abhibeckert

joined 1 year ago
[–] abhibeckert 26 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Who doesn’t want to promote and advertise how profitable they are to potential shareholders just before an IPO.

They might want to, but it's illegal.

The "quiet period" is a reference to an SEC law that forces any company to be radio silent for a strict 40 day period during the IPO process. Reddit is in that period now and therefore they cannot say a word.

JPMorgan was fined almost a billion dollars for answering questions on a phone call during their quiet period.

[–] abhibeckert 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

There's also a Base64URL variant that is a little more friendly in the modern world where the +/= often need escape sequences.

The first two are replaced with more sensible characters and the third is just removed entirely - do you really need padding?

[–] abhibeckert 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

They don’t have the capital to pursue an EV

Yes they do. It's just they're choosing to spend all of it on hydrogen, which the Japanese companies still think is better than batteries.

Supposedly hydrogen cars are a solved problem now, all the investment is going into infrastructure. The ability to fill your tank in a few minutes is useless if there's nowhere to fill up.

[–] abhibeckert 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

In October the Gaza Health Ministry claimed 471 people were killed by an Israeli missile strike on a hospital. Widespread credible (independent) evidence proves a small Hamas rocket missfired and hit a carpark near the hospital, causing relatively minor damage (there was a large fireball, but it was mostly rocket fuel - which is far less damaging than an explosive payload intended to kill).

None of the credible evidence was able to put a number to the deaths in that accident but it’s highly improbable that 471 people were in the carpark. And it definitely wasn’t an Israeli rocket.

In other words - Gaza’s health ministry is not a reliable source. Some of the things they report are probably accurate but they have been proven to be unreliable. Don’t trust anything they say unless it’s been backed by someone more reliable (in which case, you might as well refer to the other source instead).

At best, the ministry failed verify facts (e.g. was a large missile even fired at all?) before reporting what happened. But I think that’s being too charitable. For example where did they get the 471 number from? I think they made it up. I don’t have proof but it’s the only believable explanation.

Worse though - they haven’t retracted the claim. Mistakes are understandable… but failing to admit someone in your organisation made a mistake is unacceptable.

[–] abhibeckert 9 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (5 children)

Signal Just Works™️

Until you drop your phone in the swimming pool, and every message/photo you've ever received is just... gone. Forever.

Sorry but I don't buy any claim that Signal "just works". It's pretty clear they care about security more than anything else even when that means making decisions that are user hostile. And that's fine - if you feel like you need that level of security I'm glad Signal exists. But it doesn't really align with the general public and Signal is never going to be a mass market messaging service unless something changes (Signal or the general public).

What's weird to me is an app that excludes itself from phone backups considers SMS a valid form of authentication when a user links a device to a phone number - especially when you can necessarily link a device to a number that is already tied to someone else's device. Like how is that ever going to be secure? Spoiler: it's not. It'd make a lot more sense to me if users simply crated a username and shared it with other people instead of a phone number... and if they forget their password... come up with new username.

[–] abhibeckert 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The fact is in the 2022 US election, voter turn out was as low as 40% in some states and never anywhere even remotely in the same vicinity as Australian elections (which are well over 90% and a lot of the people who didn't vote had an acceptable reason, such as living in another country without being a citizen there).

When you have elections being won by very slim margins, which has been the case lately in both countries, that makes a huge difference.

[–] abhibeckert 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

From the article: "The incident has been reported to officers from Richmond Police District who have commenced an investigation."

If I was the driver's lawyer, I'd be instructing him to keep his mouth shut for the entirety of that investigation and whatever criminal charges might follow.

At the start of the video the bus is stopped on a downhill, so the handbrake must have been on. Did it fail or did a student release the brake? Whatever the answer, the driver failed to maintain proper control of the vehicle and and also failed to supervise the kids. A lot of people could have died and he's in big trouble.

[–] abhibeckert 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The feature does require confirmation.

It also requires accessing your contacts database, which is encrypted on iPhones...

Because it's encrypted, it's impossible to share contact details unless someone enters the device passcode (or else does a biometric unlock - which effectively stores your passcode temporarily in a secure location that is wiped whenever the device is powered off or left unused for several hours).

[–] abhibeckert 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It’s a tough call. Many forums have a rule against changing the title at all.

Those forums are wrong. A title should accurately reflect the content. We can't choose the title other websites choose... but we can choose a title for our posts and we should take advantage of that.

Also - if you find yourself posting on a forum with that rule, just ignore it. And then tell them the title you typed out yourself was copy/pasted. They'll have no way of knowing since so many news services A/B test titles anyway.

Here's the tile I would've used: "Police Alert Parents to iPhone's Automatic Contact Sharing Feature" — I think we can agree it's more accurate than the deliberately unclear title this post currently has.

[–] abhibeckert 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You could start by not calling them “nuts”… you set the tone of the conversation and it could only ever go down hill from there.

[–] abhibeckert 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

No - our government is generally able to get things done. There might be vocal disagreement by the opposition party, but they can rarely block things. Also on this particular issue everyone agrees something needs to be done... it's just not clear what can be done.

Social housing for low income people is an entirely different issue. This article is talking about high income families who still can't afford a home.

If you want to buy a typical family home in a major city, the loan repayments are higher than the entire income of even the highest paid jobs a young person can get (lawyer, etc). Even if a husband and wife both work full time, the amount of money is not even close to within reach.

No bank will let you take out a loan for that much money unless you're covering a large portion of the purchase by selling another home that you bought 20 years ago. How is someone who graduated from law school in 2023 supposed to have bought a home 20 years ago?

I'm young and was able to buy a home recently... but I was only able to do that by choosing to live in an unusually small home on the outskirts of a regional city (the nearest "proper" city is a thousand miles away...). And also I got in before the pandemic - property values have gone up by 1.5x in the last two years in my suburb. I don't think we could afford it now. We also have a kid now, so we can't work full time... even at the price we paid two years ago, the bank wouldn't give us a loan anymore now that we're not able to both work full time.

[–] abhibeckert 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If it were a major interstate route, it would have a name

It's effectively part of Highway 1 - which goes around the coast through every coastal city on mainland Australia.

It's not officially part of it, but west of Cairns a bridge has been closed to a lot of traffic for three years. Most people don't expect the bridge to be repaired, more likely they'll move the highway... but preliminary investigations have been suppressed (not a good sign) and nearly $10m is being spent just on planning to decide what to do - the results of that planning effort are scheduled to be released by the end of next year - who knows when construction will start. In the mean time, Atherton-Malanda Rd is one of the detour options, depending where you're going along Highway 1.

It's also a major tourist road - about half a million tourists per year drive along it.

You're right, it's not a major highway. But it is and always has been used for heavy freight and more than ever since the bridge is a mess. It was originally built well over a hundred years ago to haul massive old growth rainforest tree trunks to be shipped off to Europe - I'm talking trees where a single log would need an oversize truck to move it by modern standards. These days the road is depended on by local farmers and it's almost a blessing that it's not a federal highway, because being a local road means it's actually considered a priority by the government that maintains it.

view more: next ›