SpaceCowboy
@SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
- Comment on At least Quark had some integrity. 3 days ago:
You’re just encouraging me to refer to women as “females” with this.
- Comment on Airbus previews next-gen airliner with bird-inspired wings 1 week ago:
Bumble bees are actually inspiring wing designs now. For a long time our best theories on aerodynamics couldn’t explain how Bumblebees could fly. Given the relative mass and wing size the bumble bee they couldn’t explain how a bumble bee could fly.
In the last decade or so they figured it out after putting enough bumble bees into wind tunnels. Bumblebees generate additional lift by creating little vortexes in the air. So now wing designers are trying to incorporate that effect into their designs.
- Comment on Enshittification 2 weeks ago:
The problem with the subscription model is that it doesn’t incentivize making improvements. If I buy a piece of software, I’m not going to buy the new version unless they make significant improvements. With a subscription model I have to continue paying for it even if they make no improvements to the software.
The customers just keep asking for new things. Does a meal planning app need to be a subscription service? Probably not. But anything that keeps on adding new features costs a lot of money. Software engineers aren’t cheap.
This is a problem of poor sales and marketing. The sales people should simply charge the customer for the changes that are asked for. Of course neither the sales people nor the customer understand the cost (they think it’s just pushing one button). Sales people tend to have too much influence in a company (like they bring in the money, not the product, and developers are a cost) and they’ll say yes to anything the customer asks for even if the customer may not even care all that much. But hey if this company is offering free software development services, why not take advantage of it?
A service model might make sense in some cases, but oftentimes it does not. Most definitely not in the consumer market, but we see that everywhere now.
- Comment on Teslas have been consuming a lot of gasoline lately. 2 weeks ago:
I have a few family members with heat pumps (I’m in Canada) and they work well. They do need to be supplemented for the coldest days, but they have an electric heater integrated into the system for that. Last month was particularly cold (every day was below freezing) and resulted in some very high power bills, but still worked out to be less costly than oil or even wood.
In terms of EVs not working well in the cold… yeah and neither do Diesel engines. Need to plug in a block heater if you want your diesel engine to start on a cold morning. Seems a really easy fix to have something similar for an EV, and since you’re plugging it in anyway, it shouldn’t be a big problem.
EVs are kinda a no-brainer in terms of energy usage. Way cheaper than gas or diesel, only problem is there’s a significant upfront cost at the moment. Once some lithium mines come online and we get some economies of scale going on making the batteries that upfront cost drops too. Other than the battery, an EV is way simpler than an ICE vehicle, and all studies have shown they will last significantly longer than an ICE vehicle. Electric motors aren’t all that complicated, the batteries are getting to be mature tech now, so there’s less that can go wrong with them than with complicated ICE powered vehicle.
- Comment on Teslas have been consuming a lot of gasoline lately. 2 weeks ago:
A charging station operating on 100% diesel to power an EV is much less efficient than a modern ICE vehicle of a similar mass sans batteries.
Citation needed. Do ICE engines not get hot and therefore also have great losses because of waste heat?
Presumably a generator making electricity for a charging station would only run when electricity is needed, while an ICE engine would be losing energy to heat the entire time the vehicle is idling in traffic.
Why would a diesel generator not be made to efficient and why are ICE engines always made to be efficient? How do you know which kind of generator they were using? Why would they use the generator for 100% of the energy needed?
- Comment on Check your DVDs for disc rot — Warner Bros. says it’s replacing them 4 weeks ago:
I’m not a law talking guy, but from my understanding of it, downloading isn’t illegal. But if you’re torrenting it, you’re uploading bits of it to others while you’re downloading. That would be distributing it to others, so that’s copyright infringement.
So if you could find a way to download something without uploading anything, you’d be fine. Kinda like if someone uploads copyright infringing material to youtube. You’re not going to get into hot water for watching that video, but the person who uploaded is.
- Comment on [deleted] 4 weeks ago:
How dare you say that my soulmate is “your girlfriend”.
- Comment on We were once forced to watch predetermined junk on cable TV, now we get to choose which junk we want to watch on internet TV. 4 weeks ago:
Theoretically, yes… but the reality is that most people just let algorithms decide which junk they’re going to watch.
- Comment on Owing your home today is nearly impossible, but even if you did the ever increasing property taxes will bury you 4 weeks ago:
Yeah, and property taxes result in more low density housing, as that increases the amount of tax revenue per person. High density housing means less revenue per person but the costs of services per person is still about the same. Sure theoretically, public transit is cheaper per person with high density housing, but realistically it isn’t because nobody gives a shit about public transit in the suburbs.
