speff (u/speff) - Readit News

speff commented on Visa and Mastercard are getting overwhelmed by gamer fury over censorship polygon.com/news/616835/v... · Posted by u/mrzool

numpad0 · a month ago

I suspect a lot of people are rather comforted by the fact that it was pornographies that were removed at first. Now the waterline has moved up to horror games[1]. Mouthwashing(2024) is a horror adventure game available on all 3 major game consoles as well as Steam, and now it's hidden on itch.io. Think about that.

1: https://itch.io/search?type=games&q=mouthwashing&classificat...

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouthwashing_(video_game)

speff · a month ago

Mouthwashing was delisted for reasons unrelated to the Visa/MC kerfuffle [0]

> This game hasn’t been indexed since October 2024 since it doesn’t meet our indexing criteria: https://itch.io/docs/creators/getting-indexed#why-isnt-my-pr...

> The developers are using a “Download” button as a link to Steam. The developer took down any playable files form this page in 2024.

[0]: https://itch.io/post/13496611

speff commented on Allianz Life says 'majority' of customers' personal data stolen in cyberattack techcrunch.com/2025/07/26... · Posted by u/thm

sugarpimpdorsey · a month ago

Hey your front door was unlocked where is my bug bounty?

Some people still live in places where you can leave your doors unlocked and not worry.

Leave it to the tech industry to bring Internet of Shit locks to your doorstep.

Would you be upset if in the course of their unsolicited work, these white/grey hats found your wife's nudes in the digital equivalent of kicking over a rock? Full legal protection of course.

Ignore if they kept a copy for themselves for later use, they promised to delete them <wink>.

speff · a month ago

If everyone in the world is able to check if my door is locked and enter if not, yes I will give a bounty to someone who politely tells me that it's unlocked. Cybersecurity vulns are in a different class of exploitability from physical vulns.

speff commented on TSMC to start building four new plants with 1.4nm technology taipeitimes.com/News/fron... · Posted by u/giuliomagnifico

Waterluvian · a month ago

One of the risks of any belief in American exceptionalism is that it hides the reality that there’s nothing special about America to have deserved its position in industry and commerce. There’s no special reason why it might not soon be someone else’s turn.

speff · a month ago

I don't really follow how your statement relates to o11c's. The theft they are referring to is of other American companies - not other countries' IP.

speff commented on French villages have no more drinking water. The reason? PFAS pollution lemonde.fr/en/environment... · Posted by u/rawgabbit

margalabargala · a month ago

> replace the fertilizer with something else for a while and see if that changes the PFAS levels. If it does, sure ban the paper products from being used as fertilizer.

Or, just ban things with high levels of pfas being used as fertilizer, and test the paper slurry?

speff · a month ago

That would be a valid solution, yes. But it sounds a bit too simple? My concern here is - wouldn't someone have already tested the slurry and made the determination that's it's suitable/unsuitable? This article doesn't really go into the details there

speff commented on French villages have no more drinking water. The reason? PFAS pollution lemonde.fr/en/environment... · Posted by u/rawgabbit

hammock · a month ago

One might argue it would not be worse for PFAS to remain in a dump rather than spread on fields of food we will eat or water we will drink

speff · a month ago

I'm pretty sure everyone would take that position so I'm confused why you're implying I wouldn't.

"authorities currently favor one explanation for the pollution"

Tells me that they don't have proof this is the source of the PFAS pollution. If they did, they wouldn't "favor" the explanation, they would just say that's the explanation. I don't support making wide changes based on hunches. Sure - replace the fertilizer with something else for a while and see if that changes the PFAS levels. If it does, sure ban the paper products from being used as fertilizer. But there is a cost associated w/ doing that and that cost has higher-order effects.

speff commented on French villages have no more drinking water. The reason? PFAS pollution lemonde.fr/en/environment... · Posted by u/rawgabbit

Steven420 · a month ago

"The authorities currently favor one explanation for the pollution: the use of paper mill sludge as fertilizer on farmland near drinking water catchments."

