SirEDCaLot

@SirEDCaLot@lemmy.today

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sooo... This is happening on Imgur⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  You are confusing the spread of ideology with the spread of a conquistadorial government. Remember, most of the Germans who supported Hitler didn’t realize the Jews were being massacred. And we didn’t go to war to stop Nazi ideology, we went to war to stop Germany from conquering the entire fucking world through military means.

  The problem with using force to stop an ideology is that to the people who might follow that ideology, the fact that you care enough to use force against a belief system must mean there is something important in that belief system they should be checking out. Trying to stop an ideology with force only makes that ideology stronger, gives it validation.
  If you want to stop an ideology, ridicule it. Make fun of those who believe in it. Talk about how stupid they are. Talk about how they are morons not worth your time. Don’t give that ideology the validation of deserving force.

  The other problem with violence, is it prevents dialogue. If you are hitting somebody while talking to them, they are not going to hear what you are saying.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sooo... This is happening on Imgur⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Hitler was defeated by being nice to him

  In that sense you’re right- some people only understand and respect force, and the only way to stop them is to use force against them. The analogy of Hitler might be compared to hardened criminals- being nice to a criminal won’t stop them from victimizing you.

  This is a different battle though. The small % of racists who want to burn minorities’ houses down, they must be met with force.

  Force doesn’t win hearts and minds though. Force is intertwined with fear- ‘if you do xxx, force will be used against you’. So it might stop some church burnings, but it doesn’t stop racism. Force doesn’t win ‘hearts and minds’. Force doesn’t convince a racist that they were wrong. It might make them too afraid to speak up, but it doesn’t win them over, and they will only take their message underground, where it will thrive.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sooo... This is happening on Imgur⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Can you point to some other times in history where the threat of being beaten up has been effective in eradicating an ideology?

  I can point to plenty of instances where driving an ideology underground only fuels its growth…

  And look at the simple logic of it- if the guy in the big KKK hood says ‘the establishment doesn’t want you to acknowledge this’ and he then gets beaten up by mainstream majority people, you’ve just proved him right in the eyes of a would-be follower.

  It’s like if you found someone who knows nothing about astronomy, and told them ‘today the sun will rise at 7:15am and set at 5:43pm, and the moon is mostly made of bleu cheese’ you’ve predicted two things correctly so that gives you credibility when they consider the 3rd.
  If I said that to you, you’d say ‘you looked that up on Google, anyone can do that, and it’s well known the moon is made of rock’. But you are knowledgeable about astronomy (on a basic level at least).

  This works with the KKK person because chances are the KKK person has had limited or no actual contact and understanding with black people. So he sees news reports of inner city black people doing crimes and it becomes easy to convince him black people are somehow inferior. And ‘THEY don’t want you to know the truth’ is a powerful message for someone already interested in counterculture / dislike of the mainstream.

  That’s why Daryl Davis is effective- he sits down with the racist, who has a mental image of what a ‘black person’ is, and he’s not that. It’s like putting you on a rocket and flying you out to the moon and saying ‘okay we’re here, where’s the cheese?’

  And that’s why violence ISN’T effective- because the racist is expecting violence, so being violent only reinforces their belief.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sooo... This is happening on Imgur⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I think we need both of these —punching Nazis and talking with them to change their views.

  Can you explain to me how punching Nazis works to reduce Naziism and racism? What is the mechanism of action? Like how specifically does getting punched make someone less racist?

  That is a genuine question and I’d love an answer.

  I personally believe that punching racists only creates more hatred. The racist will be angry at the one who punched him, and thus less open to anti-racist messaging.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Control Resonant - Announcement Trailer | PS5 Games⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I general, I agree 100%.

  There’s an exception for Remedy though. They have a strong track record of not releasing underwhelming unfinished crap.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sooo... This is happening on Imgur⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Why?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sooo... This is happening on Imgur⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I think that’s called conflict exhaustion. You’re sick of fighting, sick of holding your nose and respecting things and people you find repugnant, while there’s little/no serious progress in your direction, it seems like there’s more racism and hatred than ever. So part of you is ready to set the world on fire if it gets rid of MAGA and all the thinly veiled (or not so thinly veiled) racism and intolerance.

