shikitohno

@shikitohno@lemm.ee

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are 'micro-apartments' converted from offices the answer to the housing crisis?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Parks and libraries, sure, but the rest pretty much all cost money around me. Art spaces are largely monetized, outside of maybe a free night a week, for a limited amount of time before closing that doesn’t include access to all exhibits. Community/rec centers host events and charge money for most of them now, since I guess younger generations aren’t becoming members in large enough numbers to make things self-sustaining otherwise. Churches have the disadvantage of being churches. Sure, you can technically hang out in them for free, so long as you don’t mind constant religious services, which kind of comes with the territory on that one.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Lebanon’s health minister says 8 killed, 2,750 wounded by exploding pagers⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It just says he was injured, which could happen if you were in close proximity to someone wearing one of the pagers. News here showed one of the explosions occurring in a grocery store, with plenty of people nearby, for example.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨TSMC Arizona struggles to overcome vast differences between Taiwanese and US work culture⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s also just completely failing to account for callouts in planning, which I saw a lot of when I was a manufacturing supervisor. Upper management breathes down operations’ neck to only have people doing the most high cost function they’re being paid for as much of the time as possible. If someone has been trained to run a line, they don’t want to see them doing 5S upkeep or sweeping, they want them running that line the whole shift. Unfortunately, this extends from the most senior positions down to the new hires, so they schedule the fewest people for each role they possibly could safely operate with when they come up with their production plan. Quite predictably, with humans not being robots, this throws the whole thing into chaos the moment one person calls out. Upper management gets into a tizzy about schedule attainment numbers while demanding to know how this could possibly happen, only to sit down with planning and pull the same bullshit with the following week’s schedule.

  If you have a couple of redundancies in your scheduling, you can just postpone lower priority tasks and roll with it. If everyone shows up, you can have people work on stuff like training, preventative maintenance, house keeping, and a million other things.

  For reasons apparently only getting an MBA will lower your IQ enough to seem reasonable, upper management in manufacturing loves doing those skeleton crews where a single absence means mandatory OT and 6-7 dry work weeks to try and salvage what can be of the production schedule, while demanding to know why we struggle to get and maintain staff for these roles.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI-powered network of Russia-based websites masquerading as local American newspapers is pumping out fake stories targeting the US election, investigation finds⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Sure, but many people seem to suffer when it comes to distinguishing facts from opinion and interpretation.

  For example, it’s a fact that Biden had a very poor performance in the debate. No one is really disputing that, though there have been various justifications offered for it. All good up to this point, but it falls apart when it comes to interpreting what that means for the Democratic campaign. Some are of the view that it’s too late to change the candidate and have Biden stand down, and that to do so would tank our chances of beating Trump. Others, myself included, feel like the hit he has taken is likely terminal, and that our best chance is to have him bow out and spin up a new campaign as soon as possible, in order to have the best shot at viability. Personally, I think the longer the delay on doing so, the more it becomes a situation of damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

  Either way, absent someone with a functional crystal ball or some time travelers that can give us a definitive answer, both stances are subjective and fallible interpretations of what the best course of action would be, based on facts. Yet, in the couple of hours I browsed Lemmy after my post-work nap today, I easily saw a dozen people accusing posters who stated Biden should step down of being trolls, Russian agents, useful idiots, and/or arguing in bad faith for merely stating an opinion. I’ve seen people who think Biden is the best shot get called stupid for holding that view, but it rarely seems to have the same power to kill a conversation dead in its tracks as, “You disagree with me, ergo you must be a Russian shill.”

  To deny these disinformation campaigns, both foreign and domestic, are real is to be deluded, yet so is dismissing any and all criticism of the party or views that don’t hew to the party orthodoxy as being pure propaganda. Heck, even for people who have fallen wholeheartedly for such propaganda, you ignore them and dismiss them at your peril. If you don’t successfully reengage with them and manage to bring those individuals back into the fold, they could quite easily make up the margin that ultimately could swing the election. According to this NPR article, the last two elections were essentially decided by less than 80,000 votes each in a few swing states. Unless Democratic strategists have a surefire method that’s guaranteed to juice their votes by millions in those states, they really can’t afford to be leaving anything on the table if they want to win.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Child care costs more than a mortgage payment or rent almost everywhere in the U.S.: ‘There is no escaping it’⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, unfortunately, it just isn’t a possibility for most people in the US, and even in the areas where programs do exist, they tend to be severely underfunded and means-tested like crazy, so only the poorest of the poor will qualify. I’m not interested in having kids, but for those who do want them, it’s just insane the expenses they will have to go through to be able to just keep their jobs and have their kids being watched by someone.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Winamp has announced that it is opening up its source code to enable collaborative development of its legendary player for Windows⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Maybe I would try an Android version, but Linux would be a pass, nothing they would come up with could displace MPD+ncmpc++ for me at this point.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Child care costs more than a mortgage payment or rent almost everywhere in the U.S.: ‘There is no escaping it’⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It doesn’t really seem too sustainable to have to be so expensive if you actually want people to have kids, especially when the US is so famously allergic to the very notion of social safety nets. Median household income in my county is just under $50,000/year, so lets call it $50,000 to make things easy. Median rent for a one bedroom apartment is $1,588/month, so housing alone leaves you with $30,944. Average cost of child care for my city is $16,250/year for kids 2 or younger, so now we’re down to $14,694 to cover all other expenses for the rest of the year for our average household, ignoring the fact that we ignored taxes on that $50,000 income to begin with. That’s $282.58/week to feed a potential family of 3, clothe them, pay utilities, etc. which isn’t a whole lot.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨After announcing increased prices, Spotify to Pay Songwriters About $150 Million Less Next Year⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I wouldn’t really say it’s anything beyond normal consumption, just like I wouldn’t say someone who buys a hat or jersey once every few years when they see a sporting event live has a sports memorabilia collection. Sure, technically, any quantity of something united can count as a collection, but I think plenty of purchasing just falls within the normal bounds of average consumption and doesn’t rise to the level of meriting a special term for it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨After announcing increased prices, Spotify to Pay Songwriters About $150 Million Less Next Year⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think curation implies more depth and selectivity to the collection and perhaps a certain amount of active effort to obtain and maintain it. You’re talking about hearing a song you like on the radio and clicking “buy,” where the sort of person who would talk about their curated library would spend their weekends digging through crates looking for the final LP released on some random record label in 1985 they need to complete their collection of what is, to them, the pinnacle of early house music as released in Yugoslavia prior to the fall of the USSR. Even if it’s not as hyper-specific as that example, I would expect them to at least have things meticulously tagged and organized.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨After announcing increased prices, Spotify to Pay Songwriters About $150 Million Less Next Year⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Sure, but the barrier to entry is significant enough to still deter most people. Even assuming they aren’t bothering with port forwarding and seeding, most people seem like they can’t be bothered with any pattern of consumption more complicated than finding content on major streaming platforms, and the music streaming services haven’t yet gotten annoying enough for most people. They’ll take a peek, go “Do I want FLAC, V0 or 320? WTF is an APE?” and bail again.

