Open Document Standard (.odt) for all documents. In all public institutions (it’s already a NATO standard for documents).
Because the Microsoft Word ones (.doc, .docx) are unusable outside the Microsoft Office ecosystem. I feel outraged every time I need to edit .docx file because it breaks the layout easily. And some older .doc files cannot even work with Microsoft Word.
Actually, IMHO, there should be some better alternative to .odt as well. Something more out of a declarative/scripted fashion like LaTeX but still WYSIWYG. LaTeX (and XeTeX, for my use cases) is too messy for me to work with, especially when a package is Byzantine. And it can be non-reproducible if I share/reuse the same document somewhere else.
I was too young to use it in any serious context, but I kinda dig how WordPerfect does formatting. It is hidden by default, but you can show them and manipulate them as needed.
It might already be a thing, but I am imagining a LaTeX-based standard for document formatting would do well with a WYSIWYG editor that would hide the complexity by default, but is available for those who need to manipulate it.
There are programs (LyX, TexMacs) that implement WYSIWYG for LaTeX, TexMacs is exceptionally good. I don’t know about the standards, though.
Another problem with LaTeX and most of the other document formats is that they are so bloated and depend on many other tasks that it is hardly possible to embed the tool into a larger document. That’s a bit of criticism for UNIX design philosophy, as well. And LaTeX code is especially hard to make portable.
There used to be a similar situation with PDFs, it was really hard to display a PDF embedded in application. Finally, Firefox pdf.js came in and solved that issue.
The only embedded and easy-to-implement standard that describes a ‘document’ is HTML, for now (with Javascript for scripting). Only that it’s not aware of page layout. If only there’s an extension standard that could make a HTML page into a document…
I was actually thinking of something like markdown or HTML forming the base of that standard. But it’s almost impossible (is it?) to do page layout with either of them.
But yeah! What I was thinking when I mentioned a LaTeX-based standard is to have a base set of “modules” (for a lack of a better term) that everyone should have and that would guarantee interoperability. That it’s possible to create a document with the exact layout one wants with just the base standard functionality. That things won’t be broken when opening up a document in a different editor.
There could be additional modules to facilitate things, but nothing like the 90’s proprietary IE tags. The way I’m imagining this is that the additional modules would work on the base modules, making things slightly easier but that they ultimately depend on the base functionality.
IDK, it’s really an idea that probably won’t work upon further investigation, but I just really like the idea of an open standard for documents based on LaTeX (kinda like how HTML has been for web pages), where you could work on it as a text file (with all the tags) if needed.
What’s messed up is that, technically, we do. Originally, OpenDocument was the ISO standard document format. But then, baffling everyone, Microsoft got the ISO to also have .docx as an ISO standard. So now we have 2 competing document standards, the second of which is simply worse.
Then what would you suggest? If getting rid of food costs say $5 and sending to a different area costs say $10 then between both selections which one is better for the economy?
I thought we we were close to a breakthrough. Just for fun imagine a situation where eliminating a food product costs 100 pesos, but packaging and shipping that same food product to another location costs 200 pesos; which of these is more economical?
Probably smart. Blocking me costs you about one minute of time, whereas continually responding to me has already cost you several minutes. Way more efficient.
Food isn’t even poorly distributed. Almost everybody eats, and the only places people don’t eat it’s from other people with weapons actively preventing them from getting food, and actively preventing others from bringing it to them.
I’ve been homeless in America, twice. Both times I had all the food I could eat, as soon as I was willing to accept it.
The first time I relied on strangers and I ate like a king. The people of Cambridge MA just straight up gave me more food than I could eat when I asked.
The second time I stayed in a shelter in Denver. I had three square meals a day available to me, though I only ate dinner since my job didn’t permit me to attend the other meals. It was good food, donated and prepared by volunteers.
I am sick of people trying to perpetuate the myth that we have starvation in America. It’s one area we succeed in beyond the wildest dreams of anyone even 50 years ago, but haters just can’t stop hating on our society.
The person I replied to replied to a comment solely talking about food accessibility in the US, sharing his experiences as someone who experienced homelessness.
And the reason it doesn’t happen in the US is because nobody in the US is using guns to actively prevent people from acquiring food, or from others giving food to them.
You’re replying to a comment thread about access to food in the US, I’m not sure why you’re trying so hard to derail the conversation. Just make a new comment instead of arguing off topic to others.
First of all, that means food is poorly distributed. You are just disputing the cause.
