rachet's comments

I briefly worked at a company that monetized videos with advertisements. The company would basically bundle many sites and get them video ads that the small sites wouldn’t otherwise get.

The company used GVP to provide ads to the site owners. Many of the sites were straight up serving pirated content monetized directly with gvp.

The way this was “allowed” was that the company would receive a DMCA request for the pirated content and we’d have to take it down… within 5 days. So we would wait 5 days and take it down.

In that delta, everyone made money. For the 5 days everyone made enough to stay in business and still “comply with the law”. Most of the company’s operating capital was sourced through this takedown period. 100’s of thousands a month.

It actually made the content more valuable because it introduced scarcity. The content was mostly Indian cricket matches and the only way to watch them online was pirated in this manner.

So justify it however you want, gvp and google ads in general are totally trash. Oh and we had frequent issues with advertising metrics being wrong between 5-25%. When I inquired… that’s just how they do it. It’s an “estimate.

When I had a vehicle with OnStar, I located where its antennae connected to the controller and disconnected it. The vehicle was fine, nothing else was impacted. It just couldn't communicate with anything anymore.

I originally removed the power, but then most of the "smarter" electronics stopped working.

Oddly enough, Jews are encouraged to do this! We were given brains for a reason and we were also given the frameworks for making decisions about the law as technology and society changes.

Many of the decisions also require deep knowledge into the subject matter (not just the Jewish law) in order to make a ruling. To allow electric switches one would need to know all the intricacies of both Jewish law and electricity before a valid ruling could be made.

Intent mostly, the rest is whether you are creating or not.

If you have a hot water urn, that is always on and doesn't receive new water, then consuming the water isn't usually an issue. You still need to double pour (put it in one cup then in a second to ensure it isn't hot enough to cook) but using it is OK.

If you have a large hot water tank, consuming the water IS an issue. Mostly because the moment that you consume the water, you can reasonably assume that cold water will enter the tank. Once cold water enters the tank, it will likely start heating. Thus, you become the agent that turns the heaters on in the tank. But, if the hot water was flowing BEFORE shabbat and you consume the hot water, your action does not directly affect the actions taken by the heating components. The heater is already on and using an extra amount of water has minimal impact on when the heaters turn off. Thus it is more allowed.

Light is about creation and less about the light than the means to get it. Switches create sparks internally, lights create heat (even LEDs), and you are completing a circuit. Completion can be seen as the final act of creation.

And lastly, cooking takes something from in-edible to edible. Creating food from non-food. Even on foods that are permissible to warm, they must be edible before hand. They also cannot substantially change form -- nothing too liquid or anything that would go from solid to liquid. With that framework, warming up a piece of left over baked chicken would be OK, whereas making a grilled-cheese sandwich wouldn't be OK.

> What’s the meaning of „the Sabbath prohibition against operating electrical devices“?

The point is about the act of creation. Creation is the key point in just about all the laws. Turning on/off a switch, with intent, is an act of creation. Be it light, a spark, heat, or moving an elevator. Intent increases the severity of an action surely. Bumping into a light and turning it off, as long as it lacks intention, is more of an "oops, my bad" but you can't accidentally bump into it again. And if it's a common occurrence, you probably should address that issue since you know it will happen (you can't set someone up to fail).

> ... might be indistinguishable from the perspective of the user...

And yes, perspective matters, which is one of the reasons many observant avoid it. If you see someone in front of an elevator (or TV, for that matter), an outside observer would assume you're pressing buttons and breaking the law. Since others may not know about your clever work-around, it's better to avoid it, so they don't see you getting the benefits of the work-around and then doing it directly themselves. This avoids others saying "I saw an observant guy get in the elevator and part of an elevator is pressing buttons, so pressing buttons must be OK".

The door sensors of elevators are another problem. On many with a shabbat mode, they only activate right before closing the door, but it is easy to make a mistake and the doors will re-open. This is another reason they are avoided by many if possible.

> telling a liftboy where to go seems to be ok...

Telling a liftboy is not okay. You can't order someone to do something that they wouldn't have done on their own that you aren't permitted to do yourself. If you're forbidden from turning on a light, asking someone to do it turns them into your agent, which is the same as doing it yourself. But there, like many things, is a work around. If you handed someone a book for them to read, and it was dark, you know they will want to turn on the light. But since you're not asking them to turn on the light, you're asking them to read a book -- if they turn on the light, you have no agency in that action.

In the case of a lift boy or attendant, if you walked into the elevator and said something like "I live on the 7th floor" it's debatable if you intend for the person to press the button. If their job is to press the button, then it is an issue, if it is a non-employee, it's probably less of an issue. Even here, there are nuances like intent and context. If you're younger or more healthy, it's probably better to take the stairs. If you're in a high-rise and even healthy people would have issues taking the stairs, it's probably more permissible.

Then, even in a high-rise, if you're going down (which is easier) then maybe the context would be different enough were the same circumstances that permitted you to use it going up aren't available for going down!

As mentioned by others, the circumstances and context really matter along with the perspective of yourself and those around you. That is why there have been countless books and discussions on some seemingly simple matters.

Yes, you probably shouldn’t be asking “what next” constantly, but it is important to validate you’re doing the right things. It depends how you ask it and the frequency.

In between decent blocks of work (epics, milestones, etc) I tend to ask my manager if priorities have changed since we last spoke and if he needs help with anything before I do the next feature.

This prevents me from wandering off and doing unneeded or less-needed work. That’s also true agile.

I did the same thing using twilio here (http://www.ryanfaerman.com/notebook/2012/07/10/gate-insecuri...). The plus-side is it only costs me 3 cents per gate call.

Last I heard, TM2 was being targeted for Lion - two operating systems ago.

Five years is a long time.