xapr

@[email protected]

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xapr,

I just searched amazon.com for metric tape measure right now and the entire first page of results were actual metric tape measures? The Milwaukee ones seem to be cheaper on ebay.

xapr,

There’s no problem with Firefox. The problem is with managers of websites. Because Chromium-based browsers combined account for something like over 90% of global browser market share currently (source: gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share), many sites decide to just throw any non-Chromium browser users overboard. The whole thing is quite ridiculous. It makes no sense that Firefox has such a low market share either.

Mozilla Senior Director of Content explained why Mozilla has taken an interest in the fediverse and Mastodon (techcrunch.com)

"the company looked at the history of social media over the past decade and didn’t like what it saw… existing companies that are only model motivated by profit and just insane user growth, and are willing to tolerate and amplify really toxic content because it looks like engagement… "

xapr,

This is the first I’ve heard of “a couple of devs are shutting out large numbers of contributors (frequently subject matter experts which they desperately need at this point) over relatively trivial issues” and “Lemmy has an awful reputation even among the rest of the fediverse and particularly among people who have tried to contribute”.

Can you give a summary or examples? I’m not trying to argue, but would just like to know more. I don’t follow Lemmy development more closely than reading the dev summaries they post, so wasn’t aware of any of this.

xapr,

I know teachers aren’t paid much, but if you have the audacity to say that you can do a better job than 4 or 5 professionals at teaching your kid every subject, you should have to take a test to be certified, and your kid needs testing too. Some states require it, most don’t, and it shows.

Jesus, this makes so much sense that it’s scary to think it’s not universal. Sure, you can teach your kids. Just get certified to do so first. It doesn’t even have to be the same certification as professional teachers, but just a bare minimum, pass the GED level of education. To not have this kind of requirement really seems like society failing those kids.

xapr,

I totally hear you. I meant GED as in the parent would be able to pass the GED exams now, not that they passed it 20 years ago. I think it would at least be something that could act as a minimum requirement that they can at least understand the material.

xapr,

They were big through investors throwing money at a money sink for years. Youtube was losing tens to hundreds of millions of dollars a year for a long time, before it finally became profitable.

A new competitor wouldn’t get such favorable support from investors.

xapr,

Hangry, even.

xapr,

Yes, I hope so too. I should add that this was just my experience. I don’t have any technical facts to back up this assertion. I had this problem for a long time after I first signed up for Lemmy in June 23. The unsubscribe and resubscribe trick hadn’t worked for me at that time. I just randomly decided to try again today and it worked fine this time. I don’t know if it’s something that was improved in the code, or perhaps just that the Lemmyverse stabilized after a while.

xapr,

I was not aware of this. Sorry to hear, and I hope everything gets better for him.

xapr,

Interesting, thanks. I had seen mbin mentioned a couple of times, but didn’t know the story.

xapr,

No problem, I’m glad it helped. The refresh is only needed to update the status on that page, but it actually subscribes fully in the background, if you check back on your list of subscribed communities.

xapr,

I had tried multiple times over days, perhaps weeks. However, now I can’t recall if maybe I only tried with kbin communities?

xapr,

Thanks.

xapr,

AI, climate change, and nuclear weapons proliferation

One of those is not like the others. Nuclear weapons can wipe out humanity at any minute right now. Climate change has been starting the job of wiping out humanity for a while now. When and how is AI going to wipe out humanity?

This is not a criticism directed at you, by the way. It’s just a frustration that I keep hearing about AI being a threat to humanity and it just sounds like a far-fetched idea. It almost seems like it’s being used as a way to distract away from much more critically pressing issues like the myriad of environmental issues that we are already deep into, not just climate change. I wonder who would want to distract from those? Oil companies would definitely be number 1 in the list of suspects.

xapr,

You’re probably right, but I just wonder where all this AI panic is coming from. There was a story on the Washington Post a few weeks back saying that millions are being invested into university groups that are studying the risks of AI. It just seems that something is afoot that doesn’t look like just a natural reaction or overreaction. Perhaps this story itself explains it: the Big Tech companies trying to tamp down competition from startups.

xapr,

Unfortunately, the recommendations from most (all?) top-level officials in the US right at the beginning of the pandemic was for the general public NOT to wear masks (including Dr. Fauci, Dr. Birx, etc). This absolutely didn’t help matters when later they had to change their tune and recommend then mandate masks, after they had said that they were not needed.

Here’s a nice compilation video of these statements over the first couple of months of the pandemic: piped.video/watch?v=tRE59LJc6CA

xapr,

If you’d be open to try Linux again if it were less likely to break than your past experience, look into the recent trend of what they commonly call “immutable” distributions. This should give you the ability to always switch back to a working OS if anything goes wrong (which should be much less likely in the first place). It’s similar in concept to Android or Chrome OS, from what I understand. I’m watching this space very closely because I’m concerned about experiencing the same thing as you if I switch to Linux, and not having the ability to fix the system myself.

xapr,

I stopped using Reddit regularly after the APIcalypse, even though I had never used any Reddit apps (I only used it on a web browser on a desktop). I still have an account that’s active there where I’ve only been using it to help and encourage people to move from Reddit to Lemmy and from Xitter to Mastodon.

