Giver of skulls

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Joined 101 years ago
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Cake day: June 6th, 1923

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  • You’re not doing AJAX without Javascript, and that’s what the Google search site is optimised for. Plus, there’s no way to deal with the mandatory cookie consent popup without additional page loads either.

    You can do most of Google with CSS but you can’t do it easily without sacrificing functionality and Google doesn’t care about the people without Javascript anyway. Why invest time and effort into making this stuff work for customers that don’t earn you anything? It’s not an open source nonprofit that cares about its users, we’re talking about Google.



  • They need Javascript to serve users an experience that doesn’t look like it’s from the 90s. “You don’t need Javascript” is technically correct in the same way you don’t need Google because you can go look through an encyclopedia in the library.

    The kinds of people that disable Javascript probably don’t use Google anyway, and if they do, they’ll have their browsers so full of tracking protection that serving them costs more money than it earns.





  • I don’t really know what people are doing to enrich their vocabulary and fluff up their language to be honest; my vocabulary and writing all stem from high school. However, my experience is that in order to write well, you need to read a lot. Learn what works for others, consider why it may not work for you, and pick up the good bits. If all else fails, open a dictionary, pick a word every day, and try to use it in a sentence before going to bed, just so you learn more synonyms and specific terms.

    I’m pretty sure that when it comes to job applications, most people are probably using AI these days. Unless you think you can beat AI, it doesn’t hurt to let the some kind of AI go over your text and steal some or the good bits.


  • That screenshot again proves that this person is extremely cringe, presumably a troll, but there’s still no threat. At worst that’s racism against Americans. Should obviously be removed by moderators from any normal online service that wants to encourage pleasant conversation, but that’s not necessarily illegal.

    As for the PDF, that’s not a legal definition by any kind, it’s a quick explainer for a law that only applies to hosting providers receiving complaints from European authorities. So yes, if the Belgian police sent a takedown notice regarding terroristic content then it does apply.

    However, that regulation is mere instruction to EU states to draft compliant laws. It’s not actionable legislation in itself (similar to the GDPR).

    The full text of the Regulation does include this instruction for EU countries, which I haven’t seen before:

    In order to provide clarity about the actions that both hosting service providers and competent authorities are to take to address the dissemination of terrorist content online, this Regulation should establish a definition of ‘terrorist content’ for preventative purposes, consistent with the definitions of relevant offences under Directive (EU) 2017/541 of the European Parliament and of the Council (6). Given the need to address the most harmful terrorist propaganda online, that definition should cover material that incites or solicits someone to commit, or to contribute to the commission of, terrorist offences, solicits someone to participate in activities of a terrorist group, or glorifies terrorist activities including by disseminating material depicting a terrorist attack. The definition should also include material that provides instruction on the making or use of explosives, firearms or other weapons or noxious or hazardous substances, as well as chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) substances, or on other specific methods or techniques, including the selection of targets, for the purpose of committing or contributing to the commission of terrorist offences. Such material includes text, images, sound recordings and videos, as well as live transmissions of terrorist offences, that cause a danger of further such offences being committed. When assessing whether material constitutes terrorist content within the meaning of this Regulation, competent authorities and hosting service providers should take into account factors such as the nature and wording of statements, the context in which the statements were made and their potential to lead to harmful consequences in respect of the security and safety of persons. The fact that the material was produced by, is attributable to or is disseminated on behalf of a person, group or entity included in the Union list of persons, groups and entities involved in terrorist acts and subject to restrictive measures should constitute an important factor in the assessment.

    However, the Regulation also refers to human rights such as freedom of expression. One can be of the opinion that it’s better for the USA to stop existing without any plans or support for actual genocide. Someone expressing hate for your country isn’t immediately a terrorist.


  • Do you have a copy of the actual threat? Because “you are a settler” is stupid but not an actual threat.

    I don’t know where you got that picture from, I can’t find the legal definition for a terroristic threat within the EU. The best I could find is:

    For the purposes of this Convention, “public provocation to commit a terorist offence” means the distribution, or otherwise making available, of a message to the public, with the intent to incite the commission of a terrorist offence, where such conduct, whether or not directly committed.

    That’s just a convention, though, not direct law. The definition by the convention does require proof of intent, which I haven’t found about the cringe hexbear user.







  • uBO effectively blocks every ad that can be blocked. Youtube has started to insert the ads directly into the video stream and that’s not practically blockable.

    Combining multiple ad blockers can interfere with ad blocking, though. Try creating a new, temporary profile with default settings and no addons, installing uBO, and see if it’s still broken.


  • This was much less of an issue back when you couldn’t open a bank account in someone’s name from halfway across the world. Phishing and identity theft were impossible to pull off until companies started trusting phone services and later the internet. You needed to show up in person with a realistic fake ID to do anything malicious. What else would you do? Spend (converted into modern currency) 25 bucks a minute on an international call to scam someone?

    Now that nobody meets face to face for stuff like cashing a cheque or even ordering a large quantity of groceries anymore, the few bits of personal information we can use to prove our identity are the only things protecting us.


  • Because you’re not paying extra for those problems to get fixed. And no, when you receive millions of forms per day, not every piece of feedback makes it back to someone to actually fix the issue. Especially when half those issues are “when I don’t have internet I don’t receive new emails”.

    Software, like hardware, is a balance between supply and demand. People would rather pay less for a phone crammed full of ads than pay for a service. Just look at YouTube for that one.

    Also, those clunky interfaces are there for a reason. Maybe the interface element that’s a lot better doesn’t work in right to left languages. Maybe the information overload of too many buttons and labels made the old interface impossible to extend. Maybe the prettier solution doesn’t work with screen readers or with the font size and colour cranked up for people with low vision. Maybe the feature redesign worked great but SomeCorp Tweaker Software will bluescreen the machine when it finds the word “checkbox” in a settings page for your mouse. Maybe the design team had a great idea but the feature needs to ship next week so whatever needs to happen to make that works happens, and the five other features planned for the month already eat up the rest of the dev team’s time anyway.

    But most of the time, things are suboptimal because there are seven teams of people working on features on the same screen/system/application and they need to make do.

    If you have serious issues with some software, many companies will let you partner with them. In exchange for hundreds of thousands or millions, you can directly get support for your use cases, your workflow, and the stuff you need to get done, over the billions of other people that also need to use the software. And sometimes, that means your super duper expensive preference/feature/demand means someone else’s workflow is entirely broken.

    If you know what you want, there is a way out: going the way of open source and self hosted. Within a few years, you too will grow resentful of dozens of systems made by different people all interpreting standards differently and not working together. You have the power to fix each and every feature, bug, problem, and design flaw, but none of the time or the detailed knowledge. You don’t have the money to pay experts, and even if you did, what they do may not entirely suit you either. Trying to fix everything will drive you absolutely mad. And that’s why companies and people often don’t try for perfection.