merc
@merc@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on Husband needs proof news is censored 3 days ago:
What exactly do you mean by “news is censored”? Are you saying that certain stories aren’t getting the kinds of traction you think they should be getting? Or, are you saying that major events are not being covered at all because the government is threatening news organizations that cover them?
- Comment on 90s band alignment chart 4 days ago:
While there’s a lot of disagreement on where bands belong, I think Rage Against the Machine as the pinnacle of Angry Music is one we can all agree with.
- Comment on 90s band alignment chart 4 days ago:
I’m not sure Cake qualifies.
- Comment on The basics of the Fediverse. Facebook, Twitter, Tiktok, Reddit, ... vs the Fediverse. What do you think? 6 days ago:
It needs a lot more people and lines connecting to the centralize services, like 6+. You have 14 dudes in the fediverse, you should have a similar number of dudes in the traditional centralized social media things. You need to make it clear that every connection between two people goes through that central server. With only 3 or 4 it looks like it’s some kind of small community there, like you’re just saying “communities exist on Facebook” rather than “on Facebook everybody connects to one central Facebook service”. It would also be good to draw a black line around the edge of the bubble to indicate it’s a walled garden rather than an open system.
For the Fediverse example, it would be good to have a slightly darker shaded bubble with people around their local fediverse instance. That would indicate that there are local communities, but that they can still communicate with all the other communities. And, maybe show that people can be part of different communities, show one person connected both to a mastodon instance and a Lemmy instance.
- Comment on 3's grip looks the most comfy 1 week ago:
These days I use a pen maybe once a month. I’ve probably used some of these, I vaguely recognize 1 and 7. I use pens so rarely that I don’t really have a preference. I guess if one of them is best for avoiding dried-up ink, that’s the one?
It can’t just be me, right? I don’t use pencils either. I use keyboards, either virtual or physical. Other people must also do virtually all their writing electronically.
To me this is like choosing your favourite buggy whip.
- Comment on Internet forums are disappearing because now everything is Reddit and Discord. And that's worrying. 1 week ago:
I believe this is what they call “preaching to the choir”.
- Comment on frenly warnin 2 weeks ago:
I get what you’re saying, but it’s still just really clunky writing.
Like, you want to include children for the “think of the children!” aspect, then just add “and our children” to the existing clause. There’s no need for a whole secondary clause about the future of the children when that’s already covered by the clause about the existence of our people.
It’s not that I expect Nazi writing to be good. It’s just that someone has to have said it better than this, even just accidentally, and yet this version is the one that Nazis have decided to immortalize.
If this version was the winner, what were the early drafts like?
- Comment on frenly warnin 2 weeks ago:
It’s funny because it’s hardly an inspiring or memorable 14 word sentence. It’s just awkward and clunky.
Like, why “secure”? Why not “safeguard” or “defend”? IMO those are stronger, more emotionally resonant words.
And why “existence”? Why not something stronger like “survival” or something more than survival like “prosperity”?
And just “a future” for white children? Not “a glorious future” or “a triumphant future”?
And, why “white children”? Not the white race?
Also, how is “a future for white children” distinct from “the existence of our people”? Are white children distinct from “our people”?
I could get it if it were framed as: we must defend our survival now so that our children can prosper. In that case you’re saying that the present might be tough but the future will be bright. But they’re not painting the future as bright, just “a future”, which is really the same as an “existence” so it’s basically saying “Our people must survive and so must our children, who are also our people, but smaller.”
Like, they memorized the first draft of some dumb saying and revere it as “the 14 words”, but it’s just badly written, nevermind all the racism.
- Comment on Having a baby? Use this one weird trick! 3 weeks ago:
Birthright citizenship is an absolutely stupid idea.
It’s no more stupid than citizenship by descent. Why should someone get citizenship just because of the citizenship of their parents? Shouldn’t they have to live in the country? Shouldn’t they speak the language? Shouldn’t they go through the country’s school system?
Europe’s combination of freedom of movement and only Jus Sanguinis has resulted in a situation where there are lots of people with citizenship to a place they’ve never lived, and no citizenship to the place they’ve lived their entire lives.
