blind3rdeye

@blind3rdeye@lemm.ee

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mozilla Introduces Firefox’s First-Ever Terms of Use⁩ ⁨⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Need more advertising in Firefox to keep pumping those exec salaries.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do tell!!!⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, sound is better than light for that kind of test - but also still not good; because there are many things that block sound but don’t block wifi, and visa versa. (eg. a well insulated double-glazed window is good vs sound, but doesn’t stop any wifi; and a metal mesh can block wifi while stopping very little sound.)

  I remember one time I spent ages trying to debug a wifi problem with my laptop. I was messing around with computer settings and router settings for ages trying to work out why my wifi had stopped working. But in the end, I found that it was entirely due to where I was sitting. I sitting in front of my desktop computer’s very large monitor, and the router directly behind the monitor on a shelf in the room next door. The monitor was blocking the wifi. If I move the laptop or the monitor, it worked fine.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do tell!!!⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah? Well I know shit all.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there an Australian equivalent for boycotting american products ?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  For computer services, I generally just look at the EU guides - because the EU is pretty good, and my main goal is to avoid mega-corps (not necessarily buy local stuff).

  But for physical goods I do make some effort to buy locally made stuff. And fortunately we have good enough labeling laws that it is easy enough to tell what is Australian made and what isn’t. (Not so easy to tell which companies are ‘independent’ though.)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why can't we go back to small phones?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I think it’s a psychological thing.

  Like, while thinking about what kind of phone we want - a small phone sounds pretty good. But when it comes time to buy it, we start comparing phones, and we see some small ones, and some slightly bigger ones, and some really big ones. We tend to go bigger than we’d originally intended because of psychological anchoring effects.

  The slightly bigger phone is seen as a slightly better phone. “not too big” we think, as we compare it to some monsters; and the key stats such as screen resolution and battery capacity sound slightly better. So we tend to buy that bigger phone even if it isn’t what we actually thought we wanted.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Firefox deletes promise to never sell personal data, asks users not to panic⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  They wouldn’t have to do every country. A single example would be helpful, for context and clarity.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Firefox deletes promise to never sell personal data, asks users not to panic⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  They’re not that cash strapped though. Their blog post says that they need the revenue to ‘grow’, and they go on to talk about the new people they’ve added to the board. So it isn’t really about getting enough money to survive. It’s about getting money to support a top-heavy company structure.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Firefox deletes promise to never sell personal data, asks users not to panic⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Mozilla are a non profit organisation. Their recent blog post says that they will invest in advertising to increase short-term revenue that they need to “grow”. The blog goes on to talk about the increase in board members, and new leaders being added. The CEO and these new leaders are highly paid…

  To me this looks bad. It looks to me that Mozilla’s new leaders have pushed out the old; and are now moving towards advertising and selling user data not because they need it to stabilise and survive, but because they need it to pay the people making the decision to burn trust and reputation. It has become a top-heavy organisation, and greed has seeped in.

  A few people will be self-enriched by this, and then the orgasation will be weaker as a result.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨GitHub - LadybirdBrowser/ladybird: Truly independent web browser⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The change was accepted after a short conversation. So to talk about “refusing a small change so aggressively” is total bullshit, like you’re trying to start a fight or something.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨GitHub - LadybirdBrowser/ladybird: Truly independent web browser⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Don’t be a dick. The dev is not transphobic, and you know it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Balatro wins formal appeal to reclassify poker game as PEGI 12⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Civ is a bit exploitative in that they deliberately release a half-arsed base product with glaring flaws, charging big $$$ for it; and then release a chain of expansion packs to flesh it out and make it complete.

  I was on the beta team for Civ 5; and it was a real eye-opener to see that this is a deliberate strategy. It isn’t just that games are hard to get right. They deliberately hold back to squeeze more cash out. I haven’t bought any civ game since then.

  But yeah, I agree that it isn’t the same type of exploitation as gambling.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨France runs fusion reactor for record 22 minutes⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Seems like the person wants to learn something, but with zero effort. (i.e. won’t read the article; and certainly won’t look for additional context or information.) So maybe it would be better to post the question into an AI chatbot. You can just ask whatever question, and get some plausible but possibly-bullshit answer; then feel good for satisfying your curiosity.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Obsidian is now free for work - Obsidian⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  For sure. I’ve been looking for a solid OneNote replacement for a few years now. Inking is the only major barrier.

