Luna's recent activity
-
Comment on Is OpenWRT worthwhile at home? in ~comp
-
Comment on Reddit announces new limits on moderating large subreddits and for moderators to remove content sitewide in ~tech
Luna Link ParentIf the admins are willing to do that, I don't see why they couldn't setup the subscriber count on subreddits they like to be "current sub count +100k" and those they dislike to be "current sub...If the admins are willing to do that, I don't see why they couldn't setup the subscriber count on subreddits they like to be "current sub count +100k" and those they dislike to be "current sub count -20%". There's no technical reason preventing this, it's not like they allow you to see a list of subscribers and thus would need to maintain fake accounts to keep up the illusion.
Back when YouTube modified the subscribe button to allow you to receive no, "personalized", or all notifications from a channel, a lot of people complained since, well, they subscribe to channels for a reason. And I get the immediate impulse to dislike the change, but it makes sense when you consider that a lot of channels (particularly older channels) have a very high ratio of subscribers to actual viewers (even when you ignore fake subs from channel boosting services) because people get bored and move on, they make new accounts, and just generally stop interacting without unsubscribing. So it makes sense to have the default be "personalized", so that YouTube can examine if you are actually watching the channel and make recommendations accordingly.
Likewise, many subreddits have tons of subscribers from abandoned accounts, bots trying to cloak themselves, and people who have moved on without thinking to unsub, plus the legacy of default subs (remember when /r/atheism was a default? I do).
My only problem with this change is I would like to be able to see both the visitors and subscriber count on the old UI. Currently, we can still see subscribers on the old UI; I have to get to the new UI via a private window to see the visitor count.
-
Comment on Sling TV’s $5 pass buys you one day of cable TV in ~tv
Luna Link ParentThis depends on the speed of your TV's ATSC decoder.It's "old school" FAST lol.
This depends on the speed of your TV's ATSC decoder.
-
Comment on I've noticed an odd and possibly disturbing trend on Reddit lately in ~tech
Luna Link ParentSpeaking of karma farming, it used to be that self posts did not count to link karma, so there was an incentive to link to an unnecessary, tangentially relevant image when asking a question. These...Speaking of karma farming, it used to be that self posts did not count to link karma, so there was an incentive to link to an unnecessary, tangentially relevant image when asking a question.
These days I expect posting such images is primarily done to increase engagement.
-
Comment on Query: Recommendations on how / where to buy USB cables? in ~tech
Luna LinkClub-3D and OWC are my go-tos for anything beyond the bare minimum. The price is worth the peace of mind they provide.Club-3D and OWC are my go-tos for anything beyond the bare minimum. The price is worth the peace of mind they provide.
-
Comment on Cloudflare is down causing multiple services to break in ~tech
Luna LinkCloudflare's postmortem: https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-service-outage-june-12-2025/ GCP says a full post-mortem for their outage is forthcoming in the next few days. I suspect that will...Cloudflare's postmortem: https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-service-outage-june-12-2025/
GCP says a full post-mortem for their outage is forthcoming in the next few days. I suspect that will be an interesting read.
-
Comment on Cloudflare is down causing multiple services to break in ~tech
Luna Link ParentTalk about a stressful afternoon! I first noticed when our integration tests started failing which I initially brushed off as a transient error, at least until I retried it multiple times and kept...Talk about a stressful afternoon! I first noticed when our integration tests started failing which I initially brushed off as a transient error, at least until I retried it multiple times and kept getting the same errors from Google Cloud Storage. Then I got pinged that our Apigee portal was offline...
Thankfully, the Apigee portal was our only outage (the proxying continued working as normal), but it was quite nerve-racking since if anything did go down, we were powerless. We couldn't even SSH into our nodes to manually read our logs, much less remediate anything.
Perhaps the most surprising revelation from all of this is that Cloudflare relies on GCP. Granted, it's not as surprising as if AWS or Azure was (Cloudflare's offerings are nowhere near as extensive, so it makes some sense that they would outsource some tasks), but I always imagined each major cloud provider as being its own silo for whatever reason.
-
Comment on The 'deprofessionalization of video games' was on full display at PAX East in ~games
Luna Link ParentI'd call this take technically correct. By definition, large teams developing big games cannot hope to compete with thousands of smaller developers producing thousands of more focused games in a...I'd almost say that there are more great games made by small studios than there are by big ones. Big studios can make great games but it's not that common nowadays in my opinion.
I'd call this take technically correct. By definition, large teams developing big games cannot hope to compete with thousands of smaller developers producing thousands of more focused games in a short amount of time, but the smaller devs aren't necessarily producing an overall higher percentage of better titles so much as the sheer quantity of titles means by definition, more good games will come out of those indie efforts than the big studios.
