SquiffSquiff

@SquiffSquiff@lemmy.sdf.org

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨UK flooded with forged stamps despite using barcodes — to prevent just that⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  On checking: You’re correct that the royal mail and the post office are separate organisations. They split in 2012. At the time of the majority of the active development of the horizon scandal, they were the same organisation however.

  I would still want to apply the same test - not just demonstrating a notional or paper loss, but that something has actually been stolen and acquired by some other party. This was one of the signal failures with the horizon scandal: that it was simply a bookkeeping error and they were unable to show beyond that any theft or loss on their part or gain by another party.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨UK flooded with forged stamps despite using barcodes — to prevent just that⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Sorry but at this point my money is on the Post Office being incompetent and dishonest. They have form given the ongoing Horizon scandal.

  • This is a newly introduced system
  • There’s no evidence it has ever worked correctly
  • I’m not seeing any corroborating evidence, e.g. people being prosecuted for making or selling forged stamps
  • I’m not seeing an explanation offered as to why such forgery is only happening now as opposed to before barcodes were introduced
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI Is Becoming a Band-Aid over Bad, Broken Tech Industry Design Choices⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Hate to break it to you, but these concerns are pretty specifically about iOS. Pretty much all of them have been addressed since the beginning and continue to be addressed today adequately on Android

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do surge protectors continue to draw power from the wall even if switched off or if nothing's connected to them?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  It didn’t used to be this way, but modern power adaptors are required to implement standby power:

  In the past, standby power was largely a non-issue for users, electricity providers, manufacturers, and government regulators. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, awareness of the issue grew and it became an important consideration for all parties. Up to the middle of the decade, standby power was often several watts or even tens of watts per appliance. By 2010, regulations were in place in most developed countries restricting standby power of devices sold to one watt (and half that from 2013).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Meta and Salesforce are looking to rehire some workers they just laid off. It's putting those people in an awkward spot.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s Marc Benioff, CEO of SalesForce

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Over 65 years ago this month, researchers ran the first FORTRAN program⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  🤔Guido van Rossum: “Do not send me email like this”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When a Programmer Holds the Code Hostage: The costs of a policy of appeasement⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve been where this article describes, so has the author. Excellent article.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Weird, Fragmented World of Social Media After Twitter⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  What’s difficult?

  So I’m on both and I work in tech. I’m technically capable, e.g. I verified my Mastodon account with my website. Neither Mastodon not Lemmy is anywhere near ready for non technical users.

  ##Mastodon

  Hell of a job picking an instance. Confusing to log in because I have to remember the instance not the service. Instance is all local stuff, global stuff is by default garbage.

  I signed up to Mastodon a few months back. Most of the people I followed on Twitter didn’t. Not surprising really given how confusing and complicated it is. I chose a server because someone I followed recommended it. I found most people posting less and less frequently, apart from the instance admin, they seemed to post books worth every singled day and I had to mute them. Then it got really quiet and I saw something about the server admin stepping down. At which point I learned that due to some ridiculous drama involving something the admin of my mastodon instance apparently said that some other instance admin didn’t like, the whole instance/domain was ‘silenced’. In other words ‘the hell with you’ to me because of something I wasn’t even aware of, let alone involved with. Absolutely childish that something like that can even happen, and even better, it seems people often can’t figure out how to make it 'un-happen’.

  None of this covers mobile app issues

  At this point mastodon has failed as an alternative to Twitter for me. There’s about 3 non-twitter-repost-bot posters left in my feed, all either second rate or also posting the same on twitter.

  Lemmy

  A bit better than Mastodon but comparable issues with picking an instance. Dscoverability is slightly better because I can search for topics. I’ve had to create a login on a second instance because my first pick, and then my second pick, both:

  • De-Federated a number of other instances
  • Were de-federated but a number of other instances
  • Have been suffering repeated uptime issues due to DDOS

  So now I’m on my 3rd Lemmy login and I spent half an hour yesterday using someone’s python script to back up my subs and resubscribe with my next account…

  None of this covers mobile app issues

  Overall

  It’s close, really close, and it could work but it’s tough on Lemmy and missing on Mastodon