activistPnk
@activistPnk@slrpnk.net
- Comment on 10 Spices That Make Your Food Last Longer 2 months ago:
i wondered about that.
- Comment on 10 Spices That Make Your Food Last Longer 2 months ago:
thanks - i’ve updated the post.
- Submitted 2 months ago to food@slrpnk.net | 4 comments
- Comment on Most motorists want noise cameras installed to clamp down on loud cars 3 months ago:
There are countless ways to implement autoplay. You apparently got lucky with one particular toolchain in one situation. Tor Browser is FF based and should not be extended by plugins (as that changes fingerprints), and TB plays whatever junk is on that page.
Have a look at how long Google has been unable to disable autoplay (2009).
- Comment on Does the USPS, FedEx and UPS give a crap about weed shipments since Hemp sprayed with th same terpenes and looks the same as weed has been shipped legally for 9 years now? 3 months ago:
Interesting lesson in this story:
Pkg with contraband was intercepted, documented, all needed warrants secured. Pkg is delivered while the house is staked out by LEOs. Sometime after delivery (a day later, iirc) they bust in, find the pkg, and arrest. The pkg was sitting just inside by the door, unopened. Defense argued “my client knows nothing about this unexpected package. Who’s to say the sender wasn’t framing the recipient?” So he obviously got vindicated.
So there’s a game of timing. Recipients need to be given the chance to open the pkg and react by calling the police. Not sure how it goes if you consume it immediately after opening and burn the box.
- Comment on Does the USPS, FedEx and UPS give a crap about weed shipments since Hemp sprayed with th same terpenes and looks the same as weed has been shipped legally for 9 years now? 3 months ago:
To be clear, the spores are perfectly legal. You can mail order spores that come in saline solution in a syringe without trouble. The businesses selling that are smart enough to not use media mail, which of course crosses a line.
The nuance here is you said “kit”, which suggests everything you need for growth and thus intent. Maybe you’re right on that bit. Buying everything separately would require surveillance to put all that together that you have a kit, in effect.
- Submitted 3 months ago to fixing@slrpnk.net | 0 comments
- Comment on Most motorists want noise cameras installed to clamp down on loud cars 3 months ago:
I think not. But then I’m not living in a wealthy part of town. It only takes one of those little fuckers to wake up 10,000 people.
- Comment on Most motorists want noise cameras installed to clamp down on loud cars 3 months ago:
I’d far rather deal with the noise than having yet more surveillance.
My cognitive dissonance triggers on this point because one of the reasons I cycle is privacy. I am also firmly in the #fuckCars camp (noise, pollution, death, selfishness of people putting their convenience above lives of other people & animals). It’s hard to give a shit about car drivers having privacy. And also realize that car drivers inherently sign up to give up privacy in order to use a personal car anyway (registration, insurance, banking transactions tied to those activities and their fuel purchases, etc). The fuel purchases of car drivers feed the oil industry, which in the US feeds the war chests of republican candidates who disrespect both privacy and the environment.
Yet people making the wise pro-privacy considerate decision to cycle are still exposed to breath car fumes, noise, and life-threatening physics (e=mc²). Hard to have sympathy for car drivers.
- Comment on Most motorists want noise cameras installed to clamp down on loud cars 3 months ago:
Electrics cars will make it a non issue
I do not see EVs replacing scooters (which are driven by lower budget commuters). A single unmuffled scooter driving through #Paris at 3am can wake up 10,000 people according to Bruitparif. And don’t forget horns. Assholes will used their horns at 3am on my street. The only thing they give a fuck about is their own convenience.
The idea of harsh punishments works if a vehicle is continuously loud because it will eventually cross paths with a cop. So that position is fair enough. But what about horns? There’s never a cop around when horns are misused.
- Comment on Most motorists want noise cameras installed to clamp down on loud cars 3 months ago:
⚠ That article is a bit enshitified and autoplays video. Just a warning to anyone on a limited internet connection.
- Comment on €45,000 for a heat pump installation in Germany -- really? 4 months ago:
And btw: you don’t need to reach 60°C with a heat pump. That would be pretty inefficient.
Thanks for the feedback.
