Sven Slootweg @joepie91@pixie.town

unsolved problems in computer science:

breakfast

#BlackFriday.

Apparently the Balatro dev put a clause saying "Never, ever let casinos make any kind of Balatro anything. NEVER make a gambling Balatro" into his will

And I know there's a lot of people who'll read that and think, "Oh that old nugget. I can't believe she's malding about some junk mail." But that's the fucking point? I'm over 40. I've seen some bullshit. And here I am spending 10 minutes getting increasingly excited about telling my partner about this as I'm looking for tricks how this paper wasn't legally lying to me about winning money, money that would really take a strain off, until I found the trick. The trick I knew had to be there. A trick they've been doing for at least a decade now, probably way longer. There are people who aren't able to look for those tricks, or who don't spot them. How many people make that call and give away their info, excited at the idea they won something other than landfill e-waste, only to be let down? They shouldn't be thrown to the wolves! This shouldn't be okay! Fuck the people that not only come up with this grift, but also the people so uncreative they recycle it whole cloth! I haven't even gotten to the part yet where they reveal the prestige, and I already feel like shit because I foolishly believed for a moment something nice was unexpectedly happening. The silver lining gave me mercury poisoning.

I absolutely despise how manipulative and shitty behaviors are just normalized because "of course businesses lie and mislead you". Like absolutely bottom-of-the-barrel bullshit just gets a shrug. Car dealerships in particular. I spent 10 minutes trying to decipher how something was trying to trick me into thinking I'd won a nice prize, because I knew there had to be a trick, and sure enough I eventually noticed "Order of matching symbols does not match order of winning prizes" buried at the bottom, not making sense at first. Then I realized. Four examples of prize combinations on the left, four tiers of prizes on the right. Aligned with each other. A tiny vertical rule divides the two, almost looking stylistic. But I suspect they mean any combination wins any prize, which means you're actually just going to get the garbage Temu trash speaker and added to marketing lists. Here's an 8 year old Reddit thread about an extremely similar version, I assume it's a "common" trick I just forgot about: https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/667beb/i_received_a_scratchoff_mailer_from_a_car/ And it's "legal" to be this manipulative, and it's only going to get worse as what little consumer protections there are get destroyed. Fuck the grifters always getting a pass on things like this. Fuck the systems that encourage it. This is why we can't have nice things.

"In 2012, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Truvada for the use of Pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, which reduces the risk of HIV transmission. Recent research revealed that U.S. taxpayers contributed over $143 million to clinical testing and development of Truvada. But despite the role public institutions played in bringing the medication to market, the profits have gone to the pharmaceutical company Gilead, which owns and markets the drug.

By 2019, the pharma company had made $36 billion in profits from Truvada thanks in part to pricing that followed no logical line of reasoning. When it was first approved as a treatment for HIV in 2004, Gilead charged $7,800 per year for treatment. By 2019 the cost had ballooned to $20,000 per year. Similar drug combinations to Truvada were available in other countries for as little as $60 per year.

To combat bad PR, Gilead promised to donate 2.4 million vials of PrEP each year for eleven years to 200,000 uninsured individuals at risk of contracting HIV. While this is a nice gesture, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that there were 1.1 million Americans “at substantial risk for HIV” who “should be offered PrEP.”"

https://newrepublic.com/article/188772/big-pharma-greed-hiv-drugs

#BigPharma #PublicHealth #HIV #AIDS

So it looks like NZXT is running a predatory rental scheme now, and Gamers Nexus has dropped them as a sponsor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pomC1CfpC0

Hey, Guardian.. that's a weird way to spell "Woolworths attempt strike busting by bringing in scabs" 🤔

#Union #UnionStrong #Workers #WorkersRights #woolworths #strike #Solidarity

Has anyone else tried using an alkali to strip old, sticky, horrible soft-touch paint? I just had a really positive experience I'd like to share!

Reminder first though: please for the love of all that is good, wear eye protection if you're using corrosive liquids - let's keep those lookingballs pristine.

If you think fedi instance drama is interesting, today someone snapped on IRC, replied in kind to the sorts of insults that they were receiving, and this caused the channel operator to kick every single user from the channel and keep it in silence for about half an hour.

what software do yall use to make 88*31 buttons?