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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • Wire is pretty much never removed once it’s laid out and I’m sure a lot of DSL based internet connections still run over same twisted pair that would have carried POTS lines.

    But you’re probably right that there’s a VoIP device keeping these up and working, maybe just more than 6 ft away and instead in some Telco box down the street.

    I think POTS installations will remain for decades more in niche cases - emergency backups in elevators, security systems, hospitals, fire departments. And evidently Grandma’s AOL internet connection up until this month haha




  • Thanks for posting this take. The topic of AI taking jobs seems to garner a lot of emotional response but not much of a technology discussion.

    There were people who were negative about using websites to place orders in the 90s in part because e-commerce killed order processing jobs and the need for phone reps at mail order catalogs.

    In this case AI is being used as just another e-commerce UX, so it’s really just a continuation of what’s happening already.

    People used to do things like put 18,000, or -1 and all kinds of other garbage in the fields on website order forms as well. That’s just a programmers job to fix with reasonable input validation.

    It wouldn’t surprise me if drive-thru like Taco Bell started doing license plate recognition and reputation checking. So if you order and dash more than a couple times they might not take your order from outside in that car anymore.

    On the upside they might be able to greet you by name and recall your last order:

    Hello Mr Smith… Nice to see you today, would you like 10 cheesy gordita crunch tacos and 1 large diet Pepsi again?




  • eBay is a major pain these days for small sellers that just want to unload some stuff.

    I say that because I’ve tried to get a business going on eBay several times over many years and always run into issues directly with eBay (eventually, even if for short periods it’s ok)

    A lot of bad actors go there first to run scams, and eBay just blocks sellers left and right if you do anything that even raises an AI bot’s virtual eyebrows.

    Try apps like Mercari, Whatnot, Posh/Vinted (for clothing), and Facebook marketplace. I think you’ll find all of these are friendly to one-off sellers and easy to conduct business.



  • This is wild, but I have at least one guess where they might be coming from with this idea.

    At one point I had to move out of a house that I owned for a while so I wanted to let it.

    People who want to rent can be super flaky and dishonest. Seriously 4 out of 5 or more are like this.

    They make appointments then don’t show up and ghost you. Or they call 5 minutes late to say they’ll be there in 3 hours.

    Or everything seems good until you do credit checks and find they were evicted from the last place and haven’t made a payment on their credit card for 3 years plus they have a felony conviction from a few years ago for beating up some guy.

    Or when checking their income is sufficient, their boss says yeah, they used to work here but not anymore.

    Potential renters never tell you this stuff until you already put hours into talking and going out to show the place to them.

    I’m just a regular guy with a job (who does pay his bills) so this takes a lot of time, fuck that noise.

    Basically charging people $5 will make them not come if they know they won’t qualify, saving everybody the time.



  • I think the fundamental problem with ipv6 is that it’s a bit more complex to learn than ipv4 and not universally deployed at the remote host/server level.

    New cloud companies who want to be competitive have to purchase ipv4 blocks at significant cost reducing their ability to compete with the incumbent players.

    So if you go 100% ipv6 at home, some percentage of the internet will be inaccessible to you unless you employ some workarounds.

    We’ll drop ipv4 quite fast once everything is up on ipv6 because nearly every modern network enabled device supports it.

    The only reason I think we’ve not gotten over the hump is because our alternatives are still easy enough to work with and nobody requires it.



  • I was traveling internationally recently and returning to the USA I didn’t even need my passport to clear through immigration. They had a camera which recognized me and gave me the green light to pass as I approached.

    The agent had a few questions and I was on my way.

    It was convenient as hell, but the fact that their system can link me to whatever data is stored with my passport records based on a second or two of recognition out of all the faces that must be in there…

    actually kinda blows.

    It means they can definitely put a street camera system in place and see oh, there’s /u/nucleative. Wonder why he’s at the protest, bank, with that person, driving that car, near a crime scene, or anything else.

    Somehow we have zero privacy yet the enforcement hides behind numbers and masks.

    I expect that this will just continue to go further and further.

    Kids, this is why we needed to push back hard on privacy, random cameras, and facial recognition 20 years ago.

    The metaphorical horse is already out of the barn and removing or disabling these systems will probably never happen now.



  • Sales taxes vary based on city, county, and state rates. They can also be waived if you, the buyer, have a reseller permit or are purchasing for a non profit.

    It’s not underhanded and is annoying for sellers too because they have to know a lot about sales taxes as well. They could show you the price with local taxes included but then most customers would think their prices are too high comparing to other merchants.

    So the price shown on the product in a store or online is only what the merchant is selling it for. The price at the register is what the merchant is selling it for plus the taxes they have to collect (unless you’re excluded for the reasons mentioned above).

    The tax is a buyer obligation, not a seller obligation but sellers have to be an intermediary. So buyers should be educated about the tax laws that apply to them (in this system).

    The receipt should be clearly marked so you know exactly how much went to the product and how much went to tax. You can itemize and deduct your sales taxes from your federal income taxes if you’re so inclined to track it (and it’s a better result than the standard deduction)

    It’s more complex than a VAT system but enables local jurisdictions to levy taxes to pay for various things applicable to their area.

    🤷‍♂️