Aceticon
@Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- Comment on nuked from orbit 11 hours ago:
You might want to re-read my posts a couple of time and think about it a bit harder, if the conclusion you derived from what I wrote is that I want to gatekeep the posters.
- Comment on nuked from orbit 13 hours ago:
It makes her an expert in advocacy and politics, not science or engineering.
Obviously advocacy expertise is no less worth than engineering or science, just like arts expertise is no less worth than any of that or plenty of other expertises in complex areas.
However, the “salesmanship” kinds of expertise are already the one of most widely celebrated and rewarded by present day society.
- Comment on nuked from orbit 17 hours ago:
Don’t take this the wrong way but from the list of achievements she sounds very much a Politician/PR-person/Lobbyist specialized in the area of Space Exploration, not an Engineer or a Scientist.
Still beats Beer-belly Brad by a long distance (probably not hard), but is such a person really worth celebrating in Science Memes?
- Comment on Has America Reached Its Tipping Point with Ignorance? 1 day ago:
The abuse of autoritative source (not to be confused with “authoritarian”) positions for personal upside maximization (which often meant spreading propaganda) and subsequent fall in trust in authoritative sources long predates Trump.
I mean, in the US, Newspapers - which are supposed to inform people, not to convince them of anything - openly gloat about their “opinion making” and are criticized if they do not openly support a candidate in Presidential Elections (the very opposite of Journalism)
Then there’s the decades-long massive abuse of “expert sources” on Finance and Economics by Neoliberalism to push very specific narratives, for very specific political ends which overwhelmingly benefited a very specific subset of people.
What you’re seeing now is the product of the deceit practiced by many of those who are supposed to be independent experts who inform the rest on important subject, and the blanked distrust on the the Media and “experts” and subsequent blooming of shameless loudmouth liars who speak with maximum confidence in politics is really just the harvesting that which has been sowed since at least the 80s.
IMHO the tipping point was decades ago and what you see now is the acceleration downhill having been going for long enough that the speed of travel downwards has become scary.
- Comment on It's why they tried to get rid of it 3 days ago:
So the Illuminati created Pluto as a distraction from Autism.
That makes sense.
- Comment on [deleted] 4 days ago:
When human and social situations are interpreted in simplistic one-size-fits-all ways by people who have linked such interpretation to being a member of a “political side”, their takes are not really about what’s best for the people involved, even when they claim otherwise.
There really isn’t any “one size fits all” approach for most human subjects, specially something as socially significant as gender.
- Comment on Good morning. 4 days ago:
“He was licking my balls from behind and his nose accidentally touched my butthole, so in clenched my cheeks and said ‘got your nose Donald’ and he kept coming back for more”
- Comment on What we all want deep down 1 week ago:
This society deifies the crazy cat lady syndrome as long as it’s with money rather than cats and, worse, the actual crazy cat ladies are driven by good intentions whilst those obcessed with hoarding money are driven by almost the opposite kind of feeling.
These people are literally sick people and the shitty system we have actually celebrates them and has laws designed to support the symptoms of their disease.
- Comment on What we all want deep down 1 week ago:
… and the amount of “set for life” money just keeps growing because we have to pay ever increasing amounts to rich people on things like housing. … and the safety of one’s savings keeps going down, so you can be “set for life” only for your savings to be wiped out because they exceed the bank deposite protection threshold or you had to invest it in some supposedly safe thing to generate enough interest to live of and it ends up pretty much stolen from you with no recourse (as many will find out when they finally try to draw on their private pensions).
The system is rigged so that even being an entry-level millionaire is not enough.
- Comment on uninvited 2 weeks ago:
Aliterations are the puns of serious talk: cheap and cheery.
- Comment on Steam now warns about Early Access that have not been updated in months. 2 weeks ago:
Frankly, some games like Project Zomboid have for years been way beyond what one would think of as Early Access quality but the devs had such a grand objectives that they’ve kept it in Early Access for ages.
- Comment on I got a big head start early in life in not giving a shit about what other people thought. 2 weeks ago:
Of all the ways one could possibly guide oneself by the opinions of others, being guided by the opinions of teens is about the dumbest possible one.
- Comment on Bro... 2 weeks ago:
Now you went and made it a British meme, complete with a weird accent.
- Comment on (:3) 2 weeks ago:
It’s basically indentured servitude - in that poverty is what now turns people into de facto slaves rather than race - in pretty much the same way as the English “ended slavery” but not really back in the 18th century.
The thing is, unlike in the US the Brits got rid of indentured servitude more than a century ago, plus in the US poverty and race are tightly couple for afro-Americans because the ultra-Capitalist system in American transformed ex-slavery and the subsequent tail of racist discrimination into poverty and made poverty a dynastic characteristic (in that even after active Racism was weakened, being born poor means a huge probability of being foverver poor so the victimization of Historical Racism was propagated down the generations) so present day indentured servitude in American disproportionately hits the descendants of the slaves whilst indentured servitude in Britain mainly hit the majority ethnic groups in those isles (though I do believe that for example the Irish were much more likely to be victims of it than the English).
