litchralee

@litchralee@sh.itjust.works

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Even if we found a feasible way through physics to travel through time, wouldn't it still be impossible due to the evolution of bacteria and our immune systems?⁩ ⁨⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  We are all currently traveling through time, though at a forward rate of 1 second per second (within your stationary frame of reference, since time dilation is a thing). But I take that you mean “time travel” as in advancing into the future at a faster rate, or going into the past.

  In both cases, we do currently have the means of hermetically-sealed transportation. This is how, I believe, moon samples were collected in the mid 20th Century, since there was a possibility that alien life would be contagious to humans or that humans would destroy any samples of alien life. I think Tom Scott or someone did a video on the topic.

  So while the biological risk would complicate time travel and visiting other humans, that alone doesn’t make time travel “impossible” because we could just have the travelers stay in their TARDIS or whatever. Like how people signed wills in 2020 atop automobile hoods.

  There are plenty of other reasons why time travel is impossible though.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are there seach engines that dont depend Google and Bing, if not what are the barriers to entry of new search engines?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve not used it, but have heard decent things about Kagi, a paid search engine. Supposedly, it finds things like how old Yahoo or old Google worked, without AI (but is optionally available?), and no ads.

  I would think the major barrier to entry is the business model: ad revenue goes to those that can deliver results. Google AdSense has dominated that realm for years, so it would take a major upfront investment to challenge them on that. No much different than how it’s hard to compete with established airlines to a particular airport that they already serve. Economies of scale tend towards consolidation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Whats a good etiquette to show you are doing a U turn in a left turn, so the cars behind you know?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  In California, a U turn is considered a left turn that keeps going. As a result, a U turn is legal anywhere that a left turn is legal, except when signs are posted otherwise. So in a left-turn pocket/lane, it is both reasonable and expected that people will make left turns, some of which will continue into a full 180 degree turn. People who do U turns are doing what is allowed, and they have every right to do so. If this seems like a problem, then talk to your transportation department to restrict U turns.

  I’m not aware of any aspect of a U turn procedure that would be any different than than a standard 90 degree turn: use turn signals, look for oncoming traffic, look for pedestrians, turn slowly as required by the radius, roll out of the turn with careful acceleration.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why are they asking about the serial number?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  American English speaker here. While I would understand what “to auction away” means, I’m not aware of anyone here in California that would say it like that. Usually, I would say “to auction off”, which follows in a long series of other “X off” verbs, like “to bake off” or “to shake off”, all of which usually involve some sort of adversary or competition.

  Note that we do use the verb “to give away” but that would mean a gift without compensation, which is definitely not an auction.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do airports place a cap on 10,000 USD for undeclared cash?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Civil forfeiture and DEA is a separate problem unto itself, and you’ve always hit on the key points: DEA operates within the country, whereas customs is at port of entries. DEA’s corruption and geographic reach mean they have caused far more problems than any customs agent, in pursuit of a 1990s zeal that “drugs are bad” and expanding that into a parallel law enforcement system, despite already having a federal law enforcement department: the FBI. Civil forfeiture should be abolished as unconstitutional, violating due process, equal protection, and property law.

  So yes, once you’re in the country, there is a risk to carry around large sums of cash. But that’s hardly connected to the customs declaration requirement, and certainly cannot be connected to the declaration requirement on the way out.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do airports place a cap on 10,000 USD for undeclared cash?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  When entering or exiting the USA, the rule is that cash or financial instruments need to be declared above $10,000, but you can bring as much as you want. So bringing a literal suit case of Swiss francs worth $5 million USD is perfectly fine, provided you tell the customs agent.

  While I can’t really advise going to the USA right now, it’s not like they will confiscate cash above $10,000. The particular phrase used in most places is “freedom of capital”, meaning that money can flow into or out of the country without significant impediment. The entire USA financial sector relies upon freedom of capital.

  Declaring cash helps prevent money laundering, since people intending to secretly move money would not want to declare to customs. The threshold is intentionally set so that normal people going on holiday with cash or travelers checks (yes, I’m aware it’s 2026) won’t be burdened by the rule.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Obligatory XKCD: xkcd.com/3138/

  Please let such a thing never exist!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why are prop, non functioning guns way more expensive than airsoft guns?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I think the market for each is quite a bit different. Prop guns, whether functioning or not, are often regulated in law as “replica firearms” because while they may (or not) be functional, the issue is that they are intentionally similar to the real thing. Hence, some jurisdictions have limits on who can sell replica firearms and who can buy them.

  One rank below firearms and replica firearms, air/pellet guns and BB guns propel small balls or shuttlecocks (?) made of metal using compressed air or spring power. These could still be harmful to people, but aren’t usually fatal, which makes them effective for pest control or target practice, in lieu of live firearms. Accordingly, these are often regulated like how knives are: don’t just hand a pellet gun to a child without supervision, and don’t assault people. Otherwise, do as thou whilst.

