adespoton

@adespoton@lemmy.ca

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Wireless EV charging hits 90% efficiency in Swiss real-world trials⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  90 cents per charge? And no cable that you discover after you’ve pulled up to the charger is broken?

  Seems like this will pay for itself in short order at fast charging stations.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it even feasebal to find 12 people who have not been screwed over by insurance for the Luigi trial?⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Here’s a question: how many people making more than $200,000/year or who are independently wealthy actually serve on a jury?

  I ask this because every jury pool I’ve been in was made up of working class people. Those too poor don’t vote and so aren’t on their lists, and those too rich always seem to have acceptable reasons to be excused, if they’re ever pooled in the first place.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How much money's out there?⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  And, of course, there’s inflation. The value of something is a perceived thing, but the actual dollar value attached to that perceived value always tends to increase, except when an economy collapses. Inflation is caused by a government pretending things have more value than they actually do and pocketing the difference.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why does no one in the bible have a last name?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Abrahamic people generally did name tracking based on heritage; Hebrew used “bar” and Arabic uses “ibn” or “bin”. So the apostle Peter was called Peter by his friends, but was Shimon bar Jonah legally… unless there was another Shimon whose father’s name was Jonah, at which point they’d tag on another “bar” up the patriarchal lineage until their names differed.

  So if you wanted to know which Jesus/Jeshu/Joshua was Jesus the Christ, you go to the gospel of Matthew, where the first 16 verses are actually Jesus’ complete “last name”.

  And Abrahamic cultures aren’t the only ones who do this. Celtic cultures do it too; MacDonald means “son of Donald” and Scottish clans can “mac” their way back quite a ways.

  And in Ireland, you have Mc and O — Mc means “son of” and “O” essentially means you are a landholder on that person’s land, with O’ being short for “of”.

  Then you’ve got Norse names which are a bit looser; we have Eric the Red (he had red hair), but then we have Lief, Eric’s son who was identified by the fame of his father.

  Then you’ve have English lat names that describe the person’s occupation, like baker, chandler (makes candles), smith, etc. This was taken from German, which used a similar descriptor.

  In the bible, only key people have their “last name” listed; in most situations it didn’t matter, and you’ll see people referred to by either their given name or their nickname interchangeably.

  And Greek and Roman people tended to be named after the town they were born in — and since Paul was a Roman citizen, his official name was “Saul of Tarsus”. Of course, there were likely many Sauls in Tarsus, so he would have also gone by his occupation (tentmaker) and only reverted to “son of” to differentiate him from other Sauls of Tarsus who were tentmakers.

  Where does this leave women?

  In all those cultures, they were property of their father or husband, so didn’t have their own last name — for the exceptions (widows etc), they’d use the existing naming strategy the men used.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Would it be weird of me to send friend requests to old friends I knew in school 15 years ago?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Depends… do you consider friend requests weird?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Wayback Machine saves 150000 GB of webpages every day⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  They used existing archives; the pages were actually archived earlier. But they could only incorporate the pages that had actually been archived, which was mostly major services (Geocities, ProHosting, Lycos, etc) and public institutions.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Wayback Machine saves 150000 GB of webpages every day⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  The Wayback Machine started saving web pages in 1996. I’ve got Geocities pages I created at the time where that’s the only way I can access them now.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do some Americans "feel ashamed" for being American even when it's not their fault?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  One word:

  Tribalism.

  It’s shaming to see people and institutions you were proud of and bragged about being the best, then devolve into something the rest of the world laughs at.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨My Car Is Becoming a Brick: EVs are poised to age like smartphones.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Regular cars have been increasingly slaved to the on-board computer since the 1990s though.

  You can only buy a few modern cars that don’t send constant telemetry back to the manufacturer, for example — just like televisions.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨So now that it's that time of year again in the US, what are some tips and tricks for dealing with that one relative who goes on about the same bullshit for hours and won't shut the fuck up?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Or, make it all about you, but only with that person.

  “When that happened to ME…”

  “That reminds me of the time <totally unrelated thing in your life>….”

  “I have a friend who’s an expert in that and HE said….”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can I make a Bluetooth button to skip YouTube ads on the computer?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes, but that seems like over engineering a solved problem?

