kbal
@kbal@fedia.io
- Comment on Here's what would happen if the UK abolished landlords overnight 13 hours ago:
Let’s assume being a landlord is made illegal overnight. Tenants won’t be made to leave their homes, however, until the landlord has been able to sell up.
I mean obviously we're not going to abolish landlords overnight unless we abolish a whole lot of other things along with them in some kind of incredibly successful revolution, but thinking that we'd keep them around long enough to profit from the sale of their real estate assets is just a failure of imagination. Let's assume that all mortgage debt is cancelled and ownership of every dwelling is granted to whoever's been living in it.
- Comment on Tories set a low bar after misspelling Britain on conference chocolate 1 day ago:
Good call there over at the Grauniad.
- Comment on Brits in disbelief as new refillable drinks ban implemented across UK 1 day ago:
Yes... that is the topic of discussion. I'm just saying it's manifestly unfair if they apply that tax to refills of your cup at Nando's, but don't charge extra for each lump of sugar in a cup of tea.
- Comment on Brits in disbelief as new refillable drinks ban implemented across UK 1 day ago:
In order to be consistent they'll need to start charging tax per lump of sugar as well.
- Comment on RUMOR: 'The Future of Xbox is Software Publishing' as Next Console Generation Faces Doubts 2 days ago:
RUMOR: There is no future for Xbox.
- Comment on Keir Starmer says digital ID cards an ‘enormous opportunity’ for the UK 1 week ago:
"You will not be able to work in the United Kingdom if you do not have digital ID. It's as simple as that."
Ah, I get it. The idea is to give a massive boost to the underground economy, forcing everyone without a digital ID to work completely off the books.
- Comment on Keir Starmer expected to announce plans for digital ID cards 1 week ago:
Making Britain less attractive to illegal migrants, at the cost of also making it less attractive to everyone else.
- Comment on Microsoft forced to make Windows 10 extended security updates truly free in Europe 1 week ago:
There's still a catch, though — you have to keep running Windows 10.
- Comment on Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg unveils new smart glasses powered by AI 2 weeks ago:
I think it would sell better if it had more surface areas for sensors, one near the mouth for a mic, and a big compartment over the nose to contain the battery in
- Comment on Parents outraged as Meta uses photos of schoolgirls in ads targeting man 2 weeks ago:
I dunno whether that's Facebook pushing it more often to men (because their analytics shows it works on their audience) or men clicking on it more often because it works on the Facebook audience.
- Comment on Parents outraged as Meta uses photos of schoolgirls in ads targeting man 2 weeks ago:
Some fraction of the harm they do is by carelessness rather than malice. That some mindless algorithm intended to find and exploit for advertising purposes the posts that got the most engagement disproportionately selected ones featuring images of cute teenagers does not seem unlikely.
- Comment on Parents outraged as Meta uses photos of schoolgirls in ads targeting man 2 weeks ago:
Weird that the man assumes those images were chosen to target him, but horrifying that he might be right.
- Comment on 4chan will refuse to pay daily UK fines, its lawyer tells BBC 1 month ago:
They tried that. Don't underestimate the progress already made towards building the Great Firewall of Britain. I guess the main problem was that when the filtering was optional, too many people chose to opt out.
- Submitted 1 month ago to technology@beehaw.org | 28 comments
- Submitted 8 months ago to science_memes@mander.xyz | 0 comments
- Comment on Opinion | Don’t Get Fooled Again by Crypto 1 year ago:
If I were looking to assign blame, I'd start with the coal and gas operators who are digging up fossil fuels that would otherwise remain in the ground just to fuel their bitcoin mining rigs, those who peddle specious arguments claiming that it somehow isn't a problem, those who turned the whole thing into a machine for separating the gullible from their money, and those who've built the shaky, buggy, mostly proprietary, convoluted, half-finished, untrustworthy, horrible mess that is the software ecosystem surrounding the whole cryptocurrency sphere. Perhaps none of that could have been foreseen by whoever designed bitcoin. On them we can instead put the blame for the failure to make it anywhere near sufficiently scalable, and the ridiculous choice of mechanism for the bitcoin monetary policy which serves to make it function only as a get-rich-quick pyramid scheme and not a durable currency. Regardless of who's to blame, it's got to go.
Perhaps there's already an alternative out there somewhere which is actually useful and not based on avarice, fraud, unsustainable resource usage, or unsustainable hype, but if so it's currently hidden under such an enormous pile of shitcoins that it's impossible to identify. At least the internal combustion engine was good at doing the thing it was supposed to do.
