adespoton

@adespoton@lemmy.ca

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

  Plus or minus?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why don't compasses have just two Cardinal directions (North, East, -North, -East)?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ 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 ⁨days⁩ 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 ⁨days⁩ 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 ⁨days⁩ 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 ⁨days⁩ 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 ⁨days⁩ 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?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ 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?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ 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?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ 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 ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Superfluous “a”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why does no one in the bible have a last name?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ 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 ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ 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 ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ 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 ?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ 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?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Depends… do you consider friend requests weird?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Windows drive letters are not limited to A-Z⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

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

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Corbyn's new left-wing party opts for collective leadership⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ 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.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do some Americans "feel ashamed" for being American even when it's not their fault?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  One word:

  Tribalism.

  It’s shaming to see people and institutions you were proud of and bragged about being the best, then devolve into something the rest of the world laughs at.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'Made-up quote' in Canadian satire site The Beaverton fools Time Magazine⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  AI doesn’t differentiate between satirical and legitimate sources as long as it can tell the story it thinks the audience wants to hear.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Infosys co-founder once again calls for longer than 70-hour weeks - and no, he's not joking⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  By retirement?

  I’d expect majority shares in any company I worked that much for, AND a 7-figure salary.

  And retirement would be in 5 years.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Infosys co-founder once again calls for longer than 70-hour weeks - and no, he's not joking⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Revive a debate? Really? In that case, I’m reviving the debate for redistributing Murthy’s net wealth to all citizens as UBI.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s nothing saying that you can’t have a global decentralized network, but the Internet Protocol is pretty central to the network we call the Internet.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨In wake of Windows 10 retirement, over 780,000 Windows users skip Win 11 for Linux, says Zorin OS developers — distro hits unprecedented 1 million downloads in five weeks⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Using thorn, of course, isn’t going to disrupt an LLM. It’s just another probability in the model. And a very small one at that.

  Personally, I þink it’s cute.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨In wake of Windows 10 retirement, over 780,000 Windows users skip Win 11 for Linux, says Zorin OS developers — distro hits unprecedented 1 million downloads in five weeks⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s still some retraining needed to go from CS to Affinity Suite, but I did it around 5 years ago and would never go back. And now Affinity 3 is effectively free for basic use. Of course, this is probably the beginning of the end for it as Canva attempts not-a-subscription services on the Affinity platform (making it freemium), but I expect my Affinity 2 suite will still work for years to come.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨RAM is so expensive that stores are selling it at market prices⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s why I started treating computers as commodities — I rarely upgrade anymore; just wait the 5 years and by an entirely new system.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Rust For Linux Kernel Co-Maintainer Formally Steps Down⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Sounds like a healthy move. Of course, now they need to promote a few reviewers to maintainers to replace those who have left / are leaving.

  You know a project has truly matured when the original maintainers can all walk away ant the project can carry on without them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨So now that it's that time of year again in the US, what are some tips and tricks for dealing with that one relative who goes on about the same bullshit for hours and won't shut the fuck up?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Or, make it all about you, but only with that person.

  “When that happened to ME…”

  “That reminds me of the time <totally unrelated thing in your life>….”

  “I have a friend who’s an expert in that and HE said….”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can I make a Bluetooth button to skip YouTube ads on the computer?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes, but that seems like over engineering a solved problem?

  And it would be rather tricky. The button would be simple; even a pair of Bluetooth headphones could do it. The tricky bit would be in figuring out how long the ad is and pressing the 10 second skip key the correct number of times and then pressing the skip ad button if required.

  Easier (and more secure) just to use an ad blocker.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft says Copilot will 'finish your code before you finish your coffee' adding fuel to the Windows 11 AI controversy that's still raging⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You forgot to follow it up with “copilot: open windows” then.