dandelany (u/dandelany)

dandelany commented on Airlines are charging solo passengers higher fares than groups thriftytraveler.com/news/... · Posted by u/_tqr3

omosubi · 3 months ago

I don't have any data, but it wouldn't at all surprise me if single/business travelers are way more likely to cancel or change flights, and this is just pricing that into the ticket cost.

dandelany · 3 months ago

I suspect they also empirically have less price-sensitivity on average, for a variety of reasons

dandelany commented on A thought on JavaScript "proof of work" anti-scraper systems utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/spa... · Posted by u/zdw

overfeed · 3 months ago

> bots could still use sites but they effectively pay for use. That seems like the best of all possible worlds to me

This would make the entire internet a maze of AI-slop content primarily made for other bots to consume. Humans may have to resort to emailing handwritten PDFs to avoid the thoroughly enshittified web.

dandelany · 3 months ago

As opposed to what we have now?

dandelany commented on Building an agentic image generator that improves itself simulate.trybezel.com/res... · Posted by u/palashshah

jackphilson · 3 months ago

Why do you agree? I think we should outsource as much as we can to abstraction. We've been doing it forever.

dandelany · 3 months ago

"Simple stochastic blob detection" is an abstraction. You write (or import) a function where the the gnarly logic lives and call `detectBlobs()`. "Use an abstraction" doesn't mean you should use the same abstraction for every task, you should use the right tool for the job.

dandelany commented on Possible new dwarf planet found in our solar system minorplanetcenter.net/mpe... · Posted by u/ddahlen

naikrovek · 3 months ago

I still think he did it because he wanted to have his name on something significant. He’s a science communicator, not a researcher, and he’s not going to be making any discoveries. So he’s gotta change something that already exists to have his name on something that everyone knows. He had the power to change its status, so he did. I think that’s all it was. I hope I’m wrong but I’ve never heard a really GOOD reason to undo something that was so commonly known and taught. The definition for “planet” could change and Pluto could have been left alone, grandfathered in, in a way. There’s a reason it was discovered first. It’s huge compared to other dwarf planets.

There’s no reason that Pluto couldn’t have remained a proper planet. It’s big enough to be round and its largest moon is big enough to be round. Mars doesn’t have any round moons. Mars is still a planet.

dandelany · 3 months ago

He didn't "do it", he was one voice among many astronomers who have been calling for a reclassification for years, the IAU voted and made the decision. It's a little silly calling him out for "doing it" for ego reasons when you are the one implicitly giving him credit for it... He didn't write the definition, he didn't chair the committee, he wasn't even on the committee. All he did was leave it off the list of planets at the Hayden Planetarium, where he was director.

dandelany commented on SpaceX pushed "sniper" theory with the feds arstechnica.com/space/202... · Posted by u/jnord

lenerdenator · 4 months ago

> (The whole idea seems a bit crazy too, there are a thousand things which can go wrong with a rocket, so let's look for snipers.)

If I didn't know any better, I'd say some guy who both roasted his brain with drugs and spends a lot of time in the company of a person who was sniped at is in charge of the company.

dandelany · 4 months ago

…you realize this happened nine years ago, right?

dandelany commented on The April Fools joke that might have got me fired oldvcr.blogspot.com/2025/... · Posted by u/goldenskye

gymbeaux · 5 months ago

In high school a friend figured out you could map any network drive to your desktop and access it (Windows XP), and since everyone in the entire school district had a username of {last name}{first initial}, you could gain read/write access to anyone’s network drive (essentially “home folder”). He used it to get test answers from teachers, I used it to create (empty) folders named “porn”, “porn 2”, et al.

Anyway when he was caught (a fellow classmate ratted him out) he got 10 days out of school suspension. The VP threatened to call the police… for what offense I’m not really sure. There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of cybercrime and cybercrime laws. I mean was it really unauthorized access (they called it “hacking” of course) if his user account literally had permission to map network drives?

They removed the ability for student accounts to map network drives, but the district IT guy was not fired. I really don’t get that. Maybe the union saved him… but dog, everyone knows you can map network drives by right clicking on the desktop. I never thought to try it, but that doesn’t mean the district’s IT SME gets a pass.

dandelany · 5 months ago

Is it still trespassing if the door was unlocked? Yes. Not sure why so many people have trouble applying the same principles of unauthorized access to computers.

dandelany commented on Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died eff.org/deeplinks/2025/03... · Posted by u/leotravis10

tptacek · 6 months ago

A significant multiplier of my certainty here comes from the fact that I was responding to a thread full of people who seemed certain that no sewer inspection van could look like that, which to me says "this van is not inconspicuous", which defeats the whole purpose of having a cover-story van.

You can second-guess that, but I think past this point, we're reenacting the duel between Vizzini and Westley.

dandelany · 6 months ago

Perhaps they are optimizing for having plausible deniability/a fully fleshed out backstory in case they are questioned by eg. local cops or a security guard, moreso than inconspicuousness to a random passerby who is unlikely to pose any danger with their idle theorizing

dandelany commented on Two Grand Canyon-size valleys on far side of the moon formed within 10 minutes cnn.com/2025/02/05/scienc... · Posted by u/pseudolus

robin_reala · 7 months ago

US people typically want numbers translated into American football fields it seems. So around 39,000 football fields an hour might be more obvious.

dandelany · 7 months ago

Please be complete if you’re gonna translate to American units. That’s 117,000 football fields per football game, or 325 per commercial.

dandelany commented on ChatGPT Is Down chatgpt.com/... · Posted by u/misonic

LeoPanthera · 9 months ago

I'd love to know why this thread in particular has attracted so many junk comments from green accounts. I've never seen so many.

dandelany · 9 months ago

Guessing these are the folks that can’t get work done because GPT is down…

dandelany commented on Tcl under fire: report suggests its QLED TVs might not have any quantum dots tomsguide.com/tvs/tcl-und... · Posted by u/vo2maxer

jfdjkfdhjds · a year ago

I was sure this as a link to the onion.

I mean, it would be very clever to call a feature you migth or might not include as quantum

dandelany · a year ago

Could definitely be a Monty Python sketch.

"I looked inside the TV, there were NO quantum dots."

"Well there's your problem right there - you've gone and collapsed the wave function by looking!"