Get fucked, insurance company. Here’s your reminder that, if you’re a California resident, and your health insurance refuses to cover something, it takes all of 5 minutes to file an independent medical review with the state, and statistically, 73% of the time the state will make your insurer pay.

That’s an insane amount! That is a lot of people getting screwed over, and that’s only the people who reported it who got compensation! And there are people who work for the state who take extreme joy in taking administrative action and fining insurance companies – so far this year, California insurance companies have already been fined $19.7 million, and those are not ‘medical loss’ numbers that count towards the amount of profit they’re allowed to make.

So do those people at the state a solid. You don’t have to be a green Nintendo plumber to make insurers pay; you can make a difference from your desk. If your insurance company causes you trouble, spend the five minutes to file with the DMHC helpline.

This year, my insurance plan just decided not to cover a normal preventative lipid and A1C panel for my annual physical, leaving me with a $200 bill from Palo Alto Medical Foundation. The state decided my insurance should pay it after all, and it’ll go into the file to see if they have a pattern of doing this. Blue Shield, get fucked.

It's difficult not to go down the rabbithole of "What we need is a really really good well-written HTML/CSS tutorial, I'll go write one" rabbithole, or "What if there was a lovely template that worked on desktop or mobile and was commented out the wazoo with an open invitation to use it" junk, those things already exist, when what the internet REALLY needs is

* a modern WYSIWYG website maker

* that is free

* that normal people can use

* that everybody knows about, either because it came with your computer or someone told you about it

* that comes with a bunch of free hosts pre-programmed in

* that the AVERAGE PERSON (IE not anyone who'll ever read this post) can use to make a website in an evening or two

* (EDIT because I know FOSS people are reading this) That has a good name, not the worst most ridiculous fucking unpronounceable garbage name you've ever heard of, a name that you'd be comfortable or even proud saying in public or on television, don't call it KWebExtruder or Martin'sKoolHTMLPooper or xhngthfffrrr or some shit like that

If this sounds bananas it's because you didn't use this exact program in the late 90's

Parts of Improbable Island get hit a hundred times a second, hosting it costs me like forty-odd euros a month, I've never used a CDN or even properly understand what that even *is,* and somehow the plainest website in the world needs some kinda fucking captchagate

#foxesInLove #comic

Source: https://foxes-in-love.tumblr.com/post/819494694896697344
Copyright: https://foxesinlove.net

happy pride month! 🤗🏳️‍🌈

boost this post to make the post below it gay

While I’m down the QR code rabbit hole, here is another one.

Cover any corners to make the decoder latch onto the others.

back in 2022 i found a bug that would let me, with no user interaction, turn any chromium-based browser into a permanent js botnet member

in edge, you wouldn't even notice anything out-of-place, and would stay connected to the c2 even after closing the browser

today, almost 4 years later, the bug is finally public:
https://issues.chromium.org/issues/40062121

ASLR improves security by randomizing your age, sex, and location

Whoa. UTF-8 is older now than ASCII was when UTF-8 was invented.

RE: https://mastodon.social/@verge/116139531198626533

“Amodei mentioned that “partial autonomous weapons … are vital to the defense of democracy” and that fully autonomous weapons may eventually “prove critical for our national defense,” but that “today, frontier AI systems are simply not reliable enough to power fully autonomous weapons.” He did not rule out Anthropic acquiescing to the military’s use of fully autonomous weapons in the future but mentioned that they were not ready now.”

What fucking deranged fantasy world are these clowns living in? None of this garbage should even be close to anything where lives are at stake.

Literally never buy adafruit. Not just will you be buying AI slop, but they will use any personal details you give them to dox you, if you say something the CEO doesn't like online.

https://digipres.club/@discatte/115588660312186707

He has literally been taking people's private details, acquired through their support of the company, against them the moment they speak out.

If you find his account make sure to report it and link to a post with all the details, and if he manages to find a permanent home, consider a #fediblock at them for hosting doxxers willingly. Help the fedi admins/mods protect the community from a cringe rich creep having a legendary crashout.

Also consider boosting this post, the linked post, or other posts about this; help warn people away from a very seemingly questionable company.

Some terrifically titled papers from a discovered collection of NASA research documents found in a skip

(with thanks to @JuliaRez for the original pic)

Another very insightful angle on the medium-term sustainability of coding agents, even completely disregarding model-collapse concerns. https://michiel.buddingh.eu/enclosure-feedback-loop

#ITWorldCup Greetings, programs 💾
I've got the honor to present you the match you all have been waiting for: The final of the 2025* Programming Languages World Cup:
#python vs. #rustlang

*yes, yes I know, but we started in 2025. Will start the next one earlier, so it doesn't get confusing again.

RE: https://social.vmbrasseur.com/@vmbrasseur/115922995190919975

Mozilla wants your input. Here's mine:

Mozilla should be doing two things and two things only:

1: Building THE reference implementation web browser, and
2: Being a jugular-snapping attack dog on standards committees.
3: There is no 3.

Mozilla should have NOTHING to do with AI. Nobody wants it. Stop forcing AI into every corner of every project because your VC-brained management have completely lost the plot.

https://mozillafoundation.tfaforms.net/201

Neat paper I missed in 2024 - these guys took an ultrasonic wedge wire bonder - the kind that's used to attach wires to chips - scaled it up by 15x, and used it to 3D print aluminium! Pretty cheap to implement, not much to it. Pretty cool. Open access, DOI: 10.3390/ma17102188

How do you eat an apple? For me, bottom up, whole thing for apples and pears. (Technically you receive a small dose of cyanide if you eat the seeds but it’s not likely to matter unless you eat a very large number)

Is your name Mike?

Please boost to collect as many Mikes as possible.

#Mike

In case you haven’t heard, Sutter Health decided to throw trans kids under the bus on the friday before the thanksgiving week, the day after TDoR; if you happen to have a linkedin account, maybe let them know what you think about this by liking and supporting Rainbow Families Action’s comment in the replies here:

https://www.linkedin.com/mwlite/feed/update/urn:li:ugcPost:7399818322416091136?commentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Acomment%3A%28ugcPost%3A7399818322416091136%2C7399836306027003904%29&dashCommentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_comment%3A%287399836306027003904%2Curn%3Ali%3AugcPost%3A7399818322416091136%29