adespoton

@adespoton@lemmy.ca

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Canada backs Greenland’s sovereignty as U.S. talks of annexation⁩ ⁨⁨49⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago⁩:

  Why would Canada/Greenland want Greenland’s sovereignty when the US is threatening annexation? Surely they’re in better shape as a territory of Denmark?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨China says US broke international law by seizing oil tankers off Venezuela⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  You know what they’ve been doing to Philippine vessels, right?

  And then there’s the laws against compromising another country’s telephone system.

  And a whole bunch of other laws. Essentially, if the US has broken an international law in the past 5 years, China has broken it in a less aggressive manner as a response.

  And then of course there’s the illegal police stations in other countries and their treatment of Uyghurs at home.

  Thing is, China has been very careful to break international law in ways that other countries of power are also doing, mostly the US.

  That still doesn’t make it right.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Japan needs to possess nuclear weapons, prime minister's office source says⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  They’re probably right — historically, Japan has had a defense-only army and no nuclear arsenal, and depended on the US to defend it through treaties.

  The current US administration has demonstrated that those treaties are likely worthless today; Japan can’t depend on the US to come to its aid if another country attacks them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨at what point in life it's too late to go back to school?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Good/bad doesn’t have to do with age. Are you going to Harvard or a local college with subsidized night school classes? Are you wanting to learn a specific skill, get a degree, upskill for a career path, retrain for new work?

  I had a grandfather who ended up deployed in the army when he was planning to go off to college. When he got back, he took the jobs he could and continually took night school classes.

  My father got his masters degree when he was 46, which resulted in 20 years of increased pay at work.

  Me? I’m constantly learning, using free online courses. I don’t care about the degrees or certifications; anyone who knows me knows what I’m capable of.

  I knew a woman who got her PhD in Law at the age of 97.

  My workplace pays for appropriate certifications for its employees.

  There’s all sorts of ways to go to school.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘Invasive, deceptive, and unlawful’: Texas says your TV is tracking you illegally, and is suing to stop the dreaded Automatic Content Recognition⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s projection. Paxton doesn’t like who’s benefiting.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨An Apple fan says they lost '20 years of digital life' after using an Apple gift card⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m still missing your point.

  I’ve got all my apps I’ve downloaded backed up, at least for macOS. iOS… easier to grab the older ones off a pirate repository once Apple stops listing them.

  Are you trying to say that everyone should be running Debian Stable without non-free on commodity x86 or RISC-V hardware with only open source hardware gerbers and no proprietary chips?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨An Apple fan says they lost '20 years of digital life' after using an Apple gift card⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Apple is the only provider of Apple IDs.

  Other yhan that, I’m not sure what gave you the impression I’m dependent on a single provider?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨An Apple fan says they lost '20 years of digital life' after using an Apple gift card⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve been an Apple customer for 35 years. Had an Apple account as long as Apple has had such things. A few years ago (specifically, when Apple started retiring 32-bit apps from the App Store) I saw where Apple was going and created a dedicated account for my Apple ID that’s separate from the one I use for my contact for Apple services.

  If Apple locked me out of my account today, I’d lose access to 14 years of app purchases on that account. That’s about it? And at some point I started using an alternative ID for some of my purchases, so I’d only lose access to some of them. And of course, I now keep copies of everything backed up, since they could vanish from Apple’s servers at any time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it a bad idea to learn Russian because of the war?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Learn Ukrainian first maybe, and then learn Russian? It may be easier to learn if you already know Ukrainian, too.

  Of course, if you already know Ukrainian, why not learn Russian too?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why make 250GB m.2 disks instead of 1TB⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I got a miniPC 5 years ago that had a 128GB SSD in it that I used like that. When I went to get a second one last year, the same price point came with 1TB. I got it and swapped out the storage and stuck it in an external case.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the longest, hardest fantasy rpg out there?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  For it’s time, possibly… but I’ve played through it. There are others from slightly later that have so many possible endings and characters that I never felt like I fully completed them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨US could ask tourists for five-year social media history before entry⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I wonder what they’d do with me… I have no social media presence in my own name besides a basic LinkedIn profile. Would they insist I’m hiding something and refuse me entry? Conflate me with other people of the same name who have a social media presence?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why don't compasses have just two Cardinal directions (North, East, -North, -East)?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Plus or minus?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why don't compasses have just two Cardinal directions (North, East, -North, -East)?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Why not?

  Because what happens when your referent changes? Which direction is Mars from Earth? We obviously need a single navigational system that works anywhere in the universe.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Whats a good and proper alternative google message thats clean but better with privacy? - for texting⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Why? If they were already using Signal, they weren’t about to stop using it when it dropped SMS. If they weren’t using it… any encryption was window dressing anyway.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Whats a good and proper alternative google message thats clean but better with privacy? - for texting⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  What they found though was that people were just using it for SMS, not realizing that this meant it was insecure. People kept choosing convenience over security. Removing that support was well messaged almost a year before it was done; that’s the slowest rug pull I’ve ever seen.

