hedgehog @ hedgehog @ttrpg.network

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2 yr. ago

Once a year if you have a paid developer account, which is $100/year. It’s otherwise every 7 days and capped at 3 simultaneous apps. And in either case you need a Mac or Windows machine available as well. I suspect it’ll be an improvement for anyone without a paid developer account.

- At least, according to https://sideloadly.io/ - I haven’t touched sideloading for a few years (with AltStore + AltServer).

CloudFlare actively supports hate groups

Source? Given that Cloudflare canceled the accounts of The Daily Stormer, 8chan, and Kiwi Farms, and that they otherwise avoid refusing service to any site that’s legal for them to provide service to in the US (including torrent sites, for example), I’m inclined to disbelieve that claim.

This reads to me like:

Cloudflare is consistent in their refusal to censor legal free expression by refusing service to those sites. As a result, they serve sites containing offensive, but legal free expression, as well as expression that should be illegal (and may already be - specifically when it comes to). People are mad about this.

To emphasize their refusal to police the content of sites they host, Cloudflare used to simply forward complaints about their customers to those customers. They thought they were making it clear that they were doing this, and maybe they were, but sometimes people miss those sorts of disclaimers and given the subject matter of these complaints, that was a bad process on their part. They haven’t apologized but they have amended their process in the years since.

Did I miss anything?

Now, I get that “free speech absolutist” is a dog whistle for “I’m a white supremacist” thanks to the ex-CEO of a particular social media company, but there’s a difference between

1. saying it and not doing it, and
2. actually doing it

And unlike the aforementioned anti-semitic billionaire, Cloudflare is pretty consistent about this. They refuse to block torrent sites as well, and I’ve never heard of them blocking a site that was legal and should have been kept around. (As opposed to immediately blocking the account of the guy who was tracking his personal jet.)

That all said, Cloudflare did eventually cancel the accounts of The Daily Stormer, 8chan, and Kiwi Farms.

I wouldn’t feel as strongly about this if the examples of corporations that do censor speech didn’t show that they’re consistently bad at it. I’m talking social media sites, payment processors, hosts, etc.. If Cloudflare were more willing to censor sites, that would be a bad thing. And they agree:

After terminating services for 8chan and the Daily Stormer, "we saw a dramatic increase in authoritarian regimes attempting to have us terminate security services for human rights organizations — often citing the language from our own justification back to us," write Prince and Starzak in their August 31 blog post.

These past experiences led Cloudflare executives to conclude "that the power to terminate security services for the sites was not a power Cloudflare should hold," write Prince and Starzak. "Not because the content of those sites wasn't abhorrent — it was — but because security services most closely resemble Internet utilities."

To be clear, I’m not saying that social media sites should stop censoring nazis. I’m saying that social media sites are bad at censoring nazis and just as often they censor activists, anti-fascists, and minorities who are literally just venting about oppression, and I see no reason why that would be different at a site level instead.

When you have a site that’s encouraging harassment, hate speech, cyber-bullying, defamation, etc., or engaging in those things directly, that should be a legal issue for the site’s owners. And on that note, my understanding is that there’s a warrant out for Anglin’s arrest and he owes $14 million to one of the women whose harassment he encouraged.

Cloudflare said they’re trying to basically behave like they’re a public utility. They’re strong proponents of net neutrality, which is in line with their actions here. There are reasons to be suspicious of or concerned about Cloudflare, but this isn’t a great example of one.

Side note: It’s funny to me that the comment immediately below yours says that one of the reasons to distrust Cloudflare is because of a concern that they may have been abusing their power (due to effectively being a mitm) and censoring particular kinds of content.

The point is that we aren’t comparing the generations to one another; we’re comparing them to modern day chickens. And we aren’t comparing by checking to see if a given creature “looks completely unlike a chicken.” That’s not how we differentiate species today, so why would we use it here?

As one example, one common and fairly simple definition of a species is a collection of individuals that can breed with one another and produce healthy offspring (“healthy,” in this instance also meaning that they must be able to produce offspring of their own). Obviously this doesn’t apply to bacteria or other things that reproduce asexually, but for our purposes, it could be sufficient. So you take this and turn it into a test: “Can this creature breed with modern-day chickens and produce healthy offspring?”

