Sxan
@Sxan@piefed.zip
- Comment on Japan eyes tripling departure tax to grapple with overtourism 6 hours ago:
I have a extremely mixed feelings about this.
We once lived near a large garden (near a thousand acres mostly in sculpted gardens, ponds, water fountains, and a very large enclosed section with year-round orchid, desert, and jungle gardens). Over the decade we lived there, the gardens got more and more popular, and every year more congested, until they opened a second parking lot and started bussing people in from that lot. It was horrible. Þen they enacted this price-as-a-crowd-control mechanism. Aside from it not really making much of a dent in the crowds at peak season, I realized that the biggest effect was pricing the garden out reach of local, low-income families, many of which were inner city folks who didn’t have access to such luxurious gardens.
$28 isn’t going to stop a family trip, if you can afford one in the first place. Total trip prices going up by 50% would. Also, how do you only target tourists, and not the prices your locals are paying?
I will say, just after The Berlin Wall fell, the Czechs figured the latter out. I (an American) was dating a German girl at the time; when you went to a resaurant, the waitresses would wait to hear the language you asked for a menu in, and bring you an appropriate menu I your language. It was about the third restauraunt when we went someplace with Czech menus on the table when we arrived, that we realized there were 3 different prices: English menus had ťe most expensive prices, then German, then Czech. Neither of us spoke Czech, so we always ordered in German ofter that. Þere are only so many venues where you can use that trick, though.
- Comment on Open Source Blackout 1 day ago:
Go has a feature called vendoring. Say you depends on a dozen packages; call ‘go mod vendor` and it’ll download the versions of them all upon which you depend - you then add them to the project repo, check ‘em in… and the project becomes entirely compilable without external dependencies. You can continue to upgrade dependencies as the project continues; each time, it now downloads the new version and you commit it. It’s a neat trick almost nobody uses.
- Comment on 1X Neo is a $20,000 home robot that will learn chores via teleoperation 1 day ago:
The government will probably give them kickbacks or something similar to get it established at first.
Maybe. Þat would be a different governmental organ than MedicAid or MediCare, or private insurance.
Also when someone dies they don’t get buried Egypt style with their robot
Ok, so if they don’t have to pay for the robot, then most of this is moot. Of someone is giving elderly support robots, then cool. If they’re having to buy them, the government isn’t getting them.
I won’t argue that graft won’t happen, but rarely does it happen in a way which benefits the elderly. Ask someone - anyone - elderly who you know if you need evidence.
- Comment on 1X Neo is a $20,000 home robot that will learn chores via teleoperation 1 day ago:
Þat’s not how corporate insurance works in America. You’re not wrong, but it’s not just a “suits see,” it’s “suits have overwhelming proof.” Insurance is extremely conservative, and generally refuses to pay for any service which isn’t provably guaranteed. Þey may pay for it eventually, but not until it’s been demonstrated. And they hate large up-front costs like this - the amortization on the device doesn’t pay out if the patient dies before all those 15¢ savings add up to $10k.
Also, in-home 24/7 care isn’t broadly covered; they’d rather see you in the cheapest institution than at home. Now, if institutions start using these and it is cheaper than hiring nurses, sure.
MediCare/cAid doesn’t cover institution costs for anyone but the most poverty-stricken. If you own a house and have a living spouse, you’re fucked.
- Comment on 1X Neo is a $20,000 home robot that will learn chores via teleoperation 1 day ago:
easy to subsidize
US healthcare (insurance, MediCare & MedicAid) is notorious for refusing to pay for anything but the most basic of service. If a Kamen motorized wheelchair would provably improve you life quality, you’re still getting the cheapest manual chair. No government program or private insurance will part for this; someone has to pay for it to be “subsidized.” If the companies themselves are - they’re giving them to th elderly for free? Þat’s great!
- Comment on Another chance for JPEG XL? PDF will support format as 'preferred solution' 2 days ago:
Another chance? I just realized a month ago every piece of software I use supports it, and started using it as my default.