  And it would be rather tricky. The button would be simple; even a pair of Bluetooth headphones could do it. The tricky bit would be in figuring out how long the ad is and pressing the 10 second skip key the correct number of times and then pressing the skip ad button if required.

  Easier (and more secure) just to use an ad blocker.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The ‘Great Meme Reset’ Is Coming: From Jack Dorsey to Gen Alpha, everyone seemingly wants to go back to the internet of a decade ago. But is it possible to reverse AI slop and brain rot?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Why not revert to the Internet of the 1990s, before it was commercialized and before Internet became synonymous with Web Services?

  Of course, the truth is, even back then, there were a lot of dark memes on Usenet.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Researchers discover security vulnerability in WhatsApp⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  What I find odd here is that I predicted exactly this problem back when WhatsApp first started using the protocol. I encouraged people to use Signal instead of WhatsApp because WhatsApp moved discovery outside the security model, where it would just require one “mistake” and all that data could be harvested. Plus, of course, once Meta bought them, they had unfettered access to this data.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How has there not yet been a leak of the Epstein files? Surely there is someone with access to them that could have been subject to worldwide pressure to let something out.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  So how about this scenario: someone with a terminal illness has access to the files. Said person sticks their copy in a timed release, so when they die, the documents are distributed everywhere.

  At this point, enough people have access to the files that such a thing is feasible.

  Of course, it’s also possible that enough of the files are so boring and inconsequential that nobody would see the value in releasing them like that; the main power is to leverage the innuendo to direct public opinion in a timely manner.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it normal to feel intense fear when in the presense of any sort of yelling / loud arguments?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Nope; I have no idea why. Cough seems hardwired to my “this person is about to die!” reflex, compounded with “…and they’re transmitting whatever is killing them to me!”

  I can’t think of any traumatic childhood events that would have conditioned this response.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it normal to feel intense fear when in the presense of any sort of yelling / loud arguments?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I grew up in a house where my parents intentionally never raised their voices.

  It’s made me unflappable in the face of shouting, but also resulted in years of misery as I learned a constructive way to handle raised voices outside of the safety of my home.

  Coughing on the other hand… triggers my fight/flight every time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the name of this 80s song sang by a solo female singer? I only remember her saying "nothing really maaaa-tters" or "nothing truly maaaatt-ers". Has a vibe like I Feel For You by Chaka Kahn⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Was it something by BKS? www.discogs.com/artist/14346-BKS This was early 90s, but the feel seems about right?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Native Americans?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Some Spanish were French-pasty; others were Berber-brown. This is because there were lots of waves of people from Europe and North Africa and the Middle East who settled in Spain.

  But the Spanish were also known for being pretty rapacious in the New World; this would mostly have resulted in Spanish blood in people who were indigenous by heritage, but I’m sure over time some of those “Spanish-looking” indigenes would have passed themselves off as Spanish for a better station in life, rejecting their heritage in the process. The Spanish didn’t do the whole “reservation” thing after all, they just moved in and set up camp where they wanted and mixed with the locals — kind of like the French in Canada.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How bad is it really to listen to music with headphones? My mother told me if I keep doing that I'd go deaf... Is that fearmongering?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  A helicopter emits sound in the 85 (max 40 hours a week) to 110 (WILL cause damage, even in bursts of 15 minutes or less) dB.

  So a helicopter mother’s yelling is likely more damaging to your ears than the headphones if it is prolonged ;)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How bad is it really to listen to music with headphones? My mother told me if I keep doing that I'd go deaf... Is that fearmongering?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Remember: noise cancelling works by playing the inverse waveform to cancel out the external one. That’s still pressure waves in your ear; they’re just no longer registering as sound.

  There have been plenty of studies in this area; to minimize the risk of hearing loss, keep the headphone audio between 60 and 85 dB (remember: it’s a logarithmic scale)

  Anything from 70dB down should be safe; you want to listen to 70-80dB a maximum of 40 hours a week, and 80-85 a maximum of 8 hours a day.

  It doesn’t matter where the sound is coming from; those are just the guidelines for sound waves in your ear canal. Headphones can actually muffle external sounds louder than 85 dB, protecting your hearing.

