matlag
@matlag@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on It Turns Out, Steam’s Adult Content Ban Has Been Plotted For A Year And Is Spearheaded By One Of Project 2025’s Leading Voices 4 weeks ago:
But they’ll likely be older, and learn to be more tech savvy to get around the block.
The school my kid attens provide Chromebooks, with a tight control of course.
That’s why 11y old had to learn from one of their classmates how to bypass the control. Thanks to tech protection they were safe from accidentally finding porn (did that ever happen to anyone in real life??) for at least one week.
The only part I mentioned was child development, which research has shown to have a negative impact (just like we did with cigarettes and alcohol).
We all agree. Yet I don’t understand why you so much want to defend a mechanism that is already failing its stated purpose. In case you missed it: it is a miserable total failure. It just increased VPN usage. That, and the massive data collection. Period. Nothing else achieved.
So now I guess it’s going to be ok to control VPN.
independent.co.uk/…/vpns-porn-online-safety-act-c…
That’s going to fail, by the way. Then I guess you must ban Tor at ISP level. Completely block it, for the sake of the children.
Then, then, then…
Then children are still exposed to porn, but we’re working on it! Meanwhile, would you come to the station explain why you visited that website and posted that nasty anonymous comment about the PM last wednesday night?
- Comment on It Turns Out, Steam’s Adult Content Ban Has Been Plotted For A Year And Is Spearheaded By One Of Project 2025’s Leading Voices 4 weeks ago:
And eventually, we always, always figure out their leaders don’t abide to the rules they set for others.
- Comment on It Turns Out, Steam’s Adult Content Ban Has Been Plotted For A Year And Is Spearheaded By One Of Project 2025’s Leading Voices 4 weeks ago:
Why do we regulate alcohol and cigarettes? Why dont parent’s just parent their kids? How would the kid even bave the money to buy them in the first place? To be clear, when these restrictions were being put in place, people absolutely had the exact same arguments you are making right now. The onus is on the parents.
And so now no kid can access alcohol or cigarettes, right? Right?? Aaaaah, yes they can…
Even kids with parents that have reasonable restrictions are easily able to access internet pornography because internet devices are everywhere. Internet devices are easier to access than cigarettes and alcohol, and can do just as much damage to their development. Why wouldn’t the government also control access to confirm someone’s age.
It’s going to have exactly the same efficiency: none. Kids educated enough to know they shouldn’t seek it won’t. The others will definitely find a way to get it. We will never hear about it after. There will be no report, stats, anything. How much stats have you seen on the efficiency of “anti-terrorists” laws?
Please do not respond to me about giving out your ID if you do not acknowledge my comment on use zero knowledge proof’s to verify you’re over an age.
I don’t acknowledge vaporware.
“Child’s protection”, “anti-terrorist”, “against pedophile” so many emotionally triggering words so that we slowly accept more and more control. Had this been proposed 10 years ago, people would have screamed this is “soviet-style”. Nowadays, it’s just one more small step.
I don’t give it another 10 years before you accept webcams in your house with IA monitoring you with complete guaranteed privacy as the IA is only to report cases of harm on children by their caretakers. It will just take a bit more push and a big case of child abuse on the news. We do watch people’s behavior outside the house, right? Why not inside? How many more kids are you ready to sacrifice in the name of privacy??
- Comment on It Turns Out, Steam’s Adult Content Ban Has Been Plotted For A Year And Is Spearheaded By One Of Project 2025’s Leading Voices 4 weeks ago:
The internet is different, and it’s currently the wild west.
As opposed to real world where I could buy alcohol without any problem at 15–16 and was offered cigarettes at the same age despite both being forbidden in my country? If kids wants something bad enough, they’ll get it. The stronger the ban, the higher the interest it creates for teens.
Again, if done correctly, it can be done privately and securely.
The only thing you could try is parental control on their devices. Be aware they will seek other devices outside, from their friends, etc. UK has seen an explosion of VPNs use since implementation of their control: it’s miserably failing already.
Or is it? Many adults went through the ID confirmation process…
Education: that works! Mindless coercion never works. But the advocate of these solutions know that very well. The kids were never their target.
