BananaTrifleViolin

@BananaTrifleViolin@kbin.social

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Self-Checkout Nightmare May Finally Be Ending⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The BBC article that this article is a bizarre summary of is far better (the Gizmodo article even links directly to the BBC article). It give a far better overview of the issues; the main crux is they cost most than anticipated through both theft and cost of the machines themselves. The consumer's disliking it is a less point and more naunced essentially "customer's want the technology to work but it isn't" which is also what you've said.

  https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20240111-it-hasnt-delivered-the-spectacular-failure-of-self-checkout-technology

  Personally I preferred the self checkouts because I don't want to interact with someone, but th they fail so much (because of the weighing which is to stop me being a supposed thieving scumbag, not to benefit me) and you end up standing around waving at a random stranger to come and fix the machine awkwardly while a massive queue waits impatiently for a machine. I've recently switched back to the manned checkouts for bigger shopping trips.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is "If A then B" equal to "B if and only if A"?⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Actually a good example:

  • If you have Aids (A) then you have HIV (B). True
  • You have HIV (B) if, and only if, you have AIDS (A). Not true
  • If you don't have HIV (B), then you don't have AIDs (A). True, and the actual inverse of "If A then B"; "If not B, then not A"
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What Amazon Kindle? Here's an Open Source eBook Reader⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  This is an interesting concept but doesn't seem like it has long term legs.

  It depends on what you mean by open source and also even eBook reader (I'm assuming eInk), but if people want open source e-readers I would say flashing existing reader hardware with open source operating systems would be the way to go. However I'm not sure if there is much motivation to do that.

  There are Android based eink ereaders available with more freedom than Kindle devices (Boox is an example) and you can side load free or open source reader software onto Kobo (maybe not Android Kindles though?), and you can load free books onto e-readers via software like Calibre. So you can read books in privacy outside the vendors ecosystem - it kinda reduces the imputus to build an open source ereader (hardware or OS).

  I'd love to see a truly open source Eink device - particularly software wise. But I doubt the demand is enough. And this Open Source hardware solution seems a bit too cut back to fit the bill.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I wrote a program for my boss. How legal is to to write the program again and make it FOSS?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  If you implement it from fresh then it is a new program. What matters is what your contract says about what you produce - some contracts pay claim to anything you make even outside of working hours.

  Also if you rewrite it, while technically it is a fresh project if there are substantial similarities in how you implement it there could be an argument made that you have reused code that belongs to the company. Even if that is technical false it could be something you'd have to defend sometime in the future. As others have said, implementing the program in a different language and using a different methodology wherever possible should help protect against that.

  I think the advice others have given that you should review your contract with a lawyer is sound even if this will be FOSS. It's mainly about ensuring you don't inadvertently open yourself to potential legal repercussions down the line, even if your employers at the moment seem benign. If you do work for a company that lays claim to everything your produce even in your off hours then I would strongly recommend you leave, particularly if you are the sort of person who would be working on your own projects for fun or even your own business ventures.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Auto execs are coming clean: EVs aren't working⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  While it's a factor it probably isn't the root of the problem. The problem is car manufacturers are building the cars faster than the market is growing and at high price points than consumers want in a time of economic difficulty and inflation.

  We're still seeing build out of electric infrastructure, expensive cars vs petrol cars, and a relatively small second hand market (which also drives infrastructure expansion). Dealership monopolies certainly exacerbate all those problems.

  This story headline is nonsense though. EVs are working and are growing. The story is actually that car companies have made expensive attempts at grabbing market share which haven't worked and are now counting the costs. They're delaying the rate of growth, not reducing production - significant difference.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What do overnight shift workers do when the clocks change?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  As a doctor, we would work and hour more or less depending on the shift changed. Im paid a supplement to work out of hours rather than by the hour, so we'd just suck it up of working an extra hour and be happy if we worked less.

  If you're paid hourly then you'd be paid for the time you worked.

  But shift starts and finishes were unchanged, it was just the length that got altered.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨In quest to defeat Euro red-tape, Apple said it had three Safari browsers – not one⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  No it depends on how you interpret it. Apple may have legitimate reasons for technical differences between the different versions of Safari. The issue would be if Apple is claiming they are more different than they really are to say they don't count as one when calculating market share.to.determine whether regulation applies.

  Mozilla Forefpx has different versions for Android, and Desktop. So does Chrome. But in terms of marketshare generally people class them as one browser.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How much does it really matter to use firefox?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Out of interest what part of the UI don't you like? You can drag and drop pretty much any button and component where ever you want and you can use the Firefox colours website to apply any colour scheme you want. This is all core browser features so no performance affects.

  What is it that a theme is then adding?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨NAC makes you insensitive to alcohol⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  So big mistake here: NAC is not harmless. It does have side effects and it also has toxicity at high doses.

