s38b35M5

joined 2 years ago
[–] s38b35M5@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

You cannot for example just get rid of your US citizenship - you have to pay to get rid of it...

I wanted this to be false but I see that there is currently a minimum renunciation fee of $2,350. I assume there are likely other consulate fees that may bring it closer to $2,500 at the very least. What a scam.

Edit: typo

[–] s38b35M5@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago

the one where Fry and Bender join the army for gum and get sent to fight balls

The Elders tell of a young ball much like you. She bounced three meters in the air. Then she bounced 1.8 meters in the air. Then she bounced four meters in the air. Do I make myself clear?

[–] s38b35M5@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago

...Or to post on shower thoughts

[–] s38b35M5@lemmy.world 13 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

In case you don't want to give NYT clicks. https://archive.is/a4hDO

Sydney Charlet had no job, rent due on an Upper West Side apartment, and an idea.

She had just moved to New York from Los Angeles and brought her Tesla Model 3.

She learned quickly that a parking spot on the street was not guaranteed and that the city’s alternate-side street cleaning schedule, which usually sets aside a 90-minute window for the city to sweep each side of a street on a rotating schedule, does not make parking easy.

Drivers must either move their cars, sit in them and watch for the street sweeper, or face a $65 ticket.

Ms. Charlet, 29, turned her idea into a side gig and posted it on TikTok.

“I’ll sit in your car for the fraction of the price of a parking ticket,” Ms. Charlet said in a video, as she waved a business card calling herself “The Car Sitter.”

The video was reposted and in comments and replies, New Yorkers took the occasion to share their own parking tales and misadventures.

Even if you’re not hiring someone like Ms. Charlet, anyone who has tried to park on New York’s streets knows that even when a space isn’t pay-to-park, it still comes at a price.

In the early 2000s, Cynthia Russo, then a stay-at-home mother, would pile into her Toyota Tercel with her 1-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son to deal with alternate-side parking on the Upper East Side.

In those days, Ms. Russo’s schedule was built around avoiding a ticket she said she could not afford.

To make the time bearable, one of her two older neighbors would keep her company and they would pass the time baring their souls.

“I used to tell my husband it was like ‘car confessions,’” Ms. Russo said. “My kids were in the car the whole time — they were oblivious.”

The neighbors opened up to her, and it came naturally to Ms. Russo to listen, she said, but she never told them why: She had previously been a therapist.

Bash Halow, 60, a business adviser who lives in Chelsea, hit on an idea in a moment of desperation. If he sees an open spot on the opposite side of the street, he offers a person on the street $20 to hold it for him while he circles around.

One day, several years ago, that person was an older lady with a push cart.

“She unhesitatingly agreed,” Mr. Halow said. “Six minutes later, as I rounded the corner to grab the spot, I see this guy trying to park in the spot and the lady standing in the middle, not budging.”

The woman used an expletive to tell the man to get lost.

“I’m saving this spot for my friend,” Mr. Halow recalled her saying. “That’s what really touched me.”

He paid her at least $60 on the spot.

For others, great parking spots come easier but cost more than money.

Will Simon, 55, who lives in Park Slope, some years ago came upon what he called “a perfectly good parking spot.” The problem was that it was occupied by chunks of concrete from a hole that Con Ed had dug in the street.

He took a few minutes to move the concrete and scored the spot. But Mr. Simon said that he, in general, has never seen parking as a chore. He said that people who complain about parking bring the suffering upon themselves.

“You should have to earn your cars,” Mr. Simon said, adding that the city owes him and other drivers nothing. “I’m able to store a 5,000-pound hunk of metal on public property.”

For those who can, it may be easier to just ditch a car.

Stuart Campbell’s wife racked up parking tickets when she was a flight attendant living in Greenwich Village, he recalled.

“Eventually her car was impounded — an old Hyundai, which was not worth much,” Mr. Campbell said. “When she went to retrieve it, she discovered the fines and fees were higher than the value of the car, so she never picked it up.”

