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How else are they going to track people with a hard-to-change identifier?

> How else are they going to track people with a hard-to-change identifier?

Using the device advertisee ID that the user is entitled to change.

// Sorry, for a moment I thought you were serious.


I just did some quick research on these IDs. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like each user account would be tied to one device. It also seems like the user, at least on Apple devices, has to opt into advertising tracking in order for your app to even get access to this.

Ignoring the security pitfalls of phone numbers, it really doesn't seem like these advertising IDs are a drop in replacement for using phone numbers.


You're not stuck; slowly change addresses with the different companies, people, etc. I did it over the course of a few years without hassle. If you spend $10/year for your own domain, then you can use a catchall, and if you ever decide to leave Fast ail for another provider, you don't have to change all the addreses again.

The fact that it requires slowly changing over years is a sign of getting stuck no? We can theoretically slowly migrate anything. But when effort > X, we consider it being stuck.

I think there was a HN post a few weeks or maybe a month or two ago that showed which weather forecasting service was more accurate in general by comparing predictions to actual. I think the winner was Microsoft's with about a 70% accuracy (with one or two others only a percentage point or two behind). Does anyone else remember this or have the link?

There was another I tried to dig up. It listed how one day forecast was better at x, during the day at y, 2-3 day at z, etc.

Windy.com allows you to compare models. Apparently weather forecasts accuracy are a popular topic and I didn’t bookmark it.


I think you are looking for ForecastAdvisor. However depending on your geo, different weather providers will be more accurate than others.

Microsoft did weather forecasts?

MSN Weather. I found this which links to a PDF of a report with comparisons:

https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2024/05/28/weath...


Pretty cool, thanks!

I was casting my pieces off, guaranteed a win, but my opponent left, so it didn't count as a win for me to my disappointment.

Perhaps if someone leaves and doesn't return within 60 seconds, the game should be a win for the person remaining if the remaining person's pip count is lower.


I think whoever abandons the game should forfeit, otherwise you get weird incentives (like to quit anytime your pip count is higher)

That's why I only mentioned a different condition which hopefully doesn't lead to bad sportsmanship.

Happened a second time :-( although this time my opponent still had a chance.

Both games where my opponent left, now show as wins in my history.

Also, I like the dice addition, but on desktop, the dice images are not matching up with what is rolled and displayed in the log.

How long does an opponent have until they auto forfeit if they don't move?


Thanks. The way inactivity is handled is covered in the FAQ: https://bgammon.org/faq/#what-happens-if-a-player-goes-inact...

You shouldn't need to wait more than 30 seconds to see a win in your history after you also leave the game.

Will you please share a screenshot of the dice issue?


https://imgur.com/a/bqyWblS

Maybe it was the Firefox addon Canvas Blocker? That addon was crashing the game, so I disabled it and appears to work now. The game still makes my laptop fans kick on though.


Thanks. Yes, that makes sense. The web version of the game is powered by WebAssembly and renders to a canvas.

The game is only able to utilize one CPU core when running in the browser, maxing that core out probably set off your fans.


...isn't webassembly supposed to be more efficient?

The reduced performance is a Go problem rather than a WebAssembly problem. See this issue for more info:

https://github.com/golang/go/issues/28631


Can't see the pictures due to login required :-(

I've been on a dark ship in the middle of the ocean and that was pretty good for stargazing, though I guess Australia might be a tiny bit better due to less reflective surface (compared to the ocean)?


>Can't see the pictures due to login required :-(

Works for me (without login). I'm not sure why, it could be uBlock Origin or Privacy Badger maybe.


I'm running uBlock Origin, and don't care to disable it, oh well.

Well if you're running uBO and still need to login to see the picture, then uBO isn't helping avoid the login obviously. I'm running Chrome with uBO and Privacy Badger and a few other extensions, so you might want to try PB.

Leftovers from an old Big Crunch?

No, we know (because of the CMB) that everything was compressed into a dense plasma until ~300kyr (rough estimate from memory) so there was no way for these structures to survive a previous crunch.

it'd be tricky to get them from one side to the other. you'd think the quark soup would vaporise them.

Perhaps it didn't compress evenly?

There's no reason a previous universe had to form, expand, or stay distributed evenly.


Everything in the observable universe compressed to an extremely uniform degree, as reflected in the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR), our earliest "image" of the universe. Variations in the CMBR are on the order of one part per million.

Unfortunately we have not observed any anisotropy so it seems implausible.

https://arxiv.org/abs/0811.2732

1. Introduction

Since the discovery of the anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation by COBE...


When CMB anisotropies are studied, one question is to see the the universe is isotropic or anisotropic -- these are two different uses of the word isotropic, on completely different scales.

The current prevailing science is saying that the CMB anisotropies are telling us the universe is isotropic...

The linked paper does however talk about an apparent deviation from this standard picture...but that is not what the word "anisotropy" is about in that quote.

Gurzadyan is not the most representative researcher to cite. While doing a PhD in astrophysics I remember a paper coming out where Gurzadyan co-published with Penrose but the paper had obvious flaws due to basic lack of understanding of statistical simulation, and there were many other groups jumping on showing it wrong within a few days..

IIRC the problem was that it was assumed that independent random variables in one space would still be independent after a linear transform (Fourier transform/spherical harmonic transform). I.e. failure in basic statistical algebra stuff underpinning the statistical simulations. This was not nitpicking, the whole result vanished once other groups redid the experiment with corrected algebra.

