bladegash (u/bladegash)

bladegash commented on Ticketmaster’s attempt to game arbitration services fails blog.ericgoldman.org/arch... · Posted by u/hn_acker

akira2501 · a year ago

It used to be a lot easier to get a law degree. California is currently the only state that will let you sit for the bar without a JD. You have to have equivalent work experience but you can still as a completely private citizen get yourself into practice.

Industrial gatekeeping is a real problem. One of the indirect mechanisms is the accumulated complexity of the law and the seeming inability for legislatures to remove outdated and fruitless laws from their books. Unsurprisingly the people most capable of achieving this are not interested in doing it.

bladegash · a year ago

Small correction, but there are actually four states (CA being one of them) where you can avoid law school by what is called “reading the law”. It entails more or less doing an apprenticeship with a practicing attorney or judge and meeting certain requirements.

bladegash commented on Anyone can access deleted and private repository data on GitHub trufflesecurity.com/blog/... · Posted by u/__0x1__

thingification · a year ago

You're saying there's a github API that takes as an argument a secret, and creates a git commit containing that secret? I'm very surprised. Can you provide a reference to the API call?

bladegash · a year ago

To clarify, it doesn’t create a commit and is only usable within actions. I have always used the GH action VSCode extension for it, but I believe from the API, you would call the below endpoint using a classic/non-fine grained PAT that has the “repo” grant.

https://docs.github.com/en/rest/actions/secrets?apiVersion=2....

bladegash commented on Anyone can access deleted and private repository data on GitHub trufflesecurity.com/blog/... · Posted by u/__0x1__

bladegash · a year ago

Unrelated, but another interesting one is any non-admin contributors being able to add (and I believe update) secrets in a private repo for use in GH actions. It can’t be done via the UI, but can be done via the API or VSCode extension.

When I looked into it a while back, apparently it is intended behavior, which just seems odd.

bladegash commented on First-in-human implantation of bionic device to halt Crohn's disease (2023) florey.edu.au/news/2023/1... · Posted by u/deluxeroyale

bladegash · 2 years ago

I don’t think correlation = causation in your anecdote. Care to provide some examples of people who were “cured” of Crohns through diet alone?

I have had Crohns for nearly four years with it in remission for the last two years. Diet and other lifestyle changes did slightly improve symptoms, but the only things that have yielded profound change were Inflectra and prednisone.

I think for those who have Crohns bad enough where they’re facing surgeries or being on a biologic for quite some time, diet alone isn’t going to fix the damage inflammation has already done.

bladegash commented on There's So Much Data Even Spies Are Struggling to Find Secrets bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/helsinkiandrew

throwup238 · 2 years ago

One of the reasons OSINT is becoming more popular is that since it’s already public, it can be freely passed around the government without worrying about classification. Analysis is usually classified but handled by each agency separately while still making the core evidence accessible so everyone involved in intelligence sharing between agencies can at least know the topic of discussion without the red tape of making sure everyone has the right clearance. It also makes it a lot easier to share with international partners.

bladegash · 2 years ago

You hit the nail on the head, but think aside from information being more accessible to analyze/share when it isn’t classified/there isn’t a need to protect sensitive sources and methods, is the benefit vis-a-vis translations.

Finding native speakers of languages like Chinese, Russian, Farsi, etc. who are also eligible/want to have a clearance is a challenge (it’s expensive and self-limiting, since US citizenship is a requirement).

Training people already cleared in those languages takes a ton of time, expensive, and yields linguists with mixed-usefulness (think understanding formal Spanish taught in highschool versus Spanish actually spoken amongst peers/friends). There’s slang, intonations, etc. that non-native speakers have to spend time learning/may misunderstand.

In other words, OSINT has a much larger talent pool that yield arguably/presumably better translations.

bladegash commented on Silicon Valley doesn't understand the concept of fun fastcompany.com/90965361/... · Posted by u/mariuz

notpachet · 2 years ago

Minor nitpick: while Usenet closely resembled the older BBS's, it wasn't an actual BBS per se. Ditto the other forum sites.

bladegash · 2 years ago

I guess I was more including Usenet as a part of the progression, not necessarily categorizing as a BBS.