For every smash-hit Witcher or Baldur's Gate there are multiple FIFA and Call of Duty titles, and likewise, for every FTL or Stardew Valley there are 100 low-effort asset flips infested with NFTs and other anti-consumer cash grabs pushed onto Steam and the Nintendo eShop that will never see more than 100 daily active players.
The difference is that, with AAA games, you hear about them whether you want to or not simply because they have the marketing budgets to consume the gaming press with well-timed "leaks", ad buys, and paid industry events. The only times you hear about indie titles are because a review copy actually made it into a journalist's hands (and keep in mind there are thousands of devs hoping for a real review in any given year, so just getting selected is like winning the lottery) or because it is that unexpected smash hit like Stardew Valley.
TL;DR - It's survivorship bias. You hear all about AAA failures because AAA studios pay to saturate the airwaves and that leads people to ask "what happened to <title we were hearing all about for the past year>?" when things don't pan out, but all the indie studios that just mass-produce shovelware or pour their hearts and souls into genuinely great games that never exceed 100 daily active players fly under the radar.
-
Comment on I'm thinking of starting a business making basically gatorade-type powder. Seeking advice. in ~hobbies
Luna Link ParentI'm not a doctor but I found out the hard way just how important electrolytes are while hiking in the Grand Canyon. I felt helpless and miserable because I was drinking an insane amount of water...I'm not a doctor but I found out the hard way just how important electrolytes are while hiking in the Grand Canyon. I felt helpless and miserable because I was drinking an insane amount of water but was still slowly dehydrating because it would just go in one hole and out the other (this also meant less water to sweat out for evaporative cooling, which is a very bad combination in the heat of the day), but after adding some Gatorade powder, water retention became a non-issue. It's not a stretch to say that I would have needed to be airlifted out of there without electrolytes.
That said, a lot of people consume drinks like Gatorade unnecessarily. Back when I worked in an office building, I would see people who I knew never worked out drink them every day at lunch, even when they were also eating foods loaded with salt like hot dogs.
-
Comment on Norway's capital is known for its green policies and widespread adoption of electric vehicles. Why does the city still struggle with air pollution? in ~enviro
Luna Link ParentTire and brake dust are worse for human health than tailpipe emissions. That's why it's so important not to switch to EVs, but to eliminate car dependency as a whole and actively disincentivize...Tire and brake dust are worse for human health than tailpipe emissions. That's why it's so important not to switch to EVs, but to eliminate car dependency as a whole and actively disincentivize single-occupant vehicle trips, which account for 40%+ of all trips in the US (sadly the only national data I could find on this was from 2009).
-
Comment on Trapping misbehaving bots in an AI Labyrinth in ~tech
Luna (edited )Link ParentNo, LLMs aren't that intelligent. Many apparent LLM hallucinations are actually just re-hashing mistruths ingested in the dataset, like that "Google tells people to put glue on pizza" kerfuffle...I think LLMs hallucinate because people 'hallucinate' and get confused too.
No, LLMs aren't that intelligent. Many apparent LLM hallucinations are actually just re-hashing mistruths ingested in the dataset, like that "Google tells people to put glue on pizza" kerfuffle (because detecting sarcasm in the original dataset is difficult, hence the phrase "garbage in, garbage out"), but even for the true hallucinations, they occur because LLMs are statistical models that have a very hard time saying "I don't know" because that is so rarely in the dataset in such a way that it appears most-applicable to the prompts we provide.
Humans have innocent misrecollections and just make shit up to sound smart all the time.
Edit: Think about it - if someone posts a weird question to a forum, most people aren't going to respond "I don't know" because that's not a very helpful response; instead, they're just going to let someone who does know (or who claims to know) chime in, even if that means nobody ever responds. And if nobody responds (or if the dataset doesn't contain anything close to the prompt you've given it), this can easily cause hallucinations. This is a fundamental limitation of current-generation LLMs: if something is not in the dataset, you're unlikely to ever get a useful response on the topic, and since so few people ever say "I don't know" online, there are very few chances that the LLM will say "I don't know" vs. making shit up, which is quite common by comparison, especially since an LLM doesn't truly understand what it does and doesn't "know".
I personally don't understand why an AI crawler would even want the information from some blog post by some Joe Schmoe in the first place, especially over something like scientific journals.
Because the companies who make and train models like LLMs want them to be broadly applicable as that increases the addressable market. Having random blog posts and reddit threads provides a diversity of language (i.e. not a strictly academic vocabulary) and provides a lot of interesting perspectives (some more valuable than others) that you just won't find in journal articles.