  We can disagree as to whether it should be that way or not, but I’d wager that the reach of streaming services for a new band far exceeds that of uploading a torrent to a random tracker and hoping it takes off. Unless people already know of you to look for your music, you need to hope a huge number of them are just auto-snatching anything new. On private trackers, sure, you’ll get a bunch of people who auto-snatch any FLAC upload from the current year, but you’re talking about <50,000 users in those cases, and a good chunk of the auto-snatchers are just people looking to build buffer who won’t even listen to most of what they snatch. On the other hand, nobody is auto-snatching all the torrents going up on public trackers, they’d run out of space in no time at all.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨After announcing increased prices, Spotify to Pay Songwriters About $150 Million Less Next Year⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  And the artists put their shit on spotify because people believe that spending 15 dollars a month on a service that doesnt pay artists, apparently pays artists.

  It’s probably more a case of artists acknowledging the fact that streaming services are one of, if not the, primary sources of music discovery and consumption for many these days. Even if they won’t make money off it, by not being available on these platforms, they may as well not exist for most people. That’s something that only huge, already established names can pull without feeling it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google layoffs: Sundar Pichai-led company fires entire Python team for ‘cheaper labour’⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Pretty sure they are saying that if you have 10 days PTO and you use one of them when sick, you no longer get a full two weeks’ vacation as you’ll have an uncovered day. With a full 10 days, I could clock out Friday evening, get on a flight to my vacation destination, catch a return flight the afternoon of the 19th and be back to work on the 20th. With only 9, I either need to work until next Monday and get on the plane that night, or cut my vacation short to fly back in the 16th and work the 17th. You effectively lose up to 3 whole days of downtime on vacation for being unable to work due to illness once a year.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google layoffs: Sundar Pichai-led company fires entire Python team for ‘cheaper labour’⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  True, but you also need to get enough people with the right skills/knowledge who want to live in West Virginia or Oklahoma when those same skills and knowledge likely make them highly employable in markets with more amenities and greater job opportunities without needing to uproot their life and move to a new town/city when the time comes to get a job with a new company.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Japanese police create fake support scam payment cards to warn victims⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Pretty sure staff at places that handle Western Union payments are already trained to warn people when they try to send money for similar reasons, and I’ve read that plenty of people just refuse to believe it and act like the lady working the desk at Walmart is trying to keep them from getting the big payout the nice prince from Nigeria is going to give them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  If you’re going to say Hamas’ attack was an attempt to draw the US into a war, I think that falls a bit flat. When was the last time the US did anything beyond provide the same sort of aid it currently gives Israel? Especially in light of Iran not giving into Israel’s provocation to attempt kick up a regional conflict that would draw the US in, I think this accusations is lacking.

  If they wanted to draw the US into the conflict, why would they just push for one large attack and then just let Israel steamroll Palestinian territories while demonstrating they can get on with things just fine without the US doing anything but provide the same sort of weapons aid they always have? Why not take the bait with the most recent provocation?

  Besides, even Israeli publications admit that it has been Israeli policy to prop up Hamas, so this smacks even more of propaganda efforts to distract from Israel’s culpability in creating this situation.

  Yes, Iran has provided backing to many of these sorts of groups, but they’re hardly unique in this in the region. Why is trying to kick up a regional conflict when Iran does this, but Israel gets a pass on buying oil from ISIS and aggravating the situation there? Heck, Israel’s past actions in Lebanon helped kick off the founding of Hezbollah when they overstepped what they could get away with under the pretense of chasing Palestinian forces over the border.

  The truth is necessary to arrive at a sound opinion, and Iran are no angels, but there’s far too much handwaving away of Israel’s role in creating the current situation while demonizing Iran with exaggerated capabilities.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨salmon⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Probably not photoshopped, more likely just different species and the one on the bottom has been butterflied and laid with the meat touching the ground so it looks much larger. Neither one has really started to change that much at the point these pictures were taken. Towards the end of the season, at least for west coast salmon, they’ll often get a lot leaner and their scales turn a super vivid red. As they lose their fat reserves, the meat also becomes much more delicate.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Which Iranian attack is this that’s supposed to have started a war to drag in the US? Their most recent attack on Israeli targets was in response to Israel attacking them in a third country, and Israel has been trying to provoke them into a response that would kick off a war the US would get involved with to draw attention from their ongoing genocide in Gaza.