  Meanwhile, airsoft guns propels small plastic balls using springs, compressed air, or electro-pneumatic pressure. By sheer virtue of having less density, a plastic airsoft projectile carries less energy than a BB pellet, and certainly a lot less than a live-fire bullet. Also, whereas firearms can attain supersonic velocities, the speed of sound puts a firm cap on what a plastic, ball-shaped projectile can achieve, when not using chemical-based propulsion (ie gunpowder).

  Only 8 US States regulate airsoft guns, and even those that do are not restricting them as heavily as firearms (except New Jersey?). That means a majority of Americans are potential customers for airsoft, and that means an environment will form that host matches, competitions, and so on.

  Whereas, what’s the market for replica firearms? Hollywood? Gun enthusiasts?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do I almost never see people flying drones?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Even when something is fairly inexpensive and readily available, the nature of the thing may preclude it from being well-noticed in public, even if it’s not being intentionally obscured at all. Things that move are an especially good example, because most people don’t really pay significant attention to passing traffic or stuff moving approximately 3-5x faster than their own walking pace, with the exceptions of when they themselves are in motion too (eg seeing another train while riding a train), or if the object is coming straight at them.

  An example suited for fellow Americans: seeing the same color and model of your car, parked in public, is very easy to spot, because that’s how you’re accustomed to seeing your own car: stationary. Whereas seeing your own car in motion (while you’re stationary) is slightly harder because: 1) it’s whizzing by for only a few seconds, and 2) you’re not used to seeing your own car drive away from you. Confirmation bias then means that you rarely see that same model of car in motion.

  Drones have the same perceptional bias, but compounded by the fact that humans aren’t in the habit of scanning the skies overhead for drones. And even if they do, identifying a hovering drone means to spot a small dot that’s hanging dozens of meters in the air, or being within earshot (inverse-square law limits this distance). And if the drone is moving, then spotting it is even more difficult, although it does have a moving audible footprint now.

  Finally, there’s the operator, which in almost all circumstances is stationary. Yet, for similar reasons, why should anyone notice if someone is standing in a forest, looking at a screen with a set of controls? If nobody is around, is a drone operator even there? As a fairly solitary activity, it’s no surprise that few have ever seen a drone actually being operated, much the same that loads of people know of Pokemon cards and yet few have actually seen the TCG played out on a tabletop (this fediverse audience excepted).

  TL;DR: the general public only perceives things that are easily perceivable

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can a company stop operating in a country to avoid paying a lawsuit?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The short answer is that it depends. Some countries have treaties where civil court judgements (ie money compensation) from overseas are honored domestically, meaning the domestic court would not have to relitigate the facts but would just be to re-issue the local equivalent of an order to pay up.

  Seeing as this is a lawsuit in the UK, Valve does not appear to have a dedicated business location in the UK or EU, and that Valve has not already stopped offering services, I would guess that they don’t intend to skip town. The appeals process in British courts is similar to how it is in the USA, so there would be room for any award to be adjusted downward, before being forced to pay it.

  Also, to not pay a lawful judgement in one jurisdiction would cause potential issues in other jurisdictions, such as the massive EU market next door. This is precisely because Valve doesn’t operate a subsidiary but is doing business under their USA corporation. So the EU authorities would be within their rights to curtail the same corporation that skipped on a lawsuit in the UK, even when the UK isn’t part of the EU anymore.

  Note: some lawsuit judgements are explicitly disallowed from being “repatriated”, such as lawsuits regarding free speech in the USA. Under the SPEECH Act, an overseas judgement for speech that would have been legal if said in the USA. Thus, that judgement cannot be collected on USA territory or against USA bank accounts. It would have to be collected against the person when they’re traveling, or from their non-USA bank accounts.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What impact is the whole vegetarian/vegan diet having on the price of meat?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  If a lot of people suddenly stopped consuming anything there would be a drop in price. The producers don’t have time to adapt.

  This is generally correct, but with a somewhat-rare caveat. If the product was priced as the sum of variable costs (eg unit cost of fuel to yield 1 kWh of electricity) and of fixed costs (eg price to build a power generating station that will last for 20 years), then a reduction in consumption can actually cause an increase in per-unit costs for the remaining consumers.

  This is precisely what is playing out in California with the incumbent electricity provider, PG&E. For arcane reasons, their regulated monopoly allows them to undertake large-scale construction projects, with a guaranteed rate of return (aka fixed cost) passed onto consumers. But since solar installations have smashed even the most optimistic expectations, demand for fossil fuels generation is slowing. But because a power plant running at 50% output still needs to pay off 100% of its loan payments, PG&E is using the situation to try to hike consumer rates even more. You know, to pay for those large projects that PG&E owns…

  At the end of the day, non-solar consumers are being asked to shoulder more of the burden despite falling electricity demand (pre AI), but it’s not caused by solar early-adopters, but due to PG&E’s own greed and desire for guaranteed profit.