- Comment on Sony removes PlayStation account requirement from 4 single-player Steam games: Marvel's Spider-Man 2, God of War Ragnarok, The Last of Us Part II Remastered, and Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered 3 weeks ago:
I bet the pirate versions were the superior product because they never required a PSN account.
- Comment on Sony finally surrenders: PSN accounts will be 'optional' for games on Steam, but they'll give you free stuff if you sign up 3 weeks ago:
If there’s one thing that Sony’s transition from a quality electronics company to a copyright-heavy media-driven pro-DMCA-lobbying company back in then 00s has taught me it’s to “Never, ever trust Sony”.
- Comment on Updated ADL guidelines 4 weeks ago:
“YEah, bUT WhAT aBoUT HUmuS???!!”
- Comment on Big Charging doesn't want you to know this one simple weird old trick 4 weeks ago:
Not cheaper in general, just cheaper compared to equal or more energy efficient solutions.
Red LEDs are cheaper but less energy efficient, whilst more energy efficient solutions like e-Ink are much more expensive and suffer from the problem that they need external lighting to read because e-Ink dots are passive, not emissive.
Mind you, it’s possible to come up with solutions with Red LEDs where their slightly higher consumption is no big deal (for example, a button that need to be pressed to activate the charge-left display, so the LEDs are OFF most of the time rather than ON all the time, so ultimatelly use almost no energy because they’re usually off) but they tend to add cost (no button is cheaper than having a a button) and increase the likelihood of failure or manufacturing defects (adding any kind of mechanical moving part to something which otherwise has no mecanical moving parts adds another, more risky class of failure modes).
In summary, using blue LEDs tends to be the Engineering-optimal solution for these devices, though not the usability-optimal one.
- Comment on Big talk only please. 4 weeks ago:
Somebody: “How are you?”
Me: (mentally checking my own mental state and how the day has gone so far to figure how I am at the moment)
- Comment on Big Charging doesn't want you to know this one simple weird old trick 4 weeks ago:
All the “whites” (warm white, natural white, cold white and so on) on led lights are combinations of red + blue light emitting junctions covered in a phosporous mask to “smooth” the spectrum distribution of the resulting light (otherwise the light would be purelly a peak at a very specific wavelength on the red part of the spectrum and a similar peak on the blue part of the spectrum).
- Comment on Big Charging doesn't want you to know this one simple weird old trick 4 weeks ago:
The most energy efficient kind of light emitting semiconductor junction is the one that emits blue light.
This being a battery bank and assuming that 2x7 segment LED display is always ON, maybe the choice of color for it was driven by that.
- Comment on Guess I'll starve 4 weeks ago:
Yupes.
My problem is that for me as a customer their chosen “solution” (me using my phone to see their easy to change menu) provides me no gain whatsoever whilst adding hassle. There are various possible options they could’ve gone with (blackboard, digital system with tablets for customers, printed piece of paper) with various balances of cost and ease-to-change and they chose the one that maximizes their advantages, minimizes their cost (and maybe it doesn’t even do that properly compared to, say, a blackboard) and increases hassle for customers.
In other words, in their requirements for the solution they’ve chosen to use, they focused entirelly on what was best for them and screw the customer, and if I have a choice I’m not going to bring my custom to a business which has activelly chosen to make my life more of a hassle purelly for their own gain.
Even though they’re using Tech for what they’re doing, the actual problem for customers is a Tech-agnostic “they did what was best for themselves and made the customer experience worse”, and maybe because of my immense familiarity with Tech I really don’t get dazzled by there being lots of Tech in their choise and just look at it from a “what does it do for me” point of view (a way of looking at business practices which itself derives from my professional experience: since I both worked on and implemented Business Requirements so got used to look at systems from a “what does this provide to the user” angle as part of the work of designing tech implementations of such systems).
- Comment on Guess I'll starve 4 weeks ago:
I’ve worked in Tech for 30 years, done software development in enough areas and at a sufficient senior level to be able to implement the whole QR code support, both coding and systems design, all the way from an App in a smartphone taking a picture and translating into a URL, to the webserver and if needed database on the other side including if needed an ordering system integrated with some internal order request system.
If I was faced with this I would ask for them bringing me or show me a menu. If they said “no” I would literally get up and leave.
I’m not going to be spending time mucking about with my phone to read in it’s comparativelly small screen something they could have available in an A4 piece of paper or an even larger format hanging from somewhere in the restaurant just to, at best, save them a few cents or, at worst, satisfying somebody’s totally misplaced idea that Tech is cool just for being Tech.
If there is one thing 3 decades in the Industry, often at the bleeding edge of Tech have taught me is that Tech isn’t necessarilly the best solution for everything and that being newer doesn’t make something better and I’m not interested in being the beta tester for some half-arsed solution which serves most customers’ requirements worse than the older solution.