And yes, conflict if a major cause of hunger. But what is a major cause of conflict? Fucking poverty. Al Qaeda doesn’t recruit from fucking Beverly Hills. Another major cause: US intervention, for the sake of profit and geopolitical dominance, with the dominance ultimately also being for the sake of profit. The world economic system functions as a huge siphon that extracts wealth from the global south and funnels it to wealthy countries where the major institutions of finance are located. Western financial instruments like the IMF and World Bank, alongside direct political and economic pressure, enforce austerity in poor nations, dismantle social safety nets, depress wages, and privatize resources, and this very predictably results in underdevelopment and poverty, which fucking benefits the west because lower wages mean larger profit margins, lower prices and greater market share for the western companies that source their labor there. It’s a fucking global sweatshop economy. And there are consequences to this, when everyone is fucking poor and uneducated and young men see no future for themselves except to become soldiers. It means conflict, which means starvation.
If the world economic system is as you claim, how is it that people in the southern hemisphere are getting steadily more wealthy?
The problem with people who criticize the free market is they’re so focused on distribution they don’t think about production. The answer is that as wealth is funneled north it is also generated at an even higher rate resulting in all humanity getting more wealthy as a result of the system that “concentrates” wealth.
Like if I had air in a bottle and concentrated it all to one corner, that would result in no air everywhere else.
But if I were to create an incredibly sense section of air while increasing the density of air throughout the bottle, it would be misleading to use the word “concentrate” for the action generating that air distribution.
As for big rich countries causing conflict I agree 100%. In fact as far as I know al qaida isn’t causing nearly as much hunger as the House of Saud, which is the richest organization in human history.
And I’m not talking about “there’s war and that makes the market break down” as the men with guns thing. I’m talking about “armies are actively blockading food”.
So “poorly distributed” is really better described as “actively withheld”. It’s like putting a plastic bag over a prisoner’s head then claiming their suffocation was due to “poor distribution of air”, then trying to criticize the building’s HVAC system.
There’s no HVAC system in the world that can solve the problem of a person being suffocated by a plastic bag, and there’s no economic system in the world that can solve the problem of armies actively blockading food from populations. That’s not an indication the economic system has failed; it’s an indication the political system has failed.
Just on a slightly grander scale. I feel like it’s malicious in a different way. Instead of tricking the unaware consumer into thinking they are getting the same product they are getting people to buy what they can now whether it’s due to distance or price
I mean yeah, obviously they’re profitable. It’s the convenience though. Sometimes they have good deals if you don’t want to buy a giant pack of something.
I mean yeah. There are some decent deals sometimes though. The dollar store near me sells name brand dishsoaps and cleaning solutions in normal sized bottles. You just need to be smart about what you get.
We have blown the concept of ownership way out of proportion. No one should be able to own things they have absolutely no connection to, like investment firms owning companies they don’t work for, houses they don’t live in or land they’ve never been to.
You don’t think investment firms don’t do work for the companies they invest in? While some might strip the business for parts many actually invest in something because they see the potential for growth and push the board to make those investments.
Not every investor is looking to gut the company they invested in.
I think you can invest in things, but that shouldn’t give you any legal ownership rights.
I also think it should not give you any profits, just the ability to protect your assets from losing value over time (inflation, decay, wealth tax, …). This way people could either start something themselves and make a profit, or invest it somewhere else to try to preserve the value. What they couldn’t do is invest and profit from other people’s work.
I know this is pretty radical and would definitely need many changes to the way we do things right now, but I strongly believe that decisionmaking and profits should be reserved for the people actively involved in something. If you want to work with companies you don’t run then get payed as an advisor or associate, because that is the work you would be doing.
I like this idea, I had never thought about it this way. But it would be hard to implement, what about owning things that does not physically exist? (Like a company)
Yea it would be a pretty radical change, requiring adjustments in many areas. But I do think it’s necessary, because people not being personally invested in the things they own (just financially) and profiting from other people’s work is imo the big problem with our society right now.
Companies would work the same way. You can own it (make decisions and get profits) as long as you work there. Ofc you can work for multiple companies, but with reasonably restrictions (e.g. 8 companies if you work 40h/week and 5h/week/company). I also think companies should not be able to own other companies, because companies cannot be “personally” involved in anything, only people can.
The most recent one is, of course, Sync for Lemmy. It may just be muscle memory at this point, but I find the experience a step improvement in browsing.
On my home server front, I would mention Plex despite Jellyfin’s massive improvements over the past 2 years. Plexamp is just a magical piece of software.
For the most part, though, I think I’d reverse the question. Most of the time, I prefer OSS.
