kbal
@kbal@fedia.io
- Comment on Opinion | Don’t Get Fooled Again by Crypto 4 months 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 4 months 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 4 months 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 4 months 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 4 months 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 4 months 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!) 4 months 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 4 months 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 4 months 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 4 months 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 4 months 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 4 months 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 4 months 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 5 months 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? 5 months 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." - Comment on A "test" to judge Star Trek shows 5 months ago:
It's just a thought. On further consideration I'd probably broaden it to any non-Starfleet faction. In cases where there is one involved in the plot I like it when they're portrayed in more depth than is usual.
- Comment on A "test" to judge Star Trek shows 5 months ago:
Counter-proposal: Same thing, except instead of crew members it's people from whatever non-Federation civilisation is involved that week.
- Comment on Everybody thinks they're Galileo 5 months ago:
It's a good thing our new mechanical horses have no waste products at all, otherwise that dude might've had a point.
- Comment on Subsets are a thing in biology as well. 5 months ago:
Ah, so chimps are monkeys in the same way that whales are fish.
- Comment on Subsets are a thing in biology as well. 5 months ago:
Can someone explain for the non-biologists? I never heard of chimps being classified as monkeys.
- Comment on The disturbing online misogyny of Gamergate has returned – if it ever went away 5 months ago:
[false claims that] journalists gave the recent PS5 game Stellar Blade (pictured below) bad reviews because its female characters are too hot
That seems an inadequate way of summing up the Stellar Blade controversy which on the whole was considerably more ridiculous than that.
- Comment on Jumblie #245 6 months ago:
Turns out I was wrong though, according to the dictionary it does have that meaning. I think it's somewhat archaic.
- Comment on Jumblie #245 6 months ago:
The 4-letter one is obvious, even more so if you're British. The 8-letter one I probably should've got more quickly. The five-letter one is dubious at best. The six-letter one is definitely not a synonym of "place" at all. So yeah, not easy this time.
- Comment on No, I don't want to design a logo for a coffee shop in fucking skype. 6 months ago:
I've used Skype. It was not just "mildly" infuriating, and that was before copilot.
- Comment on My floop is yo floop 6 months ago:
I think I'll take the stairs.
- Comment on AI is the future 6 months ago:
Looks like it's learned that adding "according to Quora" makes it look more authoritative. Maybe with a few more weeks of training it'll figure out how to make fake citations of sources that are actually trustworthy.
- Going Dark: The war on encryption is on the rise. Through a shady collaboration between the US and the EU.mullvad.net ↗Submitted 6 months ago to technology@beehaw.org | 10 comments
- Comment on GamesIndustry.biz: Microsoft's mystifying mismanagement 7 months ago:
I hesitate to attribute it to accidental mismanagement. Surely Microsoft has enough experience by now to be pretty good at acquiring firms they think of as competition only to find some excuse to shut them down.
- Comment on "Yeah, yeah, I totally know what a lion looks like, just give me the brush" 7 months ago:
I like the way he captured my eyes.
- Comment on Checkmate, science 7 months ago:
Less fun at parties guy: While the diagram leaves it somewhat unclear as to what precise effect that mechanism is intended to achieve, clearly it involves electromagnetism and thus any proper explanation must begin with a full description of quantum field theory...