swordgeek
@swordgeek@lemmy.ca
- Comment on [deleted] 15 hours ago:
Laws are there for the riff raff, not the elite.
This has been true for a very long time, but those in power generally didn’t abuse that fact too much. Until recently.
- Comment on Transmen who have had bottom surgery, have you ever sat on your scrotum by accident? 1 day ago:
You are obsessed with this being the norm. I’m not at all convinced it is.
- Comment on Transmen who have had bottom surgery, have you ever sat on your scrotum by accident? 1 day ago:
I’m a cis dude in my mid-50s. Don’t think this has ever hapoened to me.
- Comment on Favorite retro games? 6 days ago:
I don’t go back to it (Win 3.1 games are a PITA to get running), but I really wish someone would remake Millennium Auction. It was a very clever version of the old board game Masterpiece.
- Comment on How rare is it for people to live without anger? 1 week ago:
I lived without anger for almost 15 minutes today.
That’s almost a record.
- Comment on What is going on with Facebook's (Meta) new community guidelines? 1 week ago:
Remember, Facebook started out as a non-consensual ‘hot or not’ site, to rate women at Zuck’s college.
As they grew, they became loudly pious about their ‘strong content guidelines’ (i.e. you could get banned for a mastectomy picture), but still didn’t care about hate speech. Only a month ago, FB refused to take down an explicit call for the lynching of PM Justin Trudeau, and another saying trans kids need to be “raken to the train station.” Neither of these violated FB’s content regulations.
So framing this as Zuck bending to Trump is misleading. It’s much more him taking off his mask of civility, finally.
Like Trump, like Musk, like Poilievre, the man is a weasel and a Nazi.
- Comment on What's the endgame when the rich have all the money? 1 week ago:
What’s the endgame for them if their current path takes them to a point where their assets are more or less worthless?
Get too rich, too powerful, burn the earth, and die happy before the consequences of their behavior catch up with them.
- Comment on Could every monarchy and authoritarian/tyrannical societies have been the result of child abuse? 1 week ago:
As soon as you say “every,” the answer will be no.
Humanity is too varied and unique. Shitty behaviour can erupt spontaneously at any time.
- Comment on How can I use an LLM to generate a 10k word long coherent story? 2 weeks ago:
Don’t.
Develop real AI, don’t rely on bullshit LLMs.
- Comment on Should I get a drum kit, or a pressure washer? 2 weeks ago:
If you want to learn drums well, skip the gimmicks and toys, and get a solid practice pad (Remo, Vic Firth, etc.). You can learn a lot - and can practice fundamentals endlessly with that.
- Comment on Should I get a drum kit, or a pressure washer? 2 weeks ago:
Drums are more fun. Music is more fun, and will last you a lifetime.
But absolutely make sure you factor in the cost of lessons.
- Comment on Has the USA turned into an oligarchy? 2 weeks ago:
Yes.
Really and truly, yes.
- Comment on Day 1 Reddit Refugee 2 weeks ago:
Welcome!
You’ll find that the volume here is much (much much MUCH!!!) lower than reddit. As frustrating as this can be, the only solution is to stand and create more content. More worthwhile posts, more comments, more interaction. At its height, that was exactly what made reddit successful.
- Comment on what was the last game you played in 2024? 2 weeks ago:
System Shock, the remake by Nightdive.
I’m old enough that I bought and played the original SS back in the day, and it was transformative.
- Comment on Is there any way to search through all the games on Steam for titles that don't use the word "dystopian" anywhere in the description? 3 weeks ago:
Just search for Slime Rancher.
- Comment on Guy never bought a game on the Epic Store... Owns 200+ 3 weeks ago:
Hmm. Let’s see here…
Steam: 147
GOG: 174
Epic: 286I’ve paid for about 2/3 of the Steam games, probably a quarter of the GOG ones, and maybe two or three of the Epic ones.
- Comment on What games have you sunk the most time into? 4 weeks ago:
No idea what Steam has to say, but I’ve played more games for longer than Steam has been around, so here’s a guess of mine in no particular order:
- Skyrim
- Morrowind
- Fallout (3, NV, 4, London combined)
- Ultima II
- Doom II
- Grim Fandango
- Comment on How do we know the government doesn't just have a secret hardware backdoor in all our devices? 4 weeks ago:
We don’t.
We really really don’t.
Consider the attack that Israel carried out this fall by detonating walkie-talkies and pagers. This wasn’t just some illicit code in the firmware or hardware, they managed to hijack the supply chain and hide literal bombs in commercially-produced handheld devices!
Bottom line: If you do not directly control the production chain from chip design and fab to end-user software, you can never be sure.
40 years ago, the legendary Ken Thompsonand Dennis Ritchie accepted the Turing Award for creating Unix. Thompson’s acceptance speech Reflections on Trusting Trust pointed out this same fundamental security flaw.
I encourage everyone to read the article, and spread it as widely as possible. It is terrifying and accurate, nearly half a century later.
- Comment on If You’re Worried About the Future of Our Country, Do Something About It 4 weeks ago:
“Do somerhing.”
Kill evil CEOs in the street?
Tax the rich?
Hold the media accountable for slanting reality?
Lock up the fascists?