  I really like OneNote, and I’ve been using it for more than 10 years. But in recent years, my dislike for Microsoft has grown to the point where I feel I need to stop using all their products.

  Right now I’m using xournal++ a lot. It has really excellent drawing functionality; but zero organisational functions. (I’m organising my xournal notes using just file names and folder structure.)

  What I really want is integrated xournal support with Obsidian, or Joplin. In Joplin, I’ve tried inserting a pdf into my notes, and telling Joplin to open the pdf by launching xournal++. That sort of works; but the viewing of the pdf in Joplin shows a window-within-a-window; and the creating of new notes is fiddly; so I decided it wasn’t quite good enough.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Advice on enjoying your life⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  One must be careful with this kind of reasoning, because often the time is not a cost - but actually a valuable part of the experience in its own right. Walking to the corner store is slower than driving - but can be a worthwhile experience for its own sake - as it give a bit of time for quiet reflection, and light exercise, and fresh air. Depending on your tastes, a similar thing could be said about doing some maintenance work on your bike vs paying someone to do it for you.

  Getting too bogged down in time vs money can potentially lead to miscalculations and stress. Is it better to give someone a quick blowjob for a bit of extra cash so that you can pay someone to vacuum your house? Perhaps the calculation is not really one-dimensional.

  For me, simply spending less time thinking about money is worth quite a bit of ‘wasted’ money & time; because I value the headspace that would otherwise be consumed by that!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Looks like Lemmy is climbing up to the 2023 exodus days numbers again⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t know how many users reddit has, but it is a lot more than lemmy. Lemmy is quite small in terms of number of users.

  But I think focusing on relative numbers of users is a mistake. Forty thousand people is still a lot of people. And we can see that it is enough people to create a vibrant community with a steady stream of good content and conversations. So the fact that it is small compared to other social media is not really relevant, in my opinion. Having a thousand times more users doesn’t make things a thousand times better - that’s for sure.

  (That said, I do think its worth noting if the number of users is going up or down… because if there was a significant downward trend, that would be a bad sign.)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Developer creates endless Wikipedia feed to fight algorithm addiction⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Right, but in the context of social media feeds, “algorithm” always refers to an algorithm for personalised content.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Developer creates endless Wikipedia feed to fight algorithm addiction⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Apparently it doesn’t use a personalised algorithm. So I’d say the first one.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bluesky now has 30 million users.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  which is less than bsky, but more than lemmy.

  I think a lot of people get sucked into the idea that more is better. But that isn’t necessarily the case. I don’t think any of us really want to talk to a million different people anyway. We just want to talk to a suitable subset.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The one drawback to walking at night⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m sorry it bothers you like that.

  I personally don’t feel alienated or attacked at all by the kinds of comments you are describing. When I see a comment like “men murder women”, I think of it in the same kind of way comments like “humans are horrible” or “Australians are racist” or “young people have no attention span”… That is to say it describes a trend or someone’s perception of a tendency but does not refer to any specific individual.

  People aren’t saying these things to attack you. They are saying them to communicate their own feelings of being unsafe. And to be frank, feeling that you shouldn’t go for a walk at night because it is too dangerous is a pretty serious thing which has obvious negative effects - and the concern is based in reality. It isn’t just a perception problem. So we should take these comments seriously - not just complain about the people saying them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨LegalEagle Suing PayPal's Honey⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I use to have a PayPal account. I used it to receive donations from some open-source projects that I was working on. And I passed most of the money on by re-donating it to other people who were also sharing high quality work that I liked. It was never very much money (like maybe a few hundred dollars in total over years); but I kind of enjoyed that.

  But around 10 years ago, that PayPal account was blocked, because of who I’d sent money to. They didn’t tell me specifically what the problem was, they just told me that it was ‘suspicious’ - and they (PayPal) demanded personal info from my to prove my identity before they would unlock the account. They wanted photos of drivers license and stuff like that.