My boiler gives me control of the temp of the water running through the radiators which is independent of the room air temp thermostat. I set the water to ~55°C which seems to reasonably get the air to 17° without running continuously. I mentioned 60° because I figured that temp would enable someone to heat their room up quickly. I wonder why you say a heat pump would not need 60°. I would think the radiators need to reach a high temp like ~50—60° regardless of the kind of furnace. Maybe I’m doing something inefficient. Should I use a lower temp? I could lower the water temp but then there would be a point where the furnace has to run continuously which i would think is inefficient.
- Submitted 4 months ago to energy@slrpnk.net | 20 comments
- Submitted 5 months ago to diy@slrpnk.net | 3 comments
- Comment on Step-by-step instructions to build a smartphone that is open-source, upgradeable, repairable, and Big Tech free 5 months ago:
There’s a long history of people saying you can never have an open source phone because GSM radios and baseband stack or whatever need costly FCC approval. I also thought it was in the GSM spec that carriers had to be able to update some part of the baseband OS spontaneously. So I wonder how they got around that.
- Comment on I fixed my toothbrush (fuck you, Philips Sonicare!) 5 months ago:
So your original batteries lasted 14 years? I suppose it’s possible. I have some AA batteries that are probably nearly 20 years old but they can only be used in low-load situations (couldn’t drive a motor).
My Sonicare original batteries lasted ~8¾ years. I suppose that’s decent but still unacceptable that they can’t be replaced. We have to wonder if sometime between 2007 & 2015 Philips decided to switch to batteries that last half as long in order to sell double the number of devices.
- Comment on I fixed my toothbrush (fuck you, Philips Sonicare!) 5 months ago:
You know it would be cool to take a Beastie Boys music video, replace the heads with that of old bearded cheap bastards and dub in “repair” over “party”, and add Philips products as a prop. If done well, it’d go viral and Philips would be offering money to take it down… just as United Airlines did when a folk singer wrote a song about the airline destroying his guitar.
- Submitted 5 months ago to fixing@slrpnk.net | 11 comments
- Comment on Watch out for devs trying trick bug reporters into doing work 6 months ago:
What bug report? There’s no bug single report in particular to speak of. I’ve filed hundreds if not thousands of bug reports over the years. The post is a reflection of a subset of those experiences.
- Comment on Watch out for devs trying trick bug reporters into doing work 6 months ago:
Did I say incomplete? You’ll have to quote where you get that from.
Compare like with like. You can have incomplete code, and you can have incomplete bug reports. Neither are relevant here.
- Comment on Watch out for devs trying trick bug reporters into doing work 6 months ago:
It is not “much larger” for a dev to task the tester to implement the fix. The dev is no more than a manager in this case.
- Comment on Watch out for devs trying trick bug reporters into doing work 6 months ago:
Are you a paying customer?
Testers and bug reporters are not paying customers. They are volunteer CONTRIBUTORS you asshole.
If so, I understand completely.
Obviously not.
The dev is a bigger volunteer than you.
Nonsense. Contributors are equals. Exceptionally, devs who demand that testers fix the software are notably smaller.
- Comment on Watch out for devs trying trick bug reporters into doing work 6 months ago:
That’s fair enough, but it’s a bit of both (satire and reality). It’s actually a true account (details withheld because I have a bit of respect for the developer in the recent case). This is something that really happens. Not often, but occasionally there are devs & others who expect bug reporters to do a fix. There’s a poor attitude that bug reporters are in some way a beneficiary/consumer. When in fact the bug reporter is a volunteer contributor, just like the dev. It’s just as wrong for a dev to demand work a bug reporter work on the code as it is for a bug reporter to demand work from a dev. Everyone gives what they can or want. A bug report is not an individual support request. It’s a community bug – one that may or may not even affect the bug reporter.
- Comment on Watch out for devs trying trick bug reporters into doing work 6 months ago:
Someone tasking someone else without paying them is indeed being not where they belong. In the case of the OP, that’s the dev tasking the bug reporter.
- Comment on Watch out for devs trying trick bug reporters into doing work 6 months ago:
Of course… The reaction shows how seriously wound tight people are. Obviously not much sense of humor in this community.
There are a couple rare cases where devs have tried to coerce me into a fix. Sometimes they outright say they expect the bug reporter to fix it, strangely enough. It never happened in a language that I knew, and weird that bug reporters would be expected to know how to program at all. But it’s far from the norm.