- Comment on Is it worth investing if I can only contribute $50 a month? 4 weeks ago:
Regardless, my point was more to do with whether someone with only $50 to spare a month is truly in a position to invest in anything or whether they might be better off saving it for a rainy day or something like that.
True enough, but short-term or non-locked-in investments are available to most people.
If OP doesn’t have the starting funds to buy an investment vehicle of some sort, then they could put it into a zero-fee savings account and vigorously ignore it. This is, in fact, your rainy day fund.
Then when they have scrounged up the appropriate amount (likely $500 or $1k), they can buy a guaranteed investment certificate or the like, and get better interest rates while they continue to put money into their account.
When the term is up, they can buy a bigger one with their new savings. This way, they have both an emergency fund, and the starting point for a life of investing towards retirement, if nothing else.
(Of course your later point - if they’re struggling to eat - is still true as well.)
- Comment on Is it worth investing if I can only contribute $50 a month? 4 weeks ago:
Absolutely 100% yes yes yes.
Compounding is your friend. You can play with the values all you want, but this calculator showed me that if you deposited $50/month at 5%/year compounded annually, you’d end up making >$1800 in profit over ten years. Realistically, you should be able to get a better rate and shorter compounding periods once you’ve passed the threshold amount for a mutual fund or GIC.
And that’s assuming you never increase your deposits.
Realistically, whenever you get a raise you should assign some of it to increasing your monthly payments. Your goal should be to increase your payments faster than inflation. Get a $2/hr raise? That’ll probably add $250/month to your paycheque after taxes. You should be able to squirrel away $25/month from that at least.
Here’s a great piece of advice from The Wealthy Barber (Canadian financial dude): Pay yourself first. See if you can get your investment amount taken directly off your pay, and then you’ll never see it, thus be tempted to spend it.
His other advice is to set a goal of 10% of your income to invest for retirement. Seems like a lot, but it’s doable for most people who are talking about investing anything, like you.
Remember: The biggest factor in how much you make from investments over time is how early you invest. Invest now. Invest regularly.
- Comment on Is it worth investing if I can only contribute $50 a month? 4 weeks ago:
Pet insurance is a good thing for people with a large number of animals - particularly rescue animal boarding.
For most people though, no.
- Comment on What MMORPG are you playing, and why? 4 weeks ago:
None.
Because I hate people.
- Comment on [deleted] 4 weeks ago:
Insecure, contrarian, infantile.
- Comment on Why did people in the 90s/early 00s say that the internet "couldn't be taken down"? 5 weeks ago:
The answer to your second point is simple.
Meta’s properties (FB, Insta) have something that most other social networks are lacking: A network of real-world family and friends.
Twitter, Reddit, Mastodon, Lemmy, Tiktok, and the rest all tend to have communities built from the platform’s population, based on shared interests. Meanwhile, FB is the platform that you use to connect with your oddball uncle and high school friends from way back. That’s the sunk cost that makes it so much harder to leave than the strangers on reddit who share your love of lime jello.
- Comment on Why did people in the 90s/early 00s say that the internet "couldn't be taken down"? 5 weeks ago:
Net Neutrality was a major principle of the Internet but that is under attack, particularly in the US[…]
Not really focused on the US. Every nation, every corporation, every venal special interest group is fighting against net neutrality.
- Comment on Why did people in the 90s/early 00s say that the internet "couldn't be taken down"? 5 weeks ago:
“The internet sees censorship as damage and routes around it.”
From a very primitive perspective, this is true. Many of the infrastructure protocols (DNS, BGP, etc.) that the internet sits on are designed to be resilient and fault tolerant. Block access to a DNS server, and the system will find another one. Usually. Depending on circumstances.
Firewalling an entire country is incredibly difficult. From a technical point of view, the GFoC is only modestly successful. It blocks casual and accidental access to the ‘outside world’ just fine, but for the determined operator there are absolutely ways around it - VPNs, cellular networks, satellite relays, you name it.
But do you want to risk having the police show up at your door with orders to kill on sight?
This is fundamentally no different than content filtering in a typical office. From my work computer, I can’t get to porn sites. If I really wanted to, I could find a way - but the odds are pretty good that HR would be at my desk with termination papers and a security escort out of the building.
- Comment on Hey is Sharing Luigi’s Manifesto on Social Media Actually "Glorifying Violence"? Because Reddit Said So 😭 5 weeks ago:
He has rallied support for massively reforming the American Healthcare system…
I would disagree with this. Nobody is talking about health care reform. People are talking about destroying an economic system that creates billionaires, and also about destroying the billionaires themselves. This hasn’t been a call for reform, it’s a call to arms.
The scariest thing is that people are beginning to accept that the system has always been rigged, and there is no other way to fix it.
- Comment on Some disabled workers are making pennies per hour. Will that change under Trump? 5 weeks ago:
The articke suggests workers could get a better deal under Trump. That’s just insane to even imagine.
Of course they wonpt.
- Comment on How to get over my reddit ""addiction""? 1 month ago:
Step #1: Log out. Log out on your phone, desktop, or wherever you access reddit from.
Step #2: Delete whatever apps you used.
The way to get off of reddit is to get off of reddit. I found that as long as I was logged in, I couldn’t help but contribute - so I logged out and stopped.
Six months later I went back, vandalized my posts and comments, and then deleted my accounts.
I’m gone. I’m done. The divorce is final.