Yeah, my last apartment had toilets that weren’t compatible. The supply hose going to the tank actually had a compression washer and went all the way through the tank before attaching to the valve. Like I couldn’t just unscrew the water hose from the bottom of the tank to tie in, because there wasn’t anything to unscrew. The hose just went straight through to the inside of the tank.
I’ve never seen anything like it before or since. It honestly had me baffled, and I was left settling for baby wipes until I could move into my current place. And you’d best bet that during my walkthrough for my current place, I checked the toilet to see if it would work with my bidet. The leasing agent looked at me like I was crazy when I dove behind the toilet, but it’s a new checkbox on my list.
I’ve read about people connecting theirs by running a hose from the sink connection to the bidet. Normally you’d only do that to get hot water into the mix, but I guess it’s also an option to get basic cold water if you’re stuck with a fussy toilet.
I did have to shave some of the plastic from mine to get the toilet lid to close naturally. Not the same situation, but they do on occasion, require a little creativity
I’m not sure about EU specific but I’m currently using a Tushy brand bidet and it’s extremely simple and wonderful and their website and manuals are full of shitty puns! Also, consider one with a feminine setting as I’ve heard they’re extra helpful.
Also, don’t bother with heated bidets - unless you have to worry about the device freezing. My parents installed one in an older house and it would draw quite a bit of power, the lights would noticeably flicker lol
I’ve bought so many from them! I have multiple bathrooms, we upgraded once, given them as gifts, and sneaky installed one at a family members vacation house!
I know it’s ignorant, but all I can imagine when using a bidet for the first time is shooting my corn hole with a jet of cold water, not knowing how clean it is back there, and using a towel to dry off only to find watered down shit on the towel.
It’s only surprising or strange the first time. If you aren’t acutely aware of how the water of a shower hits your skin every time you shower, then you won’t notice the bidet more than the first or second time.
I was reluctant to get a bidet because I couldn’t hook it up to a warm water line, and was pleasantly surprised when I realized buttholes really aren’t that temperature sensitive. Even in the dead of winter, cold well water shot straight up the butthole doesn’t feel cold or shocking at all. Probably impossible to believe unless you try it yourself.
Also, don’t be a monster and dry your butthole with a towel. Just use a little bit of toilet paper so if you’re still dirty, it’s okay. It’s not like your whole rear-end gets soaked, it’s a very thin steam of water that targets just your butthole, with maybe a tiny bit of spray on the surrounding area
So, how do you bidet to squeaky clean without touching your shit covered asshole? I know Indian people run water down the small of their back with a pitcher and wash that way, with their hand. Then they wash their hand. I’d like to avoid getting shit on my hands.
Ok I know that I have to dry my pooper when it’s wet, I don’t know why I’m getting down voted it was a serious question, my candor is abrasive maybe? I just don’t see how you can wash your ass without touching it, and I’m looking for technique recommendations so I can use one of these things.
It does. It’s high pressure. Imagine a super soaker stream right on your butthole. It’s not some weak ass trickle of water like a water fountain or something
Well you can’t really beat a shower after pooping, that’s true. But I don’t always poop just once a day, or necessarily shower every day of the week…so it’d be a pretty large waste of water/time for me to do that, personally.
If you shower after pooping, what do you do when pooping away from home? In that case, washing your butthole with water from the sink and then cleaning your hands/arms would be more efficient. You may need to loosen your butthole and expand your anal conceptions?
It is hands free wiping, but with a spray nozzle. When I wiped with only TP, the chances of getting poop on my wrist/hand was much greater. Now it’s virtually none, and feels cleaner when you’re walking around later
When you’re using a bidet with the underseat nozzle, imagine you’re washing dog shit off the sidewalk, except you’re the sidewalk. You do the bidet dance - shimmy your butt side-to-side as you scoot back-to-front. Fiddle with the strength of the stream until you find what’s still comfortable, but strong enough to knock all the poop loose. The sprayer-and-hose style of bidet means you don’t have to shimmy, but you have to be a bit more careful where you aim it. Blot dry with TP. Some TP works better with a bidet because it doesn’t disintegrate as easily when wet.
If you aim the bidet stream just right, you can also give yourself a mini-enema for an extra clean feeling that lasts all day. And bear down a bit when you wash. It causes the anus to relax, helping to get the bits that get stuck in the folds. The only folks who need to be careful are hemorrhoid sufferers. If you hit an bleeding 'roid with the stream, it’s butt-clenching painful. Use the gentle spray setting on those bad 'roid days.
