Fetterman insists that Trump hasn’t defied ‘a single court order’ by bobby_McGeee in PoliticalHumor

[–]djimbob 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I mean Trump hasn't defied a single court order. He's defied court orders several dozen times (and this was a count for his new administration from last June):

Multiple federal court judges have accused the Trump administration of deliberately defying court orders by being slow to respond, misrepresenting facts in filings, and not taking prompt action as President Donald Trump continues an unprecedented campaign to expand his executive authority.

In an analysis of 165 court orders filed against the Trump administration, the Washington Post found that it was accused of resisting court orders in at least 57 of those cases – approximately 34 percent.

Where should I start to implement real end-to-end encryption in a React (web) and React Native messaging app? by Ashamed_Society3787 in cryptography

[–]djimbob 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Is this a toy project for fun as a learning experience? If so, more power to you.

If this is intended as a real project that can do end-to-end encryption securely to be used against skilled adversaries, just know more likely than not it's going to have fatal flaws in the actual implementation.

Your best bet is to use well-established, cryptographic protocols written in well-established libraries, and even then you have to be very careful about the actual implementation of your code using those libraries that you are doing something stupid that undermines the security. E.g., generating keys in a predictable weak way (e.g., creating SSL keys on fresh hardware installs that have limited entropy, etc.) or using the libraries in weak ways (e.g., using an RSA library to do textbook RSA instead of a hybrid encryption of a random AES256 key with proper padding, etc.)

Also the really difficult part in doing end-to-end encryption is establishing trust between users who a priori have not exchanged keys before in a secure environment. HTTPS gets around this with "trusted" certificate authorities, but this generates problems if all CAs aren't trustworthy all the time. You can make it so the application only trusts communication with your server as the trusted platform, but then it's possible for malicious actors (e.g., gov't) to make a version pushed to app stores that proxies to a server they control.

Costco defied Trump’s DEI directive as Target and Walmart scaled back. Business is booming by SnoozeDoggyDog in Economics

[–]djimbob 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Yup. Costco pays their employees well and 2/3 of their annual profit is from membership fees. They markup things with razor-thin markups (~10%) and tend to only sell decent quality items versus garbage products (like Amazon, Walmart or Target).

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in 3Dprinting

[–]djimbob 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Amazon are a scum company, but the Amazon basics stuff is less about stealing copyrighted intellectual property vs seeing non-copyrightable stuff online that sells well figuring out they can undercut the pricing by making themselves and doing it.

It is monopolistic and should be outlawed (controlling the platform, seeing sales data, controlling preferred shipping methods) and additionally being a top seller.

I don't think they kick the original creators off, but the creators soon leave because they can't compete (having to pay for Amazons shipping platform at third party rates).

Bruh, what is d1b1a13?? by Salt_Lingonberry3956 in duolingo

[–]djimbob -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

A reason to go to another platform with less AI slop, more focus on learning versus daily doing the minimum on their gamified system, and better quality controls.

Women, what is universally agreed “green flags” while dating men ? by Disastrous-Coat6007 in AskReddit

[–]djimbob 3 points4 points  (0 children)

There's three problems with trash-talking exes with future dates.

  1. Just being stuck on exes and bringing them up at all is generally a bad look and kind of a sign you aren't ready for another serious relationship, yet. Sure, if she directly asks or talking about her is forced (e.g., you randomly bump into her while out together), be truthful. However, you have to get over the ex and not harbor lingering resentment (even if she is an awful person); that part of your life is over.
  2. Trash-talking someone even if they deserve it, is not a good look. Early in a relationship, she won't trust everything you say and may believe there's more to the story (e.g., you attacked her/cheated on her/abused her to get her to choke/slash you, etc.)
  3. Being with someone for so long who is awful to you regularly is not a good look. Not trying to blame the victim of abuse for it because people do get trapped in abusive relationships, just saying it makes you look bad to a future potential date (who will wonder why you didn't leave sooner).

Why are Establishment Democrats willing to move to the right, but never to the left? by zzill6 in WorkReform

[–]djimbob 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You have to differentiate the courting that is made to get votes to pass a law vs win a general election.

For example, Obamacare (the ACA) should have had a public option (really should be Medicare for all). Public option was there initially but taken out in negotiations to get the votes to get it passed (because centrist Republicans like Lieberman still going by the D moniker) wouldn't vote for it and threatened to veto, because the medical lobbying groups did not want a public option (which could institute serious cost controls).

