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brvsft

811 karma · joined March 10, 2023

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brvsft··on The Bear Market Has Nearly Been Erased, Fewer Than 20 Months After It Began
The fact that bears are known to hibernate sounds like a better reason behind the term. So I looked it up because your comment just sounds like some ridiculous folklore etymology someone made up (no offense, and apparently my guess is not right either).

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/the-origins-of...

> The bear came first. Etymologists point to a proverb warning that it is not wise "to sell the bear's skin before one has caught the bear." By the eighteenth century, the term bearskin was being used in the phrase "to sell (or buy) the bearskin" and in the name "bearskin jobber," referring to one selling the "bearskin." Bearskin was quickly shortened to bear, which was applied to stock that was being sold by a speculator and the speculator selling stock.

...

> At about the same time, another animal symbol made its appearance in the marketplace. The term bull originally meant a speculative purchase in the expectation that stock prices would rise; the term was later applied to the person making such purchases. The animal seems to have been chosen as a fitting alter ego to the bear. Thus poet Alexander Pope wrote in 1720:

> > Come fill the South Sea goblet full;

> > The gods shall of our stock take care:

> > Europa pleased accepts the Bull,

> > And Jove with joy puts off the Bear.

> This eighteenth-century animal imagery caught on, and bears and bulls have been in the stock market ever since.

I'm not really satisfied with the bull explanation either, as it sounds a bit tauotological, but whatever.

brvsft··on ‘World of Warcraft’ players trick AI-scraping website into publishing nonsense
> Not a concern for me as I'm playing on PC...

> No colour blind settings. WTAF.

Do color blind settings through the OS work for gaming, or does the game have to be designed to accomodate to them in some manner?

brvsft··on LinkedIn adopts protocol buffers and reduces latency up to 60%
> For example, in JavaScript, using standard 'for loops' with index numbers is a LOT faster (over 16 times faster for basic use cases) than using Array.forEach(), yet all the linters and consultants recommend using Array.forEach() instead of the standard for loop... What about latency???

Do you have proof of this claim? It smells like bs.

brvsft··on AT&T does not intend to immediately remove lead cables from Lake Tahoe
I can't tell if this is a sarcastic comment, but (a) companies are always being shorted and (b) that's not the only reason a stock price goes down.
brvsft··on “That Deep Romantic Chasm”: Libertarianism, Neoliberalism, & Computer Culture
I always forget this, but yeah, I think you are right.

Prime example for me were those talks about rail worker strikes. They were completely disallowed from happening. I understand the reasons, but despite not being any sort of leftist, I find it quite unfair that rail workers can't strike.

Police, teachers, actors and writers, etc. all have that right. Rail workers? Nope. I don't know what to call the political economic system we live under, but it seems to just be that our leaders make it up as we go along and allow whatever happens to be convenient and not blatantly illegal. Nobody gives a shit about rail workers, so legally blocking a strike by them isn't going to cause any problems.

brvsft··on Founder of crypto lender Celsius Network arrested, charged with fraud
Mashinsky is a conman. This has nothing to do with the SEC being coy about whether BTC is a security and everything to do with Mashinsky lying to his customers about the risk involved in investing through Celsius. Here's a clip of him getting called out on his lies in a debate with a Bitcoin hater:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBohJXhpRHU&t=2m7s

brvsft··on B.C. government hit tweet limit amid wildfire evacuations
I did not think this is what they meant from the comment, but I did immediately think it would be useful (and get around any 1st Amendment concerns) as you've suggested here: a platform exclusively for official communications from gov't at various levels / localities.
brvsft··on Kelly Rowland couldn't have used the =HYPERLINK() function to message Nelly
I love spreadsheets, and I use them all the time, even in my personal life. Not once did I state that Excel sucks, is unimportant and shitty software, that no one should know it, or that people should have poor financial habits. I am not "defending ignorance." I have literally taken university-level accounting courses out of personal interest, despite not being an accountant by profession. (Although, I tend to use Google Sheets more because it's free and still functions well.)