  Long story short, I eventually did get them to unblock the account (and I did not send them personal info); but that experience destroyed my confidence and trust in PayPal. So I drained the account, and haven’t used them ever since. I very much don’t like the idea that a company can just take my account (and money) hostage for totally arbitrary reasons and make demands based on that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I never realized this⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  if you are getting “punched down” (aka offended) by a joke posted on lemmy, by a random guy, you should realize that it is simply not that deep

  I think you’ve misunderstood what punching down means. It has nothing to do with being offended. It’s about the relationship between the person telling the joke and the subject of the joke. For example, it’s generally fine for anyone to make jokes mocking rich people; but its not ok to make jokes mocking poor people unless you yourself are very obviously a poor person.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I never realized this⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Probably anyone who ever gotten any pressure about handling last-names after marriage might care. It’s definitely something that some people care about, and some people cop flack for their decision.

  The joke is just a joke, but the problem is that this joke punches down. That’s generally poor form.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Choosing pink is chaotic evil?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  shit

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Le Reddit Army is Here⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’d suggest “nothing” for the time being.

  There are a lot of different people around here, and different people get angry about different things. So there’s always going to be a lot of different bad things said about a large instance like lemmy.world. But whether or not those things are actually a real problem is for you to decide.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨flouride⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  By that reasoning, we should start putting all of our waste products in our water supply - since we weren’t able to sell them otherwise.

  … Or perhaps there are other reasons to consider?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨flouride⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Pretty much anything you can think of is recommended by someone, because different people have conflicting views. The key is to choose whose recommendations are based on the best reasoning & evidence aligning with your goals.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mastodon sees a boost from the 'X exodus,' too, founder says⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It will outlast bs. Mastodon has been around for many years now. It already outlasted Google+, which was bigger and had more funding. And since it has a broad base of support it’s unlikely that it will all just fall apart. Unlike the commercial social networks, no single person can pull the plug the fediverse. (Lemmy is younger, but it also seems very strong right now. I just hope lemmy still gets some exposure on the outside now that the major drama at reddit has died down.)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"What Is Your Dream for Mozilla" - Mozilla is doing a survey, questions include "What is most important to you right now about technology and the internet?"⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Fair enough. Thanks for the additional context.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"What Is Your Dream for Mozilla" - Mozilla is doing a survey, questions include "What is most important to you right now about technology and the internet?"⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  So you got this survey in an email. Was the link intended to be shared like this? Can I find the survey link somewhere on Mozilla’s own websites?

  I guess I’m not totally convinced that this is an official Mozilla survey, or even if it is - I’m not sure who their target survey audience is.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon questions our energy sector⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The cost of constructing and decommissioning power plants is important for sure; but it has nothing to do with energy density - which is what we were talking about before. It’s true that building solar panels takes energy and resources, and the panels don’t last indefinitely. So there is a lifecycle cost to using them. But the same is true for all forms of power generation.

  A common way to compare these costs is to look at the ‘payback time’ of each form of power generation. The payback time is the amount of time it would take for the power plant to produce enough energy to pay back the lifecycle costs required to build, operate, and decommission that type of plant. It’s basically how long it takes for the construction to have been ‘worth it’.

  In terms of payback time, wind power is by far the best; typically taking less than 1 year to pay itself off. Solar is pretty good too, but is highly dependent on where it is used. And nuclear… is not good on this measure. It takes decades for a nuclear power plant to pay itself off, because the plants are very expensive to build and decommission.

  Obviously there are other things to consider in terms of the strengths and weaknesses of different forms of power generation. But you’ve been talking about the cost of materials and construction as though it is a weakness of renewables, and it really really isn’t. That’s in fact one of their strengths, and a major weakness of nuclear. Its strange that you say nuclear is ‘insanity powerful for its cost’, because its cost is the greatest weakness of nuclear power. Its much cleaner than coal, but much more expensive, even though it uses so little fuel. And it is not cleaner than solar or wind, but it is still more expensive.

  Your point about land usage is a stronger point in favour of nuclear power… except that depending on what country you are talking about, that could easily swing the other way. Solar and wind do take up more space than nuclear, that’s for sure. But nuclear requires certain geological conditions for the safe operation of the plant, and the storage of waste. So depending on where you live, finding unused land suitable for renewables can be much easier than finding a suitable location for a nuclear power plant and waste containment facility.