communism

@communism@lemmy.ml

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How hopeless is getting a job with a CS degree?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Most people with a degree don’t do a job directlly related to their degree, and most people I know who work in an IT or CS related field aren’t university-educated. Go to uni because you want to learn and are interested in your field, not with the express goal of a career. If you wouldn’t go to uni if you knew you’d end up doing something else as a career, then that degree probably isn’t the choice for you, because it sounds like you’re not interested in the education itself, just the job resulting from it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it just the norm now-a-days for grocery stores to have lots of stuff on the shelves that's past the best-by date?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  old stuff needs to be pulled to the front, and new stuff needs to be put behind it

  As an aside, my “not unethical but does feel a bit like you’re cheating other people” life tip is to rummage around at the back of the shelf/in the bottom crate of a stack of crates for the freshest food. Don’t feel too bad about it especially in a high-turnover shop. They were going to sell the most recent-dated stock anyway, just to somebody who’s not you.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Would an LLM AI model trained wholly on consenting open source projects with a license requiring all derivative works be open source licensed still be problematic?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I think the “copyright” shit is the biggest non-issue with LLMs. Abolish intellectual property. If you put a piece of software out there, you shouldn’t be able to stop anyone else from using it for the public good.

  The issues I take with what’s being called “AI” right now is the volume of slop people have to drudge through. It particularly makes it hard to look for new software as there’s so many vibe-coded projects getting published then abandoned. It’s the aggressive and obnoxious marketing campaign that insists I pay for your shitty SaaS LLM, that I don’t get to keep or run on my own machine, that I’m supposed to use for all sorts of tasks where I don’t want a non-deterministic probabilistic machine (people use LLMs to do number-crunching?? you’re using a machine designed to do math, interfacing with the one part of it that can’t do math!). And it’s the ridiculous computing power people are using to do activities that do not require anywhere near that amount of power if they just do things the normal way. I could not care less about “copyright”. Nobody should be able to own a codebase anyway.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Lemmy or Piefed?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The Piefed devs are gigalibs who hard-code in their politics, blocking left-wing instances in the server software itself rather than letting instance admins configure that sort of stuff. Even if you agree with their politics, consider if you want to be using software that actively forbids users from interacting with conflicting politics even if the user wants to. If you agree with the principles of free software, then that doesn’t seem to respect user freedom to me.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Lemmy or Piefed?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It doesn’t mean Marxist-Leninist. It’s a coincidence. The Lemmy devs said they started using the domain because .ml domains were free.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Name of a Japanese vegetable dish?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Not an answer to what your dish is as others have already answered that, but it would help to know what food you do like as a picky eater, to suggest vegetable dishes that you would like. Going along with the Japanese theme, you could try vegetable tempura as a tasty way to get veggies. East Asia has a lot of yummy ways to eat vegetables. Stir fried, included in noodle dishes, kimchi, etc.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do you people read books?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Do you actually want to read them, firstly? I can read “hard” books just fine when they’re on a topic I’m genuinely interested in and I actually want to read the book. But if I force myself to read a “hard” book on something I don’t care about, it’ll be painful.

  I always highlight and annotate non-fiction with any thoughts/comments/etc, and if it’s a work I expect to find particularly valuable, I also take separate notes. Usually these are digital notes in the note-taking app of my choice (currently Notesnook), but for some books I get a physical notebook. It also helps motivate me if I get some nice highlighters and pens and take pretty notes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A Linux Version of Windows 11⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Windows isn’t the only problem. The amount of bloated proprietary spyware the average user uses is also a problem, aside from just the bloated proprietary spyware OS. Most people switching over to Linux will also replace any proprietary software they were using before, with FOSS, which is a good thing. For most people, switching out the OS itself is the biggest step, not replacing user software.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A Linux Version of Windows 11⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  RAM matters for a VM, to give the VM enough memory to run the OS. Wine is not a VM though, so you only need a “normal” amount of RAM to run a Windows program through Wine, ie whatever the recommended amount of memory is for Office. Not all programs work well through wine though; Office might not. I don’t know why you’d need to run MS Office specifically though when LibreOffice exists. Do you have a specific use case?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A Linux Version of Windows 11⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean… “Linux”, the kernel, has a different API to “Windows”, so by definition, no, those are two different APIs a program would have to call. I suppose it’s probably hypothetically possible to fork the Linux kernel to add support for Windows APIs, but I don’t know why anyone would want to do that when Wine and, failing that, VMs exist.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Your problem is defining “sex” as “being penetrated”. I am a woman, and do not enjoy being penetrated, and still enjoy sex. I’ve only put menstrual cups and a speculum up there before but I found it painful and difficult, like trying to push the cup up against a brick wall. I know women who have this problem and want to receive penetrative sex do vaginal dilation, but I’m not interested in that, so I don’t bother.

