable to who they’re up against) fighting force makes more sense, though.

If this was planned so tightly that they didn’t let the bulk of their fighters (or large swaths of lower rung leadership) know details until days (or less) before the attack, then it stands to reason they’d hand out infosheets. That seems to be what happened here.

reuters.com/…/how-israel-was-duped-hamas-planned-…

_bug0ut , 8 months ago

How do they account for a service like privacy.com which allows you to generate multiple dummy card numbers for a single card?

If the cost of subscription is, instead, the barrier to entry then all we’ll end up seeing is parties who have the resources for wide spanning scams or propaganda or whatever it is - and if they’re paying then they expect to profit or score gains in some way that justify their costs, which likely means they’re effective at what they do

_bug0ut , 8 months ago

They’re there… err… the remains are, at least.

_bug0ut , 8 months ago

Edgy teenager shit, probably.

Like drawing an anarchy symbol on stuff.

_bug0ut , 9 months ago

I assume the accepted copout is something along the lines of, “You can thank us for making enough noise that they backed down. Sheepdogs, sheep, blah blah something something…”

_bug0ut , 9 months ago

For real. I still regularly lose the “make my own vs. takeout” battle, but a nice evening drive is better than paying $80 for a $40 2-person meal.

_bug0ut , 9 months ago

Holy fuck did we finally sell Florida? I wonder what sucker bought it.

_bug0ut , 9 months ago

PSA: At every Exxon Mobil I’ve been to, when the screen on the pump starts vomiting up ads as you’re pumping your gas, if you tap the 2nd button from the top on the right side of the screen, it mutes it.

Enjoy your peaceful gas station visit.

_bug0ut , 9 months ago

Sneako and his “I’m a little teapot” lookin ass with those goofy ass ears. Holding a dickhead like him or the Tates up as some sort of goal to strive towards is synonymous with “rock bottom.”

I get it - like I understand the mechanism behind why some younger dudes become infatuated with these figures. It’s the same reason boomer housewives get into the Law of Attraction or why people who don’t have a single fucking clue think Trump is going to fix everything if he could just get one more term in office… but I don’t get it.

_bug0ut , 9 months ago

I actually got this solely in YouTube shorts, but without having viewed anything related to it. Every few Shorts I scroll through, I’m met with something plucked straight out of the alpha/sigma/HKV trashbin and I’m assuming it’s because I likely got demographic’d. It frankly kind of pushed me away from the whole feature - not much of value was lost since a lot of Shorts are just teaser trash that gives you a portion of a story designed to drive you to the channel.

Oddly, my regular, non-Shorts recommendations are fine.

_bug0ut , 9 months ago

I find it crazy that I didn’t really have any real male role models, but the media I turned to ended up being guys like Henry Rollins.

The “finding myself” period of my life pre-dated the existence of this manosphere/shallow-ass-masculinity shit, but the archetype has been around for far longer and there were plenty of slimy douchebags to look up to. Sometimes I wonder what spared me.

_bug0ut , 9 months ago

I feel bad for this dude, but not for the reasons he wants me to.

Nearing 40 and being pretty staunchly no-kids, I always got along great with all of the devs and admins I work with who have kids and we find plenty to talk about. I always thought what I do for a living is pretty cool, but I certainly never expected that to be my ticket to getting laid or being praised as some big-brain special boy. This dude felt one-dimensional because he is one-dimensional. Maybe he just never really spent the time developing his personality and maybe its time to do that now. It’s one thing to love what you do, its another entirely to make your job your identity - you gotta bring more to the table in social situations than shop talk and Squid Game.

As for complaining about a routine… I mean, that’s unfortunately how being an adult works for 90% of us. We have jobs, we often end up kind of worn out even if we sit at a desk all day, and it can suck - you make the best of it and break the monotony as best you can. If he wanted to be in the remaining 10%, he probably should’ve put in the effort. Those folks he mentions at Y Combinator, or starting nonprofits probably busted their asses to break through. Even content creators who put out quality content often are often run ragged from overworking. Did this dude think staying in NY and taking a 9-5 there would have magically given him extra energy?