  Just keep in mind that the dark wolf actually serves those nazi punks. Punching them only makes them stronger.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sooo... This is happening on Imgur⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Exactly 100%

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sooo... This is happening on Imgur⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  No worries my friend. I know it’s hard, but it’s useful to always assume good faith.

  “The monster never sees a monster in the mirror. We all have good reasons and justifications for what we do.” – J. Michael Straczynski

  That applies to us too.

  I think it especially applied in 2016, first time in my life that all pretense of respectful debate went away, replaced with ‘unfriend me if you like Trump’ as a mainstream accepted even encouraged position to have.
  I talk to a lot of people who supported Trump. Most of them talked about tariffs, manufacturing, jobs, there was a dream of bringing back American industry and rolling back outsourcing. Yes there was some assholes, but there were plenty of good American folks who just wanted to keep their jobs.
  But if you listened to Democrats, the only valid reason anyone would vote for Trump is because they are a tiki torch wielding racist misogynist sexist xenophobic islamophobic basket of deplorables. The public discourse broke down for good, it was all just insults from both sides.

  Nobody saw a monster in the mirror. We only saw an opposition supporting a guy who was basically openly racist and creeped on his own daughter.
  But they didn’t see a monster in the mirror either. They only saw an ivory tower elite whipping ourselves into a frenzy over which bathroom someone uses while the middle class is dying.

  That’s why, in my opinion at least, it is always vitally important to generally assume good faith on the part of your opposition. Because if there is good faith, then we repair the cracks that are dividing the country. And if there really isn’t good faith, then we are all totally fucked anyway so it doesn’t make any goddamn difference.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sooo... This is happening on Imgur⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  People who I used to think were smart and empathetic were jumping on the “fuck your feelings” bandwagon.

  I don’t know your friends. But I’d argue there’s at least some reasoning for this.
  If trade policies like globalization have harmed your economic status, offshoring a lot of the jobs you’d previously held, and you were having trouble feeding your family, wouldn’t you vote for the person you thought could fix this? Wouldn’t you say ‘fuck your feelings, I need to feed my family so I’m sorry if you have trouble putting the sex you want on your passport I’m more worried about feeding my family’? At least in concept?

  I think that’s where a lot of that sentiment came from. The people of the nation are hurting, and part of Trump’s message always was ‘I see you hurting and I want to fix it’. Dems are totally tone deaf in their messaging. A huge % of the populace gets left out of the ‘American Dream’ and they say nothing. And in recent years they focus a lot on social justice issues and identity politics while ignoring the elephant in the room. It’s why those good people are saying fuck your feelings (IMHO at least), because if the choice is your feelings or their livelihood, then of course they’ll tell your feelings to shove off.

  Of course it didn’t work out that way- government cutbacks, tariffs, foreign policy, all handled in such a ham-fisted non-strategic way that whatever benefit might have been gained was instead lost. And now it’s the little guy suffering, so you see a lot of people renouncing their votes.

  All I’m saying is keep in mind some of those people who said ‘fuck your feelings’ thought they were fighting for a greater good. I don’t believe they turned malicious. Some did I’m sure, but not all of them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sooo... This is happening on Imgur⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  This thread got me thinking a little more about Mr. Davis.

  We talk about ‘not tolerating intolerance’ but I think there’s a second level-- there’s the intolerance (the actions of the racist), and then there’s the intolerant (the racists themselves). It’s easy and simple to group the two together- we don’t want racism, we don’t want the KKK, we don’t want KKK members, all of you go fuck yourselves with your burning cross and go die in a fire (preferably in another county).

  I don’t think Mr. Davis would tolerate intolerance any more than you or I. But I think what he does is tolerate the intolerant person, engage them in conversation, treat them like a human being. And THAT can help fix intolerance- by reaching out to the intolerant people and trying to bring them into the larger community and heal them, rather than shunning them and reinforcing their stereotypes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sooo... This is happening on Imgur⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s BY tolerating it (or more specifically, the people who espouse it) that he fights it.

  And I think that’s the key difference- tolerating intolerance (the action), vs tolerating the intolerant (the people).

  I think we would all (probably including Mr. Davis) agree that the action of intolerance should not be tolerated. For example, if a local movie theater wants to have ‘whites only’ movie nights, that should not be tolerated and in fact we should all aggressively fight back against such things wherever they happen.