  If you like the idea of being penetrated, you might want to try seeing a gynaecologist about vaginismus. But this isn’t inherently a problem if you don’t actually want to use your vagina during sex. You might prefer giving over receiving, or you might only want clitoral stimulation.

  Gay people (including us lesbians) have the concept of being a top (wanting to give penetrative sex) or a bottom (wanting to receive penetrative sex). I think it would improve straight people’s sex lives to have the same thing tbh. I think some straight women probably are tops and some straight men probably are bottoms even though they’re interested in the opposite sex. If you like the idea of fucking a man with a strap-on over getting penetrated yourself, give it a go :) And if you just don’t like the idea of sex at all, you’re under no obligation to have it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  They have a near on monopoly, and even if end consumers start switching to Linux, businesses are going to be much harder to sway. They simply don’t need to care about software quality when they have massive guaranteed business customers.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What does "Woke" mean to you?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Initially used by Black USAmericans to mean “aware of the racist reality we live in”. Then racists started mocking Black people for saying it and using it as a slur against social movements. Now people mostly treat it as a meme word meaning vaguely left-wing, but in a funny way.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If you need a portable reader, is there any reason to choose an e-reader over your phone?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Lack of distraction, easier on the eyes, larger screen, much easier to read if it’s sunny out.

  I like to use it as an extra screen for when I’m taking notes on a pdf/ebook on my laptop, so I don’t need to dedicate half my laptop screen to the book. And like I said, it’s a bigger screen than my smartphone.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Non-stick pans?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  As the other commenter said, only Teflon permanently loses its non-stickiness. After seasoning your cast iron or carbon steel pan (carbon steel addresses your wife’s problem of heaviness, and it’s basically the same substance as cast iron), make sure the pan is hot before adding your food. I’ve cooked eggs, fish, veg, all sorts of commonly sticky foods in well seasoned hot cast iron and not had problems. I only get sticking problems when the pan is not hot enough. For seasoning, I wash, dry by heating on the stove, add a little bit of oil, spread it thinly with a paper towel, put it upside down in the oven with a tray beneath to catch any drippings, and let my oven run on max temperature for about an hour. I’ve only had to do that I think twice over the several years I’ve had my cast iron pan though; the seasoning should maintain and heal itself just by cooking with it. The same applies to carbon steel if that’s what you get, btw.

  My only exception is tofu, which I have literally never managed to fry without sticking except on Teflon. I think it’s because of the moisture of tofu. I don’t press my tofu tbf, out of laziness, but perhaps I’ll have to once my Teflon pan gives out.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do I figure out where flies are entering my house?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I used to have lots of flies and noticed one summer when I put tin foil in the windows to cool my house down, I stopped finding flies inside completely. Maybe because it made my house dark, they didn’t want to come in anymore? Idk, but I’ve been gloriously fly-free ever since. You’ve mentioned you have a basement—do you find fewer flies there? I suspect they might avoid dark places.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I use HeliBoard. It’s fine, but I don’t have any special use-cases/needs; I just wanted a normal keyboard, which HeliBoard is fine at. If you have anything specific you need, I’m not sure if HB does it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is so difficult to organize a strike⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s the one I was referring to! It was (still is, I think, by skimming the website) hosted by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. I went to it a while ago and found it useful, so can recommend. It’s quite highly regarded by the trade unionists I know.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is so difficult to organize a strike⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Have you read any books or done any trainings on workplace organising? Most unions provide free training for members who want to organise. I’d leave a book rec too but the main books I’ve read on the matter are by IRL comrades and I don’t really want to dox myself on here.