I thought it was going to be harder than it actually was to abandon the many niche subreddits I was subscribed to there, but I just found other things to read. I will still occasionally visit Reddit, especially when it turns up on a search result with info I’m looking for, but to use it like that I don’t have to even have an account.

I plan to eventually delete or scramble all my posting history from there on all my accounts, but just haven’t had time to do it yet. I also haven’t found a way to do what I really want, which is to replace my comments with different random text for each message, to mess as much as possible with any LLMs. In no way will I contribute any more of my comments to Reddit, except for what I said in the beginning, to help people move here, and even that I will probably delete/scramble.

xapr,

Wait, I thought that PeerTube was peer to peer in the sense that the various PeerTube server instances were peers, and not the users clicking and watching videos were peers. Am I mistaken? It seems that in order for the users to peer, they would need to either install a client program that would do that, or make some heavy browser security approvals. If it’s the servers that are peering, then this law shouldn’t apply to the users.

xapr,

Ah, interesting, thanks! The wikipedia article on PeerTube explains that it is indeed user peer to peer to some extent, using WebTorrent. I had no idea. Very interesting.

xapr,

Interesting, thanks!

xapr,

Cries in I’m in the only person in the world with my first and last name combination.

xapr,

What opportunity are Jordan and Egypt wasting?

xapr,

Thank you. All anyone needs to know about why lemmy.world defederated from hexbear is that they did it preemptively because they didn’t agree with the ideology of hexbear users. This is based on the admin’s own statements. It was completely unjustified.

xapr, (edited )

While he didn’t do it by himself, his support was critical in getting it passed:

“Biden was one of the most powerful people who could have said no, who could have changed this. Instead he used his leadership role to limit the ability of other Democrats who had concerns and who wanted the bill softened,” said Melissa Jacoby, a law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill specialising in bankruptcy.

xapr,

I had edited my post to add that he didn’t do it himself but was critical in getting in passed. Perhaps you started your reply before my edit.

I would have settled for him having done less in getting it passed. Your version of what happened or may have happened is way too charitable to Biden. He was known for being very friendly to banks and credit card companies, as a Senator from Delaware would be inclined to be, considering that Delaware is home to many of those types of businesses.

xapr,

Student loans seem to be a massive part of the problem of out of control tuition increases. The National Bureau of Economic Research published this study in 2016 that showed that changes to the Federal Student Loan Program accounted for the majority of the 106% increase in tuition between 1987 and 2010. Whether that’s some right-wing scheme to divert attention from reduction of states’ funding of public universities I haven’t looked into, but it seems to me that it’s at least a significant factor on its face.

xapr, (edited )

Yes, it is. Visa and Mastercard are not card issuers. Example: “Visa does not issue cards, extend credit or set rates and fees for consumers; rather, Visa provides financial institutions with Visa-branded payment products that they then use to offer credit, debit, prepaid and cash access programs to their customers.”

This article provides details of why Delaware is attractive to banks (various financial and legal incentives), how it became that way (legislation written by major bank lawyers), and some ways it benefits from this (jobs, tax revenue).

Biden didn’t earn the nickname “The Senator from MBNA” for no reason. MBNA was a huge credit card company that was later bought[?] by Bank of America. “Over the past 20 years [as of 2008], MBNA has been Biden’s single largest contributor.”

xapr,

I agree that this is veering way off topic, but you seem to like to argue semantics.

My main point was that Biden, at that time a senator of a majority Democratic state, voted with Republicans and a minority of Democratic senators of mostly conservative states to pass a bill that would benefit his largest donor, MBNA, as well as other banks, to the detriment of common people. While the OP may have overstated Biden’s involvement with this bill, you seem to be understating it.

xapr,

Only if they catch you!

xapr,

This is a great idea! It might work if you give everyone fake steering wheels and pedals.

xapr,

The other source aside from tires and those beads is all the other plastics that we use. Especially when exposed to the elements, all(?) plastics eventually break down into tiny particles. This includes all synthetic fibers, by the way. I’ve seen studies that show how much synthetic clothes release microplastics each time we wash them.

xapr,

This reminds me of these wise words:

“A person who runs in front of a car gets tired. A person who runs behind a car gets exhausted.”