Fair enough on the notice two, but I think people (or at least I) more generically use “BBS” to describe message boards/forums.

Anyways, appreciate the correction regardless, as after looking the actual definition, I was definitely wrong =)!

bladegash commented on Silicon Valley doesn't understand the concept of fun fastcompany.com/90965361/... · Posted by u/mariuz

glimshe · 2 years ago

Reminds me a lot of BBSs. It's hard to develop lasting and deep relationships with random people on the Internet. Just as old WoW, many BBSs had a small group of people who hung out virtually together and you got to know them. It's the closest you can get to lifelong high school and college friendships after leaving school.

bladegash · 2 years ago

Funny enough, BBSs were the way many of the players on WoW servers pre-cross realm would communicate/flame each other outside the actual game.

When I started online gaming with an old multiplayer tank game called Tanarus, we used Usenet. With EverQuest we used EZBoard, then with WoW it was many times the server’s board on the official WoW forums.

While I’m sure there’s a bit of nostalgia shading the memories, I made a lot of friends and great memories!

bladegash commented on Pixar was never a masterpiece factory freddiedeboer.substack.co... · Posted by u/paulpauper

jjbickerstaffe · 2 years ago

Sorry I wasn't super clear. I was replying to "the gap between Disney Animation Studios and Pixar has drastically narrowed", and commenting that the reason this happened is because from 2006 it was Pixar management in charge of Disney animation. Ed Catmull and John Lasseter brought over the lessons and management style that they had learned at Pixar and thus changed how Disney animation was run. So for instance they created a Disney "Story Trust" to provide feedback to directors in the same vein as the Pixar "Brain Trust". They also removed an oversight committee at Disney that was charged with keeping all film projects on budget, but in their view was holding back the film-making. i.e. the two studios are not as distinct and independent as it appears people are suggesting.

bladegash · 2 years ago

Ah, gotcha, thank you for clarifying. That makes much more sense and I think it is a fair correlation to draw!

bladegash commented on Pixar was never a masterpiece factory freddiedeboer.substack.co... · Posted by u/paulpauper

jjbickerstaffe · 2 years ago

Disney bought Pixar in 2006 and put Ed Catmull of Pixar and John Lasseter of Pixar in charge of both Disney animation and Pixar.

bladegash · 2 years ago

I am not sure what your point is? They are two very distinct and independent animation studios, which OP seemed to be aware of.

bladegash commented on Pixar was never a masterpiece factory freddiedeboer.substack.co... · Posted by u/paulpauper

noirscape · 2 years ago

I think one reason why Pixars "decline" is more harshly felt is because the Pixar "style" is the only type of flagship animated feature Disney puts out nowadays.

It's not that Pixar has always been good, like any company there's been ups and downs, but because Disney themselves have also gone all in on 3D animated films[0] (and none of those really come close to what Pixar puts out; even the recent flop of Elemental is still a better movie than most 3D Disney movies of the past decade), all those movies get compared to each other in a much more direct manner.

Back in the early 2000s, it was pretty straightforward; Disney did the 2D animation, Pixar the 3D animation. It means that when Pixar or Disney puts out a stinker, its easily covered by the other. A sort of trade if you will.

Disney has kinda now ended up in a bit of a slump for the past decade (likely directly the fault of the Live Action Remakes they keep doing - it feels really uncreative), so the highs and lows of Pixar are that much more apparent.

They'll be doing fine. Elemental sucked, but it doesn't seem like it's a pattern for Pixars movie creation process. Not in the way that Shrek's poop humor ended up dominating DreamWorks for over a decade or how Despicable Mes "marketability" ended up ruining Illumination.

[0]: The last blockbuster 2D animated movie was the Princess and the Frog and according to Disney it didn't make enough money to continue making them.

bladegash · 2 years ago

Huh?

Disney Animation Studios (not Pixar) has made three movies in the last ten years that are among the highest grossing movies of all time (Frozen, Zootopia, and Frozen II).

In terms of quality, anecdotally two of my personal favorite Disney movies ever were done by them within that timespan as well (Moana and Encanto).

My impression has been that the gap between Disney Animation Studios and Pixar has drastically narrowed.