What I am defending is someone saying that they don't know what Microsoft Excel is and don't care and having other people refer to that as prideful ignorance.

brvsft··on Kelly Rowland couldn't have used the =HYPERLINK() function to message Nelly
I'll argue that, in 2023, the most basic 'computer' skills are knowing how to:

* buy a smartphone (okay, not even a skill)

* connect to the internet

* visit a website

* install an app

* use basic apps, e.g. read/send email, read/send text messages, view/take photos

That's it. And none of this is necessary for survival, nor to even be what I'd call a well-rounded person. They're just modern conveniences. Things beyond this are trainable. People get bonus points for knowing how to use 2FA or spot phishing attempts or other scams, but I view this is going beyond the purview of basic computer skills into basic cybersecurity.

So I don't see not knowing what Excel is as equivalent to not 'knowing computers.' But you know what, why do you get to choose what is a 'cool thing' to celebrate? If someone chooses to be computer illiterate and celebrates it, why is that a problem? My wife doesn't know how to drive. Guess what, she'll never murder someone with a car. Kudos to her.

brvsft··on Kelly Rowland couldn't have used the =HYPERLINK() function to message Nelly
She also tosses the phone aside, like she is annoyed and does not care about the spreadsheet text message she just received or the person who sent it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WYHDfJDPDc&t=190s

brvsft··on Kelly Rowland couldn't have used the =HYPERLINK() function to message Nelly
It's infuriating to see such a stupid take bubbled up to the top replies to the top comment on this post.

Why would a singer know what Microsoft Excel is? And how exactly is her response even "pride[ful]" ignorance? She just said she doesn't know what it is and therefore doesn't care about the memes. Which part here is pride in her ignorance of software mostly used in the accounting profession?

I'm not going to say she's a genius, but it's grounded for a person to acknowledge when they don't know what something is and don't give a shit. This thing was an afterthought to a music video for a song she was in. The video is tangential to her actual work. Why should she care? If you're going to call her ignorant and stupid for it, you should be able to explain why she should care about Microsoft Excel specifically when it's presented to her in a flurry of internet memes.

Also, why is she on TV? Because she's the second most famous person who was in Destiny's Child, behind Beyonce. Is TV only supposed to show people of high intelligence? Are "stupid" people actually subhumans who should not be represented on television, the bastion of idiots? Are stupid people actually morally bad and smart people are morally good? I'm so confused about all the things your worldview could imply. It's nonsense.

brvsft··on I Will Not Eat the Bugs (2021)
> record profits

This term is 'triggering' for me because it is such a thoughtless complaint. Between inflation and economic growth (and population growth), record profits are practically inescapable.

Further, I doubt that when people use the term, they actually spent the time looking at the financial statements for the businesses they're talking about. Did you? Or was it just a headline?

As an aside, the eating bugs thing is a meme that goes along with you will own nothing and be happy, which was a real article title about a potential future, written ahead of some WEF event. I don't think there's any conspiracy here, but it is somewhat amusing that WEF promotes futurism (own nothing: https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/11/10/s..., eat bugs: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/02/how-insects-positivel...) that would reflexively sound dystopian to a lot of people.

Whey protein tastes pretty gross too. If there's a cheap insect alternative, I admit I'll try it.

brvsft··on Purchase and manage domains directly through Bluesky
Right, the Hunter Biden laptop story censored by Twitter for the benefit of one political party during a presidential election was somehow misinformation and also a conspiracy theory and racism.

I find the complete unwillingness for everyone still moaning about misinformation to admit they were wrong about that laptop to be probably the most insane thing I've seen in my life. The laptop story wasn't even that important, but the incessant and belligerent lying or moving the goalposts about what happened is breathtaking.

If you ever want to admit you're wrong, I won't make fun of you.

brvsft··on Every person on the planet should have their own website
As someone who has taken a lot of drugs of all sorts, I also find it a bit 'cringe' to post a list of them with no context on your public website. To me, it comes off as a humblebrag for having some specific personal hobby, but without anything interesting to say of it. I view it like posting a list of the different ethnicities of women you've bedded.

But I found the collection of quotes page decidedly more 'cringe.'

brvsft··on Charter schools, social norming and zero-sum games (2010)
My middle school was like this. They had a "zero tolerance" policy on fights, which meant if you were in one, you were supposed to get suspended.

In reality, it did not actually work this way. I did get into at least one fight where administration got involved, and they let me off the hook. (Neither of us got suspended, in fact.) In my own view, I 'started' that fight although I did not 'instigate' it, not that the difference matters much. Some kid in line for PE kept kicking the back of my shoes, and after the fourth or fifth time, I started punching him.

brvsft··on Every person on the planet should have their own website
The funnier part is he thinks his website isn't full of "cringe ass shit" now.
brvsft··on Purchase and manage domains directly through Bluesky
> Collaborative mute lists make screening out horseshit easy.