You speak truth that most are afraid to admit. My butthole is clean though and my hemorrhoid much more tame since forgoing the rough paper wiping. Also, it can help speed up the “endless poop” feelings that can happen on a bad stomach day, cause you know you’re empty (for now)
People rep bidets all the time, but I don’t see many repping the detailed nuances of why the’re the shit
Valve is one of those companies that I genuinely believe makes a strong argument for ethical capitalism being possible. Sure, they have some shitty things, but overall they do treat developers and customers reasonably well, they provide hardware and software that is easy to use and non-abusive (not filled with spyware and data harvesters, doesn’t use advertising, is well maintained, etc.). If we could obliterate all of the other major conglomerates and replace them with people/companies that understand that you don’t have to be a massive pile of shit to make money the world would be better off.
I can agree that Valve has done some good things, such as making digital distribution go big, making indie games viable, and doing a lot to advance gaming on Linux.
But I’d also argue that that doesn’t obligate me to spend money to patronize them, particularly when I can get a better (by virtue of being DRM-free) product elsewhere.
Is that not true though? As much as we hate it, until you get given some transferrable proof of ownership of the game (like an NFT) and ability to play without being tied to one service, it’s the unfortunate reality of online game services.
It’s easy to go buy a physical game but when it’s online, you don’t own anything - yet
It's true. Pragmatically speaking if you don't have access to the server software you can't play it if the servers go down, and besides reverse engineering or the goodwill of the developers I'm not aware of any games with online components that continue to be playable after their servers are taken down.
Back in 2000-2012, a good lot of mainly singleplayer games had optional multiplayer modes. Think Halo, Starcraft, TRON, Titanfall, etc. Even DOOM 2016 had it. These games function with the servers down.
Something I haven’t thought about in a while: In the early 2000s games where you made a direct connection to the other player without an intervening, third-party server were still a thing. You still see it in things like netplay functionality in emulators.
Is this still a thing at all in 2023? Imagine it would be very niche, but this comment made me curious.
Battlefront 2 (the original), still active when the servers have been down for years
Titanfall 2. Official servers aren’t technically down, but pretty much unusable and NorthStar is the alternative
Counter strike 1.6 is pretty much just community-run servers, same with day of defeat: source. I don’t know if they are tied with valve that if valve shut them down, they wouldn’t be searchable.
Supreme commander: Forged Alliance
Hell, Battle for Middle Earth II still has a small community
Valheim has never had official servers. I run my own via docker on debian
Unreal Tournament 1999
Minecraft (official servers aren’t down, but if they shutdown there would still be 2000 servers)
Fundamentally I don’t really know how it’d be viable to truly “own” a specific copy of something, when it’s always possible to make infinitely many copies of it. Any such “ownership” is at best essentially just conceptual, aside from perhaps the legal right to annoy other people about the copies they are in possession of.
So instead my personal take is that I’d rather everything just be offered DRM-free. I don’t necessarily need transferable ownership as much as I just need proper and guaranteed access under my own control after I purchase the product.
But anything that exists as digital data can be copied. The same applies to NFTs. Make an NFT image or game or whatever, and it can be copied by whoever has access to it. The only way to prevent such copying is to not release it at all.
The only stipulation is that copies made without authorization of whoever holds the rights to it would not be “official” instances of the thing, and there are potential copyright restrictions on the use of such copies…but that’s using NFTs to justify copyright law, and aside from “lol copyright”, legal of ownership of an NFT is even more of a mess than traditional legal ownership of an IP.
You’re talking about media linked to by existing NFTs. You can’t copy an NFT and use it, you don’t have the cryptographic keys to mint more. There is a finite number.
And what exactly is that NFT, as distinct from the media it’s linked to, useful for? Aside from simply saying that it is unique and one can have ownership of it.
Cryptographic licence verification so you can play the game, say for example to use online services. Allows you to trade that licence to other people directly, no third party involvement to facilitate the trade. The game would pick it up and work. Anyone could download the game files but they only work if you own the game either by buying off someone directly or an official publisher
Any such verification depends on some other party to verify it. If the game requires online services, then the verification is dependent on the online services; the verification can’t stand alone. But we already have existing systems for that without the need for NFTs.