  TL;DR: prices will usually go down when consumption goes down, unless a monopoly is trying to save their own skin. PG&E should be dissolved.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Which Pipes to choose (Newpipe, Pipepipe, Piped Invidious...etc)?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve had the opposite experience, where NewPipe lagged behind PipePipe in terms of adapting to YouTube-related changes. It had something to do with updating the subscription feed (not that that function is totally reliable on either app).

  I also observed this strange issue with NewPipe where if a notification sound interrupts a background-playing video, the audio would stay reduced in volume until the app was brought back to the foreground. A cursory search suggested it was specific to Samsung phones, but when I switched to PipePipe, the issue simply didn’t appear.

  Grain of salt: I haven’t used NewPipe since switching in November.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Distro for upgrading a 15 year old Mac?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s fair, but since OP doesn’t have the machine to immediately check the model number, and 2010 is within spitting distatof 2012, I figured I’d provide some additional info, just in case.

  That said, a 2010 machine would be fairly ancient. But then again, it’s 2026 and DDR3 is somehow relevant again…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Distro for upgrading a 15 year old Mac?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If that MacBook is old enough that it’s part of the first generation of Intel Mac products, you may have to do a few extra things to account for the 32-bit EFI – not UEFI; that would come later – that those machines used. I recall dealing with this myself, back when older versions of Ubuntu provided the ISO for specifically this scenario. Instead, you might want to review this page which describes the problem and how to address it: ctrl-alt-rees.com/2024-08-13-operating-system-opt…

  Note that a 32-bit EFI does not prevent you from installing a modern 64-bit OS. The complexity is just with getting the system to boot from the installer disc.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is a video streaming co-op a useful idea?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Insofar as USA law might apply, it may be useful for you to review the legal case involving Internet Archive’s CDL program: en.wikipedia.org/…/Hachette_v._Internet_Archive

  Since the realm of copyright law is inextricably tied to the question, I’m going to try to clarify some points. Firstly, “theft” has never been the correct legal analogy for copyright infringement. That misconception comes from a false equivalency in the late 20th Century to warn would-be infringers of the steep penalties; many Americans will remember the phrase “you wouldn’t steal a car”, even though the feds cannot charge copyright infringement as theft (which requires a tangible, non-duplicable item, like car theft or wage theft).

  In the US at least, it’s illegal to stream movies you don’t own or don’t have the license to stream.

  Only the second part is correct: all copyrighted works are used per the license granted from the owner. Such a license may restrict the format that the work is delivered, but not always. The license that accompanies physical media is: 1) irrevocable, and 2) follows the disc’s owner (recognized in USA law as the “doctrine of first sale”). So long as the disc is owned and intact, the license is good. Furthermore, under “fair use”, it is allowed to make copies of works for either: a) time shifting (ie recording a live broadcast to watch it later) or b) to change the format, aka compatibility. The latter is why it’s allowable to rip a DVD into a personal Jellyfin server. It’s valid so long as the license is still good, which applies so long as you still own/possess the disc.

  By participating in the co-op, when you stream a movie, ownership of that physical media and the digital copy is temporarily transferred to you.

  Two counterexamples come to mind, the first being the Internet Archive case that I linked earlier. The second is a Supreme Court ruling against a company that rented miniature TV receivers located in metro areas across the country. In that case, SCOTUS found that although it’s fine to rent out a TV receiver, the license for the over-the-air transmission was only valid within physical range of the signal. So conveying the TV content beyond the metro area created a copyright infringement, and the company was actively facilitating that.

  They are expensive for the library and don’t have great selection

  Most libraries are funded from a budget, and negotiate e-book and e-movie access based on an approximate estimate of concurrent users, not on a per-user basis. Otherwise, those libraries would have uncontrolled costs if everyone decides to stream Die Hard (1988) at the same time on Christmas Day; it’s definitely a Christmas film. Quite frankly, most libraries would be thrilled if more people obtained library cards and used the services, because it justified the budget for the library and proves its value to the community.

  If you aren’t finding the content you want at your library, the best thing to do is to request what you want. Libraries are always buying new materials or access to more services. But unless library cardholders voice an opinion, the librarians will just choose generically. Be the change you want to see.

  Technologically, creating a co-op is always an opportunity. But always remember that the very concept of a public library is “grandfathered” and if we had to reintroduce it, the establishment would never allow it. Cherish libraries as the crucial community resources that they are. The precise form might change, but the library role must always endure.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are the most confusing false friends from your language to another that are spelt exactly the same?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  In American English (AmE) and British English (BrE), the verb “to table” is used in legislative debates. But the meaning is diametrically opposite: AmE uses the verb to mean the abandonment of a bill, analogized as though leaving it on the bargaining table to rot. Whereas the BrE verb means to introduce legislation, as in “bringing a bill to the table”.

