Because there is currently no direct evidence of anything amiss.

You don’t need direct evidence of a problem. It’s the other way around — In order for the software to be trustable with private data you need steady, ongoing evidence that the authors are trustworthy.

National spy agencies are out there, right now, and recently in the news, trying to suborn open source project maintainers. This is a known risk.

Yes. It’s very very hard to read the source and know there’s no security bug in it. That’s 10x truer when the security bugs are potentially on purpose, and carefully hidden.

I really don’t see why there are so many people around saying “it’s probably fine”

In my personal opinion shit like this is probably not fine at all.

Oh, so THAT’S what the poop knife is for

Vorsicht vor Ratten. Ich habe eine Ratte mal unabsichtlich in meine Küche hereingeladen durch so eine Leiter aus Reben wachsen lassen. Die hat die Besuche mehr als ich genossen.

Watch out for rats. I accidentally invited a rat into my kitchen once by letting vines grow onto a ladder like that. It enjoyed the visit more than I.

Speaking as a parent who understands all too well about my kids’ depression, it might not even help.

“Ok, yes, life sucks, nothing matters, nothing is worth doing, and nobody cares. This is normal it’s just like that for some people. Now get your ass out of bed and [do your homework | get that resume written | go to work]”

This is my refrain for the past 10+ years. My kids do not enjoy hearing it, I do not enjoy saying it, and none of us has the faintest clue what to do that’s better than this.

You could try going for a walk outside in the sun and/or rain when your mom is bugging you too much with her not-understanding. That doesn’t get the homework done or the resume written or whatever but it can be a real mood lifter even for people who have heard the advice enough times already to be frustrated by it.

Good luck out there kid, it’s a hard world but somehow you can do it.

How rural is your path? I discovered recently that big fat raccoon poops are very similar to human poops.

And you’re not going to share the results of your research??

I don’t know where you’re from but it’s clearly not Chicago.

Turns out that, taken as a typical behavior across the general population of library users, it’s really fucking intensely difficult.

Digital photo frame that somebody else controls is great for the case where you are a person who can’t do tech, but you have somebody you trust who can, and you want to get a daily update delivered to your kitchen showing what all the grandkids have been getting up to.

If you’re going to buy a printer (any printer) for very infrequent use, make sure to protect it from dust.

I just threw away my Brother Laser (stored in a very dusty location) because of dust all through the works making streaks on every print.

I started with a series of white dots on each page, and in order to fix that I cleaned the whole outer case, blew out the toner cartridge area with canned air, and installed a new toner cartridge.

Result: white speckles on each page AND several big black streaks down the whole page. 😡

I’m sure somebody who knows how to clean them properly could have resuscitated the thing but I ended up contributing to e-waste instead.

Better to keep it in a cabinet with doors, or store it inside a pillowcase or something for the 18-month duration between prints.

When did they kill a guy?

Be careful picking your bird. At least some parrots will learn sounds and phrases that you did not intend to teach them.

For example I had a friend with a parrot who would very convincingly make noises like somebody having a low conversation on the phone in the next room.

Posted: Nov 11, 2025 1:52 PM PST

I feel like this one is more just total indifference to the screwing over of poor people, rather than active attempts.

It’s not like rearranging the order of your daily back transactions to put deposits and small withdrawals last, where they’re creating more overdrafts on purpose to extract more fees from poor people. That one really steamed my gizzard back when I was living paycheck to paycheck. That was active malice.

This one is not making them any money. It’s more of a casual “I want to make sure nobody rips me off by taking gas they’re credit card won’t cover, and I don’t give any shits about how that makes poor people unable to buy gas and groceries on the same day “

Not so.

The gas station putting the hold on was never getting any interest anyway.

The credit card company is not getting interest because a temporary hold is not a purchase.

Filling up an 18 wheeler can cost $1000. I don’t think the truck stops are using our piddly $150 car-side gas pump limits for the diesel pumps on the truck side.

Filling up my gas motor home at regular car gas station pumps all over, I find that Truck stops, big chain gas stations, little podunk gas stains in the middle of nowhere all use limits from $100-$200, which is not enough for me to fill up. My guess is that number used to be “safely big enough to fill up anything” and they haven’t adjusted it as the gas prices went up.

$150 sounds about normal. I put gas into a motor home with an 85 gallon tank. Generally the pumps will cut off once or even twice before the tank is full — sometimes at $100, sometimes at $125, sometimes at $150

They don’t actually charge the extra, so once get over the initial shock of thinking you got stolen from, this is not a real problem (unless you’re running your card right up to the ragged edge of your credit limit.)

Naomi Kritzer has written a few really good short stories on this topic that are kind useful reflections on how life could look if AI exists and isn’t controlled by narcissistic billionaires:

Better Living Through Algorithms

“Prophet of the Roads,” Infinity’s End — no link to read the story online but 100% worth looking up

Cat Pictures Please