Of course there’s more costs overall because more suburbs mean governments are pressured to spend insane amounts of money on building and expanding highways. But it’s usually a different level of government that builds the highways, so doesn’t factor in the decisions to create more low density housing.
- Comment on Brave CEO rants about "lefties," "glowies," George Soros 4 weeks ago:
This put it in the lefties-only-no-righty-Irish-need-apply revolving-door personnel sector of NGOs
Ok, so you say the donors are not all left, so why would a politically diverse set of donors result in Mozilla having “lefties-only” hiring practices? Reading comprehension requires some critical thinking.
It seems Brendan Eich doesn’t understand that it’s a politcal diverse group that donated to Mozilla (as you do), given the next sentence. Someone with strong reading comprehension would understand logic of, but I’ll explain it to you. His statement is saying that Mozilla became a politically biased organization because of influence from those that donated to it.
Though your strong reading comprehension may have resulted in you having a different interpretation of “lefties-only-no-righty-Irish-need-apply” to mean… well maybe explain what that means to us poor illiterate people that don’t possess your intellectual prowess, LOL.
Also do you care to comment on your interpretation on the “glowies” remark? What does that word mean to you? What is Brendan Eich saying there? Something you agree with I guess.
- Comment on Reddit will warn users who repeatedly upvote banned content 4 weeks ago:
Not gonna lose a lot of sleep over a hateful asshole getting banned from a website.
All hateful assholes believe their brand of hate is justified, just as you do.
- Comment on You knew it was coming: Google begins testing AI-only search results | This version of Google won't show you the 10 blue links at all—Gemini completely takes over the results in AI Mode 4 weeks ago:
Well you already said I’m welcome, but thank you anyway.
- Comment on Brave CEO rants about "lefties," "glowies," George Soros 4 weeks ago:
You said it “sounds accurate” then complained about people’s criticism of it. You didn’t actually give any detail about what’s accurate about it or try to explain it in terms that aren’t “rude”.
So my reading comprehension is fine, it’s just your ability to actually explain what it is you agree with (in terms that aren’t “rude”) is lacking.
- Comment on Brave CEO rants about "lefties," "glowies," George Soros 4 weeks ago:
Which is accurate? It reads like an unhinged paranoid conspiracist. Do you think Geroge Soros runs mozilla? Do you think it’s being controlled by federal agents?
- Comment on What is the best looking retro console or PC? 5 weeks ago:
Needs a Sonic 3 cartridge plugged into a Sonic & Knuckles cartridge plugged into the 32X plugged into the Genesis to get the full Sega experience.
- Comment on 80 years ago, in a galaxy close close 5 weeks ago:
Yup, and he also said he had powers some would consider unnatural… which is a reference to have dark side powers over life and death. Also some rebels mentioned cloning and magic as possible explanations (re-iterating it for people that didn’t get the references) before Poe interrupted them to focus everyone on doing something.
- Comment on Conservatives and selfishness, like 2 peas in a pod 5 weeks ago:
Imagine thinking the term Space Cowboy originated in a cartoon made in 1998.
Here’s a cool song that was apparently inspired by Cowboy Bebop LOL: www.youtube.com/watch?v=h66V1hYAjG0
- Comment on Conservatives and selfishness, like 2 peas in a pod 5 weeks ago:
Yes socialism works everywhere** ~** everywhere that has a lot of oil ~
- Comment on There Is No AI Revolution 5 weeks ago:
This is the thought I’ve had too. This stuff takes a ridiculous amount of energy and energy costs money. Ah but they’re going to build big nuclear plants! But thos cost money to build and you have to pay nuclear engineers a lot of money to run them and buy the uranium… it’s going to cost a lot of money.
They have to figure out how to get it to 1/1000 of the cost it currently is to make any money off of it. They’ll need to cut so many corners that it probably not be much good at anything.
It’ll probably just used for big “data driven” corporations to use to analyze our data to try to figure out how to sell products that barely anyone can afford.
- Comment on I love the future. 1 month ago:
Seems like something the Ninja Turtles would need.
- Comment on Anyone remember this? 1 month ago:
Nah… Netscape Navigator Gold was peak. Netscape Communicator was too bloated and took forever to load. Sure it had an email client, HTML editor, etc. but these should have been separate programs, not all built into a single thing. The original mozilla browser was also this way until
PhoenixFirebirdFirefox pulled a browser out of the bloated mess. - Comment on I love the future. 1 month ago:
What word describes what you’re doing better than cope? You’re coping with the embarrassment of what your country’s becoming. Which would be fine, but trying to make it be about other countries rather than facing up to it, that just makes you part of the embarrassing state your country is in.