Fuck outta here with this garbage, Business Insider.

_bug0ut , 9 months ago

Hah, fair enough. I’ve never been there, but I’ve always wanted to try living somewhere in the PNW at some point. This is clearly a him problem and I wonder if being a working stiff would have begun tainting his view of NY with time, too. He doesn’t realize it, yet, but what he’s doing in that regard is looking back fondly on his college days.

_bug0ut , 9 months ago

[…] but subscriptions for software-based new car features will continue, according to a BMW board member.

I wonder what they’re going to try to nickel and dime people over next. I mean, if they’re offering internet service/access or other things that are an ongoing service, fine. That’s mostly fair… but if they’re charging you to flip a bit in the car’s internal database (or even worse, a central database somewhere that keeps your car’s data) but the feature is installed in your car and costs BMW nothing to enable it, then ewwwwwww

Took a deeper look at the article…

[…] BMW says it will continue to offer subscription-based services but only for software options, like driver assistance and digital assistant services, which is completely understandable.

Hahahahahaha no. For the most part, absolutely no.

_bug0ut , 9 months ago

The issue occurred following regular maintenance work on the servers, the company said, adding that it would review its maintenance procedures.

Two people with knowledge of the matter had told Reuters the malfunction occurred during an update of the automaker’s parts ordering system.

Uh-oh. Someone forgot to uncomment include /etc/logrotate.d and bounce the service, didn’t they.

_bug0ut , 9 months ago

Oh man, the first time I ever ran into the inodes issue I was still a squirrely, eager young admin and not the broken, cynical shell you see before you. That one fucked me up for a solid day and change.

_bug0ut , 9 months ago

Passengers, reportedly including the one suffering diarrhea, were allowed to re-board after an eight-hour delay […]

God damn if I was the person who did it, I’m not sure I’d want to get back on and just have people stare at me with contempt and disgust for an entire international flight.

Alternately, I might feel obligated to suffer along with everyone else, all things considered.

_bug0ut , 9 months ago

I just keep hearing “smell of vanilla shit” in my head and I’m like, “Naw, I’m good. I’ll sleep at the airport and try to catch an early flight tomorrow.” Haha

_bug0ut , 9 months ago

I don’t know if you’re chiding me or not, but in case you are: I quite literally put myself in their shoes in the post you’re responding to.

And for the record, without going into the horrifying details, I lived a very similar situation at a really nice hotel on a work trip. I had the luck of being alone and able to clean it up on my own without anyone noticing but for that 45 minutes where I frantically ran to a 7/11 to buy paper towels and hand sanitizer as a stand-in for proper cleaning product and then frantically cleaned it up like MacGuyver was just handed a single thread and a thimble to diffuse a bomb, I dreaded more than anything that someone would see before I had a chance to take care of it.

I agree that it would be cruel to treat that person any differently because they had an unavoidable accident that caused all this, but people suck. And even if everyone was super understanding, I’d still be absolutely mortified as the person who did it.

_bug0ut , 10 months ago

Pull off request, on the other hand (ha-HA!), approved.

Not like that bitch Stephanie is gonna be helping out with that anymore.

_bug0ut , 10 months ago

Probably because most of the people at his net worth are pushing for RTO so he’s the exception to the rule.

_bug0ut , 10 months ago

Genuinely curious why you think Apple Music is better. When I got my first iPad in years last year, I decided to try to go “all-in” on Apple services partly to consolidate and partly to save some money. After about 14-21 days, the only service left standing was Apple News+ (and only because the only other option was NewsReader which is 3x the price and I just generally didn’t love the UI and the way it worked overall).

Apple Music seemed to have slightly less of the music I searched for (I don’t have specifics, it was a year ago) and also seemed to be slower/shittier overall than Spotify. It was just generally unpleasant to use - this, coming from a guy who has plenty of gripes with Spotify’s user experience.

I’m all for ditching Spotify (I have all kinds of issues with their general business practices and how they stiff artists, among other things), but like @dinckelman mentioned elsewhere in these comments: “every bit of competition is even more incompetent and greedy than they are.” I’m not going to say Apple is more greedy in this case, but they felt less competent.