- Comment on Bill and Melinda French Gates and Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge after 15 years: Only 9 of the 256 billionaires actually followed through on giving away half their wealth 1 month ago:
Once you start to have money, you get a money dependency. No matter how rich you get, the “baseline you really need to live the life you want and nothing more” growths together with your wealth.
Take lottery winners and ask them if they could give away half of their gains. Will you be surprised if most of them say no, even though the day before they would have set their “minimum needed to live a happy life for the rest of my days” at a much smaller fraction of it?
Now take a similar population, but who in addition rationalized them deserving that money through their hard work and talent.
- Comment on PSA on privuhcy 1 month ago:
Yes, at least for Firefox:
- Comment on I'm setting up a Windows 11 laptop for my uncle. Is there a sneaky way to make it block right-wing bullshit websites? 1 month ago:
Technically that won’t be a baseless conspiracy theory though. Just not “the liberals”, and not hiding “the truth”.
- Comment on Welcome to the Labour police state 2 months ago:
Unfortunately France is only lagging behind, but on the same authoritarian path.
First thing done after terrorist attack: declare emergency state, a tool designed for cases where the state is at risk of collapsing because of invasion by a foreing country or violent insurrection…
The police gains the power to assign people considered at risk at their residence. Very first use: assign climate activists at residence during the COP.
Emergency state is reconducted multiple times without any rationale, other than vague “terrorist threat”.
One of the first actions from Macron once in power was to make it permanent, by passing its key elements in the law.
Protests against anti-social policies or for climate are now systematically met with a violent response. People come out with an eye or a hand missing due to flashballs and lacrymo grenades. Answer from the government is something like “they had it coming”.
Cases of activists and journalists intimidation by law enforcement are multiplying.
Give it a bit of time, and France will catch up.
- Comment on US Politicians praying inside the House of Representatives 2 months ago:
“Oh yeah, that’s definitely settled: John has the biggest one! Ok folks, zip up before they realize what we’re doing!”
- Comment on Anon is a game dev 2 months ago:
It looks so marketing driven.
We are in decades of video games. Look at very old game and assess how “ugly” they are by today’s standard while at their time they were “the best graphics ever seen in history!” or something.
And so, the big question: we were having fun with games decades ago already. If graphics were part of the fun, your brain should explode under the immensely higher level of fun you have on modern games vs 20y old games. And… well…nope. Same as before, just higher expectations.
- Comment on Anon is a fighter 4 months ago:
Your best chance to kill a gorilla in a fight is probably to move so much air around him that he catches a f*cking cold and dies from it. If you don’t actually touch him you may even have a non-0 survival chance as he ignores you.
- Comment on Liquid Trees 4 months ago:
Trees provide shades that cool down the cities. These algae don’t. The main benefit of these “liquid trees” is to reduce pollution. You know what reduces even more pollution? Electrification and public transportation. Combine both. You’ll need much less space for motor vehicles lane inside the city and no need for “depolluting” inventions. Add some bike lanes and you’ll still have plenty of space for trees. They’re better looking and will do the cooling job.
So, as I was saying: praising a less efficient solution that may bring new unexpected issues down the road because the efficient solution requires people to change.
- Comment on Liquid Trees 4 months ago:
The issue with trees is you need to adapt the city to them, you can’t adapt them to the city. And people have proven once and again that they would invent anything to not move by an inch when our way of life is put in question.
So we push forward with absurd solutions one after the other: carbon capture, atmospheric geo-engineering, a damned nuke in antarctica, and now “liquid trees”.
Because the alternative is to change our ways, and we can’t face that.
- Comment on Liquid Trees 4 months ago:
The issue with trees is you need to adapt the city to them, you can’t adapt them to the city. And people have proven once and again that they would invent anything to not move by an inch when our way of life is put in question.
So we push forward with absurd solutions one after the other: carbon capture, atmospheric geo-engineering, a damned nuke in antarctica, and now “liquid trees”.
Because the alternative is to change our ways, and we can’t face that.
- Comment on Dunning-Kruger 6 months ago:
“Yeah but science can be proven wrong an change over time, while my beliefs and biases are forever!”
