thetanil (u/thetanil)

thetanil commented on Ask HN: What game do you wish existed? · Posted by u/jharohit

ravenstine · 3 years ago

It's interesting that you say that. That really wasn't how I imagined it, and I'm a little confused how you interpreted it as such. My thought was that it's a point of view that most people haven't experienced or thought much about. Just because the playable characters would be from the LDS church wouldn't mean that all or even most of their interactions would have a religious motivation. I imagined it more like getting "boy scout badges" for good deeds from the perspective of that particular religious group and for the game to be more light-hearted rather than dead serious, or even suggesting any sort of religion to the player.

Maybe you're right and I'm suggesting something that isn't really appropriate. I would play games more if there were more slice-of-life type games from different perspectives, but with some humor in there too.

thetanil · 3 years ago

Honestly, I like the concept of this game. If you dropped all the proper names you mentioned and just call it "Just Be Nice" it would be palatable to 1000x bigger audience. You don't need to be religiously motivated to find it challenging to be nice in particular scenarios. It's a theme I've never heard of explored and I would like to play it (but without the Mormon stuff)

thetanil commented on Are 14 people really looking at that product? (2020) blog.devgenius.io/are-14-... · Posted by u/awesometechguy

skilled · 4 years ago

Is the idea that multiple people are looking at a product supposed to inspire me to purchase it? I really struggle to understand the logic.

thetanil · 4 years ago

It's called FOMO and it works.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out

thetanil commented on A search engine that favors text-heavy sites and punishes modern web design search.marginalia.nu/... · Posted by u/Funes-

thetanil · 4 years ago

Yes please! More of this!

thetanil commented on LastPass Android app has got 7 trackers in it reports.exodus-privacy.eu... · Posted by u/aquir

ro_bit · 5 years ago

I feel like these trackers (Firebase Analytics and Visual Studio Crash Reporting) need to be looked at in context of the data they actually send and who they report to. According to the thread

> In the Mobile apps, Firebase Cloud Messaging (often mistaken for a tracker) is used only for push notifications related to sync and performs absolutely no tracking functions. Microsoft Visual Studio App Center is used for crash reporting on a range of mobile devices. In the Web Vault, Stripe and PayPal scripts are used for payment processing only on payment pages.

Compare this to LastPass where it was feeding data to Google Analytics and MixPanel, which do much more invasive levels of analysis in general.

thetanil · 5 years ago

Firebase is Google. I don't know why they deserve different levels of trust. If Firebase has your permission to harvest your sync info, there is no reason to think this doesn't get copied right on over into googles 'track every click and movement' apparatus.

thetanil commented on I paid for Spotify playlist placements so you don’t have to najinsan.wordpress.com/20... · Posted by u/pgl

corobo · 5 years ago

Without public playlists I have no reason to use Spotify haha, literally any other service would do.

thetanil · 5 years ago

That's interesting, I thought public playlist listeners would just use YouTube. If not to have access to your own musical choices, what is the point of Spotify?

thetanil commented on Coinbase mafia shows how tight a circle holds sway over Bitcoin bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/T-A

superbcarrot · 5 years ago

I don't get why people's thinking swings to these wild extremes. Why does it have to be either a societal disruptor that changes everything or a doomed ponzi scheme? Can't it be something like "oh we tried to have cool internet money, turned out that it's not that great, some people are still into it I guess".

thetanil · 5 years ago

there are a lot of people in the "not that great" and "still into it I guess" camps. Those just don't make headlines. Also, some morons can only read headlines. Don't worry, the world is not as idiotic as the headline writers and readers.

thetanil commented on I paid for Spotify playlist placements so you don’t have to najinsan.wordpress.com/20... · Posted by u/pgl

wodenokoto · 5 years ago

I don't know who the audience this article was aimed at, but it would have been nice if it talked a little bit more about what a curator is.

thetanil · 5 years ago

In this case, someone who made a playlist. Reputation of the knowledge and tastes of the playlist maker would normally matter, but since this is purely a numbers game at this point the only thing that matters is the number of followers on the list made. "Curator" makes a list of popular songs, gets a bunch of followers on the playlist, then sells placement on the list. "Curator" has really lost it's meaning here.

thetanil commented on I paid for Spotify playlist placements so you don’t have to najinsan.wordpress.com/20... · Posted by u/pgl

frabjoused · 5 years ago

A much more effective way to get listeners is to write about it and trend on HN.

thetanil · 5 years ago

if you pay people to listen to your music and they still hate it, maybe writing is what you should be doing anyway

thetanil commented on I paid for Spotify playlist placements so you don’t have to najinsan.wordpress.com/20... · Posted by u/pgl

midasuni · 5 years ago

This suddenly all makes sense. I’ve been listening to a “mamma Mia 1+2” playlist as I couldn’t see the albums immediately.

The all of a sudden some awful explicit song starts playing, nothing to do with ABBA, not even in the same genre.

Reported the playlist for being deceptive. I note today it has a different song in there now.

Spotify need a setting to avoid this stuff otherwise they’ll start losing passive customers like myself who pay £15pcm to listen to music that we want to listen to without thinking about it.

Give me a setting to avoid all “social” things like public playlists or watch as your revenue goes to Apple or amazon.

thetanil · 5 years ago

Just don't use public playlists. You can already disable explicit. Disable "autoplay similar songs when your music ends". This is Spotify itself selling playlist placement though, not public playlists being manipulated for payola. No one can stop payola on a public list, just don't use public lists.

thetanil commented on 20% of requests for Wikimedia Commons are for one image of a flower phabricator.wikimedia.org... · Posted by u/IfOnlyYouKnew

tomglynch · 5 years ago

Just added this comment on the issue:

Hi all, I've been doing a bit of research into possible apps that could be causing this and found two potential culprits that I am currently investigating.

The first is Mitron TV, an Indian TikTok alternative which was made available again on the app store June 6th (https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/tech-news-techn...).

The second is Say Namaste, an Indian Zoom alternative which was launched on the app stores June 9th (https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/tech-news-techn...).

Both fall into the timeline of huge increases, have millions of users and may be using '1280px-AsterNovi-belgii-flower-1mb.jpg' to check the users internet connection - especially for Say Namaste to ensure video connectivity. I've reached out to some developers at both companies and will report back. Let me know your thoughts.

EDIT: I have also noticed the dates match the reopening after lockdown for the whole of India: "This first phase of reopening was termed as "Unlock 1.0"[13] and permitted shopping malls, religious places, hotels and restaurants to reopen from *8 June*." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_lockdown_in_India#Unl... )

Tom

thetanil · 5 years ago

As far as I know, this is also an image commonly used in machine learning tutorials for image classification of species of flowers. I don't know if the tutorials use the mediawiki source directly though. I do recognize this image though. I think it's in the SciKit Learn O'Reilly book.