On the other hand, if the game is a standalone game that doesn’t require connecting to online services, then if the game can be made to run on one computer it can be made to run on another computer. No matter how you choose to assign ownership, you can’t get around this. Videogames are fundamentally data, and data can be copied.
Besides…inventing a new NFT-based DRM? No matter how you do it, it’s not going to be as convenient as simply not having DRM. A DRM-free game is one that anyone can just pick up and it’ll work, too. You’re proposing a “solution” that doesn’t offer anything new, while opening up other cans of worms along the way.
Also, we already have peer to peer game trades/sales anyway, and we’ve had these, long before NFTs were a thing.
This is exactly what happened actually in one of Valve’s court cases. It wasn’t that Steam went down, but rather the user was permabanned. When that ban happened he lost access to his game library. However, he had purchased those games so he argued successfully that he had a right to download what he purchased. Valve attempted to argue that they were a subscription service so that they would not have to provide anything to him. In the end since he won the case, he was allowed to download what he purchased. I’m sure that created a weird situation for those publishers and I’m not sure whether or not Steam had to remove the Steam DRM prior to allowing him to download.
They also forced developers to never price lower on any other platform than steam as a condition fire selling on steam. Which is not only unethical, it’s illegal. Also the secret hardware changes to steam deck which people usually try to justify, but was shady no matter what.
That’s not entirely true. Valve forces devs to not sell Steam keys lower on other sites without also going on sale on Steam in a reasonable close amount of time.
I know it sounds the same at first, but it’s a drastic difference. You can generate as many Steam keys as you like and sell then on other sites, Valve won’t see a single cent from these sales. They however still provide their online services and servers for free for all those keys sold on other sites. It is quite reasonable that they force you to match prices since they literally are losing money (albeit not much) if you sell on other platforms. And I don’t mean lost sales, but infrastructure cost.
And additionally is this rule pretty much never enforced. AAA studios have special deals and indi devs aren’t worth the hassle.
I can’t speak to whether or not that is true, because it’s not necessarily exclusive. Both can be correct. It’s not what’s in the antitrust lawsuit. it’s not what I’m talking about either. The issue outlined in the antitrust suit is: *“Valve has for years maintained its dominance and thwarted effective competition by engaging in various anticompetitive acts. For example, Valve forces game publishers to agree to a Platform Most-Favored-Nations Clause (the “Valve PMFN”) as a requirement to access Steam. Valve explicitly requires that publishers agree that games sold elsewhere must be sold “in a similar way to how you sell your game on Steam” and publishers cannot “give Steam customers a worse deal” for games sold elsewhere,2 i.e., Valve prohibits publishers from giving consumers a better deal on other stores that compete with Steam. Valve interprets and enforces this language to encompass price parity, forcing game publishers to charge the inflated Steam Store price across the marketplace, on all game sales, even sales of games that are not enabled for Steam. Valve thus uses its PMFN to control the prices of games sold in the Steam Store and in other stores. Rather than lowering prices to Steam customers, Valve’s PMFN has the effect of reducing price competition and raising game prices.” That’s one of several complaints against Valve." * I’m really surprised so many people here of all places believe any corporation gives a shit about anything but their money. Corporations are never your friend. If they helped make piracy necessary it wasn’t done for our benefit, it was done because it is profitable for them. Here’s the complaint in case No. 2:21-cv-00563-JCC in it’s entirety: steamclaims.com/…/5210fb_80b19705e27549158fea02a1…
I’m really surprised so many people here of all places believe any corporation gives a shit about anything but their money. Corporations are never your friend.
I never said valve is a friend, they simply are the more trustworthy party in this lawsuit. Two things about this:
I’ve never seen any proof of this MFN clause. I’ve read the Steamworks distribution agreement (which is hidden behind an NDA), I’ve read the steam TOS, I’ve looked through the steamworks documentation that is declared as legally binding in the contract, I’ve looked for screenshots or citations. There is nothing that would even suggest they are interfering with non-steamkey prices apart from what Wolfire games tells the court. (Who are, of course, coincidentally using the same Lawfirm as epic does, which makes this whole thing even more suspicious.)
This is the second time this lawsuit is brought up and there are pretty much no complaints from other devs, not even anonymous. Usually when lawsuits like this happen a bandwagon full of people come out to complain, twitter descends into a shitstorm and reddit digs out their aluminium foil hats. But there is absolutely nothing at the moment.
