adespoton

@adespoton@lemmy.ca

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If investing in the S&P 500 is such a surefire way to make money, then why isn't everyone doing it?⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  A large number of us CAN be millionaires. Which is a problem.

  It took me roughly 40 years to become a millionaire. 40 years of investing in stable stocks and bonds and scrimping and living well below my means. I was finally able to afford to buy a house. Then the market boomed and suddenly I’m worth over a million.

  Unfortunately, almost all of that is tied up in owning a small plot of land. If I sold it, I’d need to immediately use it to buy another small plot of land, or leave my city or go back to extortionate rent.

  Where I used to spend $90/month on food, now I spend well over $500/month.

  Essentially, if you’re over 55 and you’re not a millionaire and you’re living in a major city, you’re screwed because of inflation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Should you bother with... mini PCs?⁩ ⁨⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Works great as a NAS controller, multimedia server and basic web server. Also works as an emulation server for older systems. Not so good for gaming, but there’s a LOT of computing that isn’t current gen game, audio or video editing, which are the three areas where most minipc rigs will fail.

  Just make sure it gets enough cooling - run a temp monitor.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hypothetically, if you are a witness or whistleblower who's adversary was a very big corporation (such as boeing), what measures could you take to prevent yourself from being "suicided"?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Worth noting that this is something that can change over time. For example, if Snowden had done such a thing, it would be essentially useless now, since the known and accepted activities of the US government are now worse than what Snowden revealed.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨So is it "It just works" or "Shit just works"?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Why not both?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there another term for crafted, interactive activities besides games/video games?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Scouts / Guides / Cadets come to mind, as do things like obstacle courses, hunting, fishing, bicycling (of various types) etc. - we often categorize a lit of this under “clubs” and “sports”.

  There’s also collecting, studying/researching/exploring.

  And then there’s other things that fall under entertainment like going to a play or a talk or a performance.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If I wanted to make and distribute videos without profit motivate, but also with no or minimum expensive, what would be the best platform?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  You can also upload directly to archive.org; not so great for streaming to a large audience, but good for archiving for public access.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Along with the other feedback here… what timeframe is involved here?

  Since the US election, misogyny online has skyrocketed. Guys who previously wrote pretty much normal stuff started saying things like “your body, my choice.”

  In this environment, I’d be pretty careful about who I chatted with.

  That said, as others have mentioned, a lot of those “women” are likely men trying to connect with women.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I am about to board a flight. What sequence of events would occur if (by chance) for no apparent reason a window got completely smashed out?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Worth pointing out that it is highly unlikely for an airplane window to either smash or pop out — they’re multi-layered Lexan reinforced panes mounted from the inside. And they’ve all got a hole on the inside pane so that a controlled decompression with a loud whistling would happen long before the entire pane would give way. This would likely provide time for the masks to drop and the pilot to adjust altitude long before any explosive decompression (if that even occurred).

  Likewise, doors are designed not to open at altitude.

  So the only weak spots these days are door plugs and the bathrooms.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How likely will "Cloud Storage" eventually replace Local Storage?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  “Cloud” is just a 2010+ term for multihomed server. Before around 1995, almost all Internet-related storage was “cloud”, with people using terminals and terminal emulators connecting to the mainframe servers that hosted their storage.

  And yet, even back then, people stored local data on floppy disks because sometimes you needed something when your online storage wasn’t available for one reason or another.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why does the Music Industry allow Spotify/Apple to profit off of them?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  We’ve seen it in movies; we’ve seen it in gaming; we saw it starting in music right around when Apple stepped in with the iTunes music store, and then the music execs saw an uptick they didn’t want to lose. When Apple pivoted to streaming, they no longer had much of a say; ClearChannel/iHeartRadio had already consolidated OTA streaming and they had nowhere left to go.

  It’s much easier to prevent the likes of Netflix than to stand up a united opposition to it and succeed — especially with the spectre of monopoly regulation sitting back stage.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has any country actually _solved_ the housing crisis?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Funny how so many people took that. Pointing out that people are, as a whole, racist, and that it influences how they think about the homeless gets turned into a “here’s my bigotry coming out to tell you why it won’t work.”

  I guess I could have framed it more clearly, but once the mods removed it, I figured people would just move on.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Others have covered the main bits. But as someone else who has often been treated as young… it’s also possible to roll with it. Talk less and when you do talk, make it more about reflecting what someone says back to them. Then you’ll be perceived as young and smart instead of young and naive.

