deweydecibel
@deweydecibel@lemmy.world
- Comment on Never Forget 1 day ago:
For the record, Aaron Swartz never actually went to trial, nor was he “sentenced” to anything.
Federal prosecutors came after him with overzealous charges in an effort to make him accept a plea deal (they do that a lot), which he rejected. It would have gone to court where the feds would have had to justify the charges they were bringing.
But that never happened because he killed himself.
We don’t actually know how this all would have played out.
- Comment on Never Forget 1 day ago:
He didn’t get the chance to share them because he was caught downloading them.
- Comment on Never Forget 1 day ago:
He was not sentenced to 35 years. The trial hadn’t finished. 35 years was the maximum possible sentence.
- Comment on What is Reddit doing 4 days ago:
Yes, actually. Look up Oldlander addon for Firefox.
It’s new and kinda of rough but it definitely helps.
- Comment on Voyager 1 5 days ago:
I mean, unironically, yeah.
It’s not even that we need to go back to email. The problem isn’t moving on from outdated forms of communication, it’s that the technology being pushed as a replacement for it is throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Which is to say nothing of the fact that all of these new platforms are proprietary, walled off, and in some cases don’t make controlling the data easy if you’re not hosting it (and their searches are trash).
- Comment on [Serious] What is project 2025? What kind of risk is involved? 1 week ago:
It’s not even just about the fact that it’s going to wreck those agencies, it also means that there will be substantially less whistle-blowing, and there will be virtually no one working for the government who will raise an alarm or put a stop to anything. When everybody is on board, that creates a substantial amount of power for the executive branch.
What makes it so frightening is that the discussion starts to slide away from the actual functioning of our democratic system and the workings of the executive branch, and starts getting into matters of where power is derived from in a government.
What we have seen is that our Congress is infected by too many friends of fascism, if not fascist themselves. Unless the Democrats have a supermajority in both chambers, Republicans can successfully derail every single thing Congress ever tries to do to reign in an executive branch that’s out of control. Trump was impeached twice, and painfully, obviously guilty both times, and nothing happened because the system has been so fundamentally broken.
Knowing now that Congress can do nothing to stop him, and of course knowing that the court system is captured at this point, Trump will be completely and utterly unafraid of doing anything. The systems in place that would protect us from a renegade executive office will fail to stop him.
Having the entire executive, and every seat in every department filled with loyalists, with nothing in his way that can effectively stop it, is basically a precursor to dictatorship.
- Comment on Has ethernet become illegitimate? A librarian flipped out after spotting me using ethernet 1 week ago:
If you setup your network right (you can actually, although I’ve not seen it too often, setup guests networks on ethernet before WiFi, such that stations cannot see eachother directly) there’s no reason at all to fear ethernet.
Sure but this isn’t a corporate office with an IT team on call, this is a public library. They could hire someone who will go the extra mile to manage all of this and set the security up correctly, but they’re likely to get that person or keep them around. Their patrons are not going to be so opposed to wifi that expending all this effort to keep the ethernet ports active will be worth that effort.
As for finite wifi resources, I seriously doubt most public libraries would be so frequently at capacity that this becomes an issue, especially when many of them only allow clients for a couple hours at a time without renewing. They just need to scale up for their needs.
- Comment on Has ethernet become illegitimate? A librarian flipped out after spotting me using ethernet 1 week ago:
Did the library have the desktop set up for public use, as libraries all have nowadays?
Then they were providing you equal access to their internet connection, they just weren’t going to let you do it on your computer unless your computer connected to their internet connection by satisfying their security requirements.
- Comment on Has ethernet become illegitimate? A librarian flipped out after spotting me using ethernet 1 week ago:
They should just be disabling the ports, frankly. If you need to use a computer on an Ethernet connection, most libraries provide them.
- Comment on Has ethernet become illegitimate? A librarian flipped out after spotting me using ethernet 1 week ago:
Why are you even in the library to begin with if you’re so opposed to how they manage their network?
If you want to complain, complain. Write to the city, start a petition, whatever.
But regardless of how it’s supposed to work legally, the day that you were in the library, there was a network security setting that was blocking you. You sought to get around that, and you’re not going to get any sympathy for trying to do so.
Just because it’s a public resource doesn’t mean you can break in after hours, and just because you don’t have a phone doesn’t give you permission to sidestep their security policies.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
Both Lee and Lyman retweeted a post from Libs of TikTok, which the Washington Post says has amassed an audience of millions on X, largely by targeting LGBTQ+ people. In the video, a group of students speaking over each other complain that some students at the school wear masks and pounce on people.
This is kind of tacked on at the end. Looks like nothing actually happened or was reported to have happened, but one video of some kid saying it was happening got shared by a hate group.
- Comment on Windows 10 and its shortage of "Never shove this screen in my face again" buttons 1 month ago:
Can’t wait to graduate so I don’t have to run Respondus and keep dealing with this crap
Well, I’ve got some bad news depending on what industry you’re going into: the business world runs on Windows.
- Comment on Windows 10 and its shortage of "Never shove this screen in my face again" buttons 1 month ago:
They said they can’t wait to graduate, so I’m assuming that means they are using a Windows computer from their school, and depending on what the CIT department’s policies are like there, WinAero may not accomplish much
- Comment on Hasbro exec says Baldur's Gate 3 "proved for us that people really wanted great D&D games," supports Larian's plan to "take the time we need" 1 month ago:
because they accidentally got a pre release version of magic the gathering?
It was a streamer that got the pre-release boxes early by mistake, and live-streamed opening them to drive traffic to his channel. Most cards aren’t revealed ahead of time so these leaks let potential pre-buyers see what was in the set and decide if they wanted it.
