BananaTrifleViolin

@BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Reddit users in the UK must now upload selfies to access NSFW subreddits⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  This is a combination of terrible legislation in the UK meets awful social media site.

  The Online Safety Act is an abomination, compromising the privacy and freedom of the vast majority of the UK in the name of “protecting children”.

  I’m of the view parents are responsible for protecting their children. I know it’s hard but the Online Safety Act is not a solution.

  All it will.do is compromise the privacy and security of law abiding adults while kids will still access porn and all the other really bad stuff on the Internet will actually be unaffected. The dark illegal shit on the Internet is not happening on Pornhub or Reddit.

  The UK is gradually sliding further and further into censorship, and authoritarianism and all the in the name of do gooders. It’s scary to watch.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Jell-OH MY GOD!⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Just cover it in some chocolate sauce. That’ll make it look better.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Scientists make game-changing breakthrough that could slash costs of solar panels: 'Has the potential to contribute to the energy transition'⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Maybe I’m misunderstanding but would diffuse light be what it’s going to be best at? While it’d be worse on a sunny day when there is an optimal direction for the light?

  It’s the opposite of a light house fresnel lens - instead of scattering the light source evenly out, it’ll capture diffuse even incoming better and concentrate it on the photovoltaic cell? However it would be at the cost of being able to capture direct sunlight as only some of the lens would ever be in the best position to capture the direct rays?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨PieFed.World is now open⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  That link is for Piefed.world; run by the same team that run Lemmy.world

  There are other piefed servers which may have different email requirements. But the most likely reason Piefed.world requires real emails to prevent bots making fake accounts and also reduce the risk of bad actors making numerous accounts to avoid bans. As it’s hard to get multiple real emails it makes it hard to make multiple anonymous accounts which is unfortunately a tactic of trolls.

  You can of course create a dedicated “private” email account on an official service and use that to sign up if you’re worried about sharing your primary email account. A lot of people do this online to have a legitimate email but essentially in it’s own silo separate from other personal emails.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨You can still enable uBlock Origin in Chrome, here is how⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah all you have to do is circumvent the security settings in your browser and suppress warning messages to enable Manifest 2, all in 8 easy steps. For now. Until Google switches it off completely.

  Or, drop Chrome and Chromium based browsers (such as Edge, Vivaldi, Brave etc) in one easy step. Install a privacy respecting Firefox based browser like Firefox itself or Librewolf.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨We are living in the Pre-"Drone 9/11" era.⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  And yet we’ve had numerous terrorist attacks in the UK involving explosives. That is both northern Ireland related terrorism and Islamic terrorism.

  We just had the 20th anniversary of the 7!7 bombings of the London underground where 3 separate suicide bombings detonated.

  Such events are thankfully rare and very difficult to pull off, but unfortunately it only needs to happen once to be a “success” for terrorists. While the police and intelligence services have to stop every single potential attack to be successful.

  Sadly I think OP is right. There will eventually be a successful terrorist attack involving drones. After which, attitudes to drones will harden.

  It’s very difficult to get explosives and it’s very difficult for terrorists to get a explosive to a target. Unfortunately drones make the both potentially easier.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Vernon Dursley, uncle of Harry Potter is just a normal bloke that loves his wife and gets roped into a paramilitary war for it.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah… Except he makes the “freak kid” live under the stairs and neglects him compared to his own son. Kinda hard to redeem the guy by him being otherwise average.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨jobaphobia⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  True. Bit of a tangent but one issue when you have free Healthcare the cost of smoking to individuals is lower. Genuinely it’s a problem - sometimes people don’t value their health as much as they should because of ease of access to Healthcare. I’m 1000% in favour of free Healthcare, it’s just an interesting paradox.

  Public health measures focusing on increasing the cost of smoking through tax work but we don’t have the pressure to stop smoking due to the cost of Healthcare itself which can make it harder to get people to understand the effects. Meanwhile public organisations understand the cost of smoking and invest in trying to reduce it as it puts huge pressure on Healthcare systems.

  Smoking is in decline across the west but we’ve known since the 1940s and 1950s definitely that smoking is bad yet smoking rates have been persistently high in Europe until more recently - last 20 years or so.