  Locking it to phone numbers? THAT was an untrustworthy move. But removing SMS meant that people could no longer pretend to be secure when they really weren’t.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Russian ambassador slams EU frozen assets plan for Ukraine⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If he wasn’t slamming it, I’d be concerned for his health.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Whats a good and proper alternative google message thats clean but better with privacy? - for texting⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  RCS requires server-side processing, so it requires the org providing it to be large enough to be able to peer with the other orgs providing it and the telcos routing it.

  And the encryption isn’t part of the core RCS soec that’s compatible between providers.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Whats a good and proper alternative google message thats clean but better with privacy? - for texting⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Why would Signal removing support for an insecure messaging platform make you trust them a lot less? They were pretty clear about why it was done and gave plenty of warning.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If the US was partitioned, what new states would you want to appear?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s currently PA; the abbreviation will be one of the first changes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it even feasebal to find 12 people who have not been screwed over by insurance for the Luigi trial?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Here’s a question: how many people making more than $200,000/year or who are independently wealthy actually serve on a jury?

  I ask this because every jury pool I’ve been in was made up of working class people. Those too poor don’t vote and so aren’t on their lists, and those too rich always seem to have acceptable reasons to be excused, if they’re ever pooled in the first place.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How much money's out there?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  And, of course, there’s inflation. The value of something is a perceived thing, but the actual dollar value attached to that perceived value always tends to increase, except when an economy collapses. Inflation is caused by a government pretending things have more value than they actually do and pocketing the difference.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Alex Schapiro Reverse Engineered a Billion-Dollar Legal AI Tool and Found 100k+ Confidential Files⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Superfluous “a”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why does no one in the bible have a last name?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Abrahamic people generally did name tracking based on heritage; Hebrew used “bar” and Arabic uses “ibn” or “bin”. So the apostle Peter was called Peter by his friends, but was Shimon bar Jonah legally… unless there was another Shimon whose father’s name was Jonah, at which point they’d tag on another “bar” up the patriarchal lineage until their names differed.

  So if you wanted to know which Jesus/Jeshu/Joshua was Jesus the Christ, you go to the gospel of Matthew, where the first 16 verses are actually Jesus’ complete “last name”.

  And Abrahamic cultures aren’t the only ones who do this. Celtic cultures do it too; MacDonald means “son of Donald” and Scottish clans can “mac” their way back quite a ways.

  And in Ireland, you have Mc and O — Mc means “son of” and “O” essentially means you are a landholder on that person’s land, with O’ being short for “of”.

  Then you’ve got Norse names which are a bit looser; we have Eric the Red (he had red hair), but then we have Lief, Eric’s son who was identified by the fame of his father.

  Then you’ve have English lat names that describe the person’s occupation, like baker, chandler (makes candles), smith, etc. This was taken from German, which used a similar descriptor.

  In the bible, only key people have their “last name” listed; in most situations it didn’t matter, and you’ll see people referred to by either their given name or their nickname interchangeably.

  And Greek and Roman people tended to be named after the town they were born in — and since Paul was a Roman citizen, his official name was “Saul of Tarsus”. Of course, there were likely many Sauls in Tarsus, so he would have also gone by his occupation (tentmaker) and only reverted to “son of” to differentiate him from other Sauls of Tarsus who were tentmakers.

  Where does this leave women?

  In all those cultures, they were property of their father or husband, so didn’t have their own last name — for the exceptions (widows etc), they’d use the existing naming strategy the men used.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Porsche Cars in Russia Shut Down After Satellite System Failure⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s the question, isn’t it?

  Can you actually buy a car in 2025?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Porsche Cars in Russia Shut Down After Satellite System Failure⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  One way to tell: disable the cellular modem in your car and see if it still operates.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why are so many after-shave lotion perfumed ?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This is the answer.

  The more insidious bit?

  Most manufacturers don’t actually know what’s in the masking fragrance, because they buy it from a third party who has no legal requirement to list the ingredients.

  So even “unscented” products have this stuff in them that’s a mixture of perfume and preservative, the contents of which are a trade secret. There’s very few soap, deodorant and aftershave suppliers who actually know all the chemical contents of their products, and even fewer who are willing to share that information with the customer.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Would it be weird of me to send friend requests to old friends I knew in school 15 years ago?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Depends… do you consider friend requests weird?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Windows drive letters are not limited to A-Z⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Now I’m imagining someone making 💩: their default boot drive.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Corbyn's new left-wing party opts for collective leadership⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Personally, I think the Romans were on to something with the triumvirate model backed by a committee of members.

  Of course, we all know how that ended, but it seemed to work well up until the betrayal.