:)

xapr,

Sorry to hear. I prefer natural fibers, so it doesn’t affect me that much.

xapr,

I hear what you’re saying, but what do you propose instead? “Another Indian man has been murdered in Canada”? Is seems that that would kind of bury the lede, which is the implication of a connection between India accusing him of this and him being murdered. This seems like a difficult situation to balance, and perhaps there should be a different decision made in a case where someone is alive like your example, vs. this case, where the person is dead.

xapr,

Yeah, that works well, thanks! You got the job. :)

What are some FOSS programs that you think are a far better user experience than their counterparts? (sh.itjust.works)

I used Plex for my home media for almost a year, then it stopped playing nice for reasons I gave up on diagnosing. While looking at alternatives, I found Jellyfin which is much more responsive, IMO, and the UI is much nicer as well....

xapr,

video edit

I’ve heard really good things about Shotcut. I wonder how the two (and Kdenlive as well as commercial competitors) compare. I looked a while ago for some good comparison articles but don’t recall finding any.

xapr,

Yikes, sorry to hear that. I only learned about Shotcut here on Lemmy. You can see my exchange with someone who uses it for work on this post.

xapr,

I think they just mean extremely popular within their segment, since AFAIK Blender hasn’t become the industry standard in 3D yet either? I could be wrong about the latter though, since it’s been a while since I looked.

xapr,

Thanks. That was pretty much my impression of the situation. Being used everywhere, but not the core of the pipelines at most places yet.

xapr,

7500 employees

But yes, to your point, I have a somewhat controversial theory that given enough time, relatively niche proprietary software like Unity will not be able to compete with open-source software (if the latter is well-managed). Look at the growth that Blender has had over the last few years and what effect that has had in the 3D creation market. It seems that the game engine market is going to follow similar footsteps if Godot doesn’t fall into some major pitfall.

xapr,

I presume you mean the open-source versions of the JVM published by other companies like IBM, or maybe there’s some other distinction that I don’t understand? As far as I know, Oracle Java has required a paid license for the last few years: redresscompliance.com/decoding-oracle-java-licens…

xapr,

Yeah, I (and I’m sure a lot of other people) had thought of that too, but now the whole North is on fire.

xapr,

Yeah but that means it’s on a fire sale! points to temple

Haha, smart!

xapr,

I found another source explaining it from experience: www.grandin.com/humane/cap.bolt.tips.html

It seems that we may both be partially correct: If a penetrating bolt is used the animal is killed instantly. If a non-penetrating bolt is used, the animal sometimes revives. What we don’t know is how prevalent each approach is. Either way, re-reading your initial post that I responded to I realized that this debate doesn’t matter. Your point seems to have been that they don’t feel pain as they’re killed, and I concede that you’re correct. I missed that this was the point you were making, and that you were not mainly arguing whether the animals were killed instantly or not.

Edit: Just to add that I concede the point that they don’t feel pain only in a general sense. Looking at that last link, it seems that this procedure would have a lot of room for error and I’m sure that as a consequence a lot of cows suffer unintentionally.

xapr,

What else would you need in order to believe that this was a planned assault on democracy, coordinated directly with the white house and designed to take advantage of a legitimate peaceful protest?

I know it was a planned assault on democracy. I never said otherwise. I also know who had fomented and planned the assault: the people in the White House and all their die-hard followers. None of that is in question. What I was unsure about was who had fucked up and allowed it to happen that day. I had never looked very closely at the details of the events of that day, but I read the NPR and Politico stories you sent. The picture that those paint to me is that a lot of people primarily responsible for securing this event fucked up leading up to it. With all that intelligence that shit was going to go down, the local authorities should have had their shit together, ready for it. They could have asked the National Guard to be in place ahead of time, but didn’t think it was necessary despite having access to the intelligence and were worried about what had happened previously with the BLM protests. If they’re having to call the National Guard after people start rushing the capitol, it’s way too late. From the time that the crowd reaches the security lines at the capitol until the time that the protester is shot trying to enter the House chamber is less than 1 hour 45 minutes. And it sounds like the call goes out to the NG after the crowd reached the capitol.

I didn’t realize or recall that Michael Flynn’s brother was one of the generals involved in the decision to send in the National Guard. WTF, he was probably in no hurry to send in the troops. However, I still argue that the people who were intent on securing the event should not have given anyone the opportunity of a delayed response that could have been obscured by the chaos. Aside from that, what are the chances that the situation could have potentially been even worse had the NG been involved? Can you imagine the endless whining from the MAGAs if more of them had been mowed down by the NG?

xapr,

Thanks for the additional info and explanation. That makes sense, but I realize now that I must have made a mistake. The NPR piece I was referencing was not the one you linked but another one that I had pulled up when I was trying to learn more about this: npr.org/…/what-we-know-so-far-a-timeline-of-secur…

Going by that timeline and narrative, it doesn’t seem like Mayor Bowser asked for a large contingent of the NG until the attack was already under way. I now also understand better why she may have erred in that way, because of what had happened in the previous BLM protest.

Wow, that Flynn appointment timing definitely looks shady as hell. As for the Capitol cops, I wouldn’t be surprised if they put up token resistance. Cops in general seemed to be on Trump’s and his fans’ side, what with all the back the blue rhetoric and all that. So now after this discussion I’m definitely leaning more towards any possible conspiracy being all on the side of the people who wanted the insurrection to succeed, with some lucky help in the form of some people on the other side having acted with incompetence.

Thanks again.

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