At 9:30 a.m. on a Thursday morning in August, Brian McBride, a sanitation worker, parked his street sweeper in Cobble Hill in Brooklyn. Alternate-side parking had just begun but he waited before moving his mechanical broom down the choked streets.

Anthony Saporito, a superintendent at the Sanitation Department, said drivers get a five-minute grace period after alternate-side parking rules begin before department workers start sweeping — and ticketing.

Mr. Saporito followed the sweeper in a Sanitation Department vehicle with a clipboard of blank tickets perched on the dashboard. He pointed out the two, then four, then dozens and dozens of vehicles that had failed to move.

“If that car wasn’t there, he could have just had a straight run,” Mr. Saporito said of Mr. McBride, who, though deftly handling the sweeper, could clean only so much of the curb around a single parked car. “But no, he had to cut out. He probably missed about 10 feet on the back of the car, and he probably missed 10 feet on the front of the car.”

Every parked vehicle, except one with a permit for people with disabilities, got a ticket. The road, littered with leaves even in the dead of summer, kept its dusty appearance compared with the gleaming, wet asphalt where the sweeper had just passed with its whirring brushes.

Mr. Saporito wrote tickets, printing foot-long slips from a machine attached to his hip before stuffing them under windshield wipers with a neon orange envelope. The Sanitation Department issued 515,582 alternate-side parking summonses in the 2025 fiscal year, which ended on June 30.

“A lot of people will say, ‘You know what? I’ll roll the dice and I’ll get a $65 fine once every couple of weeks rather than having to pay to put it in a lot,’” Mr. Saporito said.

In neighborhoods filled with longtime residents, people remain “rule followers,” Mr. Saporito said. It’s the newcomers who push the boundaries.

“Now, I can’t tell you how many times when I was a supervisor here, I’d pass this car and it would say: ‘If you need me to move it, here’s my phone number. Call me. I’ll come move it,’” Mr. Saporito recalled.

He pointed to the gold badge on his chest and said: “Does this say ‘Mom’? You want me to do your laundry, too?”

[–] s38b35M5@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

And Mathias Döpfner is himself an out of touch billionaire-class nut who applauds the tamping of freedoms (including of the press) and jumps at every chance to breathe life into lies that advance his oligarchic wet dreams. The kind of person who says horrible things, then lies about saying them, and when confronted with the receipts, pretends he was just being "edgy" or "provocative" to provoke the plebs.

News organizations that exist to accurately report the news and properly inform the public are the exception now, I'm afraid. The rest have an agenda, and it never involves the common good.

[–] s38b35M5@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Late night host Jimmy Fallon asked Ruffalo during his show last night why he wasn't in the "Avengers trailer", saying: "Every time you're on the show you give a spoiler or you get in trouble."

The actor cheekily replied: "They decided that it was better to get rid of me than for me to tell the end of the next movie."

Saved you a click

[–] s38b35M5@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)
[–] s38b35M5@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

I stumbled upon it a few years back when I was looking for a way to send files directly to peers. I can't remember if it was from a list of similar services or if I used a search engine. It's been pretty useful for me.

[–] s38b35M5@lemmy.world 9 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)
[–] s38b35M5@lemmy.world 3 points 4 weeks ago

I'm lucky! Mine (2015 pro) has been awesome, except for when it was going through a Demon AVR. Its fine when direct to the TV or through the Onkyo. It has flaked out before though, and I never updated to the "experience" version that introduced ads on the home screen.

[–] s38b35M5@lemmy.world 4 points 4 weeks ago

I think that's the same OLED I have. B7 or C7. It's starting to band on red, but I got at least... 7 (?) years out of it, and the bands are only mildly annoying. Similarly, I have never connected it to the internet, and don't use any of the apps.

It's not very bright, but I'll take that over washed out or blotchy blacks. I'll shop for a used OLED like this when I'm ready.

[–] s38b35M5@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

Ahh, crap

Who can use Privacy and do you need a bank account?

Privacy is currently available to US citizens or legal residents with a checking account at a US bank or credit union, and who are 18+ years of age.