- Comment on It really do be like that tho 4 weeks ago:
The police are an income source since they can confiscate property and create legal slaves.
The fire department is pretty much a pure cost center.
- Comment on Hulu quizzing about the ads played 4 weeks ago:
Before this Mini-PC TV Media Box I had an actual dedicated TV Media Box which lasted for maybe a decade, and at some point its remote broke, so rather than throw the whole thing out I made my own IR-translation box with a WiFi-Enabled micro-controller (so it had an IR emitter pointed at my TV Box and that was controlled by some software that exposed a REST interface on the WiFi) and also made my own Android app to remote control the TV Media Box via that translation box.
A dedicate remote and a remote control app on a smartphone or tablet are just not the same thing in practice.
Whilst I don’t tend to have my phone on my living room, I do have a tablet there, but a dedicated remote is much more straightforward to use because it just directly works with zero delay: there is no need wake it up and unlock it like I would my tablet, I will never need to switch apps like I do in a tablet if I was using the tablet for something else, the user interface in a dedicated remote is as standard and familiar as it gets, and that remote can just stay there in my living room all the time for anybody to use just for that purpose alone whilst the tablet will move around to be used for other things and even taken away from home.
The smartphone/tablet remote control app is a more flexible option that can pack-in as many or as few controls as one wants, but that is a tradeoff for it being overall more of a hassle, less practical and slower to use for the most frequently used commands. Ultimately I just want to select a video and start it, possibly stopping it or pausing it, with the least hassle possible and with no unrelated tasks (like getting the tablet from somewhere else, having the unlock it or switch tasks on it) getting in the way.
So in my experience, having tried both ways, the dedicated hardware remote is a superior option which is why I recommended it.
- Comment on Saviour 4 weeks ago:
“All hail me: I have saved you from myself”
- Comment on Hulu quizzing about the ads played 4 weeks ago:
For over a decade I’ve been watching TV Series and Movies from a Media Box connected via Ethernet to my home NAS (which is generally an old notebook or even my router - once I got myself a decent router - with some external hardisks), which is actually a pretty simple network to set up using Ethernet Over Powerlinr adaptors (which were already good enough for it back when they only did 20 Mb/second and now that they’re 1000Mb/s will handle even the huge resolution lightly compressed stuff that one can now find as booty out there).
The setup has been recently upgraded to a Mini-PC with Lubuntu and Kodi, which is in my living room (right next to my Internet router to which it is connect with Gigabit Ethernet) and is also my home NAS and Bittorrent server over always on VPN, with a wireless remote for using in my living room to control Kodi (so it works the same as a TV Box for watching media) whilst the background stuff I control from my main PC remotely using a mix of web interfaces and ssh plus command line.
I had never had this good an environment for TV entertainment and I’m not even using any of the *arr suite or Usenet to source content so a lot of it is really just doing the same stuff as a decade ago but with better hardware and a more modern UI for media playing and (most importing) away faster Internet connection.
Anyways, the point I’m making is that nowadays one can actually upgrade a little bit from your setup (which, by the way, is superior to what I had before my Mini-PC upgrade) cheaply and even get themselves very close to the same experience as the corporate stuff (media box with remote and a nice UI to play stuff from a media library) whilst maintaining maximum control and getting no shit from enshittification.
PS: I couldn’t recommend more getting a wireless remote if you want to just be able to sit down on your sofa and have a no hassle media box experienced (even whilst behind sits a far more complex home infrastructure that what people who outsource that side of things to the likes of Hulu have). It real helps with having a shit-free under your total control entertainment experience without sacrificing the part of that experience that comes from having a modern interface for media selection.
- Comment on [deleted] 5 weeks ago:
Nah, they look similar because they’re both people very emotionally and tribalistically (as there’s quite an element of feeling part of a group in it) wedded to an ideological bundle of pre-baked ideas they took in as “undeniable truths” and do not in any way challenge with rationality and skepticism.
Both have the same way of thinking and relating to politics but tankies have adopted one ideological bundle of pre-baked ideas and modern day “conservatives” (I use quotes because they really don’t do conservation of much) adopted a different ideological bundle of pre-baked ideas.
Mind you, they’re just extreme cases of people whose relationship with politics runs along the very same behavioural lines as sports club fans. For example, here in Lemmy you often spot Democrat Party fans, which you can spot by their “the figures of the party can do no wrong” posture and similar, in contrast with, say, people who might have voted for the party for tactical or strategical reasons but don’t just take every word of their propaganda as undeniable truth.
I live in a country with a lot more political parties than the US and am even a member of a party here, as you see that kind of people in with every single party and in my experience mindless unquestioning fans are majority of party members.
- Comment on Anyway to erase the permanent marker so I can reuse this? 5 weeks ago:
Sometimes ethanol (i.e. rubbing alcohol) works.
If not, try acetone, same thing used to remove nail polish.
- Comment on Now give me a treat 5 weeks ago:
Cats will just attack because they feel like it, no need to scare them with sudden movements.