adespoton

@adespoton@lemmy.ca

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨at what point in life it's too late to go back to school?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Good/bad doesn’t have to do with age. Are you going to Harvard or a local college with subsidized night school classes? Are you wanting to learn a specific skill, get a degree, upskill for a career path, retrain for new work?

  I had a grandfather who ended up deployed in the army when he was planning to go off to college. When he got back, he took the jobs he could and continually took night school classes.

  My father got his masters degree when he was 46, which resulted in 20 years of increased pay at work.

  Me? I’m constantly learning, using free online courses. I don’t care about the degrees or certifications; anyone who knows me knows what I’m capable of.

  I knew a woman who got her PhD in Law at the age of 97.

  My workplace pays for appropriate certifications for its employees.

  There’s all sorts of ways to go to school.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it a bad idea to learn Russian because of everything?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Learn Ukrainian first maybe, and then learn Russian? It may be easier to learn if you already know Ukrainian, too.

  Of course, if you already know Ukrainian, why not learn Russian too?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why make 250GB m.2 disks instead of 1TB⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I got a miniPC 5 years ago that had a 128GB SSD in it that I used like that. When I went to get a second one last year, the same price point came with 1TB. I got it and swapped out the storage and stuck it in an external case.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  They’re not text predictors; they’re text transformers. So, more for translating a text from French to English, or providing you a summary of what a large input text is trying to say.

  They can do prediction, but not well, and not without a lot of extra computation, as they’re really trying to summarize everything you’ve said, including the bit you haven’t written yet.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the longest, hardest fantasy rpg out there?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  For it’s time, possibly… but I’ve played through it. There are others from slightly later that have so many possible endings and characters that I never felt like I fully completed them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why don't compasses have just two Cardinal directions (North, East, -North, -East)?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Plus or minus?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why don't compasses have just two Cardinal directions (North, East, -North, -East)?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Why not?

  Because what happens when your referent changes? Which direction is Mars from Earth? We obviously need a single navigational system that works anywhere in the universe.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Whats a good and proper alternative google message thats clean but better with privacy? - for texting⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Why? If they were already using Signal, they weren’t about to stop using it when it dropped SMS. If they weren’t using it… any encryption was window dressing anyway.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Whats a good and proper alternative google message thats clean but better with privacy? - for texting⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  What they found though was that people were just using it for SMS, not realizing that this meant it was insecure. People kept choosing convenience over security. Removing that support was well messaged almost a year before it was done; that’s the slowest rug pull I’ve ever seen.

  Locking it to phone numbers? THAT was an untrustworthy move. But removing SMS meant that people could no longer pretend to be secure when they really weren’t.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Whats a good and proper alternative google message thats clean but better with privacy? - for texting⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  RCS requires server-side processing, so it requires the org providing it to be large enough to be able to peer with the other orgs providing it and the telcos routing it.

  And the encryption isn’t part of the core RCS soec that’s compatible between providers.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Whats a good and proper alternative google message thats clean but better with privacy? - for texting⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Why would Signal removing support for an insecure messaging platform make you trust them a lot less? They were pretty clear about why it was done and gave plenty of warning.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If the US was partitioned, what new states would you want to appear?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s currently PA; the abbreviation will be one of the first changes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Wireless EV charging hits 90% efficiency in Swiss real-world trials⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Depends… do you consider friend requests weird?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Wayback Machine saves 150000 GB of webpages every day⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨weeks⁩ 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?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨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.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨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?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨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?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨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 ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨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?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨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.