 

Your right to due process under the law is rooted in almost a millennium of precedent, and in the United States (as in other free countries), the power of arrest and detention expressly withheld from the executive.

Here is an extremely thorough and lucid treatise on habeas corpus by Chief Justice Taney following Lincoln's illegal invocation (and delegation to military officers' discretion) of its suspension to arrest and detain a Maryland man without judicial warrant, evidence, or due process.

...Executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America, to hold his office during the term of four years—and then proceeds to prescribe the mode of election, and to specify, in precise and plain words, the powers delegated to him and the duties imposed upon him. And the short term for which he is elected, and the narrow limits to which his power is confined, show the jealousy and apprehensions of future danger which the framers of the Constitution felt in relation to that department of the Government—and how carefully they withheld from it many of the powers belonging to the Executive branch of the English Government, which were considered as dangerous to the liberty of the subject—and conferred (and that in clear and specific terms) those powers only which were deemed essential to secure the successful operation of the Government.

[...]

...He is not empowered to arrest any one charged with an offence [sic] against the United States, and whom he may, from the evidence before him, believe to be guilty—nor can he authorize any officer, civil or military, to exercise this power; for the 5th article of the amendments to the Constitution expressly provides that no person "shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law."—that is, judicial process. And even if the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus was suspended by act of Congress, and a party not subject to the rules and articles of war was afterwards arrested and imprisoned by regular judicial process, he could not be detained in prison or brought to trial before a military tribunal, for the article in the amendments to the Constitution, immediately following the one above referred to—that is, the 6th article—provides that "in all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defence [sic].

Emphasis mine:

And the only power, therefore, which the President possesses, where the "life, liberty or property" of a private citizen is concerned, is the power and duty prescribed in the third section of the 2d article, which requires "that he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed." He is not authorized to execute them himself, or through agents or officers, civil or military, appointed by himself, but he is to take care that they be faithfully carried into execution as they are expounded and adjudged by the co-ordinate branch of the Government, to which that duty is assigned by the Constitution. It is thus made his duty to come in aid of the judicial authority, if it shall be resisted by a force too strong to be overcome without the assistance of the Executive arm. But in exercising this power, he acts in subordinate to judicial authority, assisting it to execute its process and enforce its judgments.

With such provisions in the Constitution, expressed in language too clear to be misunderstood by any one, I can see no ground whatever for supposing that the President, in any emergency or in any state of things, can authorize the suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, or arrest a citizen, except in aid of the judicial power. He certainly does not faithfully execute the laws if he takes upon himself legislative power by suspending the writ of habeas corpus— and the judicial power, also, by arresting and imprisoning a person without due process of law. Nor can any argument be drawn from the nature of sovereignty, or the necessities of government for [self-defense] in times of tumult and danger. The Government of the United States is one of delegated and limited powers.

Blackstone, in his Commentaries, (1st vol., 137) states it in the following words: "To make imprisonment lawful, it must be either by process from the Courts of Judicature or by warrant from some legal officer having authority to commit to prison." And the people of the United Colonies, who had themselves lived under its protection while they were British subjects, were well aware of the necessity of this safeguard for their personal liberty. And no one can believe that in framing a government intended to guard still more efficiently the rights and liberties of the citizens against executive encroachment and oppression, they would have conferred on the President a power which the history of England had proved to be dangerous and oppressive in the hands of the Crown, and which the people of England had compelled it to surrender after a long and obstinate struggle on the part of the English Executive to usurp and retain it.

ETA: apropos quotes

 

[SOLVED] - I learned that this is a sure way to break your Debian, and no matter how you go about it, you'd wish you either waited or used a different distro altogether for this purpose. In my case, I got Nobara 41 working, which already has the latest mesa. Trying to install the latest from Debian unstable almost got me pretty turned around, and I'm glad I switched course when I did.

Original post: Apologies for my fairly low-level question. I spent all day yesterday spinning my wheels on this.

