matlag
@matlag@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on PSA on privuhcy 1 week ago:
Yes, at least for Firefox:
- Comment on I'm setting up a Windows 11 laptop for my uncle. Is there a sneaky way to make it block right-wing bullshit websites? 2 weeks ago:
Technically that won’t be a baseless conspiracy theory though. Just not “the liberals”, and not hiding “the truth”.
- Comment on 2 weeks ago:
I do 1:1 videocalls on XMPP. Quite some clients implement that now. But there were no videoconferences until very recently. That’s changing, though. See Movim right now, for example.
Main 2 issues with XMPP are inconsistent clients (in terms of GUI but also features wise) and the incredibly, astonishingly, ridiculously sloooooooooooooooow evolution of the protocol through the XSF. Nothing can get in there until it’s “perfect”. Clients devs are reluctant to implement things until the extension is stable. And the best part is this approach hardly work: the best way to figure if something works is to deploy it in larger and larger scales and improve it on the way as you identify corner cases you didn’t think about. Not to review the description for months/year until it qualifies as literature…
- Comment on Welcome to the Labour police state 4 weeks ago:
Unfortunately France is only lagging behind, but on the same authoritarian path.
First thing done after terrorist attack: declare emergency state, a tool designed for cases where the state is at risk of collapsing because of invasion by a foreing country or violent insurrection…
The police gains the power to assign people considered at risk at their residence. Very first use: assign climate activists at residence during the COP.
Emergency state is reconducted multiple times without any rationale, other than vague “terrorist threat”.
One of the first actions from Macron once in power was to make it permanent, by passing its key elements in the law.
Protests against anti-social policies or for climate are now systematically met with a violent response. People come out with an eye or a hand missing due to flashballs and lacrymo grenades. Answer from the government is something like “they had it coming”.
Cases of activists and journalists intimidation by law enforcement are multiplying.
Give it a bit of time, and France will catch up.
- Comment on In 6 hours it will be illegal to say "I support Palestine Action" in the UK, with a sentence of up to 14 years in prison. 4 weeks ago:
So, if they shut down and a new org called “Palestine Initiative” that happens to be coincidentally led by the same folks… all good?
- Comment on Having the ability to lie and manipulate with no remorse will get you much further in this world than having morals and being correct 4 weeks ago:
Yeah, that’s what the rest of us try to convince ourself so that we can cope with it. That or the idea that these people must sleep very poorly thinking about what they’ve done, while we’re actually the ones who have poor sleep thinking about what they’ve done and feeling powerless.
- Comment on WhatsApp is officially getting ads 1 month ago:
It’s not just the funding, it’s the business overall. Public companies need to show growing revenues year to year, and worse: growing revenues with a minimum yield. A product can grow by attracting more users up to a certain point. Then the only way to grow is by making more money out of the same users base. If the revenue is based on ads:
- Extend the product so that the user’s engagement increases (channels/others kind).
- Add paying features (freemium approach, that includes blue stars or whatever the hell you want it to look like…)
- Serve them ads
Freemium is not always working well and Meta never used it. They have no new great idea to extend the product without eating their other products users bases. So the only one left is more ads.
Funding is not the issue, for-profit companies are. Non-profit is the way to go. Federation is even better as individuals/families/small organizations can run their own servers.-
- Comment on Liquid Trees 2 months ago:
Trees provide shades that cool down the cities. These algae don’t. The main benefit of these “liquid trees” is to reduce pollution. You know what reduces even more pollution? Electrification and public transportation. Combine both. You’ll need much less space for motor vehicles lane inside the city and no need for “depolluting” inventions. Add some bike lanes and you’ll still have plenty of space for trees. They’re better looking and will do the cooling job.
So, as I was saying: praising a less efficient solution that may bring new unexpected issues down the road because the efficient solution requires people to change.
- Comment on Liquid Trees 2 months ago:
The issue with trees is you need to adapt the city to them, you can’t adapt them to the city. And people have proven once and again that they would invent anything to not move by an inch when our way of life is put in question.
So we push forward with absurd solutions one after the other: carbon capture, atmospheric geo-engineering, a damned nuke in antarctica, and now “liquid trees”.
Because the alternative is to change our ways, and we can’t face that.
- Comment on Liquid Trees 2 months ago:
The issue with trees is you need to adapt the city to them, you can’t adapt them to the city. And people have proven once and again that they would invent anything to not move by an inch when our way of life is put in question.
So we push forward with absurd solutions one after the other: carbon capture, atmospheric geo-engineering, a damned nuke in antarctica, and now “liquid trees”.
Because the alternative is to change our ways, and we can’t face that.
- Comment on Future apocalypse movies won't have survivors scavaging abandoned cars. 3 months ago:
Except most modern cars have turbo and direct injections and are very sensitive to gas/diesel quality. Even your diesel car will break down on an aged diesel. If the tank is not full, it will have degraded in contact with air, and if it stayed too long, it may have absorbed too much humidity and will ruin your advanced diesel engine.