And yeah incumbents losing is a well known thing… here’s a link to the first article on the results from a simple search: abcnews.go.com/538/…/story?id=115972068
Also here in Canada, the Conservative poll numbers are dropping like a rock. The Conservative are now running a ridiculous number of adds to try to claim Carney is the same as Trudeau because they got nothing other than the incumbent disadvantage that’s become the global norm. The US idiocy is serving as a cautionary tale and making people turn away from anything resemblance of it.
- Comment on After 40 years of being free Microsoft has added a paywall to Notepad 1 month ago:
Sure but with Wordpad I wouldn’t much care if they spam it up with this kind of crap. It’s something that doesn’t have much use now, because there’s notepad for basic text files and Word or Libre Office for actual word processing. So if someone wanted something to type up some notes that get automatic backups, and have AI recommendations (not that it would be me, but who knows?) just put it on there so we still have a simple text editor that’s installed by default.
If they’re going to enshittify something at least don’t enshittify the basic tools of the OS.
- Comment on I love the future. 1 month ago:
The cope is strong with this one. “There’s other people being dumb too!”
Yup, and the source of this is disinformation from adversaries like Russia, China, and Iran being laundered through US social media companies to made to appear legitimate. Well I guess TikTok isn’t American (yet) so I guess China somehow got into the game of laundering disinformation too.
And the trend is actually incumbents losing power, not necessarily a right wing shift. You see the disinformation can be a blunt tool so it just results in people hating their own governments. The UK had an election where the Conservative party lost… as they were the incumbent.
But nowhere has the government been turned over to greedy businessmen to the degree the US has been. Argentina has their President briefly promoting a memecoin, sure, but he may face a lot of repercussions for doing that. Fun Fact: the Argentinian memecoin was launched by the same people that launched $MELANIA, and no one in the US cares about it nor do they care about the $TRUMP memecoin. It’s open season for grifting Americans, because it’s the gritters that are now in charge of everything in the US.
But go on making excuses for why it’s all ok. I’m sure that will result in fixing the problems in your country.
- Comment on After 40 years of being free Microsoft has added a paywall to Notepad 1 month ago:
It’s so stupid that they’re making these additions to notepad. There is a need to have a basic text editor on an OS that isn’t going to try to “help” by giving recommendations, automatically backs up files or whatever other shit they’re trying to jam into it.
They had wordpad and if they wanted to add additional features into that, that’s completely fine. There are use cases for something that does a bit more than a simple text editor like notepad can do.
My guess is that they tracked that people used notepad more often than wordpad so they removed wordpad. Then started making notepad more like wordpad without considering why people used notepad more frequently.
- Comment on 80 years ago, in a galaxy close close 1 month ago:
Poe Dameron is my hero… while everyone else was debating how the bad thing happened, he’s the guy that’s just figuring out how to fight against it.
Peeople just didn’t appreciate the genius of JJ Abrams… pretty much every reason why people fall to fascism are in the two Star Wars movies he made. Palpatine obviously represents fascism, yet people whine about Palpatine returning not being explained.
- Comment on Economist warns that Elon Musk is about to cause a "deep, deep recession" 1 month ago:
Did you drink the kool-aid that made you believe that we couldn’t just pay off the debt by simply raising taxes on the wealthy?
In one breath they make you afraid of the debt, the next breath they lower taxes on the wealthy. After that, they piss down your mouth with their trickle down lies. And you drink it all up like a good little sub.
- Comment on So, is the USA screwed? 1 month ago:
It ain’t the left that’s in power, it’s the right. You’re not on the side of freedom fighters, you’re on the side of oppressors.
- Comment on You can see who upvoted and downvoted a post by viewing it in friendica. 1 month ago:
It’s not about blocking, it’s about sending a message.
- Comment on Bad UX is keeping the majority of people away from Lemmy 1 month ago:
Add a bell button and a whistle button.
I think instead of promoting a page where people have to choose a server, just send people to lemmy.world directly. We should probably just get people to sign up there at first and have the ability to migrate their accounts to other servers if they want to do that later.
Having to choose from multiple servers is asking people to choose between a bunch of options they know nothing about. Get people straight to looking at content and posting stuff as soon as possible, once they’re more invested, and understand more about the different instances they can change servers if that’s what they want to do.
But yeah writhing the code needed to make account migration seamless might be a lot of work so not sure if that will happen.