  Smoking rates in France for example - 23% still smoke but there has been a huge decline in the last 20 years. Yet smoking was banned on public transport in the 1970s. To be clear I’m not saying it’s because of free Healthcare - just that in countries with good Healthcare systems there is more going on. People have known for 80 years smoking is bad and there has been a gradual decline but big shifts have happened surprisingly recently.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What else should I self-host?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I went down the route of a Raspberry Pi 5 and dietpi. Dietpi has loads of recipes in its main app that makes it easy to get going, plus if you install docker you have a huge range of stuff to try.

  There is a learning curve but it’s not too steep and I’ve enjoyed it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What else should I self-host?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve been going down the slef hosting rabbit hole recently.

  First, Home Assistant is worth doing - you’ve not got a smart home yet but this is the easy way to get one going. So worth it. You can buy a few cheap WiFi plugs, and plug in devices like lights or stuff you don’t want on stand by and you have the start of a smart home. A smart thermostat and smart radiator valves are surprisingly easy to set up if you want to save some money and keep your home efficient.

  I recommend Pihole - it’s an ad blocker for your entire network. You can run it on Docker on x86 machines - you just point your router to use it as the DNS and it then filters all requests for you. It’s really improved my experience on all my devices.

  Next, Paperless NGX - scan your documents and paperless NGX will OCR read them to make them searchable and keep them in a database for you. You can use it to go paperless. Just make sure to sort our a backup.

  Joplin is quite a good note taking app which you can self host to sync your devices and keep your data secure.

  Syncthing is fantastic for syncing files between devices. I sync my main PC and living room theatre PC, plus in my case my Raspberry Pi as an always on broker and local backup.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do you all keep the area around the toilet paper dust-free?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve never had toilet paper like that. I buy supermarket own brand stuff here in the UK. Even when I’ve bought cheap stuff I’ve not had that issue.

  Switch to a different brand. The paper they’re using is bad of it’s flaking off all the time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do so many people believe that Tycho Brahe died from a burst bladder, when it's impossible to voluntarily hold it in until your bladder ruptures?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah the urinary bladder doesn’t just stop working and burst. There will have been an underlying cause, but it was not picked up at the time so now all we have is a garbled version of how he died.

  People can go into acute urinary retention - where they are unable to pass urine. That can be extremely painful and it can lead to rupture if it’s totally untreated.

  But it doesn’t just happen - and choosing not to go to the toilet is not going to cause it. Underlying causes might be prostate enlargement (common), a kidney stone getting trapped in the urethra or bladder neck, or cancers of the prostate, bladder or bowel, amongst others.

  In the modern era urinary retention is easily diagnosed with an ultrasound and usually a CT to assess for causes. Urinary catheterisation can be performed either through the urethra or a suprapubic catheter through the skin to bypass the blockage.

  None of that was available when he was alive - he’d just have been in extreme agony and there was little anyone would know to do. When he died they might have done an autopsy and found the burst bladder but workinf out what happened would be difficult and depend on the skill and knowledge of the person who did the autopsy.

  So it’s extremely unlikely he died because he didn’t go to the toilet during a banquet. Something else happened that precipitated his urinary retention and eventual bladder perforation.

  Once the bladder perforated he was a dead man as there was nothing they could do to repair the bladder or clean out the abdomen in that period. He’d have rapidly become more ill and died from infection and organ failure.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Glastonbury 2025 live: Festival says it is 'appalled' by Bob Vylan comments after controversy⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  A festival being “appalled” is ludicrous. A festival is not a person. What the article actually means is that Glastonbury PR has decided to condemn the comments and chant as they don’t think it fits their brand.

  I’ve had enough of having to pretend the “opinions” of companies and entities matter. They are just a business and will go along with the perceived status quo to protect their business interests. Their stance on anything is bullshit and they should be told to shut up - we don’t need Glastonbury telling us what we can or can’t hear or think.

  Whether you agree with what was said or not, we really need to push back against the corprotisation of opinion and discourse.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Virtual Machines- is there a better way to jump start a VM?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Some good advice already in this thread.

  Also worth considering QEMU as an alternative to VirtualBox. The Virt-manager tool is decent way of managing machines, and it’s relatively straight forward to create a base machine if you’re duplicating it. Virtualbox is perhaps initially more user friendly for absolute beginners, but once you have any familiarity with virtualization I’d suggest QEMU offers much more.