Gotta have my filter bubble to protect me from 'misinformation.' At least this time it is crowdsourced so Jack doesn't even have to cooperate with any political campaigns.

brvsft··on Facebook's Threads is so depressing
> Mark “My other platform enabled a literal genocide” Zuckerberg

Into the garbage bin it goes.

brvsft··on Ask HN: What boosted your confidence as a new programmer?
Funny thing was I never even thought to do this until I was working on a very strange bug, and a senior engineer at my company suggested I look at the source code for one of our dependencies. Sometimes really obvious and basic advice can be a big step for people.
brvsft··on A child’s privacy is worth more than likes (2022)
Social media is not absolute or immutable but it is systemic. Got it.
brvsft··on Man designs ChatGPT bot subscription service to annoy, waste telemarketers' time
When you don't want to talk to someone on the phone, you hang up. What was suggested here goes out of the way beyond hanging up to expressly cause annoyance or potential damage. It's not just speaking loudly into the phone, it is starting off quiet with the intent that the telemarketer turns up the volume on their device, and then screaming into the phone.

It's not even close to your suggestion. A papercut would be a potential injury in normal use of a fax machine, from wanted or unwanted faxes. That would be like someone hurting their wrist when holding the phone up to their head.

brvsft··on Man designs ChatGPT bot subscription service to annoy, waste telemarketers' time
Actually a classic example of the general public's misconceptions about the 'litigious' nature of the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restau...

> Stella May Liebeck was born in Norwich, England, on December 14, 1912. She was 79 at the time of the burn incident. On February 27, 1992, Liebeck ordered a 49-cent cup of coffee from the drive-through window of a McDonald's restaurant at 5001 Gibson Boulevard Southeast in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Liebeck was in the passenger's seat of a 1989 Ford Probe, which did not have cup holders. Her nephew parked so that Liebeck could add cream and sugar to her coffee. She placed the coffee cup between her knees and pulled the far side of the lid toward her to remove it.[10] In the process, she spilled the entire cup of coffee on her lap.[11] Liebeck was wearing cotton sweatpants, which absorbed the coffee and held it against her skin, scalding her thighs, buttocks and groin.[12][13]

> Liebeck went into shock and was taken to an emergency room at a hospital. She suffered third-degree burns on six percent of her skin and lesser burns over sixteen percent.[14][13] She remained in the hospital for eight days while she underwent skin grafting. During this period, Liebeck lost 20 pounds (9.1 kg), nearly 20 percent of her body weight, reducing her to 83 pounds (38 kg). After the hospital stay, Liebeck needed care for three weeks, which was provided by her daughter.[15] Liebeck suffered permanent disfigurement after the incident and was partially disabled for two years.[16][17]

...

> The Liebeck case trial took place from August 8 to 17, 1994, before New Mexico District Court Judge Robert H. Scott.[20] During the case, Liebeck's attorneys discovered that McDonald's required franchisees to hold coffee at 180–190 °F (82–88 °C). Liebeck's attorneys argued that coffee should never be served hotter than 140 °F (60 °C), and that a number of other establishments served coffee at a substantially lower temperature than McDonald's. The attorneys presented evidence that coffee they had tested all over the city was served at a temperature at least 20 °F (11 °C) lower than McDonald's coffee. They also presented the jury with expert testimony that 190 °F (88 °C) coffee may produce third-degree burns (where skin grafting is necessary) in about three seconds and 180 °F (82 °C) coffee may produce such burns in about twelve to fifteen seconds.[12] Lowering the temperature to 160 °F (71 °C) would increase the time for the coffee to produce such a burn to 20 seconds. Liebeck's attorneys argued that these extra seconds could provide adequate time to remove the coffee from exposed skin, thereby preventing many burns.[21]

Of course, why am I bothering? You apparently think that human beings are just objects to be fucked with for your own pleasure, and that telemarketers are akin to literal Nazis who were "just following orders" when committing genocide, thereby justifying any harm you would do to them.

brvsft··on Man designs ChatGPT bot subscription service to annoy, waste telemarketers' time
If I were on the jury for the civil case where you are accused of destroying several minimum wage call center employees' eardrums and hearing, I would vote guilty.
brvsft··on A record-high share of 40-year-olds in the U.S. have never been married
> The gold standard stuff is hilariously reductionist.