  It has not been studied in long term use orally or IV, it's main use b omg paracetamol overdose treatment. Inhalation is more studied but it is not absorbed into the body on the same way.

  We think it is safe but we haven't actually done human trials to be sure. What we have found in mine is that high doses can cause lung and heart damage and also when it comes to alcohol it is protective iif taken before alcohol consumption BUT amplifies the toxicity to the liver if about 4 hours taken after alcohol. All of this is summarised on the Wikipedia page which looks to be good quality.

  Overall it may be a useful drug but don't take it off label or self medicating. Medicine is littered with unexpected effects of drugs that only came out once it was too late. Thalidomide is a good example - a "wonder drug" for nausea used in pregnancy that was not tested and caused horrific birth defects.

  Your body is not a lab, be careful experimenting with supposedly "safe" drugs.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Language learning app Duolingo to mothball Welsh course⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Enshittification strikes again.

  It's becoming clearer and clearer that for-profit companies are not the way to drive quality in the tech sector long term. That they even torch their own products to try speaks volumes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Cities: Skylines II - Updates on Modding⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I think they want to be vendor neutral to reap the benefits regardless of where people bought the game (i.e. not be limited to steam workshop)

  I'm more bothered by the Mods being for Console and PC. I worry that PC modding is going to be held back by the inherent limitations of modding on and for consoles.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Redfall can be the next Cyberpunk 2077, if Microsoft wants it to be.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I think this is the real problem with the gaming industry. Development studios are treated as if they're sources of IP when in fact it's more about the people working for them.

  A good dev team is the people who made the games. A team gets bought out by a big publishing giant and it seems they inevitably lose the people who made them great.

  That's not to say big publsiher owned studios can't make great games but I'd argue the best games are coming from the indy studies whether that by one man bands like ConcernedApe or big independent studios like CD Projekt Red.

  Also CD Projekt Red was highly motivated to fix Cyberpunk as it's a smaller studio, and pretty much their entire future business needed it to be fixed and work. They need and want to make more Cyberpunk games. Microsoft has zero motivation to fix Redfall - it was a commercial failure in a big coroportation; they will just dump it and move on but also be more averse to trying to make new IP.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What if urine was reprocessed by large intestines?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  So the way evolution works, the design we have works well enough that it doesn't cause problems. It might be the best possible design or it might not, all that mattered is that whenever it arose in evolutionary history it was either an advantage over what camebefore in terms of survival so propagated or it was not detrimental and paired with something else genetically that propagated.

  We can't definitively answer your question but we can speculate on why it's a good idea to separate urine and faecal matter. Urine is a reasonable medium for growing bacteria. That wouldn't matter in the colon but would matter if bacteria from the colon could ascend into the kidneys and diarupt it's function. Valves could help or a bladder that drains into the colon, but complete separation may just be better.

  It may also be that the acidic nature of urine would disrupt the helpful bacteria we rely on to colonise our guts to help digest foods.

  Another possibility is the constant flow of urine would mean our faecal matter would never dry out. It'd be like having diarrhoea all the time and we'd need to poop constantly. The colon retrieves enough water - but not all water - that's why poop isn't hard as rock. If it was flooded with fluid it may not need to retrieve fluid.

  The fluid might even be stuck in a cycle between the colon and the kidneys and make it harder for the body to keep homeostasis - as the kidneys excrete more fluid to try and regulate fluid volume the the colon could just resorb it. Basically the colon could end up working against the kidneys and cause even more work for thenl body. It may just be less efficient than discarding water as needed.

  Drier faecal matter in the colon and a reservoir of fluid in the bladder does also give us freedom to release when it is safe to do so, which may protect us from predators (having to stop to poop even a few times a day is dangerous compared to only going when you know it's safe to as there are more opportunities to be attacked by a predator). It would also be very easy to track an animal that leaves a constant trail of poop and urine uncontrollably behind it.

  All or none of these may be reasons why we have separate urinary and alimentary tracts; it's impossible to know and would always be speculation. But regardless these do seem like reasonable reasons why we may have separate tracts.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Great news — social media is falling apart⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah I found the article a bizarre read. It talks about ActovityPub and Mastodon but fails to mention the fediverse at all. Instead it talks about the "pluriverse", some random new term pulled from some paper, and paints a vision of people spread across various commercial social media platforms.

  Either it's a blind spot In their research or an agenda so deliberate omission, but regardless it seems strange to talk about the disintegration of social media and even Mastodon but not what Mastodon is a part of.

  But I agree the general themes are there - it's basically talking about the impact of enshittification but without using the term.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Starfield Is Bethesda's Lowest-Rated Game On Steam⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Except Steam scores a binary - like it or don't - and the overall score is just what percentage is positive vs negative. You can't rate one or other, just whether you liked each game.