The talk was all about how Penrose could possibly have been fooled into putting his name on the paper -- and why he would not retract it even after many pointed out the blatant entry level mistakes.


The anisotropies in the CMB are ridiculously tiny. Microscopic. And they're extremely evenly spread.

On large scales, the universe is incredibly isotropic.


is this the same one that penrose saw the ghost of universes past in?

Penrose has published many papers on ghosts of black holes from another universe (see https://www.livescience.com/63392-black-holes-from-past-univ... for commentary), but 0811.2723 does not have Penrose as an author or state a reference to him by name.

I don't remember seeing Pocket, so I went back to the settings to look. There's an option to have "Thought-provoking stories" which in smaller text says "Powered by Pocket".

Considering I didn't even realize it said Pocket the first time around, I think bookmarks are more prominent over Pocket, so I don't see bookmarks being demoted in favor of Pocket.


For a while, bookmarks were demoted in favor of Collections, a jankier version of bookmarks that didn't sync properly to desktop and included a button to open all of them at once in multiple tabs.

Collections are still there, but they've made it easier to use regular bookmarks too, so now Firefox for Android just has two versions of bookmarks in it for some reason.

Entirely unrelated to Pocket, as far as I know, except in the general sense of Mozilla having bad ideas related to bookmarks.


> It is especially terrible if you are not in the habit of closing open tabs and just open new ones.

I just closed a bit over 2,000 tabs on my old phone because I was switching phones. I recall reading a couple of other comments here in HN and seeing a couple of comments in reddit of other people having thousands of tabs open.

Slow and buggy has NOT been my experience.

I use uBlock Origin addon though, maybe that's the difference? I bet resource-hogging ads could be an issue.

Edit: I also had "studies" turned off. Perhaps you were in a study that was testing something that caused those issues? (That's why I don't like default "studies" or A/B testing.). Or maybe something else (physical or software) on your phone is damaged/defective, perhaps even your installation of the Firefox app got borked?


No, it's happened on two different phones over the last 2+ years. And two completely different phones, Xiaomi and Pixel.

I do wonder how you know you closed 2,000? The UI displays an infinity symbol over 99 tabs. If you had so many open, most of those would have been moved to inactive. The inactive tab section doesn't have a count and has a button you can click to close all.

Makes me sort of wonder whether you are actually using it.


There's an option to turn off the inactive tabs feature.

Trying to "share" all of them will crash Firefox, so I manually select 100 and share those, then close those, repeat 20 times (which is how I know how many tabs I had open).


You also need multiple credit cards.

I mostly use cash everywhere I go, but I have one credit card for autopay items, and another credit card for random purchases. I have a third card for temporary use should either of the first two cards be hit with fraud and I need to wait for a replacement card in the mail.

If you don't want to have multiple credit card accounts, you can often get a second card on the same account with a different name and use that one.

If you write checks, you should do that from a seperate account because everything someone needs to steal your money is written on the front of the check.


I have multiple cards with multiple providers. I make an effort twice a year to run transactions through them to keep them active. The rewards card gets the most activity, the others are there as backup.

I've had the main card "stolen" a few times. Even with free overnight shipping it takes 2 days to get the card and activate the account. Having a backup card makes that less painless.


You don't need any credit cards. I've never had a credit card, and it's caused me 0 friction in life.

You don't need any, but they're very useful when used responsibly.

A person could theoretically go through their whole life (in the U.S.) and not need any form of credit, but that usually requires having money or capital upfront.

If you end up wanting to do something that requires a card (and cash, check etc isn't accepted as with most online payments), then it's better to use a credit card than a debit card as you have better protections in case something goes wrong or your card is skimmed.


> but that usually requires having money or capital upfront.

I have a mortgage. My lender wanted a year's worth of utility bill payments in lieu of me not having a credit score.


Interesting. Did you ask or did they say how often they make that accomodation, or did they talk about any other similar kinds of accomodations?

I’d be interested in the reason you don’t have a credit card. In my eyes, if you treat them like a debit card and don’t spend more than you have, then it’s just free money (2% cash back etc.)

You can’t rent a car without a credit card. (Please do not be standing in front of me in line when you try and fail)

Most hotels require one too.

This is for any situation where your liability may exceed your cash on hand.


> You can’t rent a car without a credit card.

> Most hotels require one too.

These are always the first things people say when I tell them I don't have a credit card. Far as I can tell they're both completely false, at least as of recent history. I rent cars and book hotel rooms on my plain old debit card all the time.


You can rent a car with a debit cards in many cases. Avis has a page [1], but it's lacking specifics, so you probably need to call the desired rental location to verify. Enterprise seems to say they accept debit cards (with some restrictions/deposit requirements).

Doesn't seem like a can't, although it might be in some locations.

[1] https://www.avis.com/en/help/usa-faqs/debit-card-policy


You probably don’t go anywhere, because I travel a lot and trying to only use cash would’ve been a huge burden.

There are more options than "credit cards" and "cash".

don’t most hotels strongly prefer a credit card on file? i think they typically put a large hold on a debit card. could be an issue for some.

I can only imagine what your earlier deleted comment was.

If someone was searching for "How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found", I would assume they meant to hide, not to commit suicide.

I've worked at sea. A mariner would not need to search for that if the intention was suicide.


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