(I do fine using Debian Linux as my daily driver, but I'm not ashamed to admit that this (and things in this area) are beyond my experience. I've never compiled anything from source. I used to be a wiz with DOS 6.22 and Windows through 7, but my brain just stopped learning these things properly some time in the past.)

My distro (MXLinux 23.x) just announced they're almost ready to include Mesa 24.2.8. I purchased an AMD RX 9070, and all my Linux games (HGL or Steam) are angry that Vulkan can't recognize a valid GPU.

I see that Mesa 25.0.2 should work, but I don't know how to either build & install from source or add a repo for that particular package only.

I see that Arch users can easily use the Mesa-git or others, but not my Debian 12.

I installed Nobara to a spare drive as a stopgap, but on that install, FH5 refuses to prompt for account sign in there no matter which Proton I use.

Edit: I'm using the AHS version which includes the liquorix 6.13.7-2 kernel, and none of the repos (testing, back ports) show a higher version of Mesa.

EDIT2:

System:
  Kernel: 6.13.7-2-liquorix-amd64 [6.13-5~mx23ahs] arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 12.2.0 parameters: audit=0
    intel_pstate=disable amd_pstate=disable BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinuz-6.13.7-2-liquorix-amd64
    root=UUID=<filter> ro quiet amdgpu.ppfeaturemask=0xffffffff init=/lib/systemd/systemd
  Desktop: Xfce v: 4.20.0 tk: Gtk v: 3.24.38 info: xfce4-panel wm: xfwm v: 4.20.0 vt: 7
    dm: LightDM v: 1.32.0 Distro: MX-23.5_ahs_x64 Libretto May 19  2024 base: Debian GNU/Linux 12
    (bookworm)
Machine:
  Type: Desktop Mobo: ASRock model: B650E Taichi serial: <superuser required> UEFI: American
    Megatrends LLC. v: 3.20 date: 02/21/2025
CPU:
  Info: model: AMD Ryzen 5 9600X bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: N/A level: v4 note: check
    family: 0x1A (26) model-id: 0x44 (68) stepping: 0 microcode: 0xB404023
  Topology: cpus: 1x cores: 6 tpc: 2 threads: 12 smt: enabled cache: L1: 480 KiB
    desc: d-6x48 KiB; i-6x32 KiB L2: 6 MiB desc: 6x1024 KiB L3: 32 MiB desc: 1x32 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 3175 high: 5437 min/max: 3000/3900 boost: enabled scaling:
    driver: acpi-cpufreq governor: ondemand cores: 1: 2900 2: 2972 3: 2959 4: 3018 5: 5437 6: 2819
    7: 3000 8: 3000 9: 3000 10: 3000 11: 3000 12: 3000 bogomips: 93602
  Flags: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 sse4a ssse3 svm
  Vulnerabilities:
  Type: gather_data_sampling status: Not affected
  Type: itlb_multihit status: Not affected
  Type: l1tf status: Not affected
  Type: mds status: Not affected
  Type: meltdown status: Not affected
  Type: mmio_stale_data status: Not affected
  Type: reg_file_data_sampling status: Not affected
  Type: retbleed status: Not affected
  Type: spec_rstack_overflow status: Not affected
  Type: spec_store_bypass mitigation: Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl
  Type: spectre_v1 mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization
  Type: spectre_v2 mitigation: Enhanced / Automatic IBRS; IBPB: conditional; STIBP: always-on;
    RSB filling; PBRSB-eIBRS: Not affected; BHI: Not affected
  Type: srbds status: Not affected
  Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected
Graphics:
  Device-1: AMD vendor: Gigabyte driver: amdgpu v: kernel pcie: gen: 5 speed: 32 GT/s lanes: 16
    ports: active: DP-1 empty: DP-2, HDMI-A-1, HDMI-A-2, Writeback-1 bus-ID: 03:00.0
    chip-ID: 1002:7550 class-ID: 0300
  Device-2: AMD vendor: ASRock driver: amdgpu v: kernel pcie: gen: 4 speed: 16 GT/s lanes: 16
    ports: active: none empty: DP-3, DP-4, DP-5, HDMI-A-3, Writeback-2 bus-ID: 4f:00.0
    chip-ID: 1002:13c0 class-ID: 0300 temp: 42.0 C
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 1.21.1.7 compositor: xfwm v: 4.20.0 driver: X: loaded: amdgpu
    dri: swrast gpu: amdgpu display-ID: :0.0 screens: 1
  Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1920x1080 s-dpi: 96 s-size: 509x286mm (20.04x11.26") s-diag: 584mm (22.99")
  Monitor-1: DP-1 mapped: DisplayPort-0 model: Acer XF250Q serial: <filter> built: 2018
    res: 1920x1080 dpi: 90 gamma: 1.2 size: 544x303mm (21.42x11.93") diag: 623mm (24.5") ratio: 16:9
    modes: max: 1920x1080 min: 720x400
  API: OpenGL v: 4.5 Mesa 24.2.8-1mx23ahs renderer: llvmpipe (LLVM 15.0.6 256 bits)
    direct-render: Yes
 