  Also I find integration between the guest and the host linux system is generally more straight forward. Most linux systems already ship with samba and other relevant tools QEMU uses to interact between host and guest. There isn’t a need to faff around with the guest-additions stuff. Plus KVM virtual machines can run with near native performance.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I have one of these, it’s a decent mini PC. It’s decently powerful - I used to play some steam games on it; a bit equivalent to steam deck or a bit more powerful. I used it for streaming on my home TV. I upgraded to a even better one as I liked it so much - and wanted to do more gaming.

  It’s a full PC basically. Whether it suits your purposes really depends on what you want to host? It could be overpowered and a bit redundant for a lot of self hosting uses.

  I have a Raspberry Pi 5 which is cheaper than this, and am hosting docker with Home Assistant, Sync thing, and fresh RSS running on it at the moment with plenty of spare memory and cpu resource.

  This mini PC is considerably more powerful and will have a higher power use at idle. You may struggle to use it at capacity so may be a bit wasteful?

  And even the rasp pi 5 is over powered and expensive for a lit of common home server users.

  So whether this PC is a good price and choice really depends on what you want to do with it. It’s at the end of the spectrum of being able to comfortably play 4k video. So it’d likely be a decent Jellyfin streaming host if that’s what you want?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨U.S. residential solar on the brink of collapse⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  So to summarise the challenges the industry is facing:

  • Tariffs on Aluminium - Trump
  • Tariffs on Solar imports - Trump
  • Sudden loss of federal grants that covered 30% of the cost for installation (was due to run til 2030 now slashed) - Trump
  • Slashing of the fees owners get for selling money to the grid by 75% - Oil industry lobbying / Trump

  To call this “macro economic” issues is bizarre. All of this is due to government policy and actions. It’s also notable that the rest of the world’s solar industry is not collapsing. Trump.and the republicans are selling out US consumers to prop up the oil industry and tax cuts for the rich.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  PCs are generally based around the X86 chip architecture which is an open standard. PCs are basically modular and lots of manufacturers make components that are interchangeable, creating a huge variety of possible hardware. Hardware suppliers also sell.to big companies and individuals. It’s therefore in their interest to distribute their drivers freely even if closed source. If hardware breaks it can be replaced and the PC keeps going.

  Mobile devices are closed standards. They use a more limited range of off the shelf components which are deeply integrated into a device, and the hardware suppliers provide their drivers to the device manufacturer or the device manufacturer builds their own drivers and custom version of the os. Hardware can have very long retail lives selling for years and still being functional, so the manufacturers have an incentive to keep drivers available and even update them.

  It means mobile devices are more locked down, and the hardware drivers harder to come by. This makes it hard to build custom OS for them and therefore when the device comes to the end of its support from the maker there is limited options to keep it running securely.

  It’s effectively a type of planned obscelence that keeps the mobile industry going. Manufacturers stop supporting old devices (because it provides no income) and then consumers have to buy new ones as no one can provide the security patches to keep them secure.

  So for mobile there is nothing to force Android or IOS to be kept up to date for old devices. The money is in new devices, and for Android manufacturers are responsible for the mobile device anyway. While for PC it’s in Microsofts interests to keep updating and keeping devices secure via Windows becuase devices have long lifespans and old components can be in the PC ecosystem for decades. Similarly Linux is able to support hardware for a long time because drivers are more freely available and long lifespans to hardware incentivise people to put the effort in to write open drivers when they’re not there.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ROG Xbox Ally Handhelds announced, the first real Steam Deck competition⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah its not a great headline. But in fairness Legion Go S extends SteamOS / valves reach so is part of Valves strategy. They make their money on the steam store - thats what matters to them most.

  The Xbox device is the first time Microsoft has actually got involved to help improve the windows experience on hand held. I suspect the Xbox brand will confuse people though, as theyre still just Windows devices with an Xbox branded interface. I dont see it as a winning strategy. People will still want to be using steam and a system that doesnt put that front and centre is not going to have mass appeal.

  An Xbox store would need time to catch on, and they havent managed it on windows. Steam dominates for good reason - convenient, aggressive pricing, and effective vendor lockin for many users who already have huge libraries of games.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Switch 2: Is it worth buying?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Wow what a load of rubbish. Talks about being against hype and then concludes with a bunch of hype. The games media have been generally dishonest about the Switch 2, and are not doing gamers any favours.