Not really. Ending the dollar's convertibility into gold obviously had a severe impact on how foreign economies viewed the US and the dollar. I think it's "hilariously" ignorant to pretend that this wasn't a factor.

The economic reality for the US was that, before this, we just had to print money for the value of $100 worth of gold. Meanwhile, other countries had to produce actual goods or services that were valued at $100 worth of gold.

As multiple countries started repatriating their gold, the US does a rugpull and says we're done with that? It was effectively a US default on debt (which would have happened if we allowed repatriation anyway, because we didn't have enough gold to pay back all of our creditors who wanted their gold).

Yes, there were quite a few factors happening concurrently with this. But I don't see how it's simple to disentangle the effective default on debt denominated in the global reserve currency with all the other global economic volatility at the time. Laundry-listing other things that happened at the same time is not an explanation.

Edit: Just want to point out that, IMO, the real problem was the US was defaulting on our debt. What Nixon did was just like an escape hatch for it where the US did not have to call it what it was and we also got to keep the gold. I agree with you in the sense that I think bad things would have happened with or without Nixon ending the gold standard. But I view that event as a clear sign and catalyst or accelerant for all the volatility that ensued immediately after. I still think it's crazy the US ended up on top after this anyway.

brvsft··on A record-high share of 40-year-olds in the U.S. have never been married
Feminism in general (with birth control and abortion) changed things quite a bit if we consider it including the rise of women in the workforce. Look at the chart of labor participation. I believe its changes at the time mostly reflect women starting to get jobs.

Although, people could maybe speculate that dual income families also became a necessity as a result of worsening economic conditions. I don't know.

(And for the record, I'm not using feminism as a negative word here.)

brvsft··on A record-high share of 40-year-olds in the U.S. have never been married
He is, but he is also a convenient scapegoat here.

The US was running up debts with post-WWII behavior for quite a while, especially with wars in Korea and Vietnam. This is what Charles de Gaulle was talking about when he referred to the US' "exorbitant privilege" in 1965 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorbitant_privilege) before repatriating France's gold. Multiple presidents preceeded Nixon and continued promoting expansionist policy and meddling in foreign countries with war (that the US could not afford if not for our exorbitant privilege), mostly to compete with or try asserting dominance over USSR.

brvsft··on Niantic lays off 230 employees, cancels NBA and Marvel games
> At the end of March, Niantic nearly doubled the price of remote raid passes, an extremely popular in-app item. The company’s reasoning is that remote play options were essential during pandemic lockdowns, but they go against Niantic’s vision for the game, which is to get people outside to play together in person. Players don’t feel that way, though. Some even chose to boycott Pokémon GO in protest. While their protest may not have caught Niantic’s attention, its in-app purchase sales likely did.

Key point missing here, they also changed the limit from how many times you can use a remote raid pass daily from unlimited (however many raids you could fit in) to FIVE. https://pokemongolive.com/post/remote-raid-passes-update-202...

So the higher price looks more profitable to them if you completely ignore the fact that the set an upper limit on how many you'll be able to use daily.

I honestly despise much of the community dedicated to hating this game because half of the time the reasoning is the pandemic isn't over yet! The game sucks despite Niantic having a vision for it where people actually have to go outside and walk.

brvsft··on Niantic lays off 230 employees, cancels NBA and Marvel games
Some of their decisions do the opposite, especially the recent limitation of five remote raid passes used per day. It used to be unlimited, and of course they have a way to purchase game coins that are then used to purchase those passes.

IMO this was more in line with their original principles over profits (that you ought to walk outside to do a raid at a gym, rather than going on Discord to get a remote invite and use a pass you purchased with pokecoins). But I find the game boring and tedious anyway.

brvsft··on The downfall of National Geographic
Yeah, some people take offense when a stranger attempts an unsolicited psychoanalysis over the internet.
brvsft··on The downfall of National Geographic
The literal title of the article mentions coolness.

This appears to be a form of projection, where you think you can internet bully me into liking an article about cool tattooed people by telling me it's an "internalized" problem.

But I moved on from it. I canceled my subscription. I'll never give NG money, and you're just going to have to deal with that. Sorry. Maybe you can give them your money.

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