What he did was stupid, but he did nothing wrong, and nothing especially harmful.
Calling the Pinkertons on him was obscene on principle, but it was especially egregious when the damage was so minimal. They hurt themselves more with that stunt than the leaks hurt them.
- Comment on I'm guilty, lol 1 month ago:
We did, they’re called emojis.
Gen z seems to have figured that out, too. They use emojis like punctuations, in much the same way we use lol. I was annoyed by it at first but I got used to.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
And you’re still gaining services you didn’t have before
No, you’re not. In they example they just provided, nothing has fundamentally changed because the money you were given was eaten up by price increases, leaving you exactly where you were before.
Because UBI isn’t like a stimulus check. Stimulus checks are temporary. With UBI, every single buisness, creditor, and landlord knows for a fact everyone’s monthly income just went up across the board, so they know they can safely raise prices without pricing out customers.
That’s the fundamental problem with UBI: it only works if it’s coupled with strong price controls and regulations to prevent price gouging, and can be rapidly adjusted if necessary. Prices can go up overnight, pay raises can be acquired over a pay period, but the UBI payout will not be as flexible.
Look how impossible it was to get the minimum wage raised from $8.
- Comment on Modern beauty standards 1 month ago:
Skinny legs? Is that a thing people want?
- Comment on Henry Cavill Is Playing Wolverine In Deadpool 3 | Giant Freaking Robot 1 month ago:
Kind of. Depends on what the writer wants to do. Deadpool’s versatile like that.
But generally speaking, Deadpool’s 4th wall breaking has often been used to comment on or satirize the industry. Sometimes the stories themselves become a parody.
- Comment on Henry Cavill Is Playing Wolverine In Deadpool 3 | Giant Freaking Robot 1 month ago:
Let’s be real, though, this was pre-Y2K, it was much harder to gage a fandom’s reaction to casting at the time. I don’t remember much complaints at all on the forums I was on, though I do remember Steward’s casting was celebrated.
- Comment on Henry Cavill Is Playing Wolverine In Deadpool 3 | Giant Freaking Robot 1 month ago:
15? I hate to do this to you buddy, but the original X-Men movie was 2000. Jackman has been Wolverine for 24 years.
- Comment on Henry Cavill Is Playing Wolverine In Deadpool 3 | Giant Freaking Robot 1 month ago:
I’d be annoyed about yet another multiverse story with yet another cameo from a different version of the character, but given this is Deadpool, I trust it will give the worn out trend the satirical treatment it deserves.
- Comment on Teams apparently can't call when using Firefox 3 months ago:
These days? It’s sucked to be an American for decades.
- Comment on Why did Adobe open source Magento? 3 months ago:
It also prevents competition.
Locking down Magneto would have resulted in a fork that could grow to rival the product Adobe now owns. With a community edition, the community has less incentive to fork. You can still use the product, and surely that will never ever change, so why bother getting to work on a competing fork?
Then years down the line, when no competition has come to exist, when the industry has grown dependent on the product, they can start strangling the community edition.
- Comment on He was a hero, we just couldn't see it... 3 months ago:
I wouldn’t call Jameson underappreciated. He’s as much an impediment to Peter as his is a benefit.
Sure, he won’t hand his golden photographer over to the Goblin, even with a knife at his throat, and that’s noble, but he also doesn’t pay Peter shit, is partly responsible for the creation of at least two of Spidey’s rogues, and actively turns the city against him with an unrelenting campaign of libel and hate.
He’s chaotic neutral at best.
- Comment on He was a hero, we just couldn't see it... 3 months ago:
Good journalists always protect their sources. Not that JJJ is a good journalist, per say, but he knows what parts of his business need protected.
- Comment on Video game actors speak out after union announces AI voice deal 3 months ago:
And this has to be on a per-game basis, to. Studios licensing a voice in perpetuity will eventually come back to the same issues.
For AI to truly be a net benefit to our society, it should be used as a tool by the artists to augment the output from the artists. It shouldn’t be a way of replacing them.
If a voice actors job goes from recording each and every line to recording samples for AI and helping to tweak the output, that’s fine. But the compensation stays the same. That’s how it improves our world.
The way it’s currently on track to be used is how it improves the lives of the wealthiest at the moment expense of everyone else. No amount of futurist techno-jerking should distract from that. These are not tools for us to benefit from in any significant sense.
- Comment on George Carlin accurately diagnosing the core reason our species is failing in less than 2 minutes (interview) 4 months ago:
George Carlin was a great guy, terrific comedian, and pretty smart.
But nothing informs me more of someone’s else’s immaturity than holding him up as source of true wisdom.
He was always a simplistic, self-serving, a deeply cynical nihilist that went for the edgiest takes. So of course the internet loves him. But for people that are actually interested in solving problems rather than spending their lives bitching about it them, his words are empty.
We know the world sucks. Carlin had nothing to say about actually addressing it.
- Comment on Watch a 13-year-old become the first person to ever beat Classic Tetris 4 months ago:
Apparently this kids dad died a week earlier and he decided the video to him.
- Comment on Does anyone else feel like 90% of the population is stupid? 4 months ago:
See, the fact you think the IQ tests matters in any way means your uniformed about it, which comes back to the topic at hand.
IQ tests are bullshit; it’s been proven many times.
Yet you were told they weren’t. And that informed how you think.
I could call you stupid for bringing up an IQ test.
Or I could accept that people not having all the knowledge in the world is just part of being human, and that there are many things you know that I probably don’t.
- Comment on Does anyone else feel like 90% of the population is stupid? 4 months ago:
They don’t period.