  But I personally enjoy the fact that at over half a century, I can still hang out with people of any age and they feel like they can be themselves with me. Even if people in their 70s still treat me like a child.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has any country actually _solved_ the housing crisis?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  If it works, why not? Better than what most places are currently trying.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has any country actually _solved_ the housing crisis?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m pretty sure ALL reasons are bad reasons? It doesn’t stop humans from generally being racist when it comes to housing. Which is a shame; you grow a lot more as a person when you live next to people from other cultures.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has any country actually _solved_ the housing crisis?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s not always quite so clear-cut racist. Often it’s more about social norms and food choices. When everyone shares an insular culture, it’s easier to live near each other without having to be actively tolerant of people’s differences. And the social nets that ARE set up are more likely to work for people with a shared cultural background.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Since Syria goverment has fallen, do we have any inkling of what will replace it?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Not sure about that; the current majority leader comes from extremist roots.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Everyone ready for this new IOS update?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Completion suggestions have been a complete fail. 18 has forgotten my earlier usage patterns and refuses to suggest contractions when I miss an apostrophe — and text entry STILL can’t do quote completion correctly, always leaving a space before the quote.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has any country actually _solved_ the housing crisis?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  They also have a relatively small monocultural population and really cold winters.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is steeped tea sterile?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  For sterilization, you need to boil something for a minute or more.

  Generally, the boiled water is poured into a room temperature container over top of room temperature tea leaves. The tea itself is never supposed to boil.

  So, since it hasn’t been boiled to sterilization, no, it’s not sterile.

  But if the container is sterile and the tea/teabag has come pre-sterilized, you’ll be pretty close.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What was going on in England in the 1970s to give Monty Python so much comedy fodder that is still relevant today?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Let’s put this another way: why are the same routines from the 70s still relevant today? It’s like all the movements of one generation have had almost zero effect on society as a whole.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why did Yoon lift martial law if he had the support of the military high command?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Should we? At that point, the real decisions are made by those with the most charismatic performance.

  What pure democracy assumes is that the competent decision will be more popular.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Next Generation Internet (NGI) projects adopt platforms Mastodon and PeerTube as main communication channels⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Matrix is essentially secure XMPP.

  For fast and secure communications, I’d expect Fediverse mods and admins to be using it, as it doesn’t take much more to set up and use than less secure XMPP variants, and lines up with the ActivityPub worldview.

  But I guess people go with what they know, and some people know standard XMPP or Discord.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I or my family does has a 3 year old mixed border collie. Is it to late to train him for something new?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Only if I save a penny in your shoes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨My brothers Chuwi laptop had major problems. Now he got a wal-mart gift card for the price he paid for the Chuwi. He is eyeing an HP laptop with 256gb ssd. Is that the same as a regular harddrive?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Interestingly, my SSDs tend to fail due to reaching their maximum writes (takes roughly 15 years).

  My HDDs fail due to shock or overheating. Tend to last roughly 9 years.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Since the government can theoretically access the location of everyone's phone, wouldn't it be unsafe for an undocumented immigrant to have a phone?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The big thing is whether people are behaving in a manner that brings them to the attention of the government.

  It’s not like you have to give your SSN to a carrier to get a phone; the government needs a reason to be tracking you.

  Now, they very much could put in a warrant for all phones crossing the border at unusual times/locations. But someone who snuck in with family and is working cash-only jobs to get by is unlikely to get tagged by the government unless they’re going somewhere or doing something the government is already watching.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Young people were becoming more anxious long before social media, and we should not be fixated on simplistic explanations that reduce the issue to technical variables, researcher says⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I remember when the rise in anxiety was blamed on the cold war.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there any point for current US-based "skilled immigrants" to stay in the US?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This is the most important bit: If you weren’t born in the US and aren’t white skinned, avoid any border crossings from 2025-2028 if you expect to get back in.

  So it might be worth planning a location outside the US where you can meet up with those you care about if things DO go sideways.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨In the US, is this actually the moment past the point of no return?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The Germans are good at ending things, aren’t they?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Not disparaging the dead or anything. But why does it seem in the US we are expected to feel sorry for a person who overdoses on illegal drugs? Didn't they make the choice knowing the outcome?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  In the US, doctors were prescribing opioids for pain medication for decades, ignoring the addictiveness and decreased effectiveness over time.

  So someone who went in for surgery or had an injury could end up hooked on their pain meds… except the meds would become less and less effective over time, requiring larger and larger doses. Until the dose passed the “legal” threshold, at which point these people switched to illegal suppliers to survive. And eventually the doses got to be so large that their bodies couldn’t handle it, and they died.

  And then there’s people who got hooked on methamphetamines because they were a cheap but effective way to stay up all night and study for an exam when they were a teenager— and eventually they couldn’t function without them.

  And that’s just two common examples from two drug families, ignoring things like e-cigs (person gets hooked on something they didn’t even know they were consuming), regular cigarettes, or alcohol, all of which are legal but can also be addictive and deadly.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Did "Party time! Excellent!" come from Wayne's World or Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure? Did one copy the other?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It all came from SNL and the characters they played on there.