sxan

@sxan@midwest.social

       🅸 🅰🅼 🆃🅷🅴 🅻🅰🆆. 
 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍 𝖋𝖊𝖆𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖗𝖘𝖙𝖔𝖓𝖊𝖍𝖆𝖚𝖌𝖍 

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Looking for DLNA Renderer software⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Do any of you know another solution to stream audio from my phone to my server

  I use snapcast throughout my house and devices, but there’s no snap_server_ for Android.

  I’ve been meaning to try roc, for which there is an Android client that will both play and serve.

  Sonobus also claims to be many:many; I haven’t tried it either and it doesn’t look particularly active.

  I don’t use UPnP or DLNA because of the security issues, so I can’t offer a suggestion about that. I thought DLNA was a pull oriented protocol - like, to send music from your phone you’d have to select and play on your computer with a DLNA client. Can you push media with DLNA?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨My mouth suffers for the noms⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  What is that? A squirrel? Chipmunk?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What would remain for a future species if humans were to vanish tomorrow?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Rust needs to be reduced back to ore, using a reactive, usually coke. Coke is purified coal. Coal is a fossil fuel. You can do it with charcoal, which can be made by burning wood, so it’s possible without coal, just not as efficient. This assumes you can gather the rust - it tends to break down and disperse into the environment, but if you broke up concrete to get at rusted rebar and could collect the rust, you could reduce it with charcoal.

  Again, it’s a matter of scale. We mine iron and deposits because we can get large amounts in seams. If you’re trying to harvest rust and reduced it with charcoal, you’re producing iron on the scale of making knives and swords, not cars, or combine harvesters, or more rebar.

  It’s a chicken-egg problem. We have been able to come as far as a have because oil, coal, and iron were just laying around on the surface, in huge quantities. Those are gone, and now you need the big tools first to get at the reserves that are left.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What would remain for a future species if humans were to vanish tomorrow?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Any worked iron product rusts. If we’re talking about evolutionary time scales, any exposed metal - which is most of it - is going to be unusable within thousands of years, and even rebar embedded in concrete will be gone in millions. Heck, our concrete isn’t even as good as the Romans’, and even that’s going to break down in thousands of years.

  We’ve stripped the raw, surface, easily accessible stuff and worked it into things that will degrade. There may be some scavenge, but nothing that can be gathered in any quantity to build an industrial society on. At best, future societies will be like medieval Japan, where iron is rare and steel precious and hoarded, only unlike Japan, there won’t be a future where they can import huge quantities of the stuff from China or Australia, because getting to the deposits now requires an industry and advanced mining equipment… which is all made out of iron they won’t have.

  Gold will be interesting. Again, it’s not just laying around everywhere just under the surface. Instead, there will be isolated pockets of huge piles of the stuff. Gold doesn’t degrade, but it’s all hoarded. There’s a bunch in electronics, but in tiny, tiny amounts in each device; trying to salvage that is really hard, and yields trace amounts. No more nuggets the size of your thumb, or your fist. If a future civilization could build a global economy, then gold wouldn’t be an issue. Uranium will be hard, as will platinum, and platinum is a useful, but consumable, catalyst, and rare even today it’ll be almost unheard of in a perpetually pre-industrial post-apocalypse.

  Fossil fuels are going to be the big issue, though. What’s left will simply be inaccessible, and without fossil fuels you don’t have plastics, industry, fertilizers at scale, global transportation, or the ability to work whatever metal you can find, at any scale.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨At some point in history, there must have been more nuclear warheads than there were people living in Greenland⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Thank you. I don’t know that I ever knew that statistic about Greenland’s population. The nuke statistic tossed around - that I always heard - was something like “there are enough nukes to blow up the world a million times,” with is a silly, sloppy metric that doesn’t day anything about the actual warhead count. Are those Tsar Bombas, or Fat Man? How many megatons are required to “blow up the world” once? But that graph is interesting; it’s even more interesting that there population of Greenland and the number of (viable) warheads on the planet have been so relatively close.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"Quell your rage" must be lesson 1 in how to internet⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean, if that’s how you get your rocks off, you do you. Personally, I’ve never found vitriol to be in any way healthy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What would remain for a future species if humans were to vanish tomorrow?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  The biggest challenge for future intelligent species, and the reason why I know we’re the first technological ones, is that we’ve mined all of the easily accessible metals and all of the easily accessible fossil fuels. Any intelligence arriving after us is going to have to make a civilization without iron, precious metals, oil, or coal. Unless you get into some sci-fi bio-engineering scenario where they’re growing high tech, they’re doomed to being stuck in the stone age. It’s going to be hard for them to escape the planet, defend it from asteroids, deal with super-volcanoes, build advanced calculating devices… all of the stuff we would already find challenging even with all the resources we have.