- Comment on Opinion | Don’t Get Fooled Again by Crypto 1 year ago:
If you can afford more than a small plot of land in this economy, you've probably been hoarding too much wealth. I know it's a very popular hobby, but it's quite bad for you if taken to excess. But this is getting somewhat off-topic.
Some kind of technology that resembles today's cryptocurrencies may or may not have a future. As they exist right now none of them are anything like a good investment opportunity or a safe store of value.
- Comment on Opinion | Don’t Get Fooled Again by Crypto 1 year ago:
A small plot of land with good soil and a steady supply of fresh water, a good education, and a sturdy pair of boots.
- Comment on Opinion | Don’t Get Fooled Again by Crypto 1 year ago:
Other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, which are far more energy efficient than Bitcoin
Calling those that don't depend on proof-of-work "more energy efficient" is underselling it to the point of being dishonest. The difference is not that they're more efficient in any conventional way. It's that they don't have the amazing bitcoin feature of relying for their operation on the practice of deliberately wasting enormous amounts of energy for the purpose of being able to prove that you've wasted enormous amounts of energy.
All the way through the cryptocurrency crash that the average reader of headlines thought must've put an end to it by now, the bitcoin network has kept on burning up absurd amounts of power.
- Comment on Elon Musk’s misinformation machine made the horrors of Southport, a small town in the UK, much worse 1 year ago:
Elected officials, journalists, activists, it's gradually becoming clear that everyone who uses centralised social media is part of the problem. Promoting the fediverse ought to be a national security goal.
- Comment on Elon Musk’s misinformation machine made the horrors of Southport, a small town in the UK, much worse 1 year ago:
The problem isn’t merely that Elon Musk is manifestly unsuited to the job of unelected social media tsar. The problem is that no one should have that job.
- Comment on 4 things white people can do to start making the fediverse less toxic for Black people (DRAFT!) 1 year ago:
It may sound crazy, but there is a precedent:
@Column('boolean', { default: false, comment: 'Whether the User is a cat.', }) public isCat: boolean; - Comment on Logitech has an idea for a “forever mouse” that requires a subscription 1 year ago:
I'm an Xfce user, in the habit of dragging windows around with the "super" key + left mouse button.
For instant access to the browser back button, I have it positioned in the far top-left corner so that just swiping the mouse in that direction hits it without having to look at it. Unless it's on the other monitor, which is mildly annoying when it happens but you know, probably not by enough to change my decades-old habit of buying the cheapest and simplest mouse that's easily available in much the same way as I like to shop for socks: reluctantly, when it's necessary.
- Comment on Logitech has an idea for a “forever mouse” that requires a subscription 1 year ago:
Yeah it is mostly the extra buttons that annoy me personally, I don't really know why. I have better ways of doing the things you mention but I'm sure there could theoretically be some use for them. I've played games where they might've been useful, but it seems like no software is designed to rely on them and I always found their placement made it too easy to hit them by accident. Maybe my hands are the wrong shape or something.
- Comment on Logitech has an idea for a “forever mouse” that requires a subscription 1 year ago:
- A third mouse button showed up
- A scrollwheel showed up
- Optical sensors showed up.
- Better optical sensors showed up
- Polling rate improved
... and then everybody joined me in thinking that this would be a good place to stop and actively avoided the continued attempts to sell us on new features that further complicate things.
- Comment on Logitech has an idea for a “forever mouse” that requires a subscription 1 year ago:
I'm using a Logitech mouse from probably 15 years ago that gets daily use and works just fine. I'm not sure how much it cost, but I don't think I've ever paid more than about $20 for a mouse and probably the only reason I'd have picked one from Logitech is that it was the only one available at the shop I happened to be in at the time that wasn't a ridiculous overpriced "gaming" product.
- Comment on What a lucky crab 1 year ago:
Cool crab but how do they know what time it logged in to Outlook?
- Comment on ‘Star Trek: Prodigy’ Season 2 Launching On SkyShowtime In Europe In August; Canada Still Waiting 1 year ago:
Well, I guess Canadians who want to watch Prodigy are out of luck. There certainly isn't any other way to see it. It's just impossible.
- Comment on Disney 1 year ago:
It's a racist troll account that was created less than an hour ago. You see them once in a while. Odd that it chose this community to attack, but I suppose the idea is to find the places where it will be most unwelcome.
- Comment on Why is it a common insult for someone to say they slept with your mom? 1 year ago:
Plutarch's biography of Cicero notes that:
Again, in a dispute with Cicero, Metellus Nepos asked repeatedly "Who is your father?"
"In your case," said Cicero, "your mother has made the answer to this question rather difficult."