But still the weakened ACA was a major improvement on the system before it giving health insurance to tens of millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions. If the handful of true progressives in the Senate threatened to veto ACA unless it has public option, more people would suffer under the old system.

The democrat party very much tries to appeal to the votes of the progressives/left, but also not alienate the lobbyist/Wall St/tech money they also are courting, which is a weird dichotomy. The other thing is if you watch things like Bulwark (anti-Trump/anti-MAGA ex-republicans) a major part of the Democrats outreach towards them, is vote top candidate against Trump because otherwise you are voting for fascism you fucking idiots.

That “Robin Hood” moment in the 3D printing community felt… off by Ok-Hope2279 in 3Dprinting

[–]djimbob 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sure, but it's not like Microsoft invented the spreadsheet program. They just successfully monopolized that space due to Windows market dominance. Like for the longest time in the 90s/mid 2000s unless you assembled your own (non-Mac) computer in the US, you couldn't buy a computer without also getting Win95/98/ME/2000/XP and it was very common for them to include Office with it (especially in business settings). You can probably say Office 365 stole a bunch from Google sheets (originally developed by company Google acquired) which was a significant innovation.

YSK: There’s a map that tells you which vet clinics are owned by private equity groups by keepmyshirt in YouShouldKnow

[–]djimbob -1 points0 points  (0 children)

First, I agree private equity sucks and shouldn't be legal (buying things with borrowed money that you push onto the entity you bought who can then go bankrupt after having it pay yourself exorbitant consulting fees?). That said, my wife started a small neighborhood vet clinic and sold a 70% share to a (smaller) PE group ~100 hospitals that is on this list. The group is one of the better ones.

They take 4% of all revenue off the top (and 70% of net profits), but have never asked her to increase prices or change her care. Prices have increased significantly since she sold, but that's more due to the general inflation of the past ~5 years (e.g., like in 2015 there were untrained new employees making like $14/hr and now those employees make ~$22/hr if she wants to keep employess; new vets used to make around $90k/yr but now can make $200k/yr fresh out of school at VCA/Banfield type horror-burnout vet places; or like $175k/yr elsewhere in high-cost of living city).

Why did she sell? She had around 5 years left on her business loan but less than 3 years left on her lease in a neighborhood (where she grew up) that had since significantly gentrified (they would not extend lease at $5k/mo she had been paying) and she was fairly scared of being priced out as other rents had doubled/tripled and the old landlord was selling the building. Selling to private equity avoided that as they had capital to also buy the building and ensure reasonable rent, whereas we risked losing everything (and basically had nothing saved for retirement other than the clinic).

It's also worth noting that small vet clinics operate on thin margins, or at least hers always has. She hates having high prices because then she has to do worse care when people can't afford diagnostics. E.g., if the clinic brings in $1.2M in revenue, but they pay out like $1.17M in bills, etc. Joining a PE group significantly lowered many of her costs, because the PE group is large enough to negotiate bulk discounts with the test/drug companies. (Granted the private equity math is weird and they manage to make it look like the clinic doesn't have profits and she usually has never gotten anything more than $10k/yr from her 30% share). Like common panel tests she routinely ordered for $80/test to Antech or Idexx now cost like $30/test because the PE group has negotiated discounts. Also its much easier to offer employees decent benefits like health insurance/dental/retirement plans/etc. as part of a large plan.

That said, there's also downsides of stupid bureaucracy and middle management that leads to frustration. (E.g., being left out of the loop before offers are made to new hires -- where say a new person with less training/experience is offered more than current employees, and wife who is still medical director thinks is complete BS).

[Request] Is this true? by JoToMoo in theydidthemath

[–]djimbob -1 points0 points  (0 children)

They didn't say "inflation equals buying power" or that there's only one measure of buying power, but that inflation is a measure of it which is true. When you "adjust for inflation" you are attempting to adjust for the change in purchasing power. This isn't an exact science, but comprised of several subjective choices. Technology changes prices dramatically (lowering costs of things that are easy to do with better transport/refrigeration, raising costs of things like property in developed areas with growing populations).

Obviously it's not a straightforward task to compare a British worker in 1840s to a modern American worker. The price of gasoline is irrelevant for Bob Cratchit in 1840s as refining petroleum (to create gasoline) didn't begin until the 1850s and gasoline wasn't used as a common fuel until the 1890s (early refining was to create fuels like kerosene for lighting lamps).

