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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: September 27th, 2023

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  • I kept up with the drama until about a week ago so what I’m saying here is the status from back then. Someone please add any new context if I’m missing any new developments:

    From what it appeared, view counts dropped but ad revenue stayed the same. Even before this whole thing, YouTube pays out for ads watched (and clicked). Pay out was not dependent on raw view count for a long time, if ever.

    This suspicious behavior of view count dropping but ad revenue staying the same is actually what tipped people off that the issue was adblock related. The fact that channels with a larger focus on a younger audience seeing less of a drop also helped.

    Now those view counts dropping could still have an indirect, negative effect on ad revenue, if it, e.g. automatically leads to YouTube recommending their videos less prominently.




  • I’ve been to multiple museums in Japan (which is somewhat relevant because Nintendo is Japanese) that either flat out ban all photography (e.g. Ghibli Museum, Aomori Museum of Modern Art) or have some exhibits that you’re not allowed to take pictures of (e.g. Tokyo National Museum). One exhibit I wanted to take a picture of had a “no photography” sticker on it, but it was on the opposite side from where I approached so I didn’t see it, causing staff to run up to me when I pulled out my phone to point out the sign.

    I’ve also heard from other tourists that “no photos” seems to be rather common there.

    Btw, I’m not at all saying that they’re justified at all, just saying that there are indeed places that forbid photos for copyright reasons. In my opinion, no photo would ever match seeing the exhibits in person so it is entirely pointless to ban them. Even professional, official scans of pieces don’t come close.


  • You definitely bring it to the point here. “Can/Could” has two different meanings in this case (and many more generally).

    Nobody can legally enter your house without permission. Vampires also additionally have a second restriction, they cannot physically enter your house without permission. A warrant removes the first restriction but not the second. A vampire policeman with a warrant can legally enter, but still not physically.



  • Tangetially related: For the people who don’t know, I found out recently that x!! isn’t the same as (x!)! (repeated factorial), in fact, !! is a LOT less big than repeated factorial.

    For example, while 30!! is 4.286 x 10^16 (so a number with 17 digits), doing 30! and then ! the result of that, would be a number with an unfathomable 10^33 digits.

    n!! is its own operator called the “double factorial” and is even smaller than the regular !, because it’s the product of only the odd numbers up to n.

    Edit: escape characters



  • Obviously I cannot speak to the story in the tweet actually happening, but I’m not so certain that this couldn’t happen for two reasons:

    1. People who spend money on a cute, innocent kid’s lemonade stand are probably not stingy. After all, you’re never really getting your money’s worth there and it’s more about the (arguably) good deed.
    2. Once the kid (re)acts in a way that makes it seem it is convinced the money is its, it’ll feel like stealing from a kid to ask for the change back.

  • And also because Animate Dead, the spell the blurb in the meme is from, reads:

    Choose a pile of bones or a corpse of a Medium or Small humanoid within range. Your spell imbues the target with a foul mimicry of life, raising it as an undead creature. The target becomes a skeleton if you chose bones or a zombie if you chose a corpse (the DM has the creature’s game statistics).


  • On the second part. That is only half true. Yes, there are LLMs out there that search the internet and summarize and reference some websites they find.

    However, it is not rare that they add their own “info” to it, even though it’s not in the given source at all. If you use it to get sources and then read those instead, sure. But the output of the LLM itself should still be taken with a HUGE grain of salt and not be relied on at all if it’s critical, even if it puts a nice citation.



  • What’s also kinda wild is how those plans often have 0 interest rate as long as you’re able to pay the installments on time. Which means in theory you MAKE money by using them because you can earn interest with that money in the meantime.

    It ALSO means they know the people using those services are so bad with money that they can sustain themselves (and make a nice profit) purely by their clients failing to pay on time and then selling the debt to debt collectors. It’s absolutely disgusting how predatory this is, making their money mostly on the people who’d need such a system the most (and to a smaller amount, on people who don’t care).