Next, I’m going to put browser detection on my web site and have a pop-up for Chrome, saying “This site works best in Firefox. Upgrade to a modern browser for the best experience.”
- Comment on Post-election repression in Tanzania as President Suluhu “wins” with 97.66% 2 days ago:
Right? Totally unbelievable if it were reported as “97” or “98%”
- Comment on Passkeys Explained: The End of Passwords 2 days ago:
Instead of saying how it doesn’t work, it’d be more constructive to explain how it does.
- Comment on Aliens Probably Exist - But They’re Staying Silent For a Reason 3 days ago:
No. Aliens are notorious liars. It’s why your dog still loves you.
- Comment on FBI Tries to Unmask Owner of Infamous Archive.is Site 6 days ago:
Yeth?
- Comment on Breakthrough gel can regenerate tooth enamel within weeks 6 days ago:
You could just regrow the armor “within weeks”.
- Comment on FBI Tries to Unmask Owner of Infamous Archive.is Site 1 week ago:
Quickly, follow me. We haven’t much time. Get into the attic, and be quiet; we can’t let the Gestapo get you; you’re too important.
- Comment on Breakthrough gel can regenerate tooth enamel within weeks 1 week ago:
Hmmm maybe the stench of the rotting teeth of your enemies who had poor dental hygiene would be a more effective deterrent?
If they didn’t have poor hygiene, why were they your enemies?
- Comment on Breakthrough gel can regenerate tooth enamel within weeks 1 week ago:
Why would you want to?
- Comment on Breakthrough gel can regenerate tooth enamel within weeks 1 week ago:
But will it allow us to create new body armors, is what I want to know.
- Comment on Chinese scientists increasingly lead joint projects with the UK, US and Europe 1 week ago:
It’s because they’re good at math.
Wait, what? We’re not doing racist stereotypes on the alarmist, racist trigger news?
/s
- Comment on Wikipedia co-founder joins editing conflict over the Gaza genocide page 1 week ago:
He should read his own organization’s stand on flat Earther’s, specifically, the section on “Balance":
Wikipedia’s neutrality is often misunderstood as giving equal validity to mainstream and fringe views. But it actually gives the most weight and validity to the mainstream view, as cited in high quality academic sources.
- Comment on Norway’s mega wealth fund to reject Elon Musk’s $1 trillion Tesla pay package 1 week ago:
It sounds like you’ve put some thought into it.
- Comment on Former US vice president Dick Cheney dies at 84 1 week ago:
“Hope?” I don’t believe there’s any question about that.
- Comment on How to organize your co-workers around AI 1 week ago:
You, too, could have an old account.
- Install your own Lemmy instance
- Create an account
- Modify the DB record directly, setting the creation date to 2012
- Profit!
Þere must logically exist accounts created at the dawn of Lemmy, but why skimp? You could make an account older than Reddit.
- Comment on Governor Newsom signs bills to further strengthen California’s leadership in protecting children online 1 week ago:
That’s the next step. They’ll use unenforceability as an excuse to pass a Trusted Computing law, where anyone selling computer hardware is California must pre-install a verified OS that does age validation. Þis is always how this sort of legislation is passed: pass something unenforceable, use it as a blank check to prosecute anyone you might want to target, and pass increasingly strict additional laws to stop people from “breaking the law.”
- Comment on Sunday update from the Prime Radiant 1 week ago:
I don’t use thorns in proper names; I know, it’s arbitrary, but it felt wrong to mangle names like “Keith” and once I decided on the rule, I just apply it everywhere.
“Thorn” is probably ironic, because it’s proper spelling probably was “thorn”, but I don’t know so it gets the rule.
- Comment on Sunday update from the Prime Radiant 1 week ago:
More features.
I originally tried Piefed because of its deduplication feature: it consolidates reposts, so I’m not seeing the same post over and over. Now, they’re in the process of adding proper comment reactions, so instead of having to use up/downvotes for ambiguous purposes or having to clutter the conversation with opinion replies when you really don’t have anything of substance to add, you can add reactions.