- Comment on The US Treasury Spent HOW MUCH Illegally? Now You Know Why the Left Wants to Stop DOGE. 7 months ago:
thefiscaltimes.com/…/Chart-Day-Unauthorized-Spend…
Looking forward to see US shutting down its veteran’s healthcare or the FAA, among others.
That’s going to be a show seen from outside.
- Comment on Par for the course 8 months ago:
It’s not how much money you’re pouring on it. It’s not that “it’s not working”.
Fake news enraging idiots who will vomit their hate all over and get into clashes is the highest earning formula for the business. And in a time where the new ruler of the USA is himself a big fan of hate speeches, while the EU and some other countries are ready to hammer Meta over their poor moderation, it’s also a strategic political move.
So the idea is to allow fake news and hate speecher while making big claims about freedom of speech and appeal to MAGA’s kindergarden bosses in hope they’ll defend him against evil regulators.
That’s all it is.
- Comment on Par for the course 8 months ago:
I don’t think he even cares. He wants to appeal to MAGA’s bosses.
In 4 years, if Dems take back power, he will make a vibrant speech about the need for diversity and to tackle fake news.
- Comment on ‘It affects everything’: why is Hollywood so scared to tackle the climate crisis? 1 year ago:
Hollywood used to be concerned about climate change awareness, and we could hear superstars actors making poignant speeches about it.
Then they figured that being serious about it meant stop flying private jets and helicopters, stop over consuming by building 4 mansions for themselves and collecting cars and what not, and it became a sensitive topic.
Climate change is something most people are willing to fight for only if the solution is OTHERS will have to make changes.
- Comment on I'm 99% sure it's not real 1 year ago:
Half of the job is to fix issues with existing suff, the other half is to make working stuff more complicated and problematic (aka “upgrade”), so that we’re still paid to do the first half.
- Comment on NASA has some explaining to do 1 year ago:
I kind of hope it’s real. Down that path at some point they’ll decide the whole Internet and all modern technologies are satanist and leave Internet for good. They can embrace the Amish lifestyle, it’s a win for the rest of us.
- Comment on Wreck the economy because it only works for the billionaire class. 1 year ago:
Inflation reduces the value of money at the bank: the money saved as well as the money borrowed.
In an ideal world, wages are indexed on inflation (way of calculating inflation in this context can be discussed), and inflation is kept above present targets levels (central banks try to keep it at 2% these days).
That makes your debts easier to reimburse, and limits returns on savings. Have you ever noticed that people who keep talking about the “value of work” actually push for low wages and no or low taxes on capital gains, so actually wants the capital to make more money than work?
A low inflation allows big money to hoard more and more. Higher inflation means money that’s not actively contributing to the economy will lose its value over time, and that’s exactly what you, at the bottom of the ladder, want (and considering top of the ladder is hundreds of billions of $, ever 6 figures employees are bottom of the ladder).
Too high inflation leads to an uncontrolled spiral. Deflation is also very bad (no investment will ever happen if your money just appreciate by doing nothing). But the 2% target is not to protect you. It’s made for money to make more money.
But about the link between wages and inflation: what we have today is a situation where we let cost of life dramatically outpace wage growth. So where did the inflation come from? Profits! That needs to be rebalanced.
From 1945 to the early 80’s (before the €), France and some other countries minmum wages were indexed on inflation. If doing so would instantly crash an economy, we would have noticed…
- Comment on Why is the consumption of Meat considered bad 2 years ago:
No, we had cotton before we had 1billion cows, and it was working fine. We had corn before we had 1 billion cows and we were doing fine.
And other regions in the world have crops and never needed mega-herds of cows to deal with by-products.
We don’t need more cars because of all the oil we extract. If we don’t need oil, we’ll stop extracting oil. That’s not speculation.
- Comment on Why is the consumption of Meat considered bad 2 years ago:
Today we burn tons of oil. Say tomorrow we have switched to all electric. Do you think we’ll keep extracting oil and that will create an environmental burden because of that oil sitting around?
That’s the same reasoning.
Today we grow megatons of corn,… for different things, including feeding livestocks.