You have to be incredibly greedy and stupid to use industrial waste as fertilizer

speff · a month ago

"Industrial waste" can cover a lot of different types of materials - not all of which are worthless. It would be worse if waste products from one industry are sent to a dump when they can be re-used for other productive purposes.

speff commented on Five companies now control over 90% of the restaurant food delivery market marketsaintefficient.subs... · Posted by u/goinggetthem

fasterik · a month ago

There's a George Carlin bit about politicians. The punchline is "the problem isn't the politicians, it's the people." His point is that nothing emerges from a vaccuum.

Politicians are people just like everyone else, they're just responding to incentives created by a majority vote. Tech companies are just like any other company, except a lot more people are willing to pay for their goods and services. If Carlin were alive, he'd say that the problem isn't the tech companies, it's their customers.

I'm actually far from convinced that tech companies are a net negative for society. Amazon makes billions because everyone wants competitively priced goods delivered to their doorsteps. Google makes billions because they provide free access to a large portion of humanity's information.

My theory is that if you're extremely pessimistic about technology or politics, you probably won't like anything that happens when large groups of humans make collective decisions. There's an air of let's go back to the good old days when we were hunter gatherers to the whole thing. Personally, I've accepted that it's always going to be messy and chaotic, but a lot of good things are going to come out of it as well.

speff · a month ago

I generally agree with your point, but would like to mention in my opinion Amazon (not AWS) makes billions because they've captured the market and prevent any meaningful competition from arising due to their "Fair Pricing" policy rules. I'll be happy when there are meaningful alternatives to Amazon that don't have inflated prices due to price parity which have an excessive return cost built in...

speff commented on Why English doesn't use accents deadlanguagesociety.com/p... · Posted by u/sandbach

Twirrim · 2 months ago

In almost every example you state, we've taken the word and the pronunciation, but have dropped the accent marks themselves. It's part of what makes English pronunciation a minefield.

speff · 2 months ago

If I recall correctly, the accent marks only started to get dropped when people began using keyboards. Resumé and fiancée still got an accent when it was handwritten

speff commented on Nearly 20% of cancer drugs defective in four African nations dw.com/en/nearly-20-of-ca... · Posted by u/woldemariam

hinkley · 2 months ago

I'll never forget a coworker telling me that in a previous job hunting round he had interviewed with a pharmaceutical group that was tracking the manufacturing process for batches of drugs and comparing the little tolerance mistakes (heated a little too high or held at temp a little too long or not quite long enough) and finding a market where they can sell that batch.

You'd like to think that companies have factories with quality control laws and there are local people trying to ensure that all of their product are up to the local standards. What you don't expect is that they are binning them like Intel CPUs, where they just make a batch and hope for the best, take cream off the top until the priority orders are done and then everyone else gets whatever is left. You might get a slightly better product sometimes but not be so lucky the next time.

speff · 2 months ago

Is this system not preferable over just trashing anything not perfectly made? Sure it would be nice if everyone can have perfectly manufactured medicine, but that's not reality. I would think something that's still likely good is still better than nothing.

speff commented on YouTube's new anti-adblock measures iter.ca/post/yt-adblock/... · Posted by u/smitop

asadotzler · 2 months ago

>You want to watch some content. The content provider offers you two options: pay and get no ads, or watch for free and also sit through some ads.

Thee provider made the content public on the Web. That means I can view it under any terms I chose until they find a way to exclude me without excluding all the attention that being on the public Web gives them.

There are not 2 options as you claim. There are infinite options to the user here. Google may prefer you engage in only one of two ways, but they have no legal ground to require that with content on the public Web.

speff · 2 months ago

I feel like you can make the same argument in favor of being allowed to DDOS. Yes it's public, but I don't think that gives you a moral out for viewing the content in a way the publisher doesn't want.