  Millions of years are not enough to replenish the fossil fuels, and the sun is going to start expanding before enough life lives and dies to produce any useful amount of biomass. Before then, more metals will become accessible, in places, but good luck working it at industrial levels without fossil fuels.

  I’m not saying it’s impossible, but we’ve given a severe handicap to advancing beyond a rudimentary agrarian society for any successor species; even if it’s our own descendants re-arrising from a post-apocalyptic environmental catastrophe.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"Quell your rage" must be lesson 1 in how to internet⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  “You’re not obligated to respond”, combined with “nobody else cares about your quarrel but you and that idiot” are the two maxims that make my social media experience better. Sometimes I feel like arguing, but if I think someone’s arguing in bad faith, I just block 'em.

  Life’s too short to spend time interacting with morons.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨At some point in history, there must have been more nuclear warheads than there were people living in Greenland⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  But why would you have thought that? There have always (for recorded history values of “always”) been people in Greenland; there have only relatively recently been nuclear warheads. So - regardless of truth - why would you have assumed that there must have at some point been more warheads in the world than people in Greenland? That doesn’t seem like an obvious assumption, to me. What made that occur to you?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Its so easy for humans to die from a random accident, but very hard to deliberately end their own lives reliably and painlessly.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s hope, though. Although stalled by the current civil liberties regression phase we’re going through in the States, and the rise of fascism globally, in some States and some countries assisted suicide is legal. There’s a wonderful product called the Sarco Pod, developed by an Australian, that performs euthanasia by nitrogen, which is one of the best methods of suicide. It’s not currently widely available, but hopefully services offering it will start popping up. We have to get through this rough patch, first.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is possible to learn to swim, just by reading a lot about it?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Most of the people who get into trouble in the water and need to be rescued already know how to swim. My point wasn’t that they should be afraid of swimming, it was book learning isn’t going to help, and what they read in a book is going to be the first thing to go if they do panic. Which is likely what will happen if they read a book thinking they’re learning to swim and then go try it.

  Go to a pool. Get in the shallow end and practice putting your face under water. That’ll be far more useful than reading about how to do a breast stroke.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is possible to learn to swim, just by reading a lot about it?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, yeah. But they could also skip the books; the practice will be much more useful.

  You can’t watch your form in a mirror, in a pool. Well, Elon and Bezos probably can, but most normal people can’t. So you can’t tell how you’re doing, if you’re trying to actually swim well. Having an instructor, or even a friend who knows a little about swimming would even be better than any amount of book reading.

  I’m all for book learning, but I doubt many people learned to ride a bicycle by reading a how-to first.

  If they’re going to spend time trying to learn to swim, that time is better spent in a pool, than reading about it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Keeping track of different targets in terminal⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I also have the prompt set to the host name. I’ve never understood why people included their usernames; I don’t log in to more than one account on each machine.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is possible to learn to swim, just by reading a lot about it?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Based on some real-world knowledge, no.

  For example, there’s this class that military helicopter pilots take as part of training for surviving water landings. They have the body of a helicopter which can be dropped into a big swimming pool. The pilots strap in, they’re dropped into the pool, and they have to unbuckled and exit the helicopter.

  So many people fail this, repeatedly. Scuba divers are in the pool just to extract the people who can’t make it out. The issue is that when you panic, you tend to stop thinking rationally; it’s why swimmer lifesaving is so dangerous - a panicking swimmer will do anything to save themselves, including grabbing the lifesaver and trying to climb on top of them, which can result in both people drowning. In the pilot case, people panic and can’t unbuckle themselves, straining against the restraints to get out, until they have to be rescued. Even if they start well, trying to unbuckle, if they fumble at the restraints, they can panic and then they stop trying to unbuckle. Even though the helicopter is only a cockpit and a bay with big van-style doors, people panic and get lost trying to get out; they just can’t find the bay doors, and have to be rescued. For these night tests, you can’t see which was is up, and people panic and forget to take time to orient, and swim toward the bottom of the pool, and have to be rescued.