  It’s about having the right strategy and knowing how to have these conversations with coworkers. Most people trying to organise a workplace come up against the same barriers. The biggest piece of advice I’d give is focus on active listening—what problems does this person have and care about in their workplace? Don’t impose your own problems/the issues you care about most onto them—what’s important to them may be different to what’s important to you. Find out what they care about, and get them thinking about what might happen if we used our collective power to do something about it. But organising strategy can’t be summed up in a Lemmy comment. I do suggest you look into doing a course/workshop/reading a book. You mentioned being in Europe; I think the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung ran online organising workshops for Europeans iirc, not sure if they still do.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why are some Linux community so toxic?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t think it’s Linux-specific. There’s a lot of dickheads in society. If you create a community around a particular topic or hobby, then most likely you’ll get people there feeling arrogant/superior about their skills in that hobby/topic/etc and wanting to gatekeep it. It happens for a lot of things.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why are there so many more mtf trans vs ftm trans people??⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s definitely a you thing of where you go on the internet. e.g. on Tumblr or ao3 the bias in the trans population is in the opposite direction.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why are there so many more mtf trans vs ftm trans people??⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s not the case… There used to be more trans women visiting gender clinics than trans men, which we got old stats from, but nowadays all the stats you can see show it pretty much 50/50.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do you keep your shit organized?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  (assuming you rent) you can use command strips to stick organisers to your walls and use vertical space. You can use some of those stationery organisers and stick it to the wall. In general see if you can use more vertical space.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do I get the damn cat to understand I can feed myself?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  If they don’t think animals should be kept in captivity, they shouldn’t keep a pet. Pets are, by definition, captive animals. If I befriended a pigeon by feeding it, it wouldn’t become my pet; it only would if I captured it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do black people actually want to be called Black with capital B?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  A lot of lit from the Black liberation movement uses “Black”. I’d say that the majority of people I’ve seen capitalise Black have been Black themselves. That isn’t to say it represents a majority of Black people, but also I don’t think “what do the majority of this group think” is the best metric for determining what’s right—e.g. a significant amount of women are figureheads of the anti-abortion movement, but that doesn’t mean that they’re right or not misogynistic.

  I wasn’t sure if I should use “themself” or “themselves”

  Different people who use they/them will have different preferences. If you don’t know the person’s preference, I doubt they’d care about which you go with, and if they did, they can reach out to you after the fact and ask you to change it or to use a different option going forward in the future.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do black people actually want to be called Black with capital B?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s a political choice that some folks in the Black liberation movement choose in order to emphasise Blackness. Not all Black people do it. I don’t think anyone would tell you off for choosing to capitalise it or not. Both are quite common.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why can't I apply SPF50 sunscreen twice to get SPF100 protection?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  …How do you smear butter on your skin then?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Should I donate sperm?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  People do pick based on career (not sure about UK specifically but generally sperm recipients can see that kind of biographical info), but it’s not like nutting in a cup is difficult, and someone might want sperm and not care what career the donor has. Why not just donate in case if someone wants it?

  I’m not sure how long sperm lasts, but when I was doing egg retrieval I was told that frozen eggs can last at least 10 years, probably a lot longer but they only store them for 10 years as they have limited space. If sperm is similar then there’s a decent enough chance someone will want to use it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Possibility of translating the messages of dogs, cats, and other pets⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Most animals don’t use verbal communication. As an analogy, most humans don’t use sign language. Imagine if someone wanted to create a human translator that recorded what humans do with their hands and translate them into meaning. There would be a lot of noise there because most humans don’t talk with their hands, so most of it would be ascribing meaning that isn’t there. Sometimes the person is just itching their back, or just doing the dishes, etc, not trying to say something. Similarly, most other animals vocalise for other reasons, not because they want to make a specific sound to communicate something.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is the US so into Israel?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s their attack dog in the SWANA region. As Biden said, if Israel did not exist the US would have to create an Israel.