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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)SK
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  • I got into a long debate with someone who wouldn't accept my claim that pi is 3.

    My reasoning was that 3 is accurate to the number of decimal places it's quoted to, which is all you ever can say of any given value of pi. Like, pi might not be exactly 3, but it's not 3.14159265358979323846 either, because both values still have infinity digits missing.

  • I’m currently in the long tedious process of replacing all my details for every website and service with an email address at a domain I actually own, before some AI bot at Google decides that some random shit violates their TOC and deletes my Gmail.

  • That one wasn't the one I had issues with, since the concept is essentially the same across all languages. We say it's false because we can't conclusively say that it's true. Same as the reason why null != null in SQL.

  • The code is a set of preprocessor macros to stuff loads of booleans into one int (or similar), in this case named 'myFlags'. The preprocessor is a simple (some argue too simple) step at the start of compilation that modifies the source code on its way to the real compiler by substituting #defines, prepending #include'd files, etc.

    If myFlags is equal to, e.g. 67, that's 01000011, meaning that BV00, BV01, and BV07 are all TRUE and the others are FALSE.

    The first part is just for convenience and readability. BV00 represents the 0th bit, BV01 is the first etc. (1 << 3) means 00000001, bit shifted left three times so it becomes 00001000 (aka 8).

    The middle chunk defines macros to make bit operations more human-readable.

    SET_BIT(myFlags, MY_FIRST_BOOLEAN) gets turned into ((myFlags) |= ((1 << 0))) , which could be simplified as myFlags = myFlags | 00000001 . (Ignore the flood of parentheses, they're there for safety due to the loaded shotgun nature of the preprocessor.)

  • Back in the day when it mattered, we did it like

     
        
    #define BV00		(1 <<  0)
    #define BV01		(1 <<  1)
    #define BV02		(1 <<  2)
    #define BV03		(1 <<  3)
    ...etc
    
    #define IS_SET(flag, bit)	((flag) & (bit))
    #define SET_BIT(var, bit)	((var) |= (bit))
    #define REMOVE_BIT(var, bit)	((var) &= ~(bit))
    #define TOGGLE_BIT(var, bit)	((var) ^= (bit))
    
    ....then...
    #define MY_FIRST_BOOLEAN BV00
    SET_BIT(myFlags, MY_FIRST_BOOLEAN)
    
    
      
  • It's such an insane story that I wonder what the other side of it is. It's easy to imagine the guy just having got out of a meeting ten minutes earlier with "if you don't get Julia Roberts into a movie by the end of the week, I'll see you never work in this town again!" ringing in his ears.

  • Yes. This is basically the core of why capitalism eats itself.

    You don't have to be evil or short-sighted to be a CEO, but if you don't do evil and short-sighted shit to pump the share price there's a high probability the board will replace you with someone who will.

    This is why I believe the government should hold stock and sit on the boards of any company that gets publicly listed. Much easier than tying yourself in knots with an adversarial system of complex regulations.

  • Sure, but they have a crazy large amount of data and an army of Data Science PhDs who sat down and calculated they'd make more money increasing their margins on people who'll put up with it, than they'd lose pissing the rest of their customers off.

    All the rest of us can do is leave our Torrents running and keep our ratios up...

  • When my parents bought in the UK in the early 80s, the average family house was £20k. But mortgage rates at the time were ~20%, meaning you had to pay £4k per year just to cover the interest alone, and the average salary was below £6k.

    Yes, interest came back down after a few years, but a lot of people learned about Negative Equity during those years.

  • I was sort of on Mike Goldman (the challenge giver)'s side until I saw the great point made at the end that the entire challenge was akin to a bar room bet; Goldman had always set it up as a kind of scam from the start and was clearly more than happy to take $100 from anyone who fell for it, and so should have taken responsibility when someone managed to meet the wording of his challenge.