- Submitted 6 months ago to programming@programming.dev | 20 comments
- Comment on Cashless shops operating illegally in Netherlands & Belgium; corporate disobedience 8 months ago:
Another thing to consider is when you pay by card, there are fees. You don’t see the fees but the merchant does. The merchant receives less money than you paid. That profit margin goes to the same segment of the financial industry that is attacking the cash option. So IOW, it feeds the adversary who works against us (the consumers).
I first thought when I pay my accountant, I want her to receive 100% of what I pay because she does good work and she deserves all of it. Thus cash, check, or anything that does not diminish her share is doing her a favor at no cost to me. Almost like giving her a tip at no cost to me (except maybe postage - but that’s still money better spent anyway). Well that idea extends to other businesses as long as you’re not shopping at a scummy shop like Amazon or Walmart. You probably want to support the businesses you choose to patronize if you choose ethical vendors to start with.
I used to pay using a rebate card. I eventually decided the ~1% kickback is prostituting myself cheaply. I gladly gave up the rebate to take back my privacy (and thus control). I made the same decision with grocery loyalty cards. the 1% savings is not worth the data they fully exploit. So I ditched the loyalty cards & pay cash.
- Comment on Cashless shops operating illegally in Netherlands & Belgium; corporate disobedience 8 months ago:
I’ve taken some individual actions which can only make a difference collectively, progressing in difficulty:
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Started off switching back to cash in all the simple scenarios (paying grocers, restaurants, fuel). Some credit cards give the biggest rebates in those categories precisely because the credit card adds no benefit to those types purchases.
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When dining with a group of people, insist on getting your own separate bill. Otherwise if just one person insists on using a credit card, the whole bill would be paid by that card & the resto would have no metric showing that they were fed in part by a cash payment. Restaurants have been baited¹ by Visa so it’s important to offset that tactic by making sure restaurants get cash payments. ① Visa offered a $10k bonus to restaurants who commit to refusing cash for 1 year. That’s an easy decision for an owner to make if all their payments are by card anyway.
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If a business is needlessly cashless (e.g. they are a brick and mortar establishment), boycott them.
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Buying other goods with credit card sometimes have extended warranty benefits. I eventually decided to give those up & pay cash. But then I found that cash is more widely accepted at street markets and prices are often quite low (esp. for 2nd hand).
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Boycott Amazon just because they are probably the most harmful retailer anyway. Once you take that step, it’s easier to nix online shopping entirely because there’s not much competition left anyway. Buy local.
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Boycott products from members of betterthancashalliance.org. E.g. #Unilever. That’s a huge range of products. Note that Bill Gates is a key player behind the #betterThanCashAlliance.
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File complaints and put of a fight whenever the gov. forces you to pay electronically to a government office. You can boycott the private sector but you can’t quit taxation, so it’s important to make the biggest stink when a public service requires non-cash payments.
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Pay utility bills in cash. Yeah it’s a hassle but in some cases you can reduce billing frequency to quarterly & they’re happy to accept large advance payments as well.
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When donating money to a non-profit, don’t let them dictate terms. They have no leverage. Get their mailing address to mail small cash donations, or find out which conferences they will appear at and pay them in person.
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In the US you can pay taxes in cash. Not sure about other countries.
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If you run a business of course consider making it cash only. If you’re in a country like Belgium where accepting electronic payment is an obligation, offer a 10% discount to cash payers.
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- Comment on Cashless shops operating illegally in Netherlands & Belgium; corporate disobedience 8 months ago:
That’s redeeming. But I should point out France is on-board with the war on cash in other ways: they have banned cash transactions that exceed a certain threshold (€3k, i think?).
- Comment on Cashless shops operating illegally in Netherlands & Belgium; corporate disobedience 8 months ago:
Cash is still the least common denominator because cryptocurrency excludes low tech users & it’s also unusable in a variety of tech failures. So cash should be held in the highest regard and protected as such. Cash is also the only instrument by which two people can transact without interference. E.g. cryptocurrency is not 100% fungible because a gov can issue an order that certain addresses are blackballed.
I also welcome cryptocurrency though to fill gaps where cash is impractical, like sending money remotely. Banks should have the lowest regard because they can (and do) bully and mistreat people.