#database basics

[sun-marie]

i've had SUCH a hankering to replay both BG3 and DAO recently but both of them have really intimidating mod issues right now 🥲

[a-very-tired-jew]

You ever come at someone with the expanded definitions from a discipline that includes the standards by which certain terms are defined and include citations so hard they block you?

Absolutely amazing.

[kaiowut99]

lol poor Kite gets overshadowed more than you'd think for having a Light-Attribute ace

[12neonlit-stage]

I go by no pronouns but not as in my name, more so like my pronouns are an undefined variable in shell coding

[thefandomexpert]

i am starting to see what lexicanum’s missing, btw. if this was the silmarillion, guilliman’s little blue meditation room would be noted on the Macragge’s Honor wiki with dimensions and a map

[elumish]

I figured out how to show a tag list for each book in my database!

It's going to take some time to put in place, but once it's done you'll be able to see the list of tags for each book (including some that aren't currently available at the top) and will be able to filter by tags that way as well.

[where-the-water-flows]

If you know how to do it you can use someone’s phone number to find their full legal name and home address. It’s just a bit of Google and knowing what websites stores this kind of info. Saw your tags asking how a phone number could verify someone’s age

So, I appreciate you dropping into my askbox to pass that info on - genuinely, it's kind of you - and I can see how my tags came across, but what I actually meant wasn't 'how can you find info on someone just with their phone number??' -- I actually do exactly that kind of thing in my day job pretty regularly, and I have to conform to a lot of real strict ethic constraints that uh, bluntly, random discord moderators...do not.

What I was actually getting at is the fact that, assuming the hypothetical server is just using a phone number as age verification (and doing data broker/google search on that), how in the hell is it controlling for someone doing what people under the arbitrary age limit du jour have been doing since we started implementing this sort of check, ie, lying like rugs and supplying info for someone in their family/social circle instead who is older than [whatever age].

like. sure. maybe you get a phone number for age verification. awesome. plug that into your data broker/google/etc of choice, run your searches, and ok, it belongs to jane smith, 38 years old, accountant who lives in ballarat, she's totally fine to join the 18+ server! come on in jane, the smut is plentiful and the doves are extremely dead. Jane smith has a kid. jane smith's kid is 15. jane smith's kid isn't allowed in the server, because it's an 18+ only server.

jane smith's kid almost certainly knows their mum's mobile number.

how the hell can Hypothetical Server Mod control for 15 year old jane smith's kid putting in jane smith's mobile number instead of their own? and also, separately, how the hell is HSM dealing with the many -- many many many -- different privacy laws around the globe?

not just in terms of handling that sort of information on people (and also requesting it in the first place!), but also just. some countries you can get so much fucking info on someone! (the US. I'm talking about the US.)

some you can't. because privacy laws, because the info isn't publicly accessible, because it's not online and is only in hard copy at the local government office, because it's collated but only in a nonenglish language, because it's geolocked-- etc.

also, like. even if the hypothetical phone number brings up someone in the US, and also your hypothetical mod team has decided, y'know, fuck privacy laws, security of information and data ethics can take a long walk off a short pier, we're keeping this server 18+ or dying trying!

data brokers aren't...actually consistently what you would call...super accurate, or like, accurate at all. if you have a unique name, yeah, sure, you're probably kinda fucked! (assuming you're in, again, somewhere the data brokers focus) but like. if you're named something a little more common - say, james smith, or maria sanchez in the US- uh. well. there sure are a lot of people you could be, and some of them - most of them! - are over 18.

and ok, sure, a phone number is (usually) only associated with one person, but. you can get a lot of false positives, false negatives, and straight up 'we don't know 🤪', the latter of which is sometimes hidden by the databrokers going 'our best guess is that this person is: An Age!! somewhere between 0 and 200 years old. 😇'

again, I use this stuff for work, I can tell you exactly how inaccurate it can get as soon as you throw something like 'not based in the US/UK' or 'uses a nickname/multiple name formats' or 'isn't super online' or 'older than 65 and not turbo wealthy' at some of these - I've had more than one confidently tell me that [my wallet name] is an accountant based in darwin who makes horror films in alice springs on the side, and also, is 26, and had 2-3 kids with her husband Lauchlan.