  But what of the intolerant person? What of the theater owner in the above example? Should we run him out of town? Tar and feather him? Refuse to talk to him?
  The KKK folks he encountered are used to intolerance- threats, shouting, protests, etc. They know they’re not popular, but that helps feed the belief that they are right. They’re used to it. They’re NOT used to being welcomed by anti-racists.

  And thus Mr. Davis got through to the racist- by tolerating the intolerant, not by tolerating intolerance. It’s a subtle but vital difference.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sooo... This is happening on Imgur⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  This guy obviously didn’t get that memo

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hey look, a giant sign telling you to find a different job⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I couldn’t agree more. Acting like a million dollar company is important.

  A million dollar company would recognize that reliable, continuous production and sales is more important to growth than the occasional hickup or a few extra bucks in the payroll budget. Thus, the million dollar company would hire sufficient staff that an occasional absence, even at a critical moment, would not harm production or sales.

  And a million dollar company would recognize that hiring sufficient staff is a wiser and more cost effective strategy than a possible labor lawsuit along with the associated bad PR.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon does a drug bust⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  There a saying-- only do one crime at a time.

  This guy was growing weed and doing just fine at it. Only because he decided to steal power also, he got caught.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨British plugs⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  We used to be. The rules changed about 10 years ago.

  I’d rather have 120v wiring I can do myself than 240v wiring that I have to pay someone $hundreds just to replace a light switch.

  A lot of big appliances require higher power. Dishwashers, clothes dryers, fridges.

  Here in US dishwashers and fridges run on <1500w. A fridge should only use a few hundred watts tops unless it’s horribly inefficient. A dishwasher needs power for the heating element but ours do okay on 1500w, although yours probably heat up faster. We use a different plug for clothes dryers, usually a NEMA 10-30 or NEMA 14-30 (30A at 240v), sometimes NEMA 14-50 (50A at 240v) for really big stuff like EV chargers.
  Our power is split phase (two 120v legs, 180° out of phase, so either phase against neutral/ground is 120v, phase A against phase B is 240v). So with those plugs you either get both legs and ground or both legs plus neutral plus ground.

  Some powers tools, drill press, plainer

  Almost all US power tools run on 120v 15A.
  There’s a few really big ones, mostly designed for professional shops, that need some flavor of 240v, usually with a NEMA 6-15 outlet (like normal US outlet but pins are horizontal rather than vertical). These outlets are uncommon outside of wood shops.

  I never worry about load splitting,.

  The only time I’ve ever even considered this is a. charging my Tesla on 120v, or b. running a space heater and a hair dryer at the same time in the bathroom. :)

  Bottom line- yeah NZ system has higher power density but I don’t think the benefits outweigh the loss of ability to work on it yourself.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨British plugs⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Okay but that’s more talking about the benefit of a 240v system. The question here was the benefit of the giant UK plug. Personally I would argue that 240v to every receptacle is not a major benefit, because very few devices require 3kw+. And in exchange you get a somewhat more hazardous system.
  I am curious if homeowners in NZ are allowed to work on their own wiring? Here in the US you are…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨British plugs⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Your understanding is correct. It’s actually a very simple calculation: volts x amps = watts. Watts is the amount of total work done. So to use a water pipe analogy, imagine you have a pressure washer. Volts is the pressure in PSI. Amps in the flow rate in gallons per minute. Watts is how quickly it cleans your sidewalk. Thus, the 500 PSI pressure washer that can put out 2 gallons per minute does about the same amount of cleaning as the 1,000 PSI pressure washer that puts out one gallon per minute. However, as long as the hose can withstand the pressure, pushing out 2 gallons per minute requires a larger diameter hose.

  It’s the same way with wiring. The capacity of a wire is measured in amps. So if a device needs say 1200 watts, feeding it was 240v instead of 120v means you can use thinner wires everywhere. Including in the transformer that powers it.

  However, this type of gain only really makes a big difference when you get into very high power consumption devices. An electric kettle that takes 1500 w, in the US you are almost maxing out a single 15 amp outlet. In the UK the same kettle is using less than half of the outlets capacity. (Of course they just make a kettle that has twice as much output, because the Brits don’t want to wait for their tea). Amusingly, that 3 kilowatt tea kettle is one of the only places where you get a real perceptible advantage from a 240v system.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨British plugs⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  … How is that the case? You’re multiple loads end up with a cubic foot of plugs and receptacles. Like imagine I want to plug in a computer, two monitors, a printer, a desk lamp, a cell phone charger, and a laptop plug. None of these devices use more than 100 watts. In UK you need seven of those ridiculous giant plugs for all this. Even with a power strip it would be physically huge.