Really though, how citizenship should be awarded depends on if it’s an obligation or an opportunity. If a country is at war and drafting all citizens of a certain age, citizenship is an obligation the state puts on its citizens. If a country is at peace and provides a social safety net to all citizens, citizenship is an opportunity for its citizens. If the world were fair, people would be able to choose whether or not they wanted citizenship when they reached adulthood. It shouldn’t be something that happened automatically to children based either on who their parents were or on where their parents were born.
- Comment on Having a baby? Use this one weird trick! 3 weeks ago:
They just elected Claudia Sheinbaum, who is seen as being extremely close to the outgoing president AMLO. Some people were suggesting that she was so close to him that it was really his way of getting another term as president, similar to how Putin stepped down as president of Russia to become PM while Dmitry Medvedev became president in name only.
How true is that? It’s hard to say. My guess is that a lot of it is sexism, thinking that a woman can’t think for herself and a woman president will turn to someone else for the important decisions.
But, it’s true that under AMLO, there was a lot of democratic backsliding in Mexico. OTOH, Mexico has been dominated by PAN and PRI for decades. In fact, PRI won 14 elections in a row between 1928 and 1994. It wasn’t until Vincente Fox in 2000 that PAN was even a factor. So, there’s a lot of the power structures in Mexico geared towards supporting PRI and PAN.
They were probably undermining a lot of the things AMLO wanted to accomplish. If he had followed all the rules and norms he might not have been able to accomplish anything because the establishment would have blocked everything he tried to do. That doesn’t excuse his rule and law breaking, but it does contextualize it.We’ll see what happens with Sheinbaum. I, for one, am fucking thrilled that Mexico’s president has a PhD in energy engineering. The fact she’s a woman is also historical, but to me the doctorate is more important.
- Comment on Having a baby? Use this one weird trick! 3 weeks ago:
It’s pretty telling about how much Americans know about other countries that the assumption is that Jus Soli is the norm.
- Comment on The Simple Act of Buying a Graphics Card Is the Defining Misery of PC Gaming in 2025 3 weeks ago:
Depending on what happens with GPUs for datacenters, external GPUs might be so rare that nobody does it anymore.
My impression right now is that for nVidia gamer cards are an afterthought now. Millions of gamers can’t compete with every company in Silicon Valley building entire datacenters stacked with as many “GPUs” as they can find.
AMD isn’t the main choice for datacenter CPUs or GPUs. Maybe for them, gamers will be a focus, and there are some real advantages with APUs. For example, you’re not stuck with one particular amount of GPU RAM and a different amount of CPU RAM. Because you’re not multitasking as much when gaming, you need less CPU RAM, so you can dedicate more RAM to games and less to other apps. So, you can have the best of both worlds: tons of system RAM when you’re browsing websites and have a thousand tabs open, then start a game and you have gobs of RAM dedicated to the game.
It’s probably also more efficient to have one enormous cooler for a combined GPU and CPU vs. a GPU with one set of heatsinks and fans and a separate CPU heatsink and fan.
External GPUs are also a pain in the ass to manage. They’re getting bigger and heavier, and they take up more and more space in your case. Not to mention the problems their power draw is causing.
If I could get equivalent system performance with an APU vs. a combined CPU and GPU, I’d probably go for it, even with the upgradeability concerns. OTOH, soldered-in RAM is not appealing because I’ve upgraded my RAM more often than other components on my PCs, and having to buy a whole new motherboard to get a RAM upgrade is not appealing.
- Comment on The Simple Act of Buying a Graphics Card Is the Defining Misery of PC Gaming in 2025 3 weeks ago:
The Crypto to AI transition was brutal. Just as demand for GPUs was coming down because people were starting to use ASICs to mine Bitcoin, along comes AI to drive up non-gaming demand again.
The only good news is that eventually when the AI bubble pops there will be massive R&D and manufacturing geared towards producing GPUs. Unless something else comes along… But really, I can’t see that happening because the AI bubble is so immense and is such an enormous part of the entire world’s economy.
- Comment on Fucking leeches 3 weeks ago:
It’s also not capitalism.