  Most phones have a setting somewhere to prevent the headphones from emitting sound over 85dB; this is required to be the default by law in the EU.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tim Berners-Lee On Apple’s Browser Engine Ban and Web Apps - Open Web Advocacy⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t really care if there’s only one browser engine — but that engine had better support the latest international standards around stuff like progressive web apps.

  Apple still supports PWAs, but they’ve become second class citizens. It should be possible to deploy most software as a PWA from XCode instead of a dedicated binary, including with access to hardware interfaces. And it would still be secure, and wouldn’t require app stores or sideloading.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's a realistic, low-power home server setup in 2025 for Plex/Jellyfin, Nextcloud, and reliable backups?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve got a beelink minipc with NextCloud and Jellyfin and external multiTB HDDs. Works for me.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are physical mail generally not under surveillance? If everyone suddently ditched electronic communications and start writing letters, would governments be able to practically surveil everyone?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You’re probably right, but steganography with FEC should be enough to do the job; any predictive text errors would be caught with the checksumming.

  After all, Phil Zimmerman got the entirety of the PGP source code from the US to Germany as a book. OCR combined with predictive text reconstruction has come a LONG way since then. The big problem today with OCR is that it often corrects errors that were present in the original document.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are physical mail generally not under surveillance? If everyone suddently ditched electronic communications and start writing letters, would governments be able to practically surveil everyone?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Depends on the recipient.

  And you could always encrypt a message against your recipient’s public key, print it out, and then mail it from a random drop box. You could even include a public key in the message so the recipient can send you back letters, and include an address in the letter they could reach you at.

  It’d only really work if enough people were sending such letters to enough recipients though, or the act of encrypting your messages in such a manner would itself be a data point.

  Also, you could print the messages on thermal paper, so they fade over time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How Old We're You when You Learned the Word, "Fascist"?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Depends what you mean by ‘learned’ — my grandparents talked about their time fighting the fascists from the time I was born.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why aren't people harassing marketers?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Who exactly are we talking about here? Are you saying I should be harassing the people in the marketing department at my company? Or are you saying we should have visibility campaigns about the companies involved in the Internet ad networks? Or someone else?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do air purifiers really reduce dust much?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  No; however, you essentially have a line between price and noise, and you need to check what they filter, how expensive the filters are, and how often they need to be replaced, as well as how much it costs to run them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do air purifiers really reduce dust much?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Depends on what the air purifier was filtering. Mine does PM10, PM2.5, VOC and NO2. That means it’s filtering out particles down to 2.5mm plus volatile organic compounds (smoke, aerosolized oils, water vapour with pathogens, etc) and nitrous oxide.

  The filter is a multi stage filter; the PM2.5 stuff passes right through the PM10 filter.

  Interestingly, if I want to clear a room of smoke, sawdust, drywall dust or similar, what works the best is running my shop vac with a HEPA filter installed until I can’t smell the dust (usually around 5 minutes) and then I turn my air filter on full blast and it clears up the air in around 20 minutes. If I just ised the air filter, I’d probably clog it up and then just have to replace the comparatively expensive filter.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What do you call the beleif that gods are just higher beings on other planes of existence?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Religion has to do with habits and practices. So someone can brush their teeth religiously.

  Christianity is a religion, but it’s also a faith-based belief system that incorporates alternate planes of existence. Some people eschew the religion part but still have the belief system, and some people play inside the religion without actually believing in the spiritual side of things.

  I like to explain Christianity as the belief in a multidimensional being who defines the dimensions we can observe and has done a bit of mucking around in a way that was measurable by us. Angelic appearances? Most would call them aliens, as they’d be extra terrestrial intelligences. Spiritual possession? A different dimension that has an effect on the ones we inhabit, but is currently beyond our capacity to fully understand.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Someone Snuck Into a Cellebrite Microsoft Teams Call and Leaked Phone Unlocking Details⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Someone recently managed to get on a Microsoft Teams call with representatives from phone hacking company Cellebrite, and then leaked a screenshot of the company’s capabilities against many Google Pixel phones, according to a forum post about the leak and 404 Media’s review of the material.