merc
@merc@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on What are some of the things someone permanently relocating away from the US should be aware of? 2 days 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? 2 days 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? 2 days 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? 2 days 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 5 days 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 5 days 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 5 days 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? 1 week 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? 1 week 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 1 week 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 1 week 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 week 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. 2 weeks 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.
- Comment on Bad UX is keeping the majority of people away from Lemmy 2 weeks ago:
Because you have to make a choice. If you go to a restaurant and say “I’d like a meal, please” they’ll make you choose one from the menu. It doesn’t matter to them which one you choose, you just have to choose.
In this case, some Lemmy instance needs to be the one where you sign in. Most of them probably don’t care if you choose them or not. But, if you want to use Lemmy, at some point you have to make a choice.
- Comment on Bad UX is keeping the majority of people away from Lemmy 2 weeks ago:
“Extremely” confusing?
Maybe to someone who has never once used email. But, even then, you could say “It’s like choosing a car, some look different, but they can all use the same roads.” If someone has never used a car, you could say “It’s like choosing a brand of underwear”. If they don’t use underwear, do we really want them here?
- Comment on Bad UX is keeping the majority of people away from Lemmy 2 weeks ago:
None of them really explained the user experience, and how different instances might affect it, let alone the existence of the local and global feeds and how your instance choice affects those
I almost never use the local feeds. Technically my instance choice does affect them, but I could switch to any other random Lemmy instance and the experience would be 99.99% the same for me.
To me it’s not forks vs. chopsticks, it’s someone looking at a fork with 3 tines instead of 4 and getting paralyzed not being able to decide between the two.
- Comment on Bad UX is keeping the majority of people away from Lemmy 2 weeks ago:
Everyone has heard of fire, water and grass, sure. Do they have any idea what that means in the Pokemon universe? I certainly hadn’t.
Not everyone is gonna immediately know what an instance is, or what it does, or what it’s there for
You know how you might use gmail and your friend might use outlook and you can just email no problem? Like that.
- Comment on Bad UX is keeping the majority of people away from Lemmy 2 weeks ago:
Is it really a “bad” experience?
A “bad” experience is something like applying for a job online, submitting your resume, then manually entering all the information that’s already on your resume into a thousand little boxes. A “bad” experience is trying to unsubscribe from a service that relies on the pain of that unsubscribe process keeping people paying every month.
Having to choose a server is at most a speed bump. Is it a “bad” experience to choose an email provider?
If that mild speed bump is keeping people from joining, that’s fine. If someone cared enough to make some kind of a GUI that hand-held people through the process of choosing a server, that’s fine too.
IMO, if we’re talking bad experiences, ads on Reddit that are designed to look like posts, that’s a bad experience. Ads that are designed to look like comments, that’s a bad experience. And, the feature coming soon of communities locked behind a paywall, that’s a really bad experience.
- Comment on Mexican President Threatens to Sue Google Over 'Gulf of America' Label on Maps. 2 weeks ago:
What’s dumb about this is that in their jurisdiction (Mexico) it is actually the “Gulf of Mexico” in Google Maps, they don’t get the “Gulf of America” name. In the US it’s labelled as “Gulf of America” without mentioning “Gulf of Mexico” which you could argue Google has to do because it (theoretically) follows national laws everywhere it operates.
That’s why Korean users don’t see the Sea of Japan to their east, they see the East Sea. That’s why in some locations the Persian Gulf is referred to as the Arabian Gulf instead. It’s also why inside India the borders you see for Kashmir don’t match the borders you see for Kashmir if you’re in Pakistan. The rest of the world sees a third version of that area with areas marked as disputed.
What’s really annoying is that every other country in the world is exposed to this “Gulf of America” silliness, even countries where people don’t speak English. I can understand (just barely) having “(Gulf of America)” under “Gulf of Mexico” in English-speaking countries because if someone is hearing news from a US source and they refer to the Gulf of America, it might be useful to know what they’re talking about. It’s in the news now, but in 3 years say you’re a high-school kid trying to do a geography report and can’t find the feature on the map, that could be annoying.
But, this parenthesis rule apparently even extends to Germany, where it’s “Golf von Mexiko (Golf von Amerika)”. There’s no reason to include a name that doesn’t exist in your language on your version of the maps app. If I, as an English-maps user look at Germany, I don’t get Munich (Munchen). I don’t get Florence (Firenze), I don’t get India (Bhārat). There’s a long-standing tradition that maps show things in the name that’s local to the map user. Sometimes, over time, a name gets changed to be closer to the way it’s said in the local language, so Peking became Beijing.
Also, google addressed this in a blog post from 2008, almost literally describing this situation:
“How Google determines the names for bodies of water in Google Earth … if a ruler announced that henceforth the Pacific Ocean would be named after her mother, we would not add that placemark unless and until the name came into common usage”
Other than the ruler not being female, the body of water being a different one, and “America” not being Donald Trump’s mother, this is the exact situation.
- Comment on Freed At Last From Patents, Does Anyone Still Care About MP3? 3 weeks ago:
the concept of file folders and directories, essential to previous generations’ understanding of computers, is gibberish to many modern students.
This is so weird to me. Aren’t people at all curious? Like, I would never try to fix a car’s engine, but I have a basic understanding of how one works. I wouldn’t install a toilet, but I know about J-traps. I wouldn’t write my own 3D engine, but I know the basics of how they work.