literally none of these facts are true. like. even vaguely.

and that can of worms doesn't even get into if someone has requested to be removed from data broker databases and/or takes online privacy Very Seriously and/or is just fundamentally ungoogleable, which is...more common than you'd think. less common than you'd like, but more common than you think, even before google started enshittifying itself out of existence.

which is why when you're trying to do things like prove your identity to uhhh goverments, banks, etc, they want multiple forms of ID, one of which is usually a photo ID, none of which anyone should be sending to a random on discord, or, frankly, asking for from a random on discord, both bc my god privacy and security risk but also like. handling that information can actually have legal requirements!

anyway. extremely long ramble on the failings of databrokers over, I appreciate you reaching out to help explain and it was very kind of you anon, sorry that I have. uhhhh kind of a lot of professional feelings about data privacy and basic social engineering, by which I mean saying 'no I'm totally 18 pinkie swear' in the grand tradition of teens wanting to get into age locked areas ever, your forebears lied on LJ so you could lie on discord.

[aro-who-reads]

Aro book review: On a Summer Night by Gabriel B. Vidrine

Mixed feelings about this one.

Trans teen Casey goes to summer camp with his best friend Ella, wanting to fit in and hopefully find some romance.

While the main plot is definitely the romance, the aroace character Ella is actually quite prominent and her aroace identity is often referenced and discussed (although she is usually just referred to as ace). She has her own sub-plot about gaining confidence in her identity and dealing with aphobia.

However, there were a couple of writing choices here that bothered me. At one point in Casey's internal narration he wishes she would just go get her own boyfriend, which was an unnecessary addition. A larger and more ongoing issue was that Ella was weirdly (maybe even creepily) obsessed with Casey's romantic prospects and constantly shipping him with people.

[ghostisredacted]

ohh all that seraphim agent talk on the dash is making me want to formulate the thoughts ive been having...

[maryvioletique7708]

={ @m-v-tique }=

I don’t ship them but,,,,

Yeah…..

(Edit: In mbti typology ENFJ and INFP’s are shadow types, and they’re often depicted to be the “perfect couple” or simply golden pair.)

[pluage-docters-go-brrrrrr]

Yall wouldn't it be funny if like the only way people could tell Ratchet and Clank were twins was because they had the same face. So after the war everyone's like "Hey your face is the same as the primes medic, how crazy is that" and Clank not wanting to be in one of those "things school probably didn't teach you" vedios is all like "Yeah so crazy..."

I'm redesigning her to have Ratchet's face. She losing her lips to have this happen.

[jorvikzelda]

Horses and girls, SSOBlrites and SSOBlrinas: the again-new and re-improved Zelda Bowsmith <3 (and her darling horsie Noblestep, of course)

[dkettchen]

Now this may not seem like a massive change in format, but boy howdy do I feel proud of myself for writing the functions to automate this ehehehehehe (unfortunately for me ao3 ship stat op used a different formatting for the pre-2020 tables, so I'll have to write another function to sort those ones out too ToT)

[insert-game]

i hate gen AI so much i wish crab raves upon it

[passion8alot]

Feeling good about my math class this semester. Doing the RSA cipher which means prime number decomposition, fermat factorisation, euclid theorum, etc

Spent way too long on the first question of the assessment but in my defence, I was making small stupid mistakes that was throwing the whole thing out.

Next one using mathematical induction and proof work which I am very rusty at so will do a catch up and then tackle second half of assessment :]

[sainttempest]

what is it with college-level english classes forcing you to re-learn how to conduct basic research no matter the level of class