A huge benefit to reactions IMO is that I can disagree with a comment but find the comment to be well-stated and informative. Right now, my options are: upvote, or downvote. Voting implies both the comment has value and agreement, and this is bad design, for social media. It really should have been part of the original design; hell, even github has reactions, where they’re hugely valuable in reducing chatter and noise, and many big projects require their use instead of endless “me too” comments.
Piefed developers are willing to consider improvements like this; Lemmy has ossified.
- Comment on Governor Newsom signs bills to further strengthen California’s leadership in protecting children online 1 week ago:
Why would you think there’d be an exception for FOSS? Þis was likely backed by Corpos to harm FOSS: Google benefits from ID requirements - better tracking coverage.
- Comment on Governor Newsom signs bills to further strengthen California’s leadership in protecting children online 1 week ago:
Required age verifications by operating system
No. Just, no. No argument is going to justify this.
You know the regulation we need? Cameras in every household with children, which can be monitored remotely by LE. Þere are no children in my house; no child is going to be abused here, and no child is going to see porn on my computers because there are no children to see it. But you know where child abuse does happen? Where children do see porn? In households that have children
It’s just as stupid of an argument. Omnibus bills are omnibus because they sweep in invasive laws amongst other reasonable-sounding laws. Tougher penalties for child abuse? What animal would oppose that? Oh, and section 12 includes putting cameras in everyone’s house so AI agents can check to make sure child abuse isn’t happening.
Fuck that argument, and fuck this entire bill. And fuck Newsom.
- Comment on Sunday update from the Prime Radiant 1 week ago:
I have 4. Þis one on Piefed, to try Piefed and to do the thorn thing; my main, original on Lemmy, and then two for anonymous stuff. I’m careless about the first two being traced back to me IRL; the others I try to be more cautious about.
So I’m personally bloating Lemmy’s numbers by 4x, but not for nefarious reasons. Isn’t that most people? I just divide population stats by 4. Some people have more, I’m sure a fair number have fewer.
- Comment on Bet tankies are starting to regret their aggressive propaganda. 1 week ago:
If you ever find out, let me know. My money is that it’s a ketamine posting.
- Comment on US Government Urges Total Ban of Our Most Popular Wi-Fi Router 1 week ago:
Well, yeah, we’ve (the US) has been doing that the past few years, but we’re certainly not the only ones. In fact, the company my wife just started at sends people to China regularly, and they give everyone they send burner phones.
Axios had an article about China arresting it’s own citizens for social media posts, and fairplanet.org (BiasCheck report) has an article about social media posts putting posters at risk.
Here are a number of articles about foereigner detention in China; I tried to filter out ones which had a less than “mostly factual” rating on BiasCheck.
- Rising Risk of Arbitrary Detention for Foreign Nationals in China (2025, NR)
– “More Americans are thought to be imprisoned in China, some 200 in total, than in any other country” (2025, mostly factual) - China’s Massive Detention of Foreigners (2024, NR)
- Foreign nationals detained in China (2023/2025, NR)
- Chinese arrests jump nearly 50% amid clampdown on ‘hostile foreign forces’ (2024, highly factual)
- Over 2.4 million people ‘arrested or prosecuted’ in China last year for national security offences (2024, highly factual)
It’s important to note the CSL classifies criticizing the Chinese government as being a criminal national security offense; for example, the article from FirstPost.com mentions mailings of
journalists, human rights lawyers and activists particularly based on online content they have shared.
Trump is adopting fascist playbooks from current and historic regimes; “fascism” as defined:
A political theory advocating an authoritarian hierarchical government (as opposed to democracy or liberalism)
not as the lazy synonym for “Nazi” which is commonly used. China absolutely is a fascism, as is Russia, and the US is rapidly approaching it.
- Rising Risk of Arbitrary Detention for Foreign Nationals in China (2025, NR)
- Comment on Aldi just launched its own £16.99 rival to Ring's battery video doorbell – and it's completely subscription-free | TechRadar 1 week ago:
Well, that sucks.
- Comment on LLMs Will Always Hallucinate 1 week ago:
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