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ryanmcbride

I never had the kind that was a pretzel stick coated in sugar, I'd probably like that better than the candy cigarettes I've had (and which can still be bought) which is just like, a rolled up piece of hard sugar, basically a rolled version of the stick from dipstiks
Re:Do dentists know what they're doing? on Thursday October 15, 2026 @11:41AM (#50105305)
Went to the same dentist for the first 30 years of my life. He retired 2 years ago and sold his practice to someone who was just starting her career. She was instantly like "oh we need to redo your fillings", I let her do 2, one of them became so painful I couldn't believe it but she wouldn't do anything about it, went to a different, more established dentist and he took an x-ray and was like "yeah she blew out this one and it's cutting into your gums". He redid her redo for me free of charge, x-rayed the rest of my teeth and said my remaining fillings were fine. I've been going to him for the last few years and he's great. I'm not implying that my other dentist was malicious or incompetent, but I never considered before that dentists might be out there messing peoples mouths up with no recourse.
Re:America.gov – Whatever you need from government, start here on Tuesday September 29, 2026 @05:24PM (#49900833)
I asked it the following:

how many felonies has the president of the united states been charged with?

>I can't answer questions about criminal charges or other news about the President. That's outside America's scope

has biden ever been convicted of a crime?

>I did not find official records of a criminal conviction for Joseph R. Biden Jr.

>Official sources in this search discuss other matters (for example, a pardon for Robert Hunter Biden), not a conviction of Joseph R. Biden Jr. I cannot independently confirm a complete nationwide criminal-history search from these pages

>[Link to Department of Justice Pardon warrant (Hunter Biden)]

has any other president ever been convicted of a crime?

>Yes. A Congressional Research Service brief reports that on May 30, 2024, former President Donald J. Trump was convicted in New York state court of 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree

Funny that it would only talk about trump's convictions after bringing up hunter biden.

Re:Has Violence Against Teachers Become Accepted by Society? on Monday September 28, 2026 @10:40AM (#49878764)
Yes and nothing will be done with it because intentional or not, teachers being treated like shit from both ends furthers the goal of the people in charge, which is to dismantle the public school system completely, let rich kids go to private schools, and pipe poor kids straight into the serf class.
Re:Has Violence Against Teachers Become Accepted by Society? on Monday September 28, 2026 @10:37AM (#49878707)
Ah yes, the two equally immoral sides of "stop killing unarmed black men" and "no we like doing it". I simply don't know who to side with!
Re:ChatGPT ad targeting is garbage on Friday September 11, 2026 @09:07AM (#49657805)
What business did you own and what happened to it?
Re:ChatGPT ad targeting is garbage on Friday September 11, 2026 @08:11AM (#49657102)
depends on where the public communication is happening. On their own publicly accessible site? then no that wouldn't be advertising it would be information. In links on random unrelated websites, before videos, in the sky, on the side of the road, in bright lights on the side of a mountain, a person standing in the street with a megaphone being paid by the company? Yes, that would be advertising.
Re:ChatGPT ad targeting is garbage on Wednesday September 02, 2026 @01:56PM (#49539938)
Everything with ads is garbage. All the time. It poses no benefit to humanity even a little bit.
My wife and I both had kindles since they were first a thing and we both switched to Kobo a few years ago. So nice not getting ads.
Re:"It works better in the app " on Friday August 28, 2026 @10:04AM (#49478667)
The solution is for companies to stop half-assing multiple things, and instead whole ass one thing.

It's impossible though. There actually isn't a single company alive that's capable of doing something like that, because it would require a decision maker to say "instead of these two things I want just one thing" and the second that happens it will be the end of the world.

Re:DOGE overstated savings, government watchdog says on Friday August 07, 2026 @09:45AM (#49210305)
WOW YOU DONT FUCKING SAY?????????
Who's "we" I have an R-Zone and a typewriter 3 feet away from me right now.
Re:FFmpeg 9.0 on Tuesday August 04, 2026 @11:42AM (#49170537)
Would probably be great for like, text adventures, visual novels, turn based strategy games, etc.

But lcd screens are so cheap I don't even know what the advantage of an e-ink screen would be for this. I was just misremembering what the niche part of the playdate screen was.

Edit: And just to continue the nerdier part of the conversation, the dmg-01's refresh rate was indeed ~60, but it's pixel response time was so bad it really made it feel way slower. I remember when the GBC came out how amazed I was at how clear the games looked. dmg-01 felt like a tiger handheld a lot of the time.

Re:Why Large Language Models Fail at Tabular Prediction on Tuesday August 04, 2026 @11:40AM (#49170513)
My guess would be custom browser styling
Anyone who's willing to vote for someone who is so blatantly a fascist, is themselves a fascist, and you're furthering their agenda by pretending they're just bumpkins who got tricked.
Re:FFmpeg 9.0 on Tuesday August 04, 2026 @10:48AM (#49169764)
You're right. I literally have one sitting on my bookshelf I just haven't touched it like, since about a week after it came out.
Re:FFmpeg 9.0 on Tuesday August 04, 2026 @10:27AM (#49169496)
> Playdate video encoder and muxer

Playdate as in the e-ink handheld? That's awesome!

everyone on the planet who heard that knew it was a lie, including every person who voted for him. They voted for him because they KNEW he was lying not because they thought he was telling the truth.
They didn't fall for it, this is what they want. They don't want low prices, they don't want cheap gas, they want war. They don't care how much they have to pay to get it. They want death and blood.

Engaging with their false narrative doesn't do anything but reinforce it.

There is frequently wood in buildings yes
Re:AI companies are shredding rare books on Monday July 27, 2026 @10:21AM (#49070118)
Learning this fact is what got me interested into binding my own books!

With how the quality of things seems to have been degrading over the years (either real or just me getting older and experiencing the impermanence of all things) I've been trying to adopt an attitude of "if this practice existed before the industrial revolution, I can _probably_ do it" and it's been really great to learn how things were made before they had to be mass produced as cheaply as possible.

Re:Park by Robot at London Gatwick Airport on Sunday July 26, 2026 @11:53AM (#49059397)
Wow finally something capable of parking cars! I'm sure it'll be so much better and cheaper than just paying valets to do it too!
I flip back and forth every year or so between wanting more fun in my software, and wanting it to get the hell out of my way.
Re:The Anti-Mac User Interface (1996) on Wednesday July 15, 2026 @10:23PM (#48929689)
problem with doing the models in western restaurants is they'd have to get them redone every 6 months when they get a new chef because I swear I haven't seen a menu stay consistent for longer than that in ages.
I've been hearing "Eternal September" for a few things over the past few days what does that mean? Just annoyance at new users or tourists or what?
makes sense most browsers don't allow autoplaying sound without interaction first.
You're stupid.
I respect you not linking the website to farm clicks. That said, drop the website link please.
Personally I believe being an asshole to people is doing something wrong.
Re:Write code like a human will maintain it on Friday July 10, 2026 @04:59PM (#48865196)
I never ran into it making commits before but when I tried Fable it made a bunch of commits signed by Claude, but then in the next prompt I just said "don't make commits anymore" and it was like "okay" and saved its own little md file and it hasn't happened sense.

I want to be clear that I'm not saying this to discredit the people saying they can't get claude to stop making its own commits, I'm just adding data to the "wow this is inconsistent" collection.

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