Now, even that simple question may involve qualifications in order to allow a binary answer. For example, maybe modern day chickens can breed with only 30% of other modern day chickens (of the opposite gender) and that number steadily decreases as we move back in time. The threshold for species differentiation here is going to be arbitrary.

That specific question is a bad choice in this instance, since chickens are descended from red junglefowl and can breed with them. In fact, they’re sometimes considered to be of the same species - for our purposes, we want to know when we first had a chicken - red junglefowl don’t qualify. As such, with chickens specifically it likely makes more sense to make the distinguishing criteria something that would differentiate a chicken from a red junglefowl, like “Is it domesticated?” That even gives us a good place to start looking - current understanding is that all modern chicken owe their origins to a single domestication event in Southeast Asia, roughly 8,000 years ago. Another option would be basing it off the DNA similarity to modern-day chickens (red junglefowl have 71-79% of the same DNA as modern chickens), e.g., once the DNA is no longer at least 80.000% the same, it’s no longer a chicken.

And you’re not limited to a single question, so long as the outcome of the test is binary.

Regardless of the specific test, at some point, the answer will change from “Yes, it is technically a chicken” to “No, it is technically not a chicken.”

Nonsense. All you do is say “Here is what defines a chicken” and then, advancing backwards through the generations, point to the first creature who didn’t meet that criteria. That’s your “proto-chicken” and everything after it is a “chicken.” Yes, the last proto-chicken and first chicken would be considered the same species as one another if we were building a taxonomy of species today, but we’re not; this is a historical exercise.

The definition may be based on some scientific criteria that’s specific to a point-in-time and may be somewhat arbitrary as a result, but it’s not “imaginary.”

Not everything that isn't ublock is automatically bad.

No, but if a product fails to do the one thing it was made to do, it’s bad.

Especially if you just want an adblocker and not also all the other stuff it comes with

What else does uBlock Origin come with? Like, content filtering, yes, but that’s pretty fundamentally coupled with ad blocking.

Given the implication that uBO is bloated, I’d also love to know what other adblockers you’ve been using that are more performant and/or less resource-intensive than uBO. The benchmarks I’ve seen show uBO performing better than ABP, but those metrics are all several years old at this point.

Many people still use 4 digit PINs. This is a huge improvement in security for them.

There’s an updated article that includes GOG’s follow-up to that situation: https://www.eurogamer.net/gog-pulls-hitman-from-its-own-store-admits-it-shouldnt-have-released-it-in-its-current-form

Dear Community,

Thank you for your patience and for giving us the time to investigate the release of HITMAN GOTY on GOG. As promised, we’re getting back to you with updates.

We're still in dialogue with IO Interactive about this release. Today we have removed HITMAN GOTY from GOG’s catalog – we shouldn’t have released it in its current form, as you’ve pointed out.

We’d like to apologise for the confusion and anger generated by this situation. We’ve let you down and we’d like to thank you for bringing this topic to us – while it was honest to the bone, it shows how passionate you are towards GOG.

We appreciate your feedback and will continue our efforts to improve our communication with you.

I read through this article and the articles it linked to and wasn’t able to find a list of price increases, or even just the worst ones. The 4.5% increase is the most I saw and that’s barely more than inflation. The Reuters article they cited said that price increases during the pandemic were below inflation, so this kinda averages it out.

The Reuters article had this tidbit:

Truist analyst Robyn Karnauskas said in a note that Eli Lilly (LLY.N), opens new tab planned to lower the prices of its Humalog and Humulin insulins by 75.8% and 70% respectively on Dec. 30, and to raise the price of its popular diabetes drug Mounjaro by 4.5% on Jan. 1. These changes were not included in 3 Axis' data.

I’ll take a 4.5% price increase alongside a 70-75% price cut any day of the week. And I say that partly because much (most?) of the demand for Mounjaro is because it can be used off-label for weight loss and not for it as a drug to treat diabetes. I’m not saying weight loss drugs should be unaffordable, but it does seem reasonable to treat off-label weight loss drugs as a luxury.

I’d expected that rule to eliminate apps like Brave (BAT), Signal (MobileCoin), Telegram (TON), etc..

Feels weird to rule out a tool because the team accepts donations via cryptocurrency when the tool itself (and presumably other tools by that same developer) has no links to crypto. Obviously this assumes that they accept donations via other means; if not then I can totally understand not wanting to use crypto to donate.

