Oh interesting-- Yeah gaming the recommendation/search algorithms is another, related explanation. Like I know someone with an Etsy store who says that various things, like running out of stock or putting your store in "vacation mode" will hurt your store's visibility, so people find ways to game it. Totally makes sense that the same kind of thing would be going on on Amazon.
Weird that they'd allocate ad spend at the same time that they were out of stock, but like I said, the algorithms are pretty coarse and probably just not that coordinated.
There's more than one article about this?!
At least this one actually calls out the fact that this is a nothing story.
Lots of vendors set their prices algorithmically... So like when competitors raise their prices or demand seems high for some reason or something, the price will auto-adjust to theoretically maximize profits. The algorithms are often pretty dumb.
So sometimes when you see something like this, you're witnessing a dynamic pricing algorithm spiraling out of control because it wasn't implemented very well, and nobody's paying attention.
Okay maybe OR-- and just hear me out here-- Maybe the problem is not enough money in politics?
Whoa do "percent" and "percentage points" actually refer to different things?
Yo I just saw a real estate listing on one of the islands near Vancouver Island for one of these. If it wasn't a million dollars and isolated from pretty much everything, I would definitely be tempted!
Oh I gotchu now 👌
It's Vitamin D. There was this whole thing during the COVID pandemic about how the FDA/CDC were SUSPICIOUSLY QUIET about how impactful Vitamin D levels were on COVID outcomes or something and how that's how you know that... something something sinister ulterior motives.
So like the idea was that everybody going outside and getting some sun was actually the best thing for public health, but THEY were telling you to languish inside under lockdowns, because clearly they didn't want you to be healthy.
Not. Even. Once.
What in the chatgpt...?
Nice! Hope it works out. For sharing publicly, you might look at something like Immich Public Proxy, if it seems like you need it.
Does Immich meet your needs?
I just need someone who can be both a psychoanalyst and therapist.
Taskmistress** thank you very much 💅
It's like the difference between wandering over to your local coffee shop, vs. popping in.
OONI monitors internet censorship and other forms of network interference, especially by state actors, worldwide. It's an important contributor to digital rights and freedoms IMO, and you can run their client in the background to contribute non-personal data on pretty much any device.
PSA: Inkscape is good now!
How is your network handling telemetry shenanigans?
No, no, you're thinking of a manifold. A manosphere is an orb that keeps track of how much spellcasting energy you have left, next to your healthsphere.
Art 👌
Your smart TV (probably) sends screenshots to advertisers
There was another thread with a paywalled article, but here's the actual study that found that smart TVs use "automatic content recognition" to build an ad profile for you based on what's on your screen... including HDMI content streamed from a laptop, game console, etc. Yikes.
At a high level, ACR works by periodically capturing the content displayed on a TV’s screen and matching it against a content library to detect the content being viewed on the TV. It is essentially a Shazam-like technology for audio/video content on the smart TV [38]. ACR is implemented by all major smart TV manufacturers, including Samsung [9] and LG [55 ].
Our findings indicate that (1) ACR operates even when it is used as a “dumb” display via HDMI; (2) opt-out mecha- nisms stop ACR traffic; (3) ACR works differently in the UK as com- pared to the US.
So it seems like you're opted-in by default, but you can stop ACR traffic by simply configuring six different options on Samsung, or eleven different op
Is there a reason that mobile devices are considered more "trusted" than desktop/laptops?
I keep interacting with systems-- like my bank, etc.-- that require (or allow) you to add one or more trusted devices, which facilitate authentication in a variety of ways.
Some services let you set any device as a trusted device-- Macbook, desktop, phone, tablet, whatever. But many-- again, like my bank-- only allow you to trust a mobile device. Login confirmation is on a mobile device. Transaction confirmation: mobile device. Change a setting: Believe it or not, confirm on mobile device.
That kind of makes sense in that confirming on a second device is more secure... That's one way to implement MFA. But of course, the inverse is not true: If I'm using the mobile app, there's no need to confirm my transactions on desktop or any other second device, and in fact, I'm not allowed to.
But... Personally, I trust my mobile device much less than my desktop. I feel like I'm more likely to lose it or have it compromised in some way, and I feel like I have less visibility and control int
Twitter’s Clumsy Pivot to X.com Is a Gift to Phishers
👀🍿
Who would you recommend opening a bank account with in 2024?
I'm planning to open a new chequing account in the near future, and I'm contemplating bailing on RBC. I've been with them for a very long time, and one possible outcome is that I'll just open a new RBC account and be done with it. That'd be... fine.
But for a variety of reasons (including my satisfaction with RBC trending steadily downward), I'm thinking about opening this new account elsewhere. I don't have a ton of hard requirements, and I'm not really sure what to look for in a bank, but the following would be nice:
- Good online banking experience, particularly desktop (RBC is shockingly bad at this)
- Good credit card; easy to make payments from the new account
- Minimal fees
- Easy e-transfers
- Real security (another thing RBC is terrible at)
- Neat rewards would be cool
- Low-fee, low-friction investing would also be cool-- I don't really do much investing, but I'd like to be able to
Any suggestions would be great, including anti-suggestions if you happen to know of a bank
Exploring is supposed to be a reward in itself.
Sure Todd, lol
"Managers are the real architects," concludes manager
For reference (as per Wikipedia):
Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure.
— Melvin E. Conway
Imagine interpreting that as advice on how you should try to design things, lol.
Tbf, I think most of the post is just typical LinkedIn fluff, but I didn't want to take the poor fellow out of context.