Adam Smith is seen as the person most responsible for coming up with the concept of capitalism, and he hated landlords.
“Landlords’ right has its origin in robbery. The landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for the natural produce of the earth.”
More details about what he thought of rent in his book An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.
Adam Smith imagined a world with well-regulated capitalism. In that world, a capitalist might invest in a factory to make a widget. They’d take raw materials, use capital (including labour) and end up with a product that people would want to buy. That capitalist would always have to stay on their toes because if they got lazy, another capitalist could undercut them by using their capital better, to either undercut the widget’s price, or to sell it more cheaply. This competition was key, as well as the idea of the capitalist putting in work to continuously improve their processes. A capitalist who didn’t continually improve their processes would lose to their competitors, see their widget sales drop to zero, and go out of business.
In Adam Smith’s time, the alternative to capitalism was feudalism, where a landlord owned a huge estate, had serfs working on that estate, and simply collected a cut of everything the serfs produced as rent. In that scenario, the landlord had to do almost no work. It was the farmers on their estate who did the work. The landlord just owned the land and charged rent. Originally, serfs were even tied to the land, so they weren’t allowed to leave to work elsewhere, and their children were bound to the same land. But, even once that changed, there was still good farmland. The landlord could lower the rent until it was worth it for a farmer to work the land. The key thing is that the landlord didn’t have to do anything at all, just own the land and charge rent for its use.
I think the reason that people are so pissed off with capitalism these days is that what we’re really seeing is a neo-Feudalism, or what Yanis Varoufakis calls technofeudalism.
Think of YouTube. A person puts tons of time and money into making a video, they upload it to the only viable video platform for user-made video, YouTube. YouTube hosts the video, then charges a big cut of any advertising revenue the video generates, basically charging rent for merely being the “land” on which the video lives. In a proper capitalist world, there would be plenty of sites to host videos, plenty of ad companies competing to buy ad spots for a video, etc. But, YouTube is a monopoly, and internet advertising is a duopoly between Google and Facebook. They mostly don’t even compete anymore, each has their own area of the Internet they control and so they’re a local monopoly. This allows them to behave like feudal lords rather than capitalists. There’s no need for them to innovate, no need for them to compete, they just own the land and charge rent. Same with Apple and their app store. There are no other app stores permitted on iPhones, so Apple can charge an outrageous 30%.
It goes well beyond tech though. Say you’re a Canadian and you want to avoid American products, but you love your carbonated beverages. You could buy Coke, but that’s American. Pepsi? That’s American. Royal Crown cola? Sure sounds like it might be Canadian, or British, but no, it’s American. Just look at the chain of mergers for its parent company: “Formed in July 2018, with the merger of Keurig Green Mountain and Dr Pepper Snapple Group (formerly Dr. Pepper/7up Inc.), Keurig Dr Pepper offers over 125 hot and cold beverages.” Sure, if you look you can find specialty things like Jarritos, but the huge brands just dominate the shelves.
Capitalists hate capitalism, they want to be feudal lords, and since the time of Reagan / Thatcher / Mulroney / etc. competition hasn’t been properly regulated, allowing all the capitalists to merge into enormous companies that no longer have to compete, and can instead act as feudal lords extracting rent.
- Comment on Gaming chat platform Discord in early talks with banks about public listing 3 weeks ago:
If you say so.
- Comment on Gaming chat platform Discord in early talks with banks about public listing 4 weeks ago:
In the past this wasn’t true, but it’s definitely true for new tech products.
There are 2 reasons for that, IMO.
- Tech investors expect year after year, decade after decade of serious growth
- Tech these days is not something you buy, it’s rarely even something you rent, it’s often free and paid for by shoving ads at you
That means that they can’t just land on a good product and stick with it. They have to keep changing it to try to get more engagement, more use, more growth.
- Comment on Gaming chat platform Discord in early talks with banks about public listing 4 weeks ago:
Why do you need all those things to be in one single app?
- Comment on What are some of the things someone permanently relocating away from the US should be aware of? 4 weeks ago:
I think there is, but it doesn’t apply universally. I think it was one of those things designed to catch the ultra-rich who were renouncing their citizenship to get lower taxes elsewhere, but it ends up catching a lot of people who are middle class.