-
Comment on New policy changes for Southwest Airlines in ~transport
Luna Link ParentFor me, that was one of the best parts. As a solo traveler, even if I was one of the last people on the plane, I could consistently snag an open seat in the first 3-5 rows and be one of the first...because I can't stand the non-assigned seats
For me, that was one of the best parts. As a solo traveler, even if I was one of the last people on the plane, I could consistently snag an open seat in the first 3-5 rows and be one of the first off the plane (I hate standing around at the end when I just want to get out of that cramped cabin but I'm stuck for 15+ minutes behind everyone pulling bags out of the overhead bins). I would be sitting next to randos regardless of what airline I took, but on Southwest, I could sit up front for no extra charge and have some control over what randos I sat next to. (And as a woman, having a choice over who I spend several hours in cramped quarters with means a lot to me!)
Now, if I was flying with someone I could not sit apart from (young kids, elderly relatives), I wouldn't take Southwest. But in all other scenarios, Southwest was the best choice for me, hands down. Even if they were $50 more than the cheapest option (after considering the cost of checked bags, because I always checked mine on Southwest), I would still go with them for that modicum of control and front-row access.
It's going to be a lot harder to justify flying Southwest anymore.
-
Comment on How 'Extreme Makeover: Home Edition' ruined lives in ~tv
Luna Link ParentTrue, but you also have to be able to pay registration, sales tax, etc before you can re-sell it, plus insurance to legally drive it off the lot unless you want to pay for delivery. And if you...True, but you also have to be able to pay registration, sales tax, etc before you can re-sell it, plus insurance to legally drive it off the lot unless you want to pay for delivery. And if you can't afford a Corvette to begin with, I imagine it would be difficult convincing the bank to give you a loan to pay all the fees associated with it. (Edit: actually, having dealt with that Chevy dealership, I wouldn't be surprised if they were scummy enough to finance that...) Maybe if you already had a buyer lined up.
I'd be curious if someone's written a breakdown on what you can expect to net in such a situation.
-
Comment on How 'Extreme Makeover: Home Edition' ruined lives in ~tv
Luna LinkBack when I was in high school, the local Chevy dealership sponsored the athletics program and would do a contest during homecoming football games: kick a field goal, get a small cash prize, do it...Back when I was in high school, the local Chevy dealership sponsored the athletics program and would do a contest during homecoming football games: kick a field goal, get a small cash prize, do it again from farther back, get a bigger cash prize, but if you kick it a third time from a much farther distance, you could take home $5k or $10k (I can't remember which)...or a Corvette.
One year, one of the teacher's kids actually kicked all three...and decided to go with the Corvette.
If you ever win a car in a contest, it's taxed as income at market value, so if you won a $50k car and were in the 22% tax bracket, assuming the car doesn't push you into a higher bracket, that's $11k in federal taxes, plus state and local taxes (including sales tax, also assessed at market value), registration, insurance, maintenance, and paying extra for premium gas.
They should have taken the cash. You still pay income tax on it, but at least you have cash in hand to pay those taxes with. They went from house poor to house broke and had to sell it in less than a year. They ultimately ended up worse off than if they had taken the cash. Not that they weren't trying to keep it by taking on part-time jobs to supplement their income, it just wasn't enough.
After seeing that saga unfold (and cars are fairly cheap compared to houses), it boggles my mind that anyone would think gifting a massive house to anyone who isn't already rich is a good idea.
-
Comment on Highlighting text in Wikipedia scrolls up too fast? in ~tech
Luna Link ParentFor anyone who doesn't want to create a Wikipedia account or who wants to be able to open links in other browsers/incognito without logging in:...For anyone who doesn't want to create a Wikipedia account or who wants to be able to open links in other browsers/incognito without logging in: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/458501-vector-layout-for-wikipedia
-
Comment on <deleted topic> in ~talk
Luna LinkEtheria from She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. Magic is cool and the idea that queerness is so normalized it's not really noteworthy seems really nice to me right about now. Also, their...Etheria from She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. Magic is cool and the idea that queerness is so normalized it's not really noteworthy seems really nice to me right about now. Also, their government, undemocratic though it may be, seems to be in much better hands than America's.
If a portal to it were to open up, my only hesitation would be to get my wife to come with me.
-
Comment on I hate 2FA in ~tech
Luna Link ParentI don't like phone calls or SMS for 2FA, I just think Duo is great since you can have phone calls as an option. It helps with getting older faculty on-board, especially those who have a good deal...I don't like phone calls or SMS for 2FA, I just think Duo is great since you can have phone calls as an option. It helps with getting older faculty on-board, especially those who have a good deal of influence in their departments. When you have phone calls as a fallback method, it eliminates the "but I don't have/want a cell phone" argument.
