That’s literally what we did, lol, and advanced math. Plus, I think we got to go on several field trips each year. Those were nice.

But yeah, I came to the same conclusion far too late in life.

Probably the same reason the quack science “free energy” videos on YouTube get so many views.

But also, it’s likely an evolution of the roofer scams from ye olden days.

Dogs chew on bones which are much harder, and other than potential for bone fragments/splinters, they’re fine (such was my logic, anyway lol). But for good measure, I asked their vet a good while back, and was given the green light.

I would print out the code and Rube Goldbergian series of database triggers that run some of our internal apps; to the untrained mind, it would probably have an effect similar to looking into Medusa’s eyes.

Oh, I absolutely love my ice maker. Didn’t think I needed one until I replaced the fridge in my old house with one that had one. Now I can’t live without one (except in the dead of winter when I clean it and just turn it off for ~2 months)

Dogs love chewing on ice cubes, especially in the summer. Between keeping bowls of ice cubes out for the dogs and me making margaritas and slushy cocktails all summer, I’d never be able to get by with ice trays.

It’s from an episode of ST: The Next Generation where they’re stuck in a time loop. When they realize they’re stuck in a loop, they say “So we could have seen this [presentation explaining the time loop] a dozen times already?”

The joke is different variations of that and seeing them a dozen, a hundred times. I think it’s just about played itself out, but you may still see a few coming through.

Lol, if only. It’s not a “smart” fridge, but it does have a lot of, frankly, unnecessary electronics for what it does. Electronic components that, as any internet search for Samsung appliances will confirm, can and do go bad and are a pain to repair.

“It all started back in elementary school when they told me I was ‘gifted’…”

Samsung Fridge (don’t judge me, it came with the house).

I knew it was a “when” and not and “if” it would start having issues, and it finally showed its colors last month.

Front panel buttons either refused to work at all or would cycle through every option continuously and randomly.

Want water? Sorry, only crushed ice today. Want ice? Sorry, just water today. Oh, I actually did want water (starts dispensing). PSYCH! Now I’m going to shoot ice at you and splash water everywhere.

Was about to just toss the thing and get something dumber and more reliable, but decided to roll the dice with a replacement control board from ebay. Thankfully, that worked and I’m only out $80.

Counterpoint: Good?

The fediverse has no global identity system. Just like how temporary email addresses protect YOU from spam, disallowing them protects volunteer-run services like Mastodon, Piefed, Lemmy et al from spam (and trolls, etc).

I do not approve any registration applications from throwaway email providers. Also, volunteer-run services are much less likely to use your email address for nefarious purposes. Data breaches are another thing, but TBH, most of the spam I get is from spammers just spraying out to anything that’s formatted like an email address. Not sure about Mastodon, but Lemmy and Piefed do not reveal your email address to anyone (admin can only see it during singup and in the database). At least in Lemmy, the passwords are hashed, but the standard advice to use a unique password per service applies so that in the event of a data breach, the email+password combo will only compromise that single service.

I guess the moral of the story is to save the tinfoil hats for BigTech™ and show the Fediverse people, who are trying to do better, that you’re here with good intentions. As an admin, I’ve seen more spam, trolls, and n’eer-do-wells signup with throwaway emails than people who are here because they want to be here, and to a severe enough degree that I will no longer accept registrations using such services.

Oh, you’re working on this too?

It’s been on my backburner for a while, so if there’s anything I can do to help, lemme know. My goal is to transition my instance to Piefed and port over Tesseract rather than go to Lemmy 1.0 so yeah, I’m willing to help however.

Has anyone ever clicked on a reference url from OpenAI

No. lol

Oh, wow, nice!

Hadn’t heard of them and was expecting it to have a very, very limited catalog like a lot of other DRM-free options. But at least the author I searched for has pretty much most of their catalog.

Will definitely buy my next series from them.

I know this isn’t the “correct” answer (because I have no idea if it’s even possible in 2025 like you asked), but I typically just buy the audiobook (as much as “buy” means in 2025) and then pirate it.

For ones I can’t find on the high seas, I’ll just record the playback from the “locked up” version I bought and make my own if need be.

Yeah, I just updated the post. I blocked both of their /16 blocks today. No response, acknowledgement, or drop in spam even after close to 50 unique spam reports over the course of 2 and a half weeks. None of those customers are any my org would be dealing with, anyway, so fuck 'em. If they want to be a big boy player, then they need to take responsibility for what their platform is being used for.

Disagree. 2025’s motto is basically “But wait! It gets worse” so I’ll take “no change” as a “win”.

They can still reply, you just won’t see them or get a notification.

So there is a bit of FOMO to get over when blocking, but it’s not too bad. Kind of like realizing you have no control over what people say behind your back. I’m just like, “If I cared what they had to say, I wouldn’t have blocked them in the first place”

We’re getting a heavy dose of “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone”.

It’s become apparent to even people that normally don’t pay attention that, despite being less than we want, a lot of our tax money actually does go toward things that help the citizens.

Other than that, I got nothing. These policies, decisions, and the people making them are all a disaster that are going to take decades to repair.

Yeah, I saw the steps for VLC and they’re similar. I tend to prefer CLI, so that’s what I did / wrote up.