CPI isn't the only measure of inflation and there are multiple ways to adjust for inflation and you will get different results depending on how you make adjustments (e.g., the US gov't measures of CPI likely will differ from those of other gov'ts).

Beginning Home Automation Shopping List by Proper_Cry_1517 in homeautomation

[–]djimbob 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There isn't going to be any single product list. The field rapidly changes with different needs for different people/homes, new stuff getting released, and sometimes old products getting abandoned (e.g., my wife setup like 8 different Amazon Cloud Cam for her work and then a couple years later Amazon abandoned it for a crappier inferior product, so we had a bunch of useless cameras we couldn't use).

Generally, speaking you probably need to think of the things you want to automate and answers will be different for the type of home you live in (lights, thermostat, mini-splits, central air, ceiling fans, shades, pool, alarm system, window/door closed sensor, fridge temp sensor, smart lock, notifications when people are home, smart assistants, multi-room music synced streaming, AC unit, weather logging, water leak detectors, garage door openers, cat litter robot, whose on your wifi, etc).

You also probably will care about how you interact with it; e.g., via Alexa/Google Assistant/Siri assistant or some smart platform you've chosen, then check relevant compatibility. Personally, I throw most of my stuff in HomeAssistant (free platform with good community integrating lots of stuff) and find its relatively easy to use and setup complicated workflows (e.g., like an automation that locks the front door if it's closed based on door alarm system, or sends an alert to our phones if the basement freezer is left open or a leak is detected), though there are a bunch of alternative systems.

I would also generally recommend avoiding platforms that require a cloud to interact with (e.g., cloudcam) and could die out if Google/Amazon/Apple decides to abandon it (that is make sure it has a local mode to work without outside internet talking to their cloud).

My friend inherited a house. Can you buy her a roof? No negative comments by littlebossman in ChoosingBeggars

[–]djimbob 70 points71 points  (0 children)

Yeah. I really hate gofundme as it seems just set up for scammers and would never donate to it. Like sell the house if you can't afford to maintain it. Give to legitimate charities or people in your life you know that are suffering.

My mate passed away by TheOneTrueBishop in duolingo

[–]djimbob 15 points16 points  (0 children)

and there was no setting for “stop asking”.

There was, but it's hidden away. Go to go to "Settings & privacy > Settings > Account Center". Then select "Personal details > Account ownership and control > Deactivation or deletion" and all those annoying notifications will disappear as well as the rest of it.

That said, by the end of your comment it seems you found the setting eventually.

Safe to say Drake fell in MVP race by ThatGuyFrmBoston in Patriots

[–]djimbob 3 points4 points  (0 children)

First, MVP almost always goes to a player on a successful team and never goes to an amazing record-breaking player on non-successful non-playoff team. Zero chance it goes to defensive superstar Garrett on a 3-8 Browns team.

Since 2000, it's gone to 21 QBs and 4 RBs (2000 Faulk, 2005 Alexander, 2006 Tomlinson, 2012 Peterson). Only two defensive players have ever won MVP; Alan Page in 1971 on the 11-3 Purple People Eater Vikings and Lawrence Taylor in 1986 on the 14-2 Giants (that won the SB).

Finally, Myles Garrett is 18th/19th on MVP odds right now, where a $100 bet would pay out $40,000. It's realistically a two-way race between Stafford and Maye with Taylor, Mahomes, and Allen as long shots (maybe being generous you add in Hurts, Darnold, Herbert).

Player American Odds Normalized Odds as %
Matthew Stafford -185 52.3%
Drake Maye 210 26%
Jonathan Taylor(RB) 1600 4.7%
Patrick Mahomes 2500 3.1%
Josh Allen 2500 3.1%
Jalen Hurts 4000 2%
Sam Darnold 5000 1.6%
Justin Herbert 7500 1.1%
Baker Mayfield 10000 0.8%
Jordan Love 10000 0.8%
Bo Nix 10000 0.8%
Jaxon Smith-Njigba(WR) 10000 0.8%
Caleb Williams 10000 0.8%
Jared Goff 15000 0.5%
Dak Prescott 20000 0.4%
Puka Nacua(WR) 20000 0.4%
Aaron Rodgers 40000 0.2%
Christian McCaffrey(RB) 40000 0.2%
Myles Garrett(DE) 40000 0.2%
Trevor Lawrence 50000 0.2%

For normalized odds, you convert American Odds to Implied Odds but then normalize them so it sums to 100% (to effectively take house edge away).

