History Youtube gets pretty whack about this because Google’s adsense algorithm freaks out when words like “Nazi” and “Stalin” appear. To name a few examples:

• “The Famine” in place of “Holodomor”
• Jo. [CENSORED] in place of “Stalin”, “The Patsies” in place of “The Nazis”

The second example is particularly amusing, being a video about how Shostakovich circumvented soviet censorship while self-censoring all instances of “Stalin” within the script.

Ah, yes, just over five attempts for every human alive. I assume they took the reply addresses at face value and have forwarded 45 billion cease & desist letters to Microsoft’s Redmond office?

Could have been MMANAA 😔

Male A to Male C is abolutely possible. It’s the Male A to Female C adapters which are evil. There is no pinout mapping that will turn an A host into a “real” C host and that’s exactly what a Male A to Female C adapter purports to do.

In any case, if you know what you’re doing then all bets are off the table. Hack away freely because at the end of the day it’s all just copper and bits anyway. With that being said, anyone who knows what they’re doing does not require my permission to… vague gesture know what they’re doing.

Like I said: in order to do it the non-evil way you need to cram in an onboard USB chip. Female USB-C from a Male USB-A plug-in is explicitly not possible to implement in a spec-compliant manner because of the pinouts.

You can brute-force a smaller passive adapter like those online but it’s a devil’s bargain. Nobody targets these janky adapters when designing products. USB-C things will just break without any rhyme or reason because you’re fundamentally breaking the hardware contract and “lying” about the capabilities of your port.

No, it’s because I read an expert opinion on the subject: https://old.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/m7rcu5/any_reliable_usbc_female_to_usba_male_adapters_yet/grducjr/

If you hate Amazon you can buy it on the CableCreation website instead.

EDIT: that monoprice adapter isn’t even active lol!

First thing’s first: all such adapters should be considered evil by default. The only way to make a compliant adapter is with active circuitry in the adapter essentially providing an entirely standalone USB controller interface.

With that being said, here’s an adapter which does exactly that. Back when I researched this topic in October I found that the linked adapter is essentially the only one of its kind on the market right now.

(You’ve not been good)

No, I am not contradicting myself. Let me say it again with the ambiguity removed:

1. Cox Media isn’t an advertiser, they sell a dressed-up analytics service. Think spreadsheets (that’s literally the service they’re selling in this copy, a monthly report spreadsheet).
2. The “technology partner” selling this data to Cox is accessing it by bypassing the normal and correct operation of the device using malware.
3. What does not “exist” is a shadowy cabal of smartphone manufacturers scheming to hide listening devices in the pockets of their consumers.

I’m sure you still believe this is a load of apologia and frankly you can think what you want, but you should probably know that I’d already read about the Cox story when it first broke and specifically chose my words with that knowledge in mind.

Read the document:

The growing ability to access microphone data on devices like smartphones and tablets enables our technology partner to aggregate and analyze voice data during pre-purchase conversations.

Key word is “technology partner”. They’re buying voice transcripts ripped from someone else’s spyware and selling the service of scraping it for keywords and maybe somehow tying that back to an individual by cross-referencing the hit against data from traditional above-board ad platforms.

Google isn’t buying transcripts, Facebook isn’t buying transcripts. It’s Cox Media buying shady recordings stolen from spyware-compromised devices and then trying to whitewash it into something sellable with their (unverifiable) cross-analytics middleware.

we still have people that do not believe that the phones are always listening when seemingly any website or app you use gives you advertisements about what you were just talking about in the other room with the phone locked.

Oh come on. Don’t bring this into conspiracy territory. Yes, eavesdropping does happen, but it’s not something an uncompromised Android phone will do when locked. Even when it does happen in the case of spyware, the people doing it aren’t selling your transcriptions to advertisers.

People should still opt out of as many of GAPS’s spyware-like features as possible, as you suggest, but not because it’s a special anti-listening-device warding spell.

Mayo, mayo, mayo, mayo. I’d eat mayo flavored icecream if only the frozen dairy industry weren’t so cowardly

I’ll go to bat for Roborock. All common “user serviceable” parts are available for direct order from them and remain the same between generations so even very old models can be easily maintained with first-party parts.

They unfortunately won’t sell you an internal part like a motor, but you can still find new first-party parts if you know where to look and it generally only takes removing ~10 screws to get at the insides (example).

FWIW: Marxists weren’t blind to this obvious omission. The International was what we’d call a “big tent” coalition, so contentious questions were frequently hand-waved away in this fashion. Individual Marxists – including those as foundational as Engels – absolutely had opinions on the subject and they were not afraid to do the 19th century equivalent of Twitter dunking on those who would fantasize over establishing stateless utopias. Quoting Engels circa 1872 (bolded emphasis is my own, italicised emphasis preserved from original translation):

While the great mass of the Social-Democratic workers hold our view that state power is nothing more than the organisation with which the ruling classes, landlords and capitalists have provided themselves in order to protect their social prerogatives, Bakunin maintains that it is the state which has created capital, that the capitalist has his capital only by favour of the state. As, therefore, the state is the chief evil, it is above all the state which must be done away with and then capitalism will go to hell of itself. We, on the contrary say: do away with capital, the appropriation of the whole means of production in the hands of the few, and the state will fall away of itself. The difference is an essential one. Without a previous social revolution the abolition of the state is nonsense; the abolition of capital is in itself the social revolution and involves a change in the whole method of production. Further, however, as for Bakunin the state is the main evil, nothing must be done which can maintain the existence of any state, whether it be a republic, a monarchy or whatever it may be. Hence therefore complete abstention from all politics. To perpetrate a political action, and especially to take part in an election, would be a betrayal of principle. The thing to do is to conduct propaganda, abuse the state, organise, and when all the workers are won over, i.e., the majority, depose the authorities, abolish the state and replace it by the organisation of the International. This great act, with which the millennium begins, is called social liquidation.