Two days ago, I became an unwitting victim of Amazon's lack of policing their 3rd party marketplace ecosystem. I hope I can get this in front of a few more eyeballs to save people from the experience I am now in. Here's how it went down.

Thursday, AMD dropped the Radeon RX 9070 and Radeon RX 9070 XT GPU. I won't bore you with the details, but I hoped to get one, by Friday I still hadn't and started shopping for a GPU from last generation. I setup a price alert on a few models and went to sleep. I woke at 3am to an alert (I forgot to silence my phone) that one of the models was on sale at a 27% discount from a 3rd party seller, and I groggily added to my cart. However, when added to my cart, the price jumped to 15% over MSRP. I removed and went back to the product page, refreshed, and saw the same discounted price. I copied the link and opened it in another mobile browser and the discounted price was there. I added it back to my cart and the price again increased by $150.

I contacted support, and they told me to make the purchase at the inflated price, and when it arrived, I would be given a discount retroactively by Amazon. I did so, put my phone on DnD and went back to sleep.

When I woke up, I checked my phone and saw I had two emails from Amazon. One was a price alert on another GPU, at the same deep discount from another seller. I clicked the link and saw the same price for the same GPU. This time, I was more awake, so I clicked the link to go to the "Gigabyte Store" and saw the same listing there. This one must be real, then right? I added it to my cart and the price remained discounted. I clicked the seller name and saw they had several positive reviews about fast shipping, great prices, etc.

Here's what happened next. I purchased the second GPU at the correct price and went to cancel the previous order. However, when I opened the orders page, I saw that it was already marked as shipped. Strange, I thought. It's only been five hours. So I couldn't cancel the order, but Amazon CS assured me earlier that I would receive the discount, so I shrugged and decided maybe I would sell the extra one, or give it to my son.

So I purchased the second GPU. Then I checked the second email. As I read, my face got hot, and my arms and hands began to tingle. Here is the email:

Hello,

We are writing in relation to your Amazon.com order #REDACTED.
We wanted to inform you that the seller of your order is no longer active on Amazon.com.

If you are expecting an order and you do not receive it within 3 days of the estimated delivery date, or if you have any other issue with your order, please report the problem. Our team will determine if you are eligible for a refund.
To report an issue, please follow these steps:
1. Go to “Your Orders” 
2. Locate your order in the list and click “Problem with order”.
3. Select your problem from the list.
4. Select “Request refund”.
You may also reach out to us at the following link:
https://www.amazon.com/hz/contact-us
We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Sincerely,

Customer Service
Amazon.com

Uh-oh. Wait. Amazon has seller accounts that can just ...disappear? And the only recourse is to wait to see if they ship the item to you? Here is where some of you may think, "this sounds familiar." I hadn't seen that before, and I trusted the Amazon system, foolishly.

I find the seller profile linked on my order page for the first GPU. The seller feedback (that I had never even seen before, as I guess I have always used Amazon fulfillment up until now) was five reviews. One 5-stars, and the remaining four were 1-star, all with SCAM in the text.