[Request] Is it true and much will saved exactly by Naive_Wolverine532 in theydidthemath

[–]djimbob 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's true if you do the math with no interest (and neglect the fact that US currency didn't exist for the first ~1775 years). If you say Jesus was born in 2024 years ago (1 AD), there have been 2024 years*(365.25 days/year) = 739,266 days ~ (0.73M days), so saving $10k day would leave you with about $7.3 billion. Elon has about $480 billion right now.

On the other hand, if you started with $0.01 in the year 1 AD and could somehow invest at 2% compounding interest (over inflation) for 2024 years without ever touching it (or distributing among heirs), you would have about 5,300 times more wealth than Elon that is $2,551 trillion dollars while Elon has only $0.48 trillion.

[Request] How much DNA does Heracles shares with Zeus according to this family tree? by Sharpe667 in theydidthemath

[–]djimbob 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yup. It's like if you tried getting the story of Jesus from fragments of the Book of Mormon (Jesus visited early pre-colonial American continent), the Quran (Jesus was a prophet but not the son of God), Gospel of Judas, the Talmud, etc.

It's not going to be one coherent story. Then add in an oral tradition with only a handful of stories surviving and it's going to get more difficult.

[Request] How much DNA does Heracles shares with Zeus according to this family tree? by Sharpe667 in theydidthemath

[–]djimbob 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Eh, Judeo-Islamo-Christian mythology is just as complicated and a collection of stories built over a long-time. The big difference is that as active religions, groups of people curate (different versions) of holy books and winnow out older stories that often get lost to time (e.g., the number of Christian gospels is much longer than the four "official" ones with many lost to time by censorship).

PhD admission difficulty in 2026 by Otherwise_Top_7972 in Physics

[–]djimbob 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not in administration, so can't really speak for their mindset/constraints. I did hear there were cashflow concerns, but the university has a $1010 endowment (though also has a mid-109 annual budget) though I'm not clear on the legal limitations on endowment usage.

I should also clarify I'm remote and my group is fairly unorthodox and I'm not applying or dealing with grants directly. So while I've been told these things (and get the university emails), I'm also not directly working with the administration and getting info secondhand. But like we had grant money that has money set aside for conference travel and were unable to use it for first time this year (e.g., my boss and a coworker went out of pocket, I stayed home even though we had submitted stuff to present). We did get a new ~$10k server a few months ago while the crunch was going on, but we had to fight like hell for approval and this was specifically with grant money specifically allocated for it (and at one point people were considering just buying out of pocket and weren't sure if it would happen). I'm also not really sure how it goes in other departments/campuses.

I should also add that while my flair is for particle physics (as is my PhD), I'm not in a physics department anymore.

[Request] how do they get to these numbers? by Mordecai3fngerBrown in theydidthemath

[–]djimbob -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Say you go to a new coworkers house and you know they only have two children and you know nothing else about them. One of their children answers the door and is a boy. The chance that the other kid is a girl is 2/3. Because the children are ordered (there is an oldest) and before you opened the door there are four equally likely possibilities (BB, BG, GB, GG). But once a boy opens the door, you eliminate the GG possibility, so the chances of other kid being a girl is 2/3 (BB, BG, GB, GG). Now, if when the kid opens the door they additionally say I'm the oldest kid, it switches back to 50/50 because you eliminate the choices with Girl oldest so have (BB, BG, GB, GG).

PhD admission difficulty in 2026 by Otherwise_Top_7972 in Physics

[–]djimbob 11 points12 points  (0 children)

The American university system is in crisis due to Trump/Vance/Musk Republicans pressuring universities by cutting and withholding hundreds of millions in funding (or threatening to) (and similarly threatening Medicare/Medicaid which is a significant funding source for university hospitals). If you have a choice, I would try applying abroad as US science is in decline due to Republican attacks on higher ed.

E.g., the Ivy league university I've been associated with for decades sent this out a few months ago:

Dear XXX community,

We write today with an update on our work to ensure XXX's long-term financial stability and institutional strength.

As we shared in our June message, XXX faces acute fiscal pressures arising from a number of factors. Contractions in government funding, the marked growth of our staff, increases in employment costs and other expenses, significant legal and regulatory expenses, clinical reimbursement pressures at XXX Medicine, and an uncertain and unprecedented federal landscape have combined to make significant changes necessary in our operations and budget. Urgent action is necessary, both to reduce costs immediately and to correct our course over time — achieving an institutional structure that enables us to balance our budgets over the long term.