Files and folder is such a fundamental and basic thing. Where’s the basic curiosity?
- Comment on Freed At Last From Patents, Does Anyone Still Care About MP3? 3 weeks ago:
Most music files may be MP3s, but music files are rare these days. I wouldn’t be surprised if most people under 30 have never interacted with a music file at all, they just use streaming services.
- Comment on Google abandons 'do no harm' AI stance, opens door to military weapons 4 weeks ago:
Worth noting that when Google was founded, Microsoft was in the middle of a long antitrust investigation, which was documenting every illegal thing they had done to maintain their monopoly and hurt every company that challenged it.
The “evil” in the Don’t Be Evil motto was widely seen as a reference to that company and that behaviour. From early on, Google saw Microsoft as a threat. They ran Linux servers, and tried to make sure as few employees as possible were running Microsoft on their desktops and laptops. A lot of internal tools were developed to try to avoid any kind of dependency on Microsoft, including ones that eventually became available externally like Google Docs etc.
Now, 25ish years later, it’s Google who are being investigated for leveraging their monopoly in a way that hurts consumers. IMO, they still never stooped as low as Microsoft did. Google paid Apple and Mozilla billions to be the default search engine. Microsoft used lawsuits and patents to try to drive their competition out of business. But, it’s still a monopoly that harms the world.
Anyhow, I’m glad that Google originally had the “Don’t be evil” motto, and also had this bit about AI principles that avoid the risk of harm. They act like useful warrant canaries because when they’re removed you know something’s up.
- Comment on Bluesky now has 30 million users. 4 weeks ago:
True, and this is something that Bluesky actually seems to do better. Your posts are stored in a “PDS” (personal data store), so in theory they’re not tied to any particular instance.
I hope that a future version of the Fediverse design / ActivityPub considers how to handle this issue. Still, I’d much rather lose my past posts than lose my social graph. Past posts can probably be archived, but it’s much harder to track down people you used to be mutuals with on a different account and follow each-other.
- Comment on Bluesky now has 30 million users. 4 weeks ago:
The difference is that you can easily move to another Mastodon instance, and it’s designed so that when you do that your followers / followees come with you.
- Comment on Bluesky now has 30 million users. 4 weeks ago:
What annoys me is that people are buying the idea that BlueSky is federated.
Not only is it not federated, the very architecture they designed means that it’s probably not federateable, at least not by normal users.
The way they designed it, a relay is required to collect and forward every single BlueSky post. That means, as the service grows, it becomes more and more impossible for anybody but a company to run a relay. Someone did some calculations back in November when it was a significantly smaller network, and they calculated that at a minimum it costs a few hundred dollars, possibly as much as 1000 bucks a month just to handle the disk storage needs for a relay on a leased server. The more the network grows, the more those costs skyrocket.
What good does it do to have a network that theoretically can be federated, but practically costs so much to run a single node that nobody except a for-profit company can manage it?
- Comment on Bluesky now has 30 million users. 4 weeks ago:
He’s already gone. But, regardless, why sign up for yet another corporate social media site when every single one of them becomes enshittified after a few years. Are they just planning to abandon Bluesky eventually too? Or just hoping that this time it’s different?
- Comment on [Thread] Mental Math 3 months ago:
Ronaldo’s ego is incredible, and he’s almost always looking out for himself in everything he does. But, you can’t deny that he’s one of the best ever players. And his charisma means he’s a great choice for something like this where he has to perform and interact with all the “scientists”. Someone like Messi could do the same kinds of moves, but he wouldn’t be able to chat with the presenters and “scientists” between events in a natural way. (P.S. I love that they got someone named Ronald to be the ordinary guy who couldn’t do anything useful, that was just funny.)
I also think Ronaldo genuinely cares about all the biomechanics and all that, as long as it’s something that applies to him, and that he could use to make himself better. A lot of other players just play on instinct and don’t want to have to think about it.
- Comment on [Thread] Mental Math 3 months ago:
Hearing is definitely part of it, but I imagine it’s only hearing the sound of the ball being kicked. After that it’s going to be far too quiet to hear until it gets close, and he’s obviously reacting long before that. Maybe hearing helps him adjust in the last tenth of a second, but he’s not hearing the ball’s entire flight.
As for the body mechanics of a pitch or a kick, it is amazing. Like, a proper powerful punch involves leg muscles, hip muscles, waist muscles, chest muscles, and only then do you start to get to the arms. For most of us, the best way to realize how coordinated everything has to be is to try to do something with your wrong arm/leg. Everything that flows naturally on your strong side is just completely wrong on your weak side.
- Comment on [Thread] Mental Math 3 months ago:
What’s amazing is our ability to calculate the path of something in the air.
There’s a test they did with Cristiano Ronaldo where someone kicked a ball to him so he could head it. They shut off the lights before the ball was in the air and somehow from the body shape of the person kicking it, he was able to know how to make contact with it without being able to see it.
- Comment on AI Elections 3 months ago:
I like that only Iowa and Arizona are the only states with full names labelled without weirdness, and they’re completely wrong. If it were a human completing this map, I’d say those were the two states they were confident about, and they’re obviously wrong.