- Comment on What are some of the things someone permanently relocating away from the US should be aware of? 4 weeks ago:
If you go somewhere where the main language isn’t English, you should make an effort to learn the local language. Yes, there are places like the Netherlands where virtually everybody speaks English well, but not putting in the effort means you’ll always be an outsider.
Things are smaller outside the US: vehicles, apartments, kitchens, refrigerators, etc. It can take a while to get used to not having the same space you’re used to. Also, some devices like clothes driers are rare.
Europeans take recycling seriously. In some places you have to pay to throw away garbage, while recycling is free. But, recycling is sometimes a real effort, like there’s not a “glass and plastics” box, you have to take the clear glass to one place, the brown glass to another, etc.
Tipping mostly doesn’t exist. That means that if you go to a restaurant you don’t normally have one assigned waiter. Whoever is free will help you, which tends to speed things up a lot. OTOH, since they’re not working for tips, the waitstaff don’t feel the need to fake a smile, pretend to be your friend, etc. Some Americans think that comes off as unfriendly.
Electricity is more expensive (part of the reason for the smaller appliances) so sometimes will completely unplug things that an American would just turn off (like a TV).
Businesses don’t have the same convenient hours as in the US. In some places, like Switzerland, they almost completely shut down on Sunday. 24 hour places are much more rare.
The European take on freedom of speech is different. You are simply not allowed to say certain things. Some things, like libel laws, are much more friendly to the person who is the target, rather than the “free speaker”.
Oh, and smoking is still much more common in Europe, and it can be pretty disgusting. In the US it has been largely eliminated from public spaces, and smokers are confined to small smoking areas. Even in private homes people will often smoke outdoors either to be considerate or because their landlord doesn’t allow smoking indoors. In Europe, smoking is still common indoors in many places, and… ugh.
- Comment on What are some of the things someone permanently relocating away from the US should be aware of? 4 weeks ago:
The US is one of only 2 (?) countries in the world that does citizenship-based taxation.
- Comment on What are some of the things someone permanently relocating away from the US should be aware of? 4 weeks ago:
Even if you plan to renounce your citizenship, that’s a long (and often expensive) process and you have to keep filing and paying taxes until it’s done.
- Comment on a strong beak, of course 4 weeks ago:
Hmm, I wonder how they named it? Maybe with a keyboard they weren’t sure was working?
- Comment on a strong beak, of course 4 weeks ago:
The only “asda” I know are the letters I type when I’m trying to make sure my keyboard works. (Sometimes “f” sneaks in there too.)
- Comment on a strong beak, of course 4 weeks ago:
I’ve always wondered how much alien life is out there that we’ve actually seen (or seen signs of) but not recognized because we’re blind to life that doesn’t seem earth-like.
- Comment on Why would America declaring cartels terrorist organizations be a problem for Mexico? 5 weeks ago:
Yes, my point is that they don’t have a political ideology.
Like, the IRA was bombing things because the goal was Irish independence. They wanted the UK out of Northern Ireland.
Al Qaeda was bombing things to get the US out of the middle east. They wanted no US troops on Arab soil.
Boko Haram wanted an area to be fully under Muslim law, with no western books or education.
That’s the normal definition of terrorism, a group that’s terrorizing the population in pursuit of a political aim of some kind. It isn’t normally considered terrorism if there’s no ideology involved, and it’s just in defence of a criminal enterprise.
In the case of the narcos, I don’t know of any political aim. I don’t think they have any particular ideology, other than “we want to keep making money selling drugs to Americans”. To a certain extent, I can see how they could be considered terrorists because they’re terrorizing the population, the courts and the government to get their way. But, in the past there has normally been a line drawn between a terrorist organization and a criminal organization.
- Comment on Why would America declaring cartels terrorist organizations be a problem for Mexico? 5 weeks ago:
Terrorist / Terrorism seems to be a magic word in US law and policy.
If a country has organized crime in their country it’s no big deal. If there are close ties between the rulers and the criminals, that’s unfortunate.