  I’m not hyped by the Switch 2: its expensive, its games are expensive and the launch titles are paltry. It also has competition in the form of the Steam Deck and a range of SteamOS and Windows handheld devices with a huge volume of games available including many at significantly lower prices.

  Switch 2 needs exclusives to justify its price and its existence. Switch 1 games with slightly improved graphics (which you have to pay for) and a small handful of launch titles make the Switch 2 a bad proposition for anyone except diehard fans at this point.

  At the moment there are no compelling 1st party games in the pipeline. 3D Mariocart and Donkey Kong Bananza seems to be it for now. No new Mario platformer, no Zelda, no pokemon at launch. Everything is old games with better graphics, and much of it available on other platforms like PC with better graphics already anyway.

  Nintendo has a lot of work to do - I think there is a real risk the Switch 2 will be a flop if they dont get 1st party exclusives out before the holiday season.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  As someone else has said; important to check the model number for the offical guide but if its a LAPQC71 (A, B, C or D) then this covers it: manualmachine.com/intel/…/8104213-user-manual/

  The slots look to be hidden behind your hand in your photo.

  The guide says its made for an 80 mm NVME (i.e. 2280). You look to be holding a 42mm (2242) or 60mm (2260) which is too short. There could be screw holes there that aren’t documented but if not you’d have to get an adaptor to extend the length of the NVME to fit. Far better would be to get a drive the right length.

  NVME 2242, 2260 and 2280 are all the same in terms of the connection, the only difference is the board length. The longer ones can potentially fit more memory on them so are “better” (good in full desktops for example where there is plenty of space) while the 2242 are designed to fit into smaller spaces like laptops or miniPCs. This laptop seems to be supporting the longer slots which is actually good but unfortunately it may mean your card is not going to be big enough.

  It’s always worth reading the manual before upgrade components as it will tell you exactly what slots are available and what standards are supported. There are 2 NVME slots - 1 is NVME only, the other can support NVME and SATA.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah that looks right assuming its the right model; compared to the diagram in the quick start guide, in the picture he’s covering the area where the slots are with his hand and the drive hes holding. This quide for the same model numbers is the same: manualmachine.com/intel/…/8104213-user-manual/

  OP needs to check his model number.

  Unfortunately the guide suggests it only supports 80mm length (2260) NVME drives. There could be a screw hole for the 42mm or 60mm sizes but they’re not mentioned. It may be too small for the design of the laptop. OP is holding what looks like a 2242?

  There are adaptors (e.g. on ebay) to add length to a shorter drive to fit into the slot, but the ideal is to buy the right size of the slot.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A postal worker in Harlem attacked a trans woman. She fought back and fatally stabbed him in self-defense. This is how the NY Post framed it.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  The framing uses quotes from the vicrim impact statements from the family of the victim.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is their any evolutionary benefit to the sneezing reflex when looking at a bright light source, or is it just an evolutionary glitch with no purpose?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Its a glitch.

  Its important to understand that evolution does not “design” anything with intent or purpose. Its all chance and survival of the fittest does select for traits that confer greater survival.

  But plenty of traits are neutral or minimally negative in their survival benefits so also suriviveor develop. And it only affects traits that impact reproducing and passing on traits to the next generation. So many traits may be totally unaffected by evolutionary pressures as they have no relevance to survival of the fittest.

  Plus the other species being competed woth over time and the environment generally shape what traits are desirable versus detrimental.

  Basically not everything has an evolutionary purpose or function.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  So no this is not safe. Once ypu have a system it is easier to crack because if someone has 2 or more of your passwords they can work out there is a system and it’d make it much easier to crack others if they’re determined.

  It is unlikely that someone random would specifically target a person and systematically try and crack their passwords. If that were to happen it’d most likely he someone they know. So while the passwords are definitely flawed it may not be something that anyone takes the time to exploit. But you can never say never.

  The best way to manage passwords probably remains a secure password manager and randomly generated series of characters for each site. If its truly random then there are no shortcuts and every single password stands independently. The password manager gets round the issue of memorising them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Self-Driving Tesla Fails School Bus Test, Hitting Child-Size Dummies… Meanwhile, Robo-Taxis Hit the Road in 2 Weeks.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Except the big danger with fully self droving cars is that drivers are not paying attention at all as they have nothing to do most of the time. They’ll be on their phones regardless of what theyre supposed to do and that will cause deaths.