I think to myself, 'it's a good thing I bought that other GPU... that had the same ...price. SHIT."

I go to my second GPU order and click the seller profile. The previous glowing reviews are still there, but so is a new one with the current date that reads:

I have been waiting since the first part of December. If I didn’t need them I wouldn’t have ordered them. I had to order from a different company and get them within a week.

It's now Tuesday. Both items have "shipped" but with no tracking number, claiming:

Strange. I've always had tracking for USPS packages in the past. Oh, and my shipping date? Changed from March 12 to April 30.

All this is typical for this type of scam, it seems. I was oblivious to it until it happened to me. Here are the signs:

  1. Steeply discounted price on a popular item
  2. 3rd party seller with relatively low review count
  3. Fulfillment completely outside of Amazon
  4. Order is marked as shipped extremely fast
  5. Shipping will not include tracking number
  6. Seller closes their Amazon account

Obviously, if you get past #3, you've already been scammed.

Now, after a day of research into this scam, I can also share the following that helps clear up how and why this works like this.

Sellers don't get paid immediately. They have a regular payout interval, usually a week or two weeks. So they need to keep the customer waiting long enough to collect their funds before Amazon can step in. But, lucky for them, Amazon never steps in. As I discovered, their SOP is to have the customer wait until the delivery date (which was four days, then suddenly fifty+ days) before any attempt to make the customer whole is offered. This delay works in favor of the scammers, since they have time to collect their money before Amazon bothers to consider there is any fraudulent activity.

All this info in my belt, I called Amazon CS last night and asked for a walk-through of the two purchases, the seller accounts, and the policy. The CS agent viewed the seller profiles and confirmed they seemed scammy, and that they were both no longer active, but still eligible for payout. They could not confirm that any products had ever been truly offered, let alone received. At the end of the call it was clear that Amazon CS hands are tied. They have policies, and they won't budge. I won't even be eligible for a refund until after May 3, which is just under two months from my order date.

I didn't do anything wrong. I was supposed to be protected by Amazon, and I wasn't. They aren't supposed to be like eBay, where you have to carefully research every seller, because the platform invites fraud. This is the biggest e-tailer in the world (or is that Ali Express?), who positions itself as the most customer-focused company in the world. Unfortunately, they are either not interested in countering this fraud, or they are too slow-moving to keep up with the fraudsters. Or maybe I'm not the customer. Maybe the seller is. Or maybe it's the advertisers. But not me, anymore.

What I will do differently in the future:

  1. Stay off of Amazon.

They are in the business of making money, and even Chinese scammers make the company money. They may have to refund me my $1,000, but not for almost two months, and they got my payment into their bank account immediately. When they pay the scammer (and they will), they get to keep a percentage (30% now? More? I forget).

Obviously, I have noticed that many products on the marketplace there seem scammy, but I wasn't prepared to see one hosted on the GPU manufacturer's official store front. Oh, and the CS agent also told me that there is no way to assure that I can even get the product I purchased from another seller. That is to say, I asked if instead of a refund, I could have them just get me the GPU I ordered at MSRP (or even better, the price that scammed me, twice), and they said no.

I'm okay. I used my credit card, and I'm protected from fraud if it comes to that. To those who wouldn't have that option and can't be without $1,000 for two months, I would recommend you stay away from any marketplaces that allow 3rd party sellers on, as there is too much incentive to scam like this. There is ZERO risk to the scammer. Newegg (owned by Amazon) also allows 3rd party sellers , and if you look, you can find feedback there about the same scam.

Good luck out there.

 

The answer to "what is Firefox?" on Mozilla's FAQ page about its browser used to read:

The Firefox Browser is the only major browser backed by a not-for-profit that doesn’t sell your personal data to advertisers while helping you protect your personal information.

Now it just says:

The Firefox Browser, the only major browser backed by a not-for-profit, helps you protect your personal information.

In other words, Mozilla is no longer willing to commit to not selling your personal data to advertisers.