  In the US the power strip that would run all that stuff is barely a foot long.

  I have used power strips all my life and never once has one caught fire.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨British plugs⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  American here. I may be in the minority, but I think this plug design is absolutely stupid. I get that it has safety features, that you can put a fuse in the plug, that the outlets have switches, etc etc etc. But it is absolutely fucking huge. Ridiculously huge. And anywhere that you have multiple devices you want to plug in, it is totally impractical because it is so fucking huge.

  The fact is, very very few devices need 240v 13A. Yes I get that it is useful to have this ridiculous amount of power so you can boil your tea kettle in 35 seconds, but other than that very few household appliances need anywhere near that amount of power.

  So the result is a cell phone charger, which at the very outside is pulling 20 or 30 watts, is plugged into this giant ridiculous monstrosity capable of supplying 3000+ watts. And in reality the only appliances that use anywhere near that much are cooking appliances and space heaters.

  Meanwhile the US NEMA 5-15 is good for 1800 watts, plenty to run almost every household appliance, with the longer ground pin and an appropriate outlet it supports tamper resistance shutters, the thin flat pins resist the insertion of foreign objects into the outlet, and you can fit many outlets in a small space.
  And it doesn’t destroy your foot when you step on it, as a nice bonus.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How bad is it really to listen to music with headphones? My mother told me if I keep doing that I'd go deaf... Is that fearmongering?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  And if he’s flying at Mach 2, there’s probably a fuckton of wind noise against the helmet. Which means he’s probably listening way too loud. Same problem.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How bad is it really to listen to music with headphones? My mother told me if I keep doing that I'd go deaf... Is that fearmongering?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s a bunch of crap. In fact, modern headphones can if anything help protect your hearing.

  The thing that damages your hearing is sound level. Doesn’t matter if it’s from a speaker to inches away or 20 ft away, what matters is the sound pressure level that arrives at your eardrum.

  The problem with headphones is many people turn them up to drown out outside noise. To get it loud enough that you actually can’t hear the surrounding noise, it’s pretty loud. That is what causes hearing damage, not the fact that it is headphones. It would be no different if you put speakers and turned it up loud enough to drown out the noise.

  I say modern headphones can help because a lot of modern headphones have noise canceling. Thus, reducing the ambient noise level means you don’t feel a need to turn up the volume as high.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How long do we have before PCs get locked bootloaders and corporations ban installation of "non-approved" software? (for context: Google is restricting sideloading worldwide on Android ETA 2027)⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I was talking about secure boot. If the computer only runs Windows, enterprise doesn’t care. If the computer only runs Windows S, it’s an absolute nonstarter in enterprise tons of apps aren’t on the app store. But Windows S is never targeted to enterprise, only low end home users.

  Anything can support secure boot, the question is, are the keys included in the BIOS so it can run that particular OS without loading extra keys?

  I’ve also not personally encountered a computer where secure boot couldn’t be disabled or the list of keys modified, but I’ve definitely heard about them existing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How long do we have before PCs get locked bootloaders and corporations ban installation of "non-approved" software? (for context: Google is restricting sideloading worldwide on Android ETA 2027)⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s been attempted in two ways.
  First is secure boot. There were a handful of computers sold that did not allow disabling of secure boot, or changing the loaded keys. So it was basically essentially a Windows only computer.
  More recently is there was Microsoft Windows S. This was a cheap version of Windows Home that ran on low end computers and was locked to only allow installing apps from the Microsoft store. It was possible to unlock it but as I recall it required an additional fee.

  Enterprises almost all run Windows anyway so they DGAF.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Public transit in Chengdu, China versus Toronto, Canada⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  All jokes aside, things like this are why China is beating us. I am absolutely not a fan of the Chinese government, but the simple fact is they get shit done.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨My ravioli bowl won't unstick. Took about an hour of prying, and still I couldn't unstick the plate.⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This is the answer. Leave a hair dryer blowing at the thing for 5 or 10 minutes. It will heat the bowl, and also heat the air inside, which will expand.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon is waiting for Japan⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The problem isn’t capitalism. US has always had capitalism and once we put good protections in it worked great, like post WWII up until like 1990ish. That golden arrow was mainly because there were strong protections for workers that were relevant to the time. A man working minimum wage could live decently and feed his family.