_bug0ut , 10 months ago

Alcoholism will do crazy things to people and their brains.

I keep going back to how the guy who wielded RICO so cleverly to wreck the mob, ran an effective “PR campaign” post 9/11 that dubbed him the “Mayor of America,” and was a serious potential presidential candidate ended up leaking oil out of his scalp in front of a landscaping place, being the mouthpiece for a sort-of wannabe mafia-esque organization and eventually getting bitchslapped with RICO charges himself as a result.

I think it’s one part alcoholism, one part grasping wildly for the glory days, and possibly one part dude just getting wackier with age. You can see the glory days stuff in action during his time trying to get the GOP nomination in 2008 and how everything with him was about 9/11. There’s probably a feeling of invincibility he has from the highest highs he reached in his life and maybe even a bit of smug “I know what’s best for this country, I was it’s goddamn Mayor for the love of fuck!”

Whatever it is, fuck that guy. Time to piss off, Rudy. You’re embarrassing yourself and the rest of us by extension.

_bug0ut , 10 months ago

The amount of “innovation and debate” I’ve seen during remote meetings is no different than when I used to work in an office. Meetings are either exhausting and dead (when they’re the usual bullshit administrative meetings that no one wants to be in and could’ve been handled via email) or they’re fun and engaging (when its something like a working session where the participants want to be there).

This guy is an idiot and, as others in this thread have already stated, he’s got ulterior motives beyond “innovation and debate.”

_bug0ut , 10 months ago

I feel like this was a missed opportunity to use Dhalsim for the fire one instead of Sagat.

_bug0ut , 10 months ago

Can’t believe he chose THAT instead of just wishing for more wishes.

_bug0ut , 10 months ago

My background is not on STEM and I was always passed the notion that without roots in hard math I can’t go far in programming.

I swear this is some BS repeated by people who have no idea what they’re talking about. I got told pretty much the same when I was younger - don’t believe it. It may have been true to some degree at some point in the distant past, but it’s outdated advice at best.

Your main general skills when it comes to writing code are the ability to think logically and to think about abstract concepts. Creativity and imagination can definitely help. The ability to keep organized in your thoughts can also go a long way. Just about everything else comes in the form of knowing the language you’re working in, exposure to common coding and software design principles, and knowing your coding environment.

Math can figure into a lot of different types of programming careers… Shit like writing video game engines and other complicated things that model physics and stuff come to mind. But it’s not so much that math is intrinsic to programming, but rather that those types of software just require a lot of advanced math.

For example, I’m an automation engineer. It’s just a sysadmin who writes a decent amount of code. Most of my programming work revolves around sending requests over our company’s local network to servers or internal websites to do shit like remotely power up or shutdown machines or trigger a task or open up work orders. There is very little actual math, if any, in the entirety of my work.

At it’s core, programming is just the storing, moving around, manipulating, and keeping track of bits of information. Especially in a language like Python (which is my primary language).

EDIT: I should probably add my background isn’t STEM either. I’m a two time college dropout who got a break 14 years ago and left the restaurant industry to go into the tech sector instead.

_bug0ut , 10 months ago

These dickheads always think they can translate the power they hold in civilized society to the wild post aoocalyptic free for all. Makes you wonder what will be going through their heads when some brutish psycho decides it’s his turn and is about to stomp their heads into the tightly packed wasteland dirt.

_bug0ut , 10 months ago

Nostalgia? I’m nearing 40 and all I have to do is switch out “room” with “home office” to make this applicable to me.

_bug0ut , 10 months ago

Kenshi is one of those games where I had it wishlisted for like 3 years, finally bought it, spent 300 hours soaking in the utter horror and brutality of it, resorted to shameless save scumming, put it down, and now, 2 or 3 years after my last session, I’m afraid to pick it up again because I have shit to do and nothing will get done until I’ve lost another several hundred hours to it.

EDIT: Oh, AND there’s a sequel coming and that’s even scarier to me than picking up the original again. Send help.

_bug0ut , 10 months ago

Hell yeah. Best kind of game for social “black hole” periods in your life (like when you move to a new city or something) and those times when you’re just uninspired and unwilling to be productive for a couple months, too.