Try reiverr, its a jellyfin ui made by a lemmy user that integrates with the arr suite and tvmd so you can easily find new things to watch github.com/aleksilassila/reiverr
I agree about Plex. But I don’t get the love for Sync.
It feels kind of clunky and it lacks some features many of the other apps have. Personally, I’m liking Thunder right now, but I’m excited for Boost to come out.
Sync has ads unless you pay, it’s not open source, and I haven’t actually found anything superior about it.
It’s missing some of the gesture customization others have. I particularly like the left AND right swipe gestures in Thunder. Plus, there are more actions you can assign to them.
Thunder also has more visual adjustments. Things like edge to edge images and post action customizations.
Also, the reply window makes formatting and quoting easier.
The feature different isn’t big though, and most of them aren’t a big deal.
I’m not sure why you think Thunder is ugly though. The way I have them setup, they look almost exactly the same, except I have nested comments in factors more visible on Thunder, which makes it a bit easier to track the conversation.
I was unable to get the font sizes right, to change only the base font to affect all proportions, and to colorize the indented comments the way I like them. Maybe I just wasn’t able to find the settings, though.
So i bought plex pass a while ago and i keep hearing about plexamp, I dont really understand why is it considered so good, could you elaborate on why you like it? Does it do more than play music from my home server?
I love Jellyfin and mainly use it and recommend it where possible these days, but man, the download situation sucks. Hate having to download files without compressing them, especially since I keep my media lossless. Its the main reason I’ve still kept Plex running on my server. Also sometimes the clients can be wonky, I’ve found Jellyfin works best for me with Kodi as the player for most things, which is interesting. But overall I do like Jellyfin and support it and its mission, hopefully gets better in these aspects in time.
I think it’s very likely that profit-driven social media sites use fake accounts to boost their stats to advertisers and the like. Throw in corporations using fake accounts to sell shit as well as govt agencies using fake accounts to push their narratives, and the mainstream internet seems like a much more lonely place.
Some of the men were children. I was 12 when I first learned I could just click “yes” when the internet asked “are you 18+” I was one day older when I learned what browser history was. Then began a 4 year game of cat and mouse between my father and I. He’d try to catch me looking at porn and I’d try to figure out how he caught me.
Burning a new ROM is just as hard fora regular user as jailbreaking an iPhone, so practically it doesn’t make a difference if android is open-source or not.
Also, even though core android is OSS, what you and i run on our phones heavily depends on the play framework which is Google proprietary. Amazon has tried and failed to fork android before with its fire devices and that hasn’t worked.
FYI GrapheneOS is trivial to install (you don’t need to do all that exploit and root nonsense you used to have to!) and runs entirely without Google Play Services (unless you want to install them in a less-invasive way, which is also officially supported)
Thanks, bug. It’s gotten better for those of us with some background, but I’d definitely not say it’s trivial for a regular android user to use. GrapheneOS only supports Google Pixels launched after August 2020 for starters. The recommended to install GrapheneOS still needs you to OEM unlock and may need a factory reset as well. Jailbreaking might technically be harder, but this is hard enough.
The only way something like this can become mainstream is if popular smartphone manufacturers intentionally supported an alternative distribution (like GrapheneOS), which i don’t see happening for business reasons including the possibility of a fallout with Google.
Even though android is open-source, the hurdles for running an alternative are around the proprietary stuff we depend on in the ecosystem.
I’d say having a Pixel is the only real blocker, as unlocking the bootloader and factory resetting the phone are both a couple of clicks in the settings that anyone can follow. I remember the days of rooting and installing cyanogenmod on early Android phones and compared to that the process today is really trivial!
You’re glossing over a lot of complexity that the GrapheneOS team is doing for you. The reason that they only support Pixels is because Google is relatively open. Their FAQ says the following:
In most cases, substantial work beyond that will be needed to bring the support up to the same standards. For most devices, the hardware and firmware will prevent providing a reasonably secure device, regardless of the work put into device support. … Broader device support can only happen after the community (companies, organizations and individuals) steps up to make substantial, ongoing contributions to making the existing device support sustainable.
You can’t expect Android users to be able to en masse move to a fork if Google decides to close the tap.
I have LineageOS (CyanogenMod) running on one of my spare phones and it is easier now than it used to be ten years ago (speaking from experience), but you still need to have a phone that is supported, and the OEM needs to allow unlocking. I had to wait a couple of weeks to be able to unlock. So it’s definitely not trivial.
You’re glossing over a lot of complexity that the GrapheneOS team is doing for you
Not meaning to gloss over, it’s their hard work that makes it a nice experience! It’s always been the case that some devices are more moddable than others, comparing the ones that are simplest is the only comparison that really makes sense though.