You are free to post any links with proof you have. Maybe the lawsuit will dig up something in Valve’s basement. But as of now, everything we’ve seen is just one big accusation from Wolfire games.
You did not that’s correct, that was meant more towards all of the people in the thread in general worshiping steam as a corporate savior. That was poor writing on my part. The things you mentioned are almost word for word the conjecture you find on Reddit and has not proof itself. I would love to see a copy of the MFN myself. Valve definitely admits they ask developers to offer similar prices according to their responses to other users, but won’t deny it or produce a copy themselves of any MFN. All I’m saying is they’re in a well deserved anti-trust suit that covers several topics beyond the MFN as detailed in the links I did provide. Their motions to dismissed have been slapped down because the judges feels there’s enough evidence to proceed on at least some of the claims. I guess we’ll see whether the case can prove itself or not and neither of us will really know until all of the evidence is presented. I’m not blindly believing they must be guilty, but it’s hard to say Steam isn’t a monopoly. There are plenty of other reasons to dislike Steam, but arguing that with the other people here is a bit like arguing with gun owners. People are willing to dismiss their principles about things that affect the macrocosm quickly when it could deprive them of something they personally enjoy.
You never owned any software, even before valve. All you ever purchased was a license key that could be revoked at any time.
That isn’t a problem made by valve, it existed far before the whole company was even founded. The underlying issue is the way digital mediums are licensed and the corresponding copyright laws.
That’s not really true. I still have physical media that I’ve purchased as a teenager. That’s not a license key that I own that’s physical media. It was independent of any licensing servers or anything like that. Digital media licensing didn’t really start taking effect until about 2010ish en masse. Prior to that most streaming services like Netflix weren’t really streaming services as internet infrastructure didn’t quite exist to that degree yet.
Commerce conducted in a capitalist economy is inherently capitalist. Being publicly traded is not strictly required, though it might be the most common form of corporate structure under capitalism. Individuals, partnerships, privately-held and publicly-traded companies can all own capital. Valve’s assets are not owned by a government, its business decisions are made privately and it operates in a free market. Those three factors are pretty much the definition of capitalism.
I’m not convinced that Valve will go down the tubes when Gabe shuffles off this moral coil (praise gaben may he live a thousand years). It would require a strong company culture that believes as he does that piracy is a service issue and is thus willing to adhere to his vision in his absence, but that can happen in a privately held company if there’s a strong succession plan in place.
Now, if Gabe dies and Valve goes public, then it’s pretty much over. Platform monetization, proft-taking and short-term thinking would enshittify Steam in short order.
“We just care about providing for our employees, keeping the servers running, and stashing away a percentage in a rainy day fund”. Employees having debate on whether to hire a translator or build a breastfeeding room this year. Some saying why not both?
Their strength comes from having zero management and all projects are born and lead by the devs themselves. As close to communism as you could get in a capitalistic world. It does come with some problems but they’re totally manageable - like having a strictly homogeneous workforce (which, one could argue, isn’t a bad thing)
It’s funny. I’m dirt poor and I really want to play The Last of Us again. I could easily download it and get it going through piracy. Heck, it’s crossed my mind a time or two.
But you know what I’m doing? I’m waiting for it to go on sale and I’ll grab it then if the time is right. If not I’ll wait until it is.
I have plenty to do until then.
It’s definitely a service issue. I haven’t pirated a single game on Steam Deck.
This incident made me realize not to use an admin account for my primary lemmy account in my personal instance. I setup another account for instance admin purpose (with 2FA enabled) and keep it logged out, then remove my primary account from the instance admin list.
This is a good mindset in general, when working in AWS you are not supposed to use your root account unless it’s absolutely necessary even if you are the only user. Hosting a Lemmy instance should be no different.
I just setup a VPS for a Minecraft server for some friends and did exactly that. I was under a bit of a time crunch, but still took the time to think through those challenges in access for everything. Created an unprivileged user to run the server as, created a seperate unprivileged user for another service. Disabled password-based SSH login, etc.
I should probably setup a dedicated non-root admin account for administrative functions but that’s a problem for after work
Lemmy decided to go with SHA256 for TOTP seed. This is a very odd move since many 2FA apps don’t support SHA256. I actually had to write a quick python script to spit out my 2FA code since Bitwarden doesn’t support it. Hopefully either Lemmy will change to SHA-1 or Bitwarden will start to support SHA256 seeds.