_bug0ut , 10 months ago

Oh, I can’t ever just pick up an old save on a game like that. Although, with Kenshi, it might be easier in some ways to just pick up the save and go into an established, geared, and prospering character vs. becoming instantly disemboweled 10 min into a new save by a dust bandit lol

_bug0ut , 10 months ago

his legacy*

_bug0ut , 10 months ago

Shrek is love, Shrek is life, Shrek is high fashion.

_bug0ut , 10 months ago

I think in a lot of cases, it’s less about them having a lot of money and more about how they’re able to effect change using that money or the power/influence associated with that money. Unfortunately, this can often happen at a relatively large scale, like by upending a popular social media platform or disrupting the automobile industry (for good or ill) or discussing futuristic public transportation ideas to take the wind out of the sails of more realistic/attainable projects and efforts.

All things considered, I wouldn’t mind hearing less about these people - a lot less. We’re well into mud slinging territory and some of these dickheads absolutely thrive on that. I’m sure the worst of them feel egged on when the media talks about them so they say or do more crazy shit very publicly to draw attention from fanboys and detractors alike. Call it a vicious cycle… or a hyperloop or something.

_bug0ut , 10 months ago

fair enough and fwiw, that’s what i was kind of echoing. “we’re” in mud slinging territory as a culture, but journalists/opinion-piece-writers/whatever are massive drivers of it.

_bug0ut , 10 months ago

Big brain thinking right here. Variety is the spice of life.

_bug0ut , 10 months ago

Same, back when I played a lot more. There was a period of time where I felt completely unfulfilled and unappreciated at work. I was a Linux admin at the time so I spent 90% of my time in a text environment. One day, I installed TinTin++ which has a non-GUI version and I’d just keep one ssh connection opened to a VPS I pay for and would just MUD throughout the day (mainly just running quests over and over). This was years before “quiet quitting” was cool lol

_bug0ut , 10 months ago

Yeah, they all definitely seem quite polished. Sometimes I get the itch to play a MUD, find one or return to one I’ve played before, and get hooked for a few months. Other times, I’m done after a few days… they’ll always be an option for me though. IRE games are just fine for my purposes in that regard.

_bug0ut , 10 months ago

exactly this right here. we saw the same phenomenon with threads and mastodon before it inre twitter annoying its userbase. depending on how engaged each wave of incoming users ends up, i’d guess you could expect it to look something like:

• spike
• drop off
• plateau
• spike
• drop off
• plateau above the last plateau
• etc etc

sometimes the drop off is really bad. sometimes its just people getting bored with the initial hype while others stay. rinse and repeat until the platform succeeds or dies.

_bug0ut , 10 months ago

I think there are a combination of factors intermingling, situations like the API backlash just jostle things a little harder and that’s when you see big spikes. Once a platform like Lemmy begins to see more and more traffic and, in turn, content, it starts to become a viable alternative.

Lemmy existed for at least a couple years before I joined, for instance, and I came with what I would guess was the biggest wave so far (June 2023). Provided the userbase can keep up a respectable momentum generating discussion and content, the next wave could be bigger or it could be more resistant to leaving because there’s enough content here to consume and interact with.

Reddit could take years to lose substantial portions of its userbase or it may shed some and stay solid, but Im not one of these people who obsesses over it’s ruin. If they survive long term, God bless, whatever, who cares. What’s interesting to me is seeing an alternative sprout up and actually generate traffic and start building a community, whether that’s Lemmy or something else built on ActivityPub or something else built on a different federated framework or even something else entirely that’s centralized… I think Lemmy is one permutation of this and it has undoubtedly got some traction.

I sometimes wonder if/when I’ll start getting random Lemmy links from people instead of ones to Reddit.

edit: I should also add that considering reddit is trying hard to get value on paper and probably still hoping to ipo, we probably shouldn’t put it past them be shitty once again at some point in the future.

_bug0ut , 10 months ago

exactly. a little bit of elbow grease and greed is what got us all to the fairly awful future we find ourselves in, who’s to say it can’t get worse? never let the hope die. lol