  Both clearly share the same origin – a piece of furniture – and yet diverged as to what act is described by the word.

  Other confusion arises from the verb “to sanction” which can mean “to allow” but coildn also “to prohibit” or “make punishable”.

  And a more modern addition in slang vernacular: “to drop”. In the context of artists, “dropping a mix tape” would mean to introduce new music. But “dropping a vocalist” means that the band has fired their singer.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How would you rate your country's constitution?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  No constitution, no hard checks and balances

  I’m an American, but IIRC, the UK does have an unwritten constitution, one that incorporates all the landmark legislation over a millennium. That is to say, rather than a dedicated, singular document that “constitutes” the boundary of the law, the British look to their still-active laws to ascertain what core rights and responsibilities must exist, and extrapolate from there. If this sounds wishy-washy, it’s remarkably no different to how the USA Constitution is interpreted, under the “living document” doctrine. That doctrine in American law simultaneous recognizes that: 1) the exact text of the constitutional provisions must be adhered to (this is a basic tenant of “rule of law”, and 2) those provisions may extend to analogous situations. Right-wing conservatives over here attempt to ignore the second, adopting the so-called doctrine of “textualism” (which would only recognize strictly the first aspect) but this “doctrine” only seems to be cited out when it’s convenient, and hand-waved away when it’s not. Hardly a doctrinal approach.

  As an example of what is universally understood as being part of the British constitution, see the Magna Carta. Many of its provisions might no longer be part of the formal British body of law, but were translated into formal statute law, with its lineage acknowledged when it comes up in civil rights litigation. The current status makes the Magna Carta more akin to the US Declaration of Independence, which formally grants or recognizes zero rights but is still important in American constitutional jurisprudence. In that sense, the Declaration of Independence is a part of the unwritten body of the American constitution.

  As for checks and balances, since the UK adopts the notion of parliamentary supremacy – and still does, even after the creation of the UK Supreme Court in the 21st Century – the checks exist within the Westminster parliamentary system. As currently formulated, the UK Parliament is composed of a lower and upper house, with the former seating representatives of the people and the latter seating representatives of … nobility? The church? I’ll just say that the House of Lords represents the “establishment”. Not like “deep state capital-E Establishment” but just the institutions at-large. In that sense, the check-and-balance is one where the populist will is anchored by institutional momentum.

  Is this alright? Personally – and again, I’m an American, not a UK citizen – it does seem rather backwards that the PM can advise the Monarch to create and appoint more hereditary peers in the House of Lords, which could stack parliament against the interest of the citizenry. I think the existence of bicameral legislative bodies to be an anachronism, especially in the USA where both end up being population-based (because prior court rulings ruled that land-based representation was unconstitutional, except the US Senate). The Nebraska unicameral legislature shows what can be done when the law-making process (committees, 1st reading, 2nd reading, floor vote, etc…) is consolidated, where testimony doesn’t have to be taken twice and citizens need only voice public comment at one committee.

  But I digress.

  No guarantee of stability, a new govt can repeal any of the previous govt’s laws

  Yes, and no. The UK has a very rich tradition of inking out their party platforms, to the point that when a new government and party are in power, it’s not at all a surprise what laws they will change. Indeed, it would have been obvious for months to years, since the minority party forms the “shadow government”, which is basically a demo to the citizens about what the government would look like if they were in power. Note to fellow Americans: “shadow” in this case does not mean nefarious, but rather that each designated person from the minority will “shadow” the actual minister (eg Dept for Transport) and thus go on TV to give interviews about how the minority party would have done things differently. If a journalist needs to fill airtime with multiple points-of-view, going to the shadow minister on that topic is a quick way to get an opposing perspective.

  The only question then, in terms of stability, is which party prevails after an election. In this sense, while there may not be absolute continuity, there is still practical continuity: businesses and individuals can make plans in advance when they learn what’s in the platform of the minority party, can start actioning those plans if the party has a likelihood of winning an election, can brace for change if a close election is called, and ultimately be ready for when the new party takes power and implements their changes. It’s a pragmatic approach: change is the only constant, so might as well give sufficient notice when things do change.

  As for repealing “any” prior law, technically yes. But the institutional inertia is partially what blunts this power. Public advocacy organizations are – to this American – seemingly more transparent in their operations, and astroturfing is less an issue because of open-transparency when it comes to forming a legal company at Companies House. Likewise, the interests of businesses, the Church of England, the universities, workers unions, etc all find representation somewhere. So it’s much harder than, say in the USA, to ignore whole segments of the population to make sweeping changes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can you also do this with languages that use the Latin Alphabet?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  In English, the example I would prefer is “attorney general”, which as-written refers to the chief lawyer that advises a state (sometimes exceedingly badly). But if reversed, “general attorney” could plausibly refer to a lawyer that can take on any type of legal work, not self-limited to ones within a particular specialty (eg divorce law, personal injury, copyright, etc).