As for users moving en masse it obviously wouldn’t be trivial, but the theoretical removal of side-loading wouldn’t happen overnight so there would hopefully be plenty of time for more solutions to pop up.
Assuming that there will be phones with unlockable bootloaders sold in the US in the future. There are precious few of them now. Importing’s always an option (and quite easy these days), but then you run into the problem of band support.
EU laws (btw, afaik, India has similar requirement now) is one of the reasons which will make disabling alternative installation option very complicated if Google would want to.
side loading has always been available on apple Iphones, it’s just been locked exclusively down to their developer program for debugging and testing purposes and said installed apps are only valid for a limited amount of time. I expect it will use the same framework that the dev program uses, just not as restricted. That being said i can forsee them region locking it.
Doesn’t Apple already allow side loading to some degree?
You can just put an app onto a iDevice through iTunes, without having to run it through the App Store. Apple even puts out a specifically outdated version of iTunes that still retains much of the App functionality.
It’s not as though they’re trying to build the feature in from scratch.
Why would it be a huge undertaking? Allowing installing apps from package files obtained from anywhere seems like a trivial change to the software for a company with a lot of resources.
Why would it be a huge undertaking? Allowing installing apps from package files obtained from anywhere seems like a trivial change to the software for a company with a lot of resources.
Laws can change and international market organisations fall, that’s my only point, and I don’t if know that, but there’s a war happening in Europe right now.
until there is Google
Google is not concerned in make open tech at all, see that shittest thing of all: ChromeOS. It’s a pain in the ass to install Linux apps there even it’s based on Gentoo Linux. If Google could close their things like Apple, it would do it. It’s just not the moment right now.
Not everyone who left Digg went to reddit, and not everyone who left Myspace went to Facebook. “Replacing” reddit should never be the goal, it should be “be better than reddit”.
If this is ever to go mainstream, what we should be concerned about is making good, high quality original content. If people see us having fun and being nice here, they’ll want to join in too.
Great point about the high-quality content. I remember before Reddit was popular, that’s where much of the original content was generated, and it would eventually be reposted on Digg. Reddit had the reputation of being tomorrow’s Digg homepage today.
Start saving for retirement now. You can make literally millions by putting away 10% of your income early on. Do it automatically so you never even notice the money gone.
If you are worried about making the wrong choice and your company doesn’t have a 401k, open an IRA somewhere (Fidelity if you need someone to make the decision for you) and pick a date targeted fund. Set up auto deposit. Never look at the balance.
You can always make it better later but for now the best thing to do is start. Don’t let analysis paralysis get in the way.
Some companies in the US have a deal to where they match on 401k. One such organization puts in 5% for your 2%. Two percent is low enough it wouldn’t be a hit to almost any cash in your pocket given that the money is taken out pre tax.
Question: If I had money saved in a 401k or Roth IRA, what if I died before I retired? What would happen to the money? Would it go back to the government or to a close relative?
I don’t want to come off as insensitive, so I’ll try to phrase things carefully.
If you have even the slightest spare money per pay period, like $30, and a 401k or 403b is offered to you, you really need to do it.
That money comes out of your check before taxes, so you will be investing more money than what actually comes out of your check. By deduction 6% of a $15/hr full time job, you’re putting in $36, but your paycheck will only go down about $30-free money!
Many places will match you some, say half of that first 6%, so now you’re saving $54 while only being out $30. You’ve almost doubled your money in one week!
Come tax time, you’ve saved $1872, and you’ve been given a free $936. It doesn’t stop there though, because now you only are paying income tax on $29,328 instead of $31,200. If you get a tax rebate now, you will get even more back!
So now you’re saving $2808 a year at age 20. Let’s put that in one mutual fund, a SP500 index fund. Over the last 10 years, that has returned 12‰, but let’s be conservative and call it 10. If you never make a cent more per hour, by age 65, you will have saved $84,000 and your job has chipped in $42,000, over a year’s pay! But with that 10% compound interest, you have $2,000,000! You are a multi-millionaire for $30/wk!
No, I understand what he’s trying to say. The point is: doing what he recommends requires having money to save up in the first place, and for a big portion of people in their 20s that’s not the case.
It’s valid, and it sucks. If you can even do $5, it’s worth it. But the world is absolutely against you right now. A lot of older folk don’t quite get how bad it’s gotten.
However, saving a dollar today is worth more than saving two dollars ten years from now. And having an emergency fund might actually save your life.
Hopefully something happens to shake up housing. These prices are absolutely criminal.
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