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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 16th, 2023

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  • The term “best” is extremely vague. How does one define the “best” anything? There are countless possible options, some of which would absolutely put Taylor as the best. There are also many that wouldn’t, some even putting her near the bottom.

    Avatar was, and always has been, a movie about the visuals. It’s total eye-candy, meant to wow audiences. And if that’s how you define the “best” movie, it probably is.

    But it’s equally valid to define the best as being a total immersion, or drawing your emotions, or being convincing, or having an expansive story to tell. Especially on that last option, Avatar is pretty bad.

    Siskel and Ebert were well-known for their movie reviews. Typically, one hated it and the other loved it, and for different reasons. Their goal was to articulate this well enough that you, as a viewer, could determine if you would like the movie. Your “best” movie is unique to you.




  • While the AG has a number of options available, most common are civil suits. But even before that, simply having the AG in the middle is putting them on notice that they need to really, REALLY be confident that they are in the right. In most circumstances, they will simply approve your warranty claim to avoid the risk.

    When you see headlines of “[state] AG sues XYZ Corp for not honoring warranty claims”, it means there have been a ton of complaints, or a lot of complaints where they still refused. You should never purchase from a company that’s had one of these headlines recently.


  • Adding onto this, every state AG regularly pursues companies for not honoring their warranty. It takes some paperwork (usually original purchase receipt, original warranty terms, and your desired resolution), but it’s usually not too bad. Yours might even list it as a common category for your complaint. Probably takes about 20 minutes.

    Companies don’t usually fuck around when the AG is watching. You probably aren’t the only one to complain, and too many complaints can lead to a full-blown lawsuit from one of the most capable organizations in the state. The penalties can include your entire company - including parent, children, and sibling companies, being banned from doing business in the state.


  • This one is tough. A longer warranty is a way to reassure customers that it’s made better, with the promise that it will be repaired/replaced if it breaks. And if they honor their warranties as promised, it’s probably valid. Warranty claims are expensive, regardless of industry, so they go to great lengths to minimize claims. Whatever the warranty is, you can reasonably be sure that it will last that long, but probably not a second longer. Again, assuming a trustworthy company that will honor the warranty.

    Otherwise, anyone can shit in a box and mark it guaranteed. If it’s from Amazon/AliExpress, the company probably won’t even exist in 6 months (but a strangely similar new company will).

    The flip side is that an unusually short/weak warranty, below that of its competitors, is almost certainly a shit product. They aren’t even going to pretend it’s up to industry standards.




  • This is part of a series frequently known as “Microsoft interview” questions. The most famous one is, “Why is a manhole cover round?” They are partially meant to gauge your problem-solving abilities, but more importantly see how you react to a question you did not (and could not) prepare for. They’ve since fallen out of fashion, because it was always a terrible way to gauge roles like software developers.



  • During US prohibition, there were “grape bricks” with warnings not to dissolve in water and place in a cupboard for 20 days, because then it would turn into wine.

    A simple negation probably won’t cut it legally (the bricks had a significant legal purpose), but you could probably word it in a similar way. For instance, “While VPNs are effective at anonymizing yourself during piracy, they can also protect your privacy from data mining ad companies”.

    At some point, you’ll have to conspicuously avoid the topic and let people infer. Remember when high-speed connections were advertised as being great to “download movie trailers”?