  Teslas self drive technology is not fit for the roads regardless of this. Musk had sensors stripped out pf the cars design to save money because apparently he knows better than all the worlds self drive engineers. The guy is a just an investment bro woth a huge ego - he can’t let the people hes investing in get onwith it, because he sees himself as a “genius”. The guys a moron.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I probably interact with people who are at the pinnacle of their chosen skill but I'd never know because that skill isn't something that generates fame.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I work in healthcare in a specialist field, and the best are not the ones who get recognised. The ones who get recognised chase respect and fame - on healthcare that is going to conferences and speaking, and writing as many papera as possible.

  But the best people ib my field are the ones who do the actual job each day at an extremely high level. They go unrecognised except by those of us who understand what it takes to be good. Theyre humble and focused. Some of them for sure go and speak at conferences band publish papers etc but its not those things that make them the best, although its only those things that make them “visible” outside their place of work.

  The same goes for music and actors. The most famous are not necessarily the best. They are the ones who people like or are the most commercial etc. The best singers are not necessairly world famous - they may be working professionally in less popular sectors such as opera or classical music or choirs, or they may be totally amateur. Similarly the best actors may be strutting a stage somewhere and never seen in a movie or tv show by the majority of the world. And even then they may be the “star”.

  Fame and notoriety has get little to do with talent - some famous people are undoubtedly near the top of their field but it is far from required.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Stack Overflow seeks rebrand as traffic continues to plummet – which is bad news for developers⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Stack Overflow, like Reddit, derives its value entirely from its users—it’s just a host. Now that users (and their knowledge) are moving elsewhere, the platform’s importance is fading.

  It’s odd when people worry about Stack Overflow’s decline. Online communities have always shifted: from BBSs and newsgroups to forums, chat, Yahoo Groups, Reddit, and Stack Overflow. Each had its time.

  The next gathering spot for tech-savvy users might be the fediverse, but who knows at this point. AI isn’t solely to blame for the shift—people moved to Stack Overflow because it was better than what came before. Now, as it declines in quality thanks to general enshittification of services as companies try to monetise uaers, they’re moving on again.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Collapse of GPT: Will future artificial intelligence systems perform increasingly poorly due to AI-generated material in their training data?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not sure why this is being downvoted—you’re absolutely right.

  The current AI hype focuses almost entirely on LLMs, which are just one type of model and not well-suited for many of the tasks big tech is pushing them into. This rush has tarnished the broader concept of AI, driven more by financial hype than real capability. However, LLM limitations don’t apply to all AI.

  Neural network models, for instance, don’t share the same flaws, and we’re still far from their full potential. LLMs have their place, but misusing them in a race for dominance is causing real harm.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It is an absolute crock of shit.

  There is plenty of research on magnetism and humans and it doesnt need a new title and niche “research” from a frankly failed state like Russia.

  We use high Tesla fields routinely every day worldwide in hospitals in Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Safety of this technology has been and is continuously investigated. There has also been extensive investigation of magnetic fields related to power lines and other use cases.

  There does remain some uncertainty and controversy around potential effects of long term exposure to low T electromagnetic fields but its long established that short term exposure is safe.

  This “research” is more on the realm of autism vaccine science. A lot of money can be made in niche fake sciences both in the industry of research itself and then the crap they can sell to ignorant people as a result.

  Russia as a state has been systematically destroyed over the past few decades and most of its institutions have a terrible reputation now. While there are undoubtedly still good scientists in the country, they are working in a gangster state and many of the best minds have long fled for better opportunities abroad.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Even Starfield's community patch modders are growing 'disenchanted' with the sci-fi RPG, as volunteers depart in droves: 'If nobody comes forward, we may have to retire the project'⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think if Starfield had come out 10 years ago it would have wowed people and been a classic. But now it just seems dated when you have other games doing RPG better (Cyberpunk 2077, Witcher 3, Baldurs Gate 3) and open world space better (No Mans Sky).

  Starfield doesnt do RPG as good as those games, nor does it do open world space as well as No Mans Sky. I’ve heard it described as being as wide as an ocean but as deep as a puddle, and that doesnt seem far off to me.

  I really hope Bethesda have paid attention and dont make the same kind of mistakes with Elder Scrolls VI. Big and empty is not the way to go.