  The three factors of production are land, labor, and capital. All three are supposed to have equal seats at the table. But starting somewhere between the Reagan years and 1990s, we started to let capital run the table. Labor took a back seat. And what we have now is the result.

  Housing and health care became investments rather than services. Minimum wage didn’t track inflation, didn’t track CPI, and sure as hell didn’t track worker productivity. The federal minimum wage has less buying power today than at any point since the minimum wage was implemented. And there is a very real trickle down effect, in that if the lowest worker is making $7.25, all other wages adjust based on that. IE, the slightly higher end worker makes $15 or $20 because that’s double or triple the minimum wage. If the lowest worker was making $20, the slightly higher end worker would be making $40 or $60.

  The result is that the American people have less buying power at their disposal than they have in a very long time. Significantly less than during those golden years of the latter 1900s. And that is why shit sucks.

  Capitalism is not the problem. Unchecked unregulated capitalism is the problem. Regulatory capture is part of that problem. And that’s what we have now in many industries.

  Fix that, raise the minimum wage, and stop letting corporations exploit not just workers but the nation as a whole. Then you have some capitalism that works for everybody.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon is waiting for Japan⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Sadly Japan may be a culture in decline.
  Their culture is basically work yourself to the bone even more than the US. Young people study their ass off and get a job working long hours while still living at home because they still can’t afford their own place. And you have stuff like if the subway is a minute late they hand out apology slips to workers so they don’t get in trouble with their bosses for being 30 seconds late. Meanwhile there is a very strong ‘defer to elder authority’ note in their culture. And in many industries people are expected to work a 10-hour day and then go drinking with the bus until 2:00 a.m. only to be back at work the next day at 8:00 a.m.
  The end result is young people have neither the time nor the money to have kids. So they don’t.

  Their population is literally aging and shrinking. They are facing a very serious problem in wondering who is going to take care of their elderly. Their birth to death ratio is 0.44, meaning that for every baby born in a year more than two people die. In a nation of about 125 million, the population is shrinking by just under a million every year. That’s not good.

  And while the Japanese people are highly educated and very capable, the ‘defer to authority’ culture prevents the sort of entrepreneurship you see in the US. An example of this, Japanese companies have a stamp called the hanko, when a paper memo is circulated around the office each employee stamps it with their personal hanko stamp to signify that they have read it. Many Japanese companies stayed in person during COVID simply because there was no digital equivalent to the hanko and managers refused to give it up.

  If you wants an example, look at Toyota Motors. It’s been obvious to everyone with eyes that electric vehicles are the future, and it has been obvious for probably 8 or 10 years. Every major automaker is investing in EV technology. Except Toyota, which up until recently was still betting the farm on hybrids and hydrogen. But that’s because the good Mr Toyoda didn’t like EVs, and unlike in an American company no one would dare challenge him on that.

  It is really too bad. Japan is a wonderful place with an amazing culture and rich history. But if they are going to survive they need to make very serious changes to their society and they need to do it soon. That is going to involve dumping most of what currently qualifies as Japanese business culture, an instituting some real work-life balance laws with teeth. I don’t know if they’re going to do it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"You should probably just throw it away"⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh of course. For them and their OEM partners too. Nobody else benefits from throwing 2-5 generations of perfectly functional hardware in the fucking trash.

  That all said though, Microsoft has been one of the biggest pushes behind replacing passwords with more secure authentication. And TPM does play a role in that. Certainly not the driving factor for throwing away millions of perfectly good computers though.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"You should probably just throw it away"⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I really wish there was something regulatory that could be done about this. There are millions of perfectly good fully working computers that are going to go in the fucking trash because of this. I understand the desire for a TPM on every machine. It makes sense in a way. But the pure environmental impact is just indefensible. All of those computers had a significant environmental footprint to build them and ship them and again to dispose of them plus building and shipping their replacements.
  If Microsoft had such a hard-on for TPM, they should have worked with computer manufacturers to make some sort of retrofit system or way of easily determining if a TPM can be added to an existing computer