Doesn’t matter too too much for a TOTP though. It just needs to be pseudorandom enough for a relatively difficult to guess 6 digit (or longer) code that changes every 30 seconds. Much more likely for someone to get phished for their TOTP than for someone to reverse engineer someone’s TOTP seed. Plus how would that even happen? The attacker would need to have the device and / or track the user’s 6 digit codes for quite a while at which point the game’s already up.
Bitwarden definitely works with SHA256 and even SHA512, I believe. And with codes longer than 6 digits also. Oh and even Steam codes if you really want.
You can put steam OTP there too? I’m tired getting locked up from steam whenever I format my phone. If I can put steam OTP into bitwarden, that’ll be really great.
Not officially (you have to trust some third party desktop app to do so), but it is technically possible. I think there’s a guide on the Bitwarden help articles.
Edit: link - bitwarden.com/help/authenticator-keys/#steam-guar…
You’ll need to either subscribe to bitwarden premium ($10 / year), or deploy vaultwarden in your own server and have your bitwarden extension/app use that vaultwarden server instead of the official server.
Yeah I have premium and every account I have that offers 2fa is set up but Lemmy will only let me set it up in authy or Google auth. It won’t give bitwarden as an option or give me the code to manually add it to bitwarden.
Just right click at the 2fa button and select “copy link”, then paste the link into bitwarden TOTP field. The link you copied should already be in the format otpauth://totp/xxxx which will be recognized by bitwarden.
I use bitwarden, so it’s pretty simple: just copy the link from the 2fa button in Lemmy into the TOTP field in your account editor in bitwarden, and it’ll automatically recognize the format.
About 70 years ago European leaders decided the best thing to do with the Jewish people was give them their own country…
So they picked the holy land of three main religions, kicked out everyone that had been living there for centuries and made it a religious ethnostate.
Surprisingly the people who lived there weren’t happy to be victims of an ethnic cleansing.
Picking virtually any other place on the globe and it probably would have worked itself out by now.
Cynics think that was intentionally. It’s the perfect lightning rod for attacks against “the west” and the hostility leads to plenty of proxy wars while avoiding actual war in Europe again after WW2
It actually started with WW1 when Britain promised both Jews and Palestinians their own state if they overthrew the Ottomans.
Before that, Ottoman rule was oppressive to both groups relatively equally for a few hundred years.
WW2 and the whole holocaust thing just turned it from a small problem into a big problem, as millions of European Jews sought a safe haven outside of Europe, leading to the creation of a religious ethnostate in 1948.
So yeah, Europeans definitely are to blame, but Arabs and Palestinians aren’t innocent either. They rejected a perfectly adequate solution by the UN in 1947.
It started even earlier, after the ottoman empire fell/dissolved, British and French diplomats basically drew lines on a map Scramble for Africa style and created new countries out of nothing.
There’s also a belief among some Christians in the US (including many political leaders) that a Jewish state was necessary for the second coming of Jesus to occur. Why they’re in a hurry, I don’t know.
As one who was raised Evangelical Christian for the majority of my childhood by a devout and Republican parent, I’m pretty sure it’s just a death cult.
They live their whole lives only preparing to die.
They forsake and forego a lot of random stuff in favor of rewards after death.
And if they think it’ll get them any bonus, they don’t care if they take everyone else with them, hence the Republican Evangelical politicians generally trying to supply the ingredients for the battle of Armageddon to happen.
Tldr; I think it’s greed typical of those who would fully knowledgeably choose to be a Republican combined with the beliefs of an Evangelical trying to cash in on rewards asap, in the way a Republican typically does.
There has been conflict there for centuries. It was predominantly Jewish people 1500 years earlier when they were forced out. One of the main reasons it was selected was because it was not heavily populated and that at one time it was a Jewish region before they were invaded. The history goes back millenniums.
I feel like that’s a hard one. Whenever I argue against tipping with coworkers (we don’t currently work in the service industry) they will mention how they are all for it and mention how during peak times they made double their usual amount. I feel like it’s really been drilled in that it’s good for the workers
Absolutely, those who get high tips stay in the industry. Those who get low tips are fired. Places don’t keep those who aren’t tipped well because it means they have to pay more out of the budget. If you aren’t getting high tips you are seen as lazy or not doing enough as a waiter. In reality tipping has more to do with who you get as customers (and what they find attractive) than quality of service. scroll.in/…/does-tipping-really-ensure-better-ser…
That element of it — when the restaurant is doing well, the windfall is shared with the waitstaff — could be preserved by simply giving the staff a percentage of the price of each meal they work on. Structure it as a bonus, the way salaried professionals can receive a bonus when the company is doing well.