  All of the theory in the world can’t protect you from panic; the only thing that helps is experience. You do it enough that you get used to it and have confidence that keeps the panic at bay.

  Studying isn’t enough, because the first thing that goes when you panic is your ability to think rationally, and the OMG way to prevent panic is confidence, and that’s developed through experience. It’s why teaching always includes homework: you have to exercise the knowledge for it to become second nature.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What if the moon turned into a black hole?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s XKCD. A scientist who makes a comic strips, and this series is him answering questions, most of which are highly hypothetical, submitted by his readers.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The System Wayfinder - (looking for feedback)⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  As long as it isn’t github.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The System Wayfinder - (looking for feedback)⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Publish that puppy. It can’t hurt.

  Don’t do it in github, though. Sourcehut is better; or if you crave that cluttered, JS-heavy feel, Gitlab.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨billionaires are a cancer on society [literally]⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Agent Smith wasn’t wrong. Most villains have a weak motivation; Smith’s was strong, because it is true.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨billionaires are a cancer on society [literally]⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Do you think I’m promoting voluntary extinction? I don’t think anyone has to do that - not only would it not make a dent in the race to doomsday, but it’s unnecessary since we’ve probably already passed the point at which we’re capable of halting the runaway ecological collapse we’ve engineered - even if there was any indication of willingness on the part of the biggest polluters to draw down, which there isn’t.

  What I find funny is those people who are still making more people, as if they’re not dooming them to live through a true apocalypse: global societal and ecological collapse, technological regression, famine, and the resurgence of self-perpetuating oligarchies. A dark ages, but one we’ll never come out of.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨billionaires are a cancer on society [literally]⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Yup! Of the things we could be, we’re most like a virus, but parasite might work. Most parasites don’t kill their hosts, and if they do it’s a secondary action - it usually isn’t the parasite itself that kills the host, but some virus or bacteria the parasite transmits. There are some really nasty parasitic worms that will kill you, or make you wish you were dead.

  We’re definitely not symbiotic, like most macro and many micro organisms are.

  If we consider the the ecosystem as the host, we’re killing it; and individually, we’re micro-sized to the Earth, so I think virus is the most accurate model.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The System Wayfinder - (looking for feedback)⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Maybe! How is it better than keeping a README?

  If it’s just a command, I put it in a readme. If it’s a series of commands, I put it in a shell script. What would your tool bring to the party, and if I’m going to turn to a third party solution, why shouldn’t I use Salt or Puppet instead?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨billionaires are a cancer on society [literally]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The same applies to the human race.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are our societal problems being caused because modern technology allows people to be old for longer?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  You only see it that way because of your age. Old people have mostly aged out of those behaviors, but believe me, people have been doing all of those things you list for as long as the technology to do them has.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Conspiracy theorist always claim pyramid are build by aliens or giants, but then it could be just Sphinx covering their poop.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  New headcanon.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨So long as it's not poisonous, there really is an audience for any taste.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  People seem to love grapefruit. I can’t stand it; that bitterness tastes like vomit.

  I love coffee, but despite the bitterness, not because of it. I go to lengths to brew coffee with minimum bitterness, and then usually add milk just to flatten out the remaining bitterness. I can’t tell it I just have oversensitive bitterness receptors, or what, but your comment about high IBU IPAs struck home. Can’t stand those beers, myself.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If nudity was more widely accepted, tattoos would be more popular.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Minneapolis.

  Most of Canada live in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver BC; Minneapolis is father north than where the bulk of the population of Canada lives.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If nudity was more widely accepted, tattoos would be more popular.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The (US) city I live in is farther North than something like 70% of the population of your country!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If nudity was more widely accepted, tattoos would be more popular.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Mandatory nudity probably would improve general public health… for a while. Eventually, though, laziness would win and then we’d all be sorry.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google Drive alternative?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Have you ever used OwnCloud, before the fork?

  I hated administrating OwnCloud, and that’s kept me away from NextCloud. OwnCloud was a big, resource hogging, hot mess; did NextCloud do a huge refactor and clean it up?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It used to be just weird Christians, but now everyone's pretty much on board with burning Harry Potter books.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  If wishes were horses, beggers would ride.

  One of this things is within your power; the other, isn’t.

  That said, burning her books only benefits her. If you want you hurt her, find someone who wants to buy and read them, and give them yours.