It’s funny to see someone say “I didn’t send them a donation through PayPal, a crypto exchange, because they accept donations via crypto and I’m morally opposed to crypto.”

Pretty big difference between buying a thing that stops working if you don't have an active subscription, and using an old LTS and being given the choice of paying for extended support if you’re a corporation, signing up for a free “subscription” if you’re not, or the free upgrade to the new LTS

FTFY, it’s an even bigger difference when the extended support is free for end users.

The difference is that the information gas stations are using is public, but the information used by RealPage is non-public and sensitive.

From https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/dealings-competitors/price-fixing

If there is evidence that the gasoline station operators talked to each other about increasing prices and agreed on a common pricing plan, however, that may be an antitrust violation.

…

Each company is free to set its own prices, and it may charge the same price as its competitors as long as the decision was not based on any agreement or coordination with a competitor.

So the question becomes: does use of RealPage qualify as “coordination with a competitor?”

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_fixing

Under American law, exchanging prices among competitors can also violate the antitrust laws. That includes exchanging prices with the intent to fix prices or the exchange affecting the prices individual competitors set. Proof that competitors have shared prices can be used as part of the evidence of an illegal price fixing agreement.5 - source Experts generally advise that competitors avoid even the appearance of agreeing on price.[5]

In this case you have them sharing prices with RealPage in exchange for information that will affect their prices.

I’m no lawyer, but it seems pretty clear that this situation could qualify as price fixing.

Constructive dismissal isn’t illegal, it merely allows the employees to receive benefits and make claims as though they had been dismissed. California is an at-will employment state, so unless these employees have contracts stating otherwise (including the employee handbook, unless it has verbiage stating it is not legally binding), their dismissal is legal.

Apple is giving each employee who chooses to resign a $12.5k severance package. Assuming Apple doesn’t plan on fighting any unemployment claims made by these employees, what else you think they would be able to get after a successful lawsuit?

Rather than documenting that the patient refused to take it at 7, taking the pill away, and then (time allowing) giving the patient another chance to take it later, OP wants to leave the medication with the patient and document that it was handed to the patient at 7. Unfortunately, doing that creates uncertainty, which isn’t acceptable in a medical context.

No, I’m not arguing that. I’m saying that you’re being willfully ignorant by acting like insulin in the 1920s and insulin in the 2020s is the same thing.

It doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing circle jerk. And lying about the issues people face doesn’t make those issues somehow more likely to be fixed. It makes it easy to discard any argument you’re making because the actual things you’re saying are not true. When the person lying is an attorney who’s ostensibly on our side, this bothers me; it tells me that this person is so incompetent that he can’t get people to agree with him without making shit up. He can’t be bothered to do 5 minutes of research on issues fundamental to his case before taking an interview.

If some patients can’t afford $35/month, that’s a failing of society. Our social services, including medicaid, should be easy to access, and they aren’t. I’m personally of the opinion that, at minimum, UBI at a level sufficient to cover all necessities in a given location is the minimum that our society needs.

And this isn’t a failing of society solely in relation to healthcare costs. The costs of housing, education, food - every necessity - are all too expensive even for many people working full-time jobs to afford. These are all systemic problems and suing pharmaceutical companies within the bounds of our capitalist system isn’t going to fix anything. Capping out of pocket insulin costs for medicaid patients actually fixed something - maybe not for everyone, but for one of the largest groups of people who were shafted by the previous system.

Why don’t you think the accomplishments of the scientists involved in coming out with new compounds that solve problems with existing drugs are worth acknowledging? If they’re worthless, then it follows that nobody should care how much they cost. If they’re essential improvements and everyone who needs them should have access to them, that’s a much better foundation to an argument. Then the focus can be on ensuring that advancements still happen while ensuring that the people who need the products of those advancements receive them.

And acting like they were the only people responsible diminishes the achievements of everyone involved since.

We don’t use that insulin today. Why do you think we do?

It’s a shame that the people involved with this lawsuit are either ignorant or intentionally misleading their audience.

And over the last 20 years, we have seen over a 1000% increase in spite of the fact nothing’s changed with the drug. The cost to produce it has gotten lower. But we are getting screwed hundreds, possibly thousands of dollars a month.