  This is in the realm of postnominal adjectives, although not all reversals will yield recognizable phrases, and some will be nonsensical, like “the incarnate devil”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How would you actually tax the ultra wealthy?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I was going to write about how an existing tax agency (the California FTB) is already aggressive at tracking down high-earning residents that leave the state – whether in-fact or on-paper – in order to collect precisely what the state is owed per the tax code. That is, the FTB already engages and challenges the precise amounts that these former residents write on their final California tax returns, with some more spectacular results being some incredibly detailed timelines for when someone finally stops being a resident in California, as defined in state law.

  But then I noticed that because of California’s proposed wealth tax (aka Billionaire Tax) on the November 2026 ballot, the SF Chronicle has already started a series of articles to answer the specific what-and-hows of the wealth tax. This is the first article, pertaining to enforcement, and it agrees that the FTB would be capable of pursuing any high-wealth individuals that the proposal would tax. sfchronicle.com/…/ca-billionaire-tax-mechanism-21…

  This proposed tax in California is written as a one-time tax, so the question of whether high-wealthy people could flee the state is nearly irrelevant, because either they’re subject to the tax or they’re beyond the reach of the US courts (eg Venus). Almost. The remaining questions are legal in nature, and don’t really change how the tax would be pursued. Whether FTB simply hires a dedicated team or outsources to private investigators, the task is still straightforward: follow the money.

  Unlike civil lawsuit plaintiffs, who have more limited means of chasing down a defendant’s assets in order to get paid on a judgement, the California tax authorities enjoy the benefit of the subpoena power, that can be used to compel companies and banks to tell the tax authorities about where and how wealth is being held. It is, after all, a core power of a US state to administer a tax, especially when the tax is authorized directly from the sovereign power (ie the citizenry). Any other result would conflict with the very purpose of a republic: to unyieldingly serve the people.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Should I use a "proper" password manager instead of Firefox?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  (short on time, so here’s an overview to answer part of the question)

  All password managers that are worth their salt (cryptography pun intended) have to anchor their trust to something, be it the OS’s secret-storing APIs or a piece of hardware like a TPM (typically built into your machine’s motherboard), an HSM (eg Yubikey) device, or an external source of authentication outright (eg a smart card, akin to what the USA Military does). Without any sort of trust anchor, a password manager is little else than a random program that happens to invoke a few cryptographic algorithms. It would be almost trivial for a malicious actor to use a bog-standard debugger like GDB to read the program’s memory and steal the secrets, either after it has been conveniently decrypted by the program or by spying on the program while it performs the cryptographic algorithms.

  Since a password manager runs within an OS, meaning that you already have to trust that your OS isn’t an NSA backdoor, it makes sense to rely on the OS for storage of secrets. What the password manager does is provide the frontend for adding/updating secrets from the OS’s store, while also making sure to authenticate the user prior to allowing access to the store of secrets. Once again, this is where hardware modules can come into play, but it can also be done using a main password. That is, you need to unlock the password manager before the secrets it contains are available for use.

  Rather conveniently, the OS can also provide this authentication functionality: if you have already successfully logged into the computer, then that’s a form of authentication. The most basic-but-reasonably-secure password manager would use two APIs to offload the difficulty tasks to the OS: the authentication API and the secrets API. That’s the absolute bare minimum.

  What Firefox’s password manager provides, by default, is exactly that. But you can choose to upgrade to a Firefox-specific main password, so that if you forget to lock the computer, someone can’t just open Firefox and use your secrets. This is one step above the minimum for a reasonably secure password manager, but it comes with the inconvenience of having to unlock the password manager every time you want to use a secret.

  By and large, all password managers make these types of tradeoffs between convenience and additional layers of protection against certain threats. If your machine is inside the vault of Fort Knox and is actively guarded by people with machine guns and a keycard bullet proof door, then Firefox password manager is plenty acceptable.

  Whereas a shared home computer in a situation where the disclosure of the secrets would cause a grave problem – eg if an irate person finds that their spouse has a login for the local family court’s online website, which might suggest a forthcoming divorce proceeding – this might make sense to add additional layers. Indeed, some password managers can provide a decoy set of secrets, as a way of forming plausible deniability. If your situation needs plausible deniability, then Firefox’s built-in password manager might not fit the bill.