A related change was also highlighted by mozilla.org commenter jkaelin, who linked direct to the source code for that FAQ page. To answer the question, "is Firefox free?" Moz used to say:

Yep! The Firefox Browser is free. Super free, actually. No hidden costs or anything. You don’t pay anything to use it, and we don’t sell your personal data.

Now it simply reads:

Yep! The Firefox Browser is free. Super free, actually. No hidden costs or anything. You don’t pay anything to use it.

Again, a pledge to not sell people's data has disappeared. Varma insisted this is the result of the fluid definition of “sell” in the context of data sharing and privacy.

 

My GF is a ghost writer. The publisher has her write into files that are uploaded to a shared platform where editors and other creatives and execs tweak and move each chapter through several named states (represented by different folders), until it reaches "Final."

She gets paid per X words. Come the day before the deadline for payroll, they (sometimes, often its late) open up the payroll system, and she has to re-upload the Final chapter to a folder in that tracking system. Tonight (when they opened the system for her), she has to enter 130 chapters by 10am tomorrow.

It's not just moving a file. She has to download the Final chapter, select the text, copy/paste into the payroll tracking system, and then fix formatting that their silly system creates, like extra spaces, double quotes, etc. Each chapter can take minutes. These pasted chapters are then the final product. She has to stay up all night until its done, or she won't get paid on time.

I feel like she's being taken advantage of, doing admin work for free. This feels like someone else's job. Is this even compliant with labor laws? Is it legal to have her do 12hrs of gruelling repetitive labor to move her completed text like this? Her being paid is conditional on her entering this data.

I know hourly employees must be paid for hours worked, whether it was tracked or not, and tracking is an employer responsibility.

Edit: added more words

55
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by s38b35M5@lemmy.world to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
 

I haven't run windows since 2019. However I need to boot my old drive to grab some data. I really need to make sure this system doesn't update any windows components, but I'll need it to have internet access for a portion of the time.

On a different system, I used to have two reg keys that I would run to disable or enable updates when I found that disabling the services only worked until the watchdog would re enable them. Those resulted in updates saying something was wrong, which is perfect by me.

Now that web searches for stuff like this are all AI-gen'd SEO BS, can anyone tell me or point me to a reliable resource for truly disabling updates on Win 10?

PS - Bonus points if Anyone can link me to the page I used a few years back that had all sorts of privacy enhancing and telemetry disabling option on the left side and would create a reg file for applying those changes on the right. It might have been a purple theme, I forget.

Edit: it may also have been a "services" command that fully disabled services from CLI where the GUI says access denied. I forget.

Edit 2: I got the updates services disabled via registry. Thanks to those who refreshed my old Windows admin memory. I dumped Windows on my personal systems years ago, and haven't had to think about this for a while. It's a shame when the operating system changes to this model of SaaS where they call all the shots. I want security updates, but not bleeding edge drivers, candy crush, "feature enhancements", random unexpected reboots, etc. I miss when the update feature didn't assume nobody in the world could handle manual updates. You know, like sudo apt-get update.

 

Jong, currently a customer/technical training instructor on Apple's global developer relations/app review team, said that she only became aware of a stark pay disparity by chance.

"One day, I saw a W-2 left on the office printer," Jong said. "It belonged to my male colleague, who has the same job position. I noticed that he was being paid almost $10,000 more than me, even though we performed substantially similar work. This revelation made me feel terrible."

[...]

According to the complaint, several of Apple's policies favoring men have further entrenched the alleged pay gap. That includes Apple's performance evaluation system, which women suing alleged rewarded men in categories such as teamwork and leadership but "penalized" women for excelling in those areas.

Apple also seemingly has "a policy or practice of selecting individuals who have 'talent' and compensating those persons more highly than other employees." But neither Jong nor Salgado—although both have held various leadership roles—were ever designated as "talent" deserving of a pay increase, the lawsuit said. They've alleged that this Apple policy is biased against women, more often rewarding male "talent" while female talent goes unacknowledged.

"More men are identified as having talent," the complaint said.

