• 0 Posts
  • 199 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: August 3rd, 2023

help-circle
  • I have taken to using my a quote of my own with people recently, on both sides in different situations. Quote: “Those who neither ascribe to nor participate in the social contract of tolerance are not afforded the protection it brings.”

    I say it to the right when they complain about me calling them out on their BS or making it known that they are generally shit human beings.

    I say it to the left when they try to call me out for saying that literal Nazis holding signs on the side of the road should have beverages thrown at them by passing cars at the tamest. I would prefer throwing much heavier objects, but the law protects them. The Law, not the social contract of tolerance. Within the confines of the law, people like that should not be tolerated and should be informed with as much force as possible.


  • This is a cultural thing. My wife has studdied German culture, particularly relating to their relationship with their language, pretty extensively and from what she says they are exceedingly resistant to changes to their general language at all. Hence all of the compound nouns for new devices instead of coming up with a new word. Apparently the cultural adoption of “Das handy” for cellphone was a cultural milestone since they actually used something new instead of trying to cram together “Mobile Wireless Vocal Communication Device” into one word.




  • Yup. I shop at Walmart out of desperation. I had stopped entirely for years after hearing that they have members of staff who go around from store to store to help get employees on food stamps. That and that they tell manufacturers what the price will be. That is not how commerce works.

    My solution to the government assistance issue is a pretty straightforward answer. Revise corporate tax codes to include a reduction exempt line item that totals 2x the total value of all government assistance received by employees. Do not pass go, give us your $200. Food stamps exist to help families who are struggling, not as a corporate subsidy.












  • I know it isn’t “always”, but it has been proven that the “overcharging” is a way to launder money into black budget projects and operations. They aren’t always “bad”, the Manhattan Project was a black budget, as was the development of the stealth bomber.

    I am also less concerned about a 5k pair of socks and more worried $90 million/plane F-35 that is widely regarded by pilots as a worse plane than the jets being replaced. You know, the one we spent $2 Trillion developing. I’m sure there were some $25k hammers in there, but overall it was so much other waste. Let’s cut some of that type of spending.


  • Not that I know of. In the end you are editing the browser rendering parameters. Anyone can inspect the page and see that the opacity on the page is being turned down. Finding where it is happening is the only thing you can really make hard. Have a couple of the pass through scripts be machine generated and you can have it use nonsensical variable names and a bunch of dummies that lead on wild goose chases. It could all be fixable, but you can make it a pain in the ass. Add a redundancy or two and it will make debugging a nightmare because even if one is fixed, the others will make it look as though it has not.

    The real answer is to have NEVER do freelance web development inside the client’s firewall. Never. If they try to require it, walk away. If it is inside their firewall then they can just take the source code and stiff you. If they try to spout some BS about security, say that is precisely what you are concerned about and point blank ask them what safeguards they are willing to allow you to put in place for developing in their system. If the answer is none, walk. If they are willing to let you VPN in, run the code from a local copy over the VPN and node lock it so if someone attempts to serve it from another machine it fails.

    Apologies. I’m tired and hate businesses taking advantage of “Independent Contractors”.