  I want to stress that using any password manager at all is already a massive improvement in security posture, and that any additional features and frills are merely refinements. Some folks are in situations where they cannot accept the possibility of off-device secrets synchronization, which would rule out Firefox password manager. But if you don’t have such requirements, and if you can trust your OS, then you can also trust Firefox to store and manage secrets.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What happens if an instance gets down?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  At least for Lemmy – I have no idea about kbin or other ActivityPub software – there isn’t a user-accessible way to back up one’s account on an instance, nor to preserve any communities that you’re a mod for. So yeah, if the instance goes down unexpectedly like due to data loss or an FBI raid, the communities and users that were on that instance will disappear.

  It’s true that other servers will have a cache of some of the existing community posts and the users on the departed server. But it’s exactly that: a cache, which will eventually be evicted.

  A similar situation occurs when a Lemmy instance changes domain name: all prior posts to the community (and the community itself) were homed to the old domain. So a new domain cannot have the same identity as the old; it will simply be a separate entity, even if all posts were somehow preserved and reposted on the new instance.

  Is this Lemmy-specific? No, Mastodon and I think all other ActivityPub software, plus BlueSky have this property, because they anchor identities to DNS names. From that, the posts to a community are anchored to the instance, and the instance is anchored to DNS.

  So if the domain is lost, then it’s game over. But if the domain is still there but the disk got wiped, then it would be a matter of recovery from a backup. You do have a 3-2-1 backup strategy, right?

  I will note that Mastodon has a user-initiated export feature, which functions as a backup, something that Lemmy doesn’t have. A Mastodon user can export their data and then move their identity to a new instance. Lemmy can’t do that today, but it should be possible. Though in both cases, only the saved account is preserved. To restore a Lemmy community would require a disk-level backup image.

  (this is all conjecture based on my limited knowledge of Lemmy. A better answer would come from an instance admin or one of the Lemmy devs)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  some people

  they say that it’s definitely a thing

  To borrow a phrase from the largest encyclopedia project in the world, citation needed.

  This is not to say that you, OP, need to provide the evidence of a problem. But rather, whoever you’re hearing this from needs to proffer up more than just weasel words.

  There is only so much time before each of us shuffles off our mortal coil, so why spend it contemplating nebulous “issues” when the real issues are readily visible: a pattern of physical violence against LGBTQ+ communities. It’s not exactly difficult to do a web search for “lgbtq violence”.

  And to be abundantly clear, proof of “a pattern” has to show a pervasive, widespread, or organized/systemic series of events. LGBTQ+ violence easily meets this criteria, sadly. Where violence against white people because they’re white or violent against straight people because they’re straight doesn’t meet this bar.

  Demand better evidence from your vendor of talking points.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If I decided to convert from [insert lack of religion] to Amish, would they allow me to bring my Casio graphing calculator to continue my math studies?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think it depends on which Amish community, since they all adopt different degrees of self-sufficiency. See nebula.tv/…/hai-how-amish-people-get-around-not-u… (or on YT).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is Windows still bloated⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  When looking through the history of Windows, some of the major milestones included the very concept of a windowed user interface in 3.1, refining the concept into a complete desktop-oriented (as in, a physical table top, with files and folders and a recycling bin) experience in Windows 95, huge backend improvements in the kernel (eg networking) by merging in the NT kernel (last used intact in Windows 2000) and giving us Windows XP.

  Note well that XP was the first juncture between a consumer-oriented OS (a la Win 95/98) and a business-oriented OS (a la NT Server or Windows 2000). The missing link here is Windows ME, which was the next consumer OS after 98 but it flopped so hard when it became apparent that this artificial consumer/business division wasn’t going to scale. Specifically, the Windows 9x kernel had too many DOS-isms whereas the NT kernel had no such issues. Hence, Microsoft undertook the massive effort to bring the two kernels together for XP.

  In that sense, XP coupled a newer kernel with a polished UI. In essence, the company bet all its chips on XP. And fortunately for them, it paid off. But this came with a cost: XP has to carry the lineage of both the DOS/95/98/ME and NT/2000 into the 21st Century. This means the same OS has to support things like Active Directory (a feature only used by corporate customers) and Fax for Windows (used by anyone that wanted to use their dial-up modem for faxing, but also on fax servers, which are somehow still relevant today), while also supporting DirectX for the consumer gaming segment, plus multi-user support for “home computer” customers that still share a single machine for a household, despite a market trend towards personalized computing, and everything else under the sun.

  And that’s before we get to some of the backwards-compatibility support they still have to upkeep, like 32-bit support on the x86 family of CPUs, and BIOS (in spite of UEFI being a decade old). Notably, Windows on ARM has never kept such backwards compatibility, with ARM32 being completely deprecated and only ARM64 being supported by Windows 10 and beyond (hence, Windows on Raspberry Pi).