“Insulin” is more than just one drug. Traditional (short lasting) insulin is relatively cheap. A “Novolin N or R ReliOn vial” (which I just learned is available over the counter) with 1000 units of insulin is $25. Rapid and long lasting insulins are what’s expensive, but those are recent advancements. See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7864088/ for a list of some of these.

It’s weird that he says prices have gone up 1000% over the last 20 years. According to https://www.goodrx.com/healthcare-access/research/how-much-does-insulin-cost-compare-brands prices went up 54% from 2014 to 2019 and dropped 10% from 2020 to 2023. Is he really suggesting that prices went up 590% from 2003 to 2013? I wasn’t able to verify that claim. According to https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0X22B0/ the price went up 197% from 2002 to 2013. Added up that means prices have gone up 310% in the past 21 years. That’s still a lot but also: inflation since then is 73%. Account for inflation and that 310% increase drops to a 140% increase - a 7th of the alleged 1000% increase. That’s basically how much housing prices have gone up in that same time period. That’s still a lot and it’s still shitty, but if you have to make up numbers to get your point across, I question whether you’re the best person to be conveying that point.

According to https://diabetes.org/tools-resources/affordable-insulin both Sanofi and Lilly have programs that cap out of pocket expenses for most people to $35 a month, and that includes the new drugs. If someone you know is struggling to pay for their insulin, make sure they know about these programs. They’re getting a lot more marketing now that the federal government negotiated the $35 cap for medicaid/medicare patients, but those programs have been around for a while. It’s frustrating to see so many discussions about how pharmaceutical companies are exploiting people without anyone sharing (or even mentioning) the resources that can help them.

It’s also frustrating that all of the claims about companies colluding are completely unbacked. Is there any evidence of this? I don’t find it hard to believe that pharmaceutical companies price their products as high as they can because they like money. I certainly don’t trust a person who’s already shown his other statements to be demonstrably untrue when he makes a statement that can’t be verified one way or another.

The anti-R&D arguments are also exhausting. Pharmaceutical companies do spend a ton of money on R&D - according to https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/060115/how-much-drug-companys-spending-allocated-research-and-development-average.asp Lilly spent a quarter of their revenue on R&D in 2020 (I didn’t see the other names mentioned). No, that’s no 80+% like it’s made out to be, but it does mean that the most prices could possibly be reduced without negatively impacting innovation is to a quarter of where they were in 2020, and that’s assuming that someone else pays for all the other expenses (manufacturing, distribution, marketing, education, etc.). According to that article, “The average R&D to marketplace cost for a new medicine is nearly $4 billion, and can sometimes exceed $10 billion.” According to https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8855407/ the top end of that range is more like $6 billion, but still. Either way, that money has to come from somewhere.

It’s good to see PBMs mentioned, though. They’re literally middlemen who provide 0 value. Even if they’re not doing anything illegal they should still be outlawed.

I thought the official jellyfin images on the versioned tags (like “10.8.13”) were stable - are they not?

The Kindle Paperwhite is great. I think the Oasis gets even dimmer, but you’ll need to pay a premium for it. Personally, I prefer to stay away from Amazon e-readers now that there are other good options available, though.

If you don’t want to be locked into the Kindle ecosystem, the Kobo Libra 2 is a good option. It lets you set the warmth of the front light, lights the screen very evenly, and even supports dark mode for ebooks.

I really like the Onyx Boox line myself (though my experience is admittedly limited - I’ve only used the Note Air 3C), but their full Google Play store support might be a negative for you, if you don’t trust yourself to not install social media apps. My experience is that having apps for Hoopla, Libby, Kindle, Kobo, Nook, etc., all on the device is a huge improvement to my experience.

The Onyx Boox e-readers are also a bit more expensive than alternatives - the cheapest e-reader by them that I would recommend is the Poke5 at 180 USD and the one I personally want is the Page at $250. (There’s also an in-between model, the Leaf2, at $200, that looks solid.) Of course, if you want a phone-sized e-reader, the Onyx Boox Palma is the only good option that I know of. Unfortunately, it’s also $280.

All that said, is there a comfortable place outside your bedroom (or at least outside your bed) that you can read? It’s technically better if you don’t read in the same place that you sleep (though reading on an e-reader in bed is still gonna be better than being on your phone late at night).