You would be surprised how many faculty still only have landline phone and cable TV service at home. The fact that landlines (especially campus landlines) are much more resistant to SIM swapping-style attacks is a happy coincidence.
-
Comment on I hate 2FA in ~tech
Luna (edited )Link ParentYou can store TOTP secrets in the "Authenticator key" field of a website entry, and Bitwarden will use this to auto-generate TOTP codes that you can easily copy from the desktop app or browser...- Exemplary
You can store TOTP secrets in the "Authenticator key" field of a website entry, and Bitwarden will use this to auto-generate TOTP codes that you can easily copy from the desktop app or browser extension. The mobile app also puts all your TOTP codes in one location - just tap "Verification Codes" from the "My Vault" screen.
If you have Bitwarden on your phone and you log in to a website/app via the Bitwarden app's autofill function, it'll also put the TOTP code on your clipboard so you can easily paste it into the 2FA field, making TOTP on mobile devices a breeze.
Bitwarden can also store website-generated passkeys (FIDO2 keypair credentials; basically a software implementation of a YubiKey), making authentication using them a breeze.
https://bitwarden.com/help/integrated-authenticator/
https://bitwarden.com/help/storing-passkeys/
Edit: Previously, to do this you would have to either hope they provided the raw seed as a backup method (in case the QR code failed to load) or copy-paste the QR code into a QR-decoding website and then copy the seed out of the URL (which also contains the website and account name) and paste it into Bitwarden. It seems it's much easier to add TOTP codes now - the mobile app can directly scan the QR codes, and the browser extension seems to have the ability to screenshot the page to do the same.
-
Comment on I hate 2FA in ~tech
Luna (edited )Link ParentAs someone who works in IT and witnessed a 2FA rollout, I whole-heartedly agree. Since we migrated all our services to use SSO and enforced 2FA on staff accounts, phishing basically stopped being...As someone who works in IT and witnessed a 2FA rollout, I whole-heartedly agree. Since we migrated all our services to use SSO and enforced 2FA on staff accounts, phishing basically stopped being an attack vector for university resources, as it also has for students who enabled it (though it's not mandatory for them yet, so it is still a problem in much the same way anti-vaxxers tend to contract preventable diseases more often than the general population). Now, the only way to reliably hijack 2FA-enabled accounts is through cookie harvesting/session hijacking, which requires a lot more effort since the user has to do more than just fill out a form and you only get access to the services whose cookies are still valid (i.e. if you authenticated to O365 more than 24 hours ago, someone who steals your O365 cookie will just get a redirect to our SSO page, completely nullifying the attack).
In theory, someone could build an advanced phishing attack that also faked a Duo prompt so they could complete the login, but we haven't heard of this happening yet, and since we require 2FA every 24 hours, the blast radius is time-limited. It's so effective that I believe everyone should use it for every website, even for throwaway accounts. The inconvenience is absolutely worth it for me.
Edit: For the record, I'm very much against websites that implement SMS-only 2FA. Many SMS 2FA services only work with non-VoIP numbers and can easily be intercepted via SIM swapping, in addition to not working if service is spotty. I believe it should be abandoned entirely in favor of TOTP and hardware tokens, as both can operate on any connection, mobile or otherwise, and cannot be easily hijacked like SIM swapping attacks. Duo is great in this regard since it supports phone calls (an excellent choice for older faculty), SMS, push notifications, TOTP, and hardware tokens.
-
Comment on Is OneDrive for Linux Mature Enough Yet? in ~comp
Luna (edited )Link ParentI was also unaware there was an official Linux client. If there is, I wish it was available when I was in uni and lived in OneNote (which I had to run in a VM since I used my university OneDrive...I was also unaware there was an official Linux client. If there is, I wish it was available when I was in uni and lived in OneNote (which I had to run in a VM since I used my university OneDrive to sync it between devices automatically but OneDrive doesn't work under Wine, a known issue).
Edit: In the thread I linked, it seems someone has found a workaround using onedriver. I'm not sure if it would work with OneNote, but at least for syncing files, it should suffice.
I got so frustrated with Ubiquiti breaking things that I switched to Mikrotik and Ruckus several years ago. Mikrotik has a steep learning curve but is rock solid, and Ruckus just works. I've installed it for my friends and it eliminated their wifi woes entirely. Ruckus Unleashed is incredible for multi-AP setups as well, with truly seamless roaming. I never ran OpenWRT but I did use DD-WRT back when I had an Asus router/AC combo, and Ruckus beats it by a mile.