  And then, of course, the Microsoft own-goals and mistakes: somewhere around 8.1, they decided to meet the tablet/touchscreen market by having Windows be touch-oriented. But as was blitheringly obvious then and now, the desktop concept cannot possibly be similar when the controls (keyboard/mouse versus touchscreen) are swapped out. Thus, this compromised the desktop experience in pursuit of a relatively niche target market.

  A better execution might have been to port Windows for ARM (which is what most/all phones and tablets use today) earlier than they did, use that as the basis of a tablet-experience OS (like how Windows Media Center was just an application atop Windows XP), and then later introduce compatibility with desktop apps (like how Apple can now do full-speed x86 emulation using special ARM extensions baked into their custom silicon). That said, the latter was only technically achievable in the 2020s, but seeing as Microsoft was the market leader well into the 2010s, they would have been in the same position as Apple is in today.

  So to summarize my long-winded comment, Windows carries a lot of weight. It is the result of successfully merging two very-real market segments into one product (business users and consumer users), then MSFT dropped the ball by chasing the Next Big Thing and adding more diametrically-opposed objectives to an over-burdened OS, with nary a plan for how to eventually relieve it. Had they instead did a separate OS for tablet and mobile (rip Windows Phone), they could have merged that one into the XP-based kernel and got the refined best-of-both-worlds.

  Instead, they now have the worst of both. The Windows 11 desktop experience sucks, with bad icons, near-invisible text boxes, confusion where there wasn’t any, and all while pushing consumers towards web browser-based apps. And to make it sting harder, because they’ve been feeding this mess to their corporate customers, those customers now demand that everything be kept the same (“better the enemy that you know”) which prevents Microsoft from making XP-level wholesale improvements.

  They’re stuck, they know it, and they can’t really fix it unless great leadership shows up to take command of the ship. But similar to Amazon (which makes most of its revenue through AWS, not selling/shipping products), Microsoft makes the majority of its revenue in two segments: Azure cloud and Office 365. It’s hard to revamp Windows when it’s now playing third-fiddle.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The absolute first thing is to establish the jurisdiction of this scenario. The answer will be vastly different if the jurisdiction is California/USA than if the jurisdiction were South Susan. No shade against South Sudan, but we are talking about criminal and civil law, so the details might be very different.

  But supposing this is a jurisdiction that follows in the Anglo-American common law (such as California, and I’ll proceed using California as the setting), then we can make some generally-true statement, some of which confirm what you’re already written:

  1. Criminal law exists to punish bad acts committed against society at-large
  2. Criminal law can only punish the persons or entities which have committed an act or omission that is proscribed in law, and only those persons or entities within the territory
  3. Dead people or dissolved corporations are beyond the reach of criminal law
  4. The notion that the next-of-kin will “inherit” the criminal liability was abolished long ago; see US Constitution “Bill of Attainder” prohibition, and equivalent in other jurisdiction like the UK or Australia
  5. Anyone that is still alive and collaborated to aid or supply the dead assailant can be pursued using criminal law
  6. In parallel to the criminal law system, civil lawsuits can be filed against the remaining property of the dead assailant. This is known as the “estate” of that person, and the lawsuit would be captioned as "XYZ v the Estate of [dead assailant]"
  7. A civil lawsuit can only win as much property as the respondent (ie person being sued) has, or any insurance policy they had which might apply, or any debt which was owed to the respondent at the time of their death.
  8. Mass murder commonly result in civil lawsuits that do not obtain anywhere near the full amount to compensate for the victims’ families’ loss.
  9. As a result, the target of civil lawsuits can be expanded to include adjacent parties, such as the manufacturer of the weapon or materials used, under a claim of product liability or something similar. This is not a guaranteed result, but they often have deeper pockets and good insurance policies.
  10. Civil lawsuits can only bring a monetary compensation. The law cannot revive the dead, cannot erase or amend history, and cannot salve the void left when victims are removed from this world unjustly.

  With all that said, the entire line of inquiry into the dead assailant’s will, or to their parent’s will, or anything like that, is entirely inapplicable. Children or parents do not inherit the sins of others, at least where criminal liability and civil lawsuits are concerned. Unless, of course, the parents participated somehow or willfully neglected a duty to report (very few of these exist in California, unless the victims were undoubtedly known to be children; see mandatory reporting laws). Thus, these other people cannot be sued nor criminally punished.

  The other commenter correctly said that what we call the “justice system” is more accurately called “harm reduction”. That’s not wrong, but I would post that the crimimal law system is about harm reduction (nb: I do not endorse the carcereal state of imprisoning huge segments of the population, disproportionately by race), whereas civil lawsuits are about equity and compensation.