Separately, Jong has also alleged that Apple subjected her to a hostile work environment after a senior member of her team, Blaine Weilert, sexually harassed her. After she complained, Apple investigated and Weilert reportedly admitted to touching her "in a sexually suggestive manner without her consent," the complaint said. Apple then disciplined Weilert but ultimately would not allow Jong to escape the hostile work environment, requiring that she work with Weilert on different projects. Apple later promoted Weilert.

As a result of Weilert's promotion, the complaint said that Apple placed Weilert in a desk "sitting adjacent" to Jong's in Apple’s offices. Following a request to move her desk, a manager allegedly "questioned" Jong's "willingness to perform her job and collaborate" with Weilert, advising that she be “professional, respectful, and collaborative,” rather than honoring her request for a non-hostile workplace.

As a result of Weilert's promotion, the complaint said that Apple placed Weilert in a desk "sitting adjacent" to Jong's in Apple’s offices. Following a request to move her desk, a manager allegedly "questioned" Jong's "willingness to perform her job and collaborate" with Weilert, advising that she be “professional, respectful, and collaborative,” rather than honoring her request for a non-hostile workplace.

 

The bankrupt casual restaurant chain didn’t fail because of Endless Shrimp. Its problems date back to monopolist seafood conglomerates and a private equity play.

The company abruptly shuttered roughly 50 of its locations across the country last week without informing employees, who showed up to work only to find signs announcing the closures, which may be a potential labor law violation. According to staff complaints, they only later received notice that they’d be laid off or transferred to the remaining stores, in some cases many miles away.

A good read for anyone who wants the truth about the fail upward brunch lords who play with the lives of their workers for high fives and walk away with billions while the companies they put on their resumes get stacked with debt and crumble under the weight.

 

When I use yt-dlp -x to grab audio only, the resulting opus files are often troublesome to play back in strawberry, stopping unexpectedly. They also sometimes don't index at all, and metadata including embedded cover art don't seem to stick.

So, since most of my library is already vorbis in OGG files, I have been converting the files, but my inexperience with audio codecs and YouTube audio formats in general is shining through. I use 320kbps, but the resulting files are typically about twice the size afterward. I'm thinking I'm probably wasting space for no reason.

What is a comparable bitrate for the OGG files for a given bitrate opus source file?

EDIT: Here is my conversion script find ./ -iname "*.opus" | parallel --load 0.9 ffmpeg -i {} -c:a libvorbis -b:a 320k "{.}.ogg"

EDIT2: Here is the updated version with a suggestion from @Supermariofan67@programming.dev find ./ -iname "*.opus" | parallel --load 0.9 ffmpeg -i {} -c:a libvorbis -q:a 6 "{.}.ogg" which results in only slightly larger files (5.4MB > 7.2MB).

 

Received notice of a change to the service in my inbox today. Seems icky to me.

Devices in the network use Bluetooth to scan for nearby items. If other devices detect your items, they’ll securely send the locations where the items were detected to Find My Device. Your Android devices will do the same to help others find their offline items when detected nearby

Your devices’ locations will be encrypted using the PIN, pattern, or password for your Android devices. They can only be seen by you and those you share your devices with in Find My Device. They will not be visible to Google or used for other purposes.

ETA: here's the link to opt out: opt out of the network

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submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by s38b35M5@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml
 

Anyone have experience getting an HP EliteBook 840 G2 to boot from M.2? There's only one setting in BIOS to enable it, and it's enabled by default. Latest BIOS update. It's in the boot order. It's even seen when pressing F9 for boot options. I see MX23 but no grub (under legacy) or EFI files found in the ESP partition (under UEFI).

I've tried cloning my functional SSD install with dd and clonezilla with no errors, but both result in no boot disk found. Same with a fresh install to the drive from live USB.

I've moved through full legacy, to hybrid, full UEFI, but none see the device as bootable after install.

Loading GRUB or Syslinux and attempting to boot from HD also fails to boot from the M.2.

TIA

Edit: added clarification what was being cloned

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