It may be worth noting that worker-owned restaurants, like Cheese Board Pizza here in Berkeley, typically do not solicit tips. (Well, except for the live musicians, who are not worker-owners.) If tipping was really all that great for the workers, then places where the workers literally control company policy would encourage it.
It is not illegal for owners or managers to receive tips for work they perform. If the manager is waiting a table, they can receive that table’s tips.
Where the restaurant is owned by the workers, an individual worker-owner will still collect the tips for the work they perform. An owner who is not working that day has no claim to tips earned that day.
Are you sure? Even when I’ve been at places where the owner works, those owners haven’t taken tips, instead splitting any they receive among the other staff.
Employers, managers, and supervisors may not keep any portion of the employee’s tips, and may not participate in a tip pool. But yes, they can certainly accept their own tips.
Consider a small, mom-and-pop diner. Pop cooks, mom serves. They co-own the diner. They can certainly accept tips.
Hiring a part-time busboy as a worker doesn’t mean that he automatically earns all tips received during his shift. Mom still gets to collect tips for serving, pop still gets to collect tips for cooking. They don’t get to receive tips in their managerial capacity, only in their capacity as workers.
It is important to note: A traditional owner/manager only performs managerial work. This is the kind of scenario we are usually talking about when we hear about scummy managers stealing tips, but it is not the kind of scenario we are talking about here.
We are considering a restaurant that is owned by the workers. We are talking about a mom-and-pop diner with a whole lot of moms and pops doing the work.
In Norway, restaurants started to implement applications or websites to order at the restaurant. Scan a QR code or download an app (yuck) to order the food and preemptively pay for it. While that might be fine, I find it really strange when I’m asked about tipping when I place my order. I have literally not seen a waiter, I have just sat down and looked through a website, and now I’m asked if I want to tip? Why? What for?
Luckily, 0% tip is very common in all services in Norway, so it’s not considered rude to refrain from tipping.
Not if you’re under 24, and in the good ole US of A, it would seem. Even in the graph above, urban areas are more likely to result in gun violence than automotive injury.
All the web integrity thing would do is force them to use a specific client when accessing YouTube to scrape their site.
The problem is none of the attested browsers will let you to use them in this way.
We already have DRM for video on the web. I believe it would be a similar problem to getting WideVine L1 content from e.g. Netflix in an open source app.
Yea I think, if newpipe stops, I would switch to nebula. It would even help my yt addiction and I would support my youtubers without giving a share to youtube.
Practical Engineering, Real Engineering, Real Science, Joe Scott, Climate Town… Dude in that screen grab of just 15 videos I’m ready to watch about 60% of them.
So many of my current YouTube subscriptions are on that list. 12 tone? Tom Scott? Adam Neely? Mary Spender? Real life lore? Leagle Eagle? The 1 Janitor? Invisible People? neo? JJ McCullough? Tier Zoo? Up & Atom? Charles Cornell? Strange Parts? Half as interesting? Not Just Bikes? Practical Engineering? HBomber guy? Minute physics? Tantacrul? Medlife Crisis?
If a nuclear weapon is exploded in a vacuum-i. e., in space-the complexion of weapon effects changes drastically:
First, in the absence of an atmosphere, blast disappears completely.
Second, thermal radiation, as usually defined, also disappears. There is no longer any air for the blast wave to heat and much higher frequency radiation is emitted from the weapon itself.
Third, in the absence of the atmosphere, nuclear radiation will suffer no physical attenuation and the only degradation in intensity will arise from reduction with distance. As a result the range of significant dosages will be many times greater than is the case at sea level.
Sounds like you’d end up with just a big blast of radiation
I’ve completely switched over to using ChatGPT as my basic question search engine now. Like I get that it’s confidently wrong at times and I wouldn’t go there for legal advice but for silly curiosities I’ve got a better chance at finding an answer to satisfy my query.
I beta tested Bard and have used ChatGPT and the number of times they responded with completely wrong answers was stunning. Confidently wrong is a greatvway to put it.
I switched to DuckDuckGo a few years back and it’s been better than Google for a bit. At this rate, I expect Encyclopedia Britannica to make a strong comeback.
Jokes aside, the future of paywalled