  Both systems exist in tandem to prevent people from achieving a bloodier form of justice in the streets, like in days of yore: pistols at dawn, dueling in general, “bigger army” diplomacy, midnight slaughters of whole families, and other such unpleasantries. It’s definitely not perfect, and it needs reforms in many parts, but the structure serves a purpose and so far, it’s what we have and the best that we have.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why don't my shit and urine stink while they're inside me?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think this would easily qualify for !brandnewsentence@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If Programmers are wizards then what are Computer Architects?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Castle builders

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can one use someone's previous argument against themselves in a different legal case?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  In Anglo-American common law, if a party has previously argued a position in one of their own cases, and later argues a different position in a subsequent case that they’ve a party to, then the doctrine of equitable estoppel would foreclose on certain claims from that party. As usual, the devil is in the details.

  Firstly, they must be a party to both the prior and prospective case. A motorist that is injured in a multi-vehicle pile-up cannot assert different facts when suing each of the participants in the crash. However, an advocacy group that files a petition on behalf of another is, by definition, not the party that is bringing suit. Nor is anyone that offers an amicus (ie “friend of the court”) brief that advises the court on how a case ought to be decided.

  Secondly, the exact things which are foreclosed will depend. The most common benefit available under equitable estoppel is the loss of a presumption of good faith. So if party A is a corporation and claimed in an earlier employer/employee case that their CEO’s crass, sex-pest behavior was a result of substance abuse (in an attempt at a medical defense or a defense about temporary inability to perceive the situation), then that assertion – irrespective of whether it actually won them that earlier lawsuit – could be used against them in a later case litigated by the shareholders. If the company is sued for the CEO not conveying accurate business info, the defense that their CEO acted in good faith is not going to carry water, if the events coincided in time.

  As you can see, the exact remedy that equitable estoppel provides isn’t exactly clear-cut in every instance. But the goal is to prevent the same litigant from abusing the judicial system. One cannot come into court on Monday claiming the sky is blue when it’s convenient for them, then claim on Wednesday that the sky is not blue when it’s inconvenient for them. Two-face assertions are not allowed.

  To be clear, these must be actual assertions. Sometimes a civil case can be won merely by the likely possibility that someone else is at fault, making it impossible to determine fault. And so no assertion may be needed as a defense. If a pedestrian is struck and injured by a hit-and-run motorist driving a red car, and five red cars are identified later, any of those motorists can correctly state that there were four other such cars in the area. Pointing out facts unfavorable to the plaintiff is exactly what the defense is supposed to do. But if a motorist actually says “I didn’t injure her”, then that’s an assertion. And judicial estoppel means they may not later claim, for some reason in a later case, that they did do it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's going to happen to gas stations as cars electrify?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Predominantly in Texas, Buc-ees is nominally a chain of gasoline stations but they’re known for the stores attached to the station, selling all manner of kitsch but also fast food. Ok, they’re also known for having 100+ pumps at each location. But that’s important because it means they’ve always been located at the periphery of city boundaries, usually on the highways into or out of town.

  When the gasoline business dries up, Buc-ees still has other business interests to keep them going in the road travel market, and they have real estate along major corridors that could be redeveloped. One option is to invite businesses that occupy motorist’s time while parked charging their electric cars, like wayside attractions (besides Buc-ees itself, obviously). Another would be to entrench themselves: develop a hotel so that visiting business people always stop at the Buc-ees before leaving.

  So while neighborhood fuel stations would see a slow demise, Buc-ees can turn their fuel locations into new cash cows. This is why diversification is so important.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨(serious) What would we be losing in a world where most people didn't own a car? Please read the OP before posting.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Whole sections of the country that are zoned for suburban single family housing would not exist as they are today. Not because they’d be illegal or anything, but they’d be incredibly unpopular if most people didn’t own a car, which is needed to basically get to or from a suburban neighborhood.

  I understand the question to be something like: what happens if a majority of people are unwilling/unable to own a private automobile. And I think the immediate answer is that suburban neighborhoods cease to exist, at least at the current density levels. Either a neighborhood must densify so that transit options make sense, or they must aim to become rural living. This also means that things like suburban schools either turn into walkable urban schools, or into small one-room rural schools.

  I don’t actually think rural living will go away, because the fact is that the grand majority of people – USA and abroad – do not prefer rural living. The 18th, 19th, 20th, and 21st Century trends are that people tend towards urban areas, where services and jobs exist. There will always be people that want to live in the hills on 20 acres, and therefore need an automobile. But that has never been the majority, so if a majority of people refuse owning an automobile, they will also mostly refuse rural and suburban living.

  There is no plausible situation where over 50% of people willing decide to: 1) not own a car, and 2) live in a suburb or rural area. This is from the fact that all other modes of transport into a suburb or rural area are either: 1) nonexistent (ie metro rail), or 2) ludicrously expensive (ie Lyft, or transit with 15% fairbox recovery) if the cost was borne by the people living there (as opposed to being subsidized heavily by other taxpayers… Ahem, America).