- Comment on conduwuit, “featureful fork of conduit” (Rust Matrix homeserver), is discontinued 3 months ago:
Really? Do you realize how many people we’re talking about? This is where the idea that the human brain can’t comprehend interactions with too many people.
“Multiple indepondant people” might be 5% of the people, some of them under the mob’s effect (wouldn’t engage alone).
Maybe we miss another point of view, but maybe we don’t. This may be a screaming example of what you get as a representative of minorities getting a bit of attention.
- Comment on Undocumented 'Backdoor' Found In Chinese Bluetooth Chip Used By a Billion Devices. 4 months ago:
Summary: China is not a friend country. It’s a hostile country. Yes, we know.
But the news is… so is the USA to Canada now. A hostile country threatening to annex Canada and trying to cripple the economy as a way to achieve the goal. So either we slap 100% tariffs on US made cars, which would hurt Canadians, or we apply the same tariffs on Chinese cars, so reduce them from where they are at the moment.
- Comment on Undocumented 'Backdoor' Found In Chinese Bluetooth Chip Used By a Billion Devices. 4 months ago:
Yes, but Canada had implemented 100% tariff on cars from China, following the US. That’s pre-trade war. The proposal is to lift that one.
- Comment on Undocumented 'Backdoor' Found In Chinese Bluetooth Chip Used By a Billion Devices. 4 months ago:
Because that’s not about privacy, that’s about the trade war. Retaliatory tariffs on US cars increase cost of cars for Canadians, as there are almost no car assembled in Canada. Reducing or eliminating tariffs on cars from China would lower cost of new cars for Canadians while keeping the tariffs up.
For privacy and security, not a single new car on the market is decent right now. That should be regulated, but that’s no concern for any politician at the moment.
- Comment on The US Treasury Spent HOW MUCH Illegally? Now You Know Why the Left Wants to Stop DOGE. 5 months ago:
thefiscaltimes.com/…/Chart-Day-Unauthorized-Spend…
Looking forward to see US shutting down its veteran’s healthcare or the FAA, among others.
That’s going to be a show seen from outside.
- Comment on Germany hits 62.7% renewables in 2024 energy mix, with solar contributing 14% 6 months ago:
They do. But you need to reduce the generation to make sure you don’t heat up too much the water for the ecosystem that lives in. Less water means the temperature difference before and after the plant is higher. That’s the constrain.
- Comment on Germany hits 62.7% renewables in 2024 energy mix, with solar contributing 14% 6 months ago:
Prices capped have nothing to do with nuclear energy and everything to do with stupid EU price policy.
France used to have a monopoly by a state owned company on electrIcity: EDF. But everyone knows that’s terrible, and private market is the way to go. At the time, electricity in France was the cheapest across Europe, but it’s still terrible because… well that HAD to change!
In order to introduce some competition, generation, network and “distribution” (billing…) activities were separated.
Then private distributors (again: billing companies with 0 generation capabilites and 0 grid network) were allocated some quota of electricity from the nuclear electricity generated by EDF at low cost.
In addition, and that’s the European policy: electricity price on the market would be set at the cost of the most expensive generator at a given time. Example: 100% nuclear today: cost is set at cost of nuclear. 95% of electricity from nuclear, 5% from gas: 100% of the electricity that day is billed at cost of gas! 80% nuclear, 15% gas, 5% coal: 100% of the electricity billed at cost of coal!
Why? So that the priate newcomer would get huge benefits and be able to invest in electricity generation. But: there was 0 constrain in doing so, so they just rack up benefits at the expense of EDF and clients! Even better: since they get such low prices from their quota, they’re cheaper than the EDF split distributor company. So at some point, their quota was insufficient for their client’s demand. Time to invest… hahaha! No I’m kidding: time to ask for a bigger quota, of course granted by Macron and his team.
Then came Ukraine invasion. Uh oooh! Gas price exploses, even the “distributors” start to feel the pain. What to do? Well, kick out their clients! Refure to renew contracts, or ask for such a ridicuously high price to make sure they just go! EDF’s hisorical distribution company is legally obligated to take them back. And that’s where the 2nd joke kicks in: EDF gave s much quota of nuclear electricity that they no longer have enough for these clients they have to take. No worries: the “distributors” sold back the electricity quota… at market price, ie mostly gas price!
With the price of gas multiplied n times determining the cost of the whole production, it became unbearable for clients. That’s where genius Macron and Lemaire (Minister of Economy) set a “shield” (cap) on the bills. It’s no shield nor cap. It’s actually the state of France paying the difference in the bills between the actual bill and the cap they set. That’s public money!
And again, that money didn’t go to resources. It went straight to “distributors” (rather call them parasites).
For sure, the heavy maintenance work on the nuclear power plant done at the time didn’t help. They decided to do it on all plants at once (another bad call) and it lasted longer than planned.
But the price issue has nothing to do with nuclear and everything to do with stupid policies.
And now, lesson learned (not): Spain and Portugal got out of that absurd elecricity market. Germany and France (and many other countries) made a few changes and keep going. Because competition with multiple private actors in electricity is good. Can’t you see it??