[…]

Now as, according to Bakunin, the International is not to be formed for political struggle but in order that it may at once replace the old state organisation as soon as social liquidation takes place, it follows that it must come as near as possible to the Bakunist ideal of the society of the future. In this society there will above all be no authority, for authority = state = an absolute evil. (How these people propose to run a factory, work a railway or steer a ship without having in the last resort one deciding will, without a unified direction, they do not indeed tell us.) The authority of the majority over the minority also ceases. Every individual and every community is autonomous, but as to how a society, even of only two people, is possible unless each gives up some of his autonomy, Bakunin again remains silent.

Few movements self-identify as “Socialist”, at best it’s a taxonomical label. Attempting to talk about the finer points of socialism is akin to debating the pros/cons of “Animals” – it’s an overly broad topic and doomed to spiral into bike-shedding over semantics as soon as the conversation starts to look interesting.

With that being said, let’s talk about some more concrete terms – apologies in advance for wielding only slightly less clumsy terminology in my bullets:

• Socialized Medicine: Healthcare is a human right. I am pro human rights.
• Unions: Mostly positive. Nothing’s perfect, but come on… you’d have to be blind not to see and feel for how exploited lower-class workers are without them
• Democratic Socialists of America: I’m a member – that means I like them. I think their platform represents the ideal incrementalist approach to improving the current status quo
• European Welfare States (e.g.: Denmark): Too fuzzy to have a solid opinion on, but certainly a battle-tested template. I like most of their ideas most of the time
• Marxism: A genius body of economic philosophy, but increasingly out of place as time marches onward. I’d be for a by-the-book implementation (insofar as that’s possible) in 1923, but not 2023
• Maoism/Leninism: Not exactly success stories. It’s easier to appreciate their noble ideas & intentions with the distance lent by history, but that’s altogether different from “liking”
• Communism: As a whole? I think the template holds promise and can be made to work in a modern context, but viability =/= realizability. The world would have to get turned upside-down first and it’s questionable exactly how many of us would live through that… but never say never.

Also worth noting that most companies prefer to treat any given firing as “without cause” because stating a reason is usually a net-loss in terms of legal exposure.

Exceptions to the rule include, but are not limited to:

• States which make it expensive/slow to fire without cause (because money)
• Union jobs (because union)
• Retaliative firings (because worker’s rights)
• Prejudiced firings (because civil rights)

How does one tell if they’re on the road to a with-cause termination? Simple: documentation. If you’re suddenly being put under a microscope it might indicate that a premeditated f-bomb is hiding around the corner.

It could probably be argued that the board didn’t do what was best for the investors, which is what they exist to do.

Incorrect. OpenAI LLC (the traded company) does not have a board of directors. The board of directors actually belong to the parent company, simply “OpenAI”, which is a nonprofit organization – the only thing that they’re beholden to is the OpenAI company charter.

Here’s a simplified breakdown:

Board of Directors =[controls]=> OpenAI (non-profit) =[controls]=> OpenAI LLC =[employs]=> OpenAI CEO

OpenAI LLC is obligated to act in the best financial interest of their shareholders, but OpenAI LLC does not actually have control over who sits in the CEO chair. That power goes to the non-profit “OpenAI” parent company – a company beholden to their board, not shareholders.

I present for your consideration the case of September 3rd, 1967: the day Sweden switched from driving on the left side of the road to the right side. One would expect that the incredibly distracting process of overcoming a lifetime of learned habit would be a recipe for chaos, but in fact there were significantly fewer accidents than average on the day of the change ^[1].

As it turns out, the danger of complacency outweighs the danger of distraction. It does not particularly matter where one directs their focus if they are not driving mindfully. In a more natural environment, we’re good enough at identifying dangerous situations to pay attention when it matters, but roads are not a natural environment. For every alert person briefly annoyed by an audio notification there will be at least as many pedal-pushers too relaxed to even form coherent memories, let alone engage in defensive driving.^[2]

I used my WF-1000XM4s daily for 2 years until the batteries gave out. They were already out of warranty, but Sony replaced them anyway. I still use mine daily and am quite happy with the performance. They’re great IEMs if you’re fine with the batteries croaking after a couple of years – not a big deal if you’re comfortable installing aftermarket cells.

It’s not ideal, but I’ve had worse exeriences with other IEMs. My worst experience was actually with the GalaxyBuds, which unfortunately I developed an allergy to (Don’t roll your eyes – I’m not the only one! It was an issue with the rubberized coating in a few specific batches). Those assholes accepted my in-warranty RMA, but then never sent anything back. I literally only wanted a replacement, not even money back! Support completely stonewalled me even though I had the UPS receipt from their return slip 😤

I doubt anyone would list this as a reason, per se, but a common justification for the coffee/tea crowd is that these drinks are rich in antioxidants. The theory goes that stimulants cause oxidative stress, so you want all of the extra antioxidants that you can get.