  But Gamespot have gone too soon with their reporting, picking a time when the scores are still in flux. Fallout 76 is 72% positive, while Starfield is 75%. And Fallout 76 certainly wasn;t 72% positive at launch. It's not a fair comparison and is a nonsense story.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Meta and Salesforce are looking to rehire some workers they just laid off. It's putting those people in an awkward spot.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  If I was laid off by a company I wouldn't go back unless I had no other choice. If a company didn't see your value previously and now it supposedly does, what is to say it will not again in the future and fire you again? A lot of companies do a last-in first-out approach and are cyclical about hiring and firing to please shareholders. That's where these tech companies are at now.

  Also who wants the potential of a CV where you were laid off twice by the same company? It'd be like them taking your CV and wiping their arse with it before handing to back to you as security escorts you out of the building.

  Don't go backwards, keep moving forward.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Unity U-turns on controversial runtime fee and begs forgiveness⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  They haven't u-turned, they have delayed implementation.

  This is a prime example of enshittification. What do Unity's users benefit from in exchange for this new charge? Nothing - all this does is increase Unity's income.

  The reason they need to change their income makes sense - their primary income comes from helping mobile game makers push ads and that is both volatile and threatened by privacy pushes by Apple on particular.

  The commercial motivation makes sense, and yet another example of how it leads to enshittification of a service or product.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Lab-grown Meat is not a Climate Change Solution⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  It's a rather bizarre argument, essentially saying "it's not the whole solution so it's not a solution at all"

  The article dismisses lab grown meat because the technology might cost $450m to build one 10,000 metric ton per annum producing factory, claiming it won't work because of economies of scale. But they clearly have no understanding of economies of scale. There is economies of scale in the building of factories and reactor production too. One novel reactor is expensive and difficult to maintain, but a global chain of 100s of factories become much cheaper to build individually and maintain as you have a whole supply chain and supporting infrastructure built out.

  A good example of this is Apple's Vision Pro. The 1st iteration of this technology will be prohibitively expensive for most people. But by starting production Apple is stimulating the building of factories and infrastructure to build all the component parts at scale. Version 2 will be cheaper per unit, as will Version 3. The production capacity will increase reducing cost, even if the components iteritively get more advanced and complex from generation to generation. It's an expensive proposition for investors up front, but the long term potential to scale up is what makes it so powerful.

  A "bio-reactor" to make meat is the same - the more you build, the more you invest in the supporting infrastructure, the cheaper it gets. There will be a risk barrier to starting, but it's crazy to dismiss the whole thing based on the projected cost of the first industrial scale factory. This is similar to Fusion power; the ITER fusion reactor in France is crazily expensive but the idea is the lessons learnt and the build out of the supportive infrastructure is what will move Fusion from a lab experiement to a real world source of power.

  The reality is there is no one single solution to climate change, it will by multiple different things happening together that will improve the climate situation. Lab Grown Meat will help reduce methane from animals, while renewable energy will reduce carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels, and Electric Vehicles with renewables will do the same and so on.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Space.com poses the debate-provoking question whether SNW S2 overdid the gimmicks?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah I agree they went too far. Season 2 was disappointing; they seemed to want to spend their time indulging themselves with musical shows and cross overs. It feels like they alternated each episode - one moment you get a serious episode and the next a silly one.

  However the season also gave us Ad Astra per Aspera which was one of the best star trek episodes I've seen in a long time. Among the Lotus Eaters wasn't bad; they just didn't need to shoehorn Khan in - it undermined what was actually otherwise a nice character driven story for La'an. The "should I kill hitler/my grandad" bit at the end was something that could have been impactful but was just didn't feel right.

  Among the Lotus eaters and Lost in Translation were decent serious stories. Under the Cloak of War was an another attempt at a serious episode; it just didn't come off in the end.

  And for me, Those Old Scientists was actually one of my favourite episodes. It was not Ad Astra Per Aspera good, and it was undeniably silly, but there was just something very warm and wholesome about the episode, and it actually reflected much better on Lower Decks than SNW; Boimler and Mariner felt a bit more fleshed out by the episode and it made me more appreciative of the show and what it's doing.

  I think all in all, it was a decent season. It didn't maintain the high level of quality of the first season, and there were some really poor episodes (the opener Broken Circle and Cherades were terrible, and the muscial episode was just too far EVEN in a season with a crossover with a cartoon) but the highs were high and most of the other episodes were decent even allowing for some silliness. Season 1 was masterful TV in my opinion. Season 2 was decent.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft is killing WordPad in Windows after 28 years⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I get where you're coming from but I think you're overstating the impact in this day and age. If this had been 1995 it'd be a big deal. Now it's rediculously easy to install any alternative you like for free.

  Libre Office is an entire free fully features office suite.