Tomorrow, if we have less livestock, we’ll adapt the crops mix, just like rest of the world has been or is still doing fine without having mega-herds of cows.
We don’t have too many cows because we had too much crops. We increased the crops to match the herds!
- Comment on Why is the consumption of Meat considered bad 2 years ago:
Just how many times did you copy-paste that comment?! Are you a bot or a lobbyist by any chance?
You think that we started producing some grains, and one day we realized we had too much by-products and one smart guy said: “let’s start a cows herd so that they’ll eat these”. Sounds legit. Especially if you consider that eating beef the way we do is very recent in human history, and still inexistent in many parts of the world. Poor folks must be buried under the by-products…
So, since I don’t think farmers are total morons, I would rather imagine they would produce different kind of food, such as leguminous.
- Comment on Why is the consumption of Meat considered bad 2 years ago:
A non-peered review article from a totally unbiased source.
Coming up next, an article demonstrating the benefit of burning oil for the environment by Shell.
- Comment on Why is the consumption of Meat considered bad 2 years ago:
There is no solution to capture methane in the air. Its lifespan in air is 12years, so if we stop emitting, it will go away by itself. Until then, it’s quite bad. Capturing it at the source is also challenging (can you hemetically seal a cow’s ass without impacting its health?!).
The best solution is… less farms, less cows but that means less meat!
- Comment on Why is the consumption of Meat considered bad 2 years ago:
The main issue is probably less meat itself than the ginormous quantities we consume.
Most livestock farming is intensive, meaning they can’t rely on grazing alone and need extra food sources, typically corn. They emit methane, a greenhousing gas on steroids.
That grain is produced through very intensive agricultural methods because we can’t get enough of it. It consumes ridiculously large amount of water and slowly degrades the soils. Nitrates eventually end up in the sea, causing algea to proliferate while other lifeforms are suffocated. See the dead zone in Mexico’s gulf.
71% of agriculture land in Europe is dedicated to livestock feeding.
The percentage must be similar or higher in America, and don’t count North America alone: without grains from Brazil, we’re dead. Period. So next time you hear the world blaming Brazil for deforestation, keep in mind that a large share of it is to sustain livestocks…
Cattle farming in the USA is heavily subsidized, by allowing farmers to use federal land for grazing for free (I believe something similar is in place in Canada?). The claim they “take care of the land” is absurd: nature has been doing that for millenias without needing any help. First nations have been living in these lands also without supersized cows herds and it was going alright. Farms actually prevent wildlife to take back its place.
But I wouldn’t blame them. People in North America (among others, and I live in Canada, definitely me too) eat indecent and unhealthy quantities of meat, and that has to come from somewhere.
Now, simple math will tell you: if everyone in the world was consuming meat in the same quantities as us, there would’nt be enough suitable land on Earth to grow the corn that needs to go with it.
Another thing is not all meats are equal in terms of pollution. From the worst to the least bad, in equivalent kgCO2 per kg of meat you can actually eat: -Veal: 37 -Chicken (intensive, in cage): 18 -Beef: 34 -Pork: 5–7 -Duck, rabbit, pork: 4–5 -Chicken ("traditonal, free range): 3–4 -Egg (for comparison): <2
You can appreciate the orders of magnitude!
There are only 2 ways out of this:
- reduce meat consumption, and pick it right
- grown meat (meat made without the animal around it, in machines)
One can be done today, starting with your next meal. We don’t need meat every meal, we don’t even need meat every day, but it is true that going full vegetarian force a certain gymnastic to get all the nutriments one need.
The other solution is barely getting there, so there are still unknown (food quality, resources consumption, etc.) and the economics may not help it taking off.
The third (and let’s face it: current approach at national level everywhere on this issue) option is to do nothing and keep going as if the problems didn’t exist. This is guaranteeing a famine in the coming decades. When we’ll fail to feed our livestock, and it will start dying, it will be too late to turn around and get the whole agriculture sector to transition. These things take many years.
We’re trying to reduce our meat consumption at home, or to favor the least impacting ones. We still eat too much meat, but I hope we can gradually improve.