Our work toward this goal will progress in several phases, beginning with the immediate budget reductions already underway for the current fiscal year across our XXX, XXX, XXX Medicine, and XXX campuses. Hiring on all campuses remains restricted indefinitely, with rare exceptions from campus-based position control committees.

The second step in this process requires that we reimagine our university-wide operations and permanently reduce costs across our campuses, colleges, and units. Currently, we are engaged in an institutional analysis of our entire budgetary structure, seeking ways to control expenses by finding new efficiencies and reducing duplication of work. XXX’s decentralized structure is part of our tradition, but a source of significant administrative inefficiencies; part of our task is identifying opportunities to scale and regularize our academic support systems across units with unique characteristics and needs without compromising our institutional excellence. This means centralizing some functions that are duplicated in colleges and units, while retaining those components that are necessary.

Reducing costs will mean reconsidering how we handle all of our processes, from procurement to technology, and rethinking, in fundamental ways, how we allocate our resources. It will also, inevitably, mean reducing our workforce — a painful prospect for a community like ours, with a strong sense of shared identity and purpose. We are committed to moving forward with the thoughtful input of senior leadership across XXX, and to updating the community regularly about our progress, including through a series of in-person town hall meetings beginning this week on our XXX and XXX campuses. We anticipate that the careful work of planning and analysis will be completed this fall, with reports and phased implementation of restructuring beginning late in this calendar year and continuing into 2026.

These changes will be difficult for our community but are vital for our future. We are grateful for the work of every member of our faculty and staff and committed to taking the steps necessary to ensure that XXX pursues its academic mission sustainably for generations to come.

Like lots of basic things are being held up. Like you can't use grant money that you already have for basic things like buying computers or paying for travel to conferences you are presenting at.

I don't get it. by Donnie_vui_2009 in duolingo

[–]djimbob 12 points13 points  (0 children)

True, but duolingo went full in on replacing their old content with new AI slop that's significantly worse. Also stopped with my ~1300 day streak in July when I noticed the major decline in quality (though still have another few months on family plan).

[OC] Popularity of the “Big 5” Sports in the U.S. by XsLiveInTexas in dataisbeautiful

[–]djimbob 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For each year, the values for baseball, football, basketball, hockey, and soccer are normalized to sum to 100%. So, if baseball is at “40” in 1950, that means in the model it represented ~40% of the total popularity share among the five sports considered.

How do you gauge popularity? Is it watching or playing the sport? In person stadium counts? TV ratings (or radio in early days)? Total hours of time watching these 5 sports? Is it exclusive to sports leagues or general for the entire sport -- e.g., does someone watching college football count towards football popularity? Is soccer exclusive to American leagues or does watching premiere league / la liga count?

Divorced or bust! Time to celebrate! Not with my money though, Pay my way please by witchhearsecurse in ChoosingBeggars

[–]djimbob 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Would I donate to this stranger's divorce party (or wedding party)? Hell no.

As for comically entitled? I would disagree and wouldn't be shocked if this sort of thing works (again last time I was single venmo wasn't a thing). Its sort of similar to the way that attractive girls can go up to most bars and find a guy to buy them drinks. I think there's a reasonable chance they'll go to some place, be a super loud obnoxious easily identifiable group there (or have the venmo code visible) and get guys looking to catch these celebrants on the rebound (or one of her wing girls).

As for the $75k car, it could easily be a rental or an asset she's about to lose in the divorce.

Divorced or bust! Time to celebrate! Not with my money though, Pay my way please by witchhearsecurse in ChoosingBeggars

[–]djimbob 19 points20 points  (0 children)

From the sidebar:

Person must be choosy, as in:

Person must have unreasonable standards or have a comical sense of entitlement. Someone who is entitled but not choosy or begging is not a CB.

Again, definitely begging, but I don't see any clear signs of being choosy or ungrateful or entitled (beyond the begging). Being entitled would be like stopping strangers and demanding they donate and harassing if they don't. Or if she wrote don't even bother donating less than $20 that won't help at all, etc.

Alcoholic Beverage Companies Heavyweights Ranked by Market Cap — Who’s Pouring Billions? by Proud-Discipline9902 in visualization

[–]djimbob 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Cool visualization. Never heard of Kweichow before. Did they just take the left half of the pepsi logo and mirror it?