  I'm less bothered about removing WordPad than I am about Microsoft advertising and pre-installing it's products in Windows - they force Edge on people, they push OneDrive and preinstall a preview of Office. That's the real problem - not losing WordPad.

  At one point Anti-Trust / Anti-monopoly regulators globally punished Microsoft for pushing Internet Explorer to consumers and for a long time in Europe had to offer a choice of Browsers to download on new Windows installs. Now it's allowed to get away with abusing it's dominant position to force it's products on consumers.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  How do you know it said fucking? Might have said Knob-gobbling Enterprise and Cunty Millennium Falcon.

  We can fill in our own expletivesa and send it back to whichever sanatised and sterile commercial place it came from.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why US tech giants are threatening to quit the UK⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  It would potentially mean WhatsApp and Signal disappearing from the App Stores in the UK, and UK based accounts being shut down. Whatsapp could concievably just switch off encryption for the UK users or make a UK only version with no contact to the rest of the network (but that would be a major back down), but Signal would never be able to accept that and would likely exit. However Meta may still decide it's better to exit WhatsApp completely than stay if the regulatory burden and risks are too high.

  It is possible however that these bills won't make it through parliament either at all or in there current form. We're about 1 year away from a general election (the latest the election can be held is Jan 2025 but they desperately want to avoid a christmas election campaign, so late autum 2024 seems likely) - that means campaigning effectively starts soon and controversial legislation like this can become quickly toxic to MPs desperate to hold their seats. It really depends on what the general reaction to this is - at the moment most people don't seem to care but the social media companies do have the power to drum up public opposition should they wish to fight this.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why US tech giants are threatening to quit the UK⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I think the article summarises the problem well; we have a conflict between big tech and regulation but at the same time the regulatory side is driven by ignorance and arrogance.

  I'm in favour of regulating the tech sector to enable competition, but I am definitely not in favour of the nonsense draconian snooping powers the Uk government wants to have in the name of "protecting children". There is a right wing obsession with he use of tech to enable child abuse; some of that is valid but it is also paired with extreme ignorance of how technology and encryption works. Basically you have secure encryption or you have nothing. Anything with a backdoor into it is by definition not encrypted.

  There are plenty of ways of protecting children - the problem is not encryption, the problem is a failure of social services, schools, parents and families to protect children from abuse. Breaking encryption entirely in the UK will be a marginal benefit in making it easier to catch a few individuals after the abuse has taken place, at the cost of the polticial freedom and personal privacy of nearly 70m people as well as severe damage to the UKs place in the Tech sector.

  The tech industry hasn't allowed China unfettered access to their systems (encrypted comms giants have largely exited China or been banned there); exiting the UK to protect the global norm would be an easy choice. The real concern is if crazy ignorant rightwingers in the US follow the lead of the the ignorant rightwingers in the UK driving this nonsense.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨People who back into parking spots: Why?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  In addition to the ease with front wheel drives that other people have mentioned, it is also safer. When you back in to a space you have full awareness of what's around you in the car park, and are blocking the main driving route while backing into a place where no one is driving so are unlikely to have some speeding idiot hit your car. But when backing out of a space you lose vision on the driving route and are backing into it so you have a bigger chance of being hit by someone you can't see not stopping

  While you can feel pressured by other drivers waiting while you backing into a space, it's far less pressure than when you back out of a space and don't know what's around you.

  Similarly of you have a drive way at home, it's safer to back in to it as you have better awareness of pedestrians and other drivers versus if you are backing out of the space into a road.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[Opinion] About Lemmy⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Just on the "There are so much socialists/communists around, including Lemmy’s founders. Even the ‘subreddits’ called communities."

  You really need to learn to tolerate and listen to the views of people you disagree with. Just cutting those voices out entirely and not wanting to hear them really is putting yourself into an echo chamber. You are an individual - don't fall into the trap of thinking you need to belong to a "group" and agree with all the thoughts in that group and disagree with all the thoughts outside that group. It's important that you are open to being challenged and hearing other peoples world views, even if yours is ultimately unchanged. Otherwise you'll just be a sheep thinking how others are directing you to think.

  Also, the idea that the word "community" is socialist/communist is the most rediculous thing I've read in a while.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can I get a "Lemmy for dummies" intro?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  So a few optipna (I'm on kbin but similar):

  • move to an instance where the users aren't signed up to those communities (remember All is not the whole fediverse, All is just the content that is local to that instance plus that users on your instance have subbed to. On a big instance you will see a lot in all)
  • block individual communities or entire instances. I have been blocking the numerous meme communities for example which tidies up my All feed, but it is tedious as there are so many
  • browse Lemmy or Kbin using Subbed instead of All or Local views. On kbin you can do that by going to /sub, clicking the link on the toolbar or setting it as your default view.
  • create your own personal instance of lemmy or kbin and only sign up for content you want on that aerver. You can browse new communities to join via other instances then add it to your instance.