But, if the criminals are now labelled as terrorists, then you get to go on the state sponsors of terrorism list, which comes with all kinds of sanctions and restrictions.
If you look at so-called “terrorist” organizations, there’s almost always elements of “terrorist” activities, but also evidence of other random criminal activities, and often legitimate political activities too. Take Sinn Fein, the political arm of the IRA. Some of their funding came from fuel and drug smuggling. So, where you draw the line between a “terrorist” group and a criminal group is pretty arbitrary. I think most people would say that the Mexican cartels are primarily criminals though. While they do kill people in ways that are intended to send a message, the message is generally “don’t mess with our profits” rather than some political ideal.
Every country has some corruption, definitely including the US. So, what happens if a Mexican politician was accepting bribes from Narcos and passing legislation favourable to them? When does that become the state sponsoring terrorism?
Putting the “terrorist” label on Mexican cartels seems like a prelude to doing things that violate Mexico’s sovereignty. If the cartels are merely violent criminal organizations, it’s a problem for Mexico’s government. If they’re “terrorists” then the US can lob missiles into Mexico, because it has a long-standing policy of violating the sovereignty of countries that “harbor” (i.e. contain) terrorists.
- Comment on Google Chrome disables uBlock Origin for some in Manifest v3 rollout 5 weeks ago:
Firefox and the Chrome engine are open source projects. Anyone can modify the browser to enable ad-blocking in some form if a user is sufficiently determined.
Technically, sure. But, these are extremely complex software products, and it would be one hobbyist vs. an entire software division of a trillion dollar company who are determined to make sure you see ads.
- Comment on Google Chrome disables uBlock Origin for some in Manifest v3 rollout 5 weeks ago:
Unfortunately, there are only 3 companies developing browsers right now: Google, Apple and Mozilla.
Apple’s browsers are only available on Apple platforms. In fact, if you’re on iOS you have no choice, you have to use Safari. Even browsers labelled as “Chrome” or “Firefox” are actually Safari under the hood on iOS. But, on any non Apple platform, you can’t use Safari.
Google is an ad company, so they don’t want to allow ad blockers on their browser. So, it’s a matter of time before every kind of ad blocking is disabled for Chrome users.
Firefox is almost entirely funded by Google, so there’s a limit as to what they can do without the funding getting cut off. They seem to be trying to find a way forward without Google, but the result, if anything is as bad as Google if not worse:
“investing in privacy-respecting advertising to grow new revenue in the near term; developing trustworthy, open source AI to ensure technical and product relevance in the mid term;”
blog.mozilla.org/…/mozilla-leadership-growth-plan…
All these other browser people like are basically reskinned versions of Chrome or Firefox. They have a handful of people working on them. To actually develop a modern browser you need a big team. A modern browser basically has to be an OS capable of running everything from a 3d game engine, to a word processor, to a full featured debugger.
It looks like it’s only a matter of time before there will be 0 browsers capable of blocking ads, because the only two companies that make multi-platform browsers depend on ads for their revenue, and both of them will have enormous expenses because they’re obsessed with stupid projects like AI.
- Comment on France runs fusion reactor for record 22 minutes 1 month ago:
Sure, but it makes up for that by having an idiot proof design.
- Comment on Mexican President Threatens to Sue Google Over 'Gulf of America' Label on Maps. 1 month ago:
I’ve heard that in Germany it’s “Golf von Mexiko (Golf von Amerika)”. That’s really annoying. I can vaguely understand it having the parenthesized name in English. Say in 3 years some kid in England is doing a report about something in the US and the Gulf of America comes up. Maybe you’d want the kid to be able to find it on the map. But, maybe it’s fine if the kid has to look it up somewhere else, realize that’s the stupid name, then search for Gulf of Amerikkka.
But, it doesn’t make any sense to do that for other languages. Just like we don’t get Finland (Suomi) when searching for Finland, Finns shouldn’t get something like Meksikonlahti (Gulf of America). They aren’t going to be exposed to / hearing the Finnish translation of the English name, so it’s not helpful in any way to have that parenthesized version.