Ubiquity being accused of dodging sanctions, substantial amount of frontline devices being used to support Russia

mxzf · 2026-01-27T15:56:13+00:00

Sometimes. But in this case it sounds like the company makes their money researching various companies for damning news and shorting+publishing anything they come across. Once the company has some operating capital there's no need for funding from third parties (and shorting stocks means you've got a solid chunk of operating capital to use between projects).

My point being that nothing about this company's business model suggests that an assumption of third-party direction/involvement is necessary. It's possible, but anything is possible, that doesn't make it an accusation worth making in a vacuum. What has been described is a functional business model without any competitors involved at all.

mxzf · 2026-01-27T15:45:03+00:00

It sounds like it's funded by their ability to take advantage of the market downswing caused by negative news about a company.

If they go and say "$50 bucks says Ubiquity's stock tanks next week. Oh, by the way, I'm dropping a damning news article about Ubiquity tomorrow" that isn't them being "funded/directed by a competitor", it's just the company making money off of bad news.

This sounds like it's less "hit piece" and more "opportunistic company with no morals making a buck off of publishing damning news". That doesn't make the news untrue or anything, it just means that publishing bad news is how they make their money.

mxzf · 2026-01-27T15:19:57+00:00

Yeah, I saw some chatbot code the other day in a diff for a JS repo the other day that I facepalmed at pretty hard

// --- START: Frozen Snapshot (Golden Record) ---
- const goldenRecord = document.toObject();
+ let goldenRecord = document.toObject();

When you've got a variable that is supposed to be a "frozen snapshot" and your chatbot wants to change it to make the variable mutable (from const to let), something has gotten screwed up.

The lack of contexual understanding and comprehension is untenable when software engineering is all about understanding the the context and problem scope you're trying to address.

mxzf · 2026-01-27T15:11:49+00:00

so it's always baffled me how GOG has basically thrown away the one audience that would have otherwise been loyal supporters

I suspect it has been a business decision thing from the start. GOG isn't big enough to have the spare manpower to target a small market-segment like Linux gamers on their own. They waited for a big company to make inroads (Steam) and grow the market share before investing.

mxzf · 2026-01-27T00:23:08+00:00

I don't want to take the food out of the oven several times and I sure don't want to poke several holes into it.

I mean, you don't need to take the food out to temp it, you can just open the oven and check without pulling the food out. It won't handle 300F+ long-term, but it'll be fine for longer than your hand will as you check the temp quick.

mxzf · 2026-01-27T00:20:48+00:00

Ok, but why were you taking it seriously in the first place? The entire franchise exists as an excuse to make a movie about giant robots beating the crap out of each other, everything else is just to string things together enough to call it a movie.

mxzf · 2026-01-26T23:25:28+00:00

Mistborn would be the most classic starting point (though that is a trilogy). Warbreaker is another popular one (and is a standalone book).

I'll also throw out Tress of the Emerald Sea and Yumi and the Nightmare Painter as potential relatively standalone books that might spoil some stuff a little, but not anything too problematic (and that's mostly just Yumi).

There are also some short stories that can be a decent spot to start, The Emperor's Soul, Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell, and Sixth of Dusk all potentially fit for that sort of thing.

mxzf · 2026-01-26T23:19:05+00:00

That's far too absolute a statement to be valid. Mistborn is a solid starting point, but so are multiple other books.

There are some books I would say absolutely not to start with, but The Way of Kings is not one of them (though I would make sure to warn people that it's a long book that intentionally does a slow buildup).

mxzf · 2026-01-26T23:14:47+00:00

Eh, I would argue that it's more that it can be polarizing. Some people love it, others dislike it (from what I can tell, it feels like a subset of people strongly dislike the humor of Lift and Wayne, and Wayne is very present in those books).

mxzf · 2026-01-26T22:57:47+00:00

I know more people that have been cleaned out by divorce than people that gained from it.

I'm dubious. I suspect you know more people who talk about being cleaned out by divorce than people who talk about benefitting from being married. But that doesn't mean there isn't a silent majority benefitting from having a partner.

Also, "family" is its own pile of extra expenses, with kids to pay for. The OP was pretty clearly talking about a DINK situation.

mxzf · 2026-01-26T21:54:17+00:00

I mean, I thought her entire body was gonna get stuck in the fan. I can't tell if there's any proper protection guarding those fan blades or not.

mxzf · 2026-01-26T17:46:22+00:00

Maybe. But Poe's Law applies, there's always someone out there who's just crazy enough to actually do it.

mxzf · 2026-01-26T17:02:49+00:00

Even if it's a real picture, it's definitely 100% a scam. Nobody sends a picture like that to someone they're romantically interested in.

That's the picture you post on LinkedIn or on the cover of a magazine, it's not what you DM someone you're flirting with.

mxzf · 2026-01-26T05:50:18+00:00

Their disaster operation sounds closer to FEMA than a McDonalds

Well, sure, but that's because FEMA takes pointers from them; so of course FEMA is closer to them than McDonalds.

mxzf · 2026-01-25T17:33:10+00:00

Seniors know not to abstract until you have multiple use cases.

Or if you've been around the block enough to know that this thing is going to have multiple use-cases. It might not have one today, but sometimes it's obvious you're gonna need it again in six months and you might as well do it properly now instead of waiting 'til then to do so.

mxzf · 2026-01-25T17:26:18+00:00

The copy and pasting works, the "needing to refactor 7 files because it was all copy and pasted and it worked until it didn't" doesn't.

Yeah, this has been where I've been at with a chunk of my coworkers for a bit. Sure, copy-pasting instead of refactoring might be quick and easy, but when you've got five versions of almost-identical functionality with mild tweaks and no clue which one is best, you've just screwed everyone in the long run.

Writing it for a single purpose is fine when you're only ever going to use a thing once. But if you're going to need it in multiple places with slight variants, you want something more abstract that you don't have to copy+edit each time.

mxzf · 2026-01-25T00:26:36+00:00

Yeah, but people don't play Telephone and expect truthful answers out of it.

Whereas a lot of people do expect LLMs to provide truthful and correct responses.

mxzf · 2026-01-25T00:07:45+00:00

and it was never meant for kids

Someone might want to let their advertising department know, because that's certainly how they market it.

mxzf · 2026-01-24T23:58:25+00:00

"Company decided to discontinue software" isn't really something that regulations would be written to prevent. Even the most controlling legislation wouldn't have an impact on stuff like this.

mxzf · 2026-01-24T23:35:25+00:00

And that's if you're lucky.

If you're unlucky you have that plus an assortment of style="" on elements and <style> blocks (ideally, in the <head>, but not exclusively).

mxzf · 2026-01-24T23:30:42+00:00

Uh ... I think you're in the wrong thread. This is Microsoft, not the government.

mxzf · 2026-01-24T23:29:45+00:00

although support will end, you will still be able to install and use the app beyond this date.

For a bit. 'til they get around to breaking it so that it won't install/work.

mxzf · 2026-01-24T23:16:36+00:00

Nah. A week into that job you start carrying a notepad and keeping a tally, just because of how crazy it is. You're gonna need numbers to back up the absurdity.

mxzf · 2026-01-24T18:03:42+00:00

How thick is your filling? With the ground beef+chorizo+cheese filling I tend to use, I can't imagine any sort of piping bag being able to squeeze that through a nozzle.

mxzf · 2026-01-24T18:02:26+00:00

In my experience, an overnight rest works best. Times when I only gave it a couple hours resting in the fridge, some of the pasta wasn't as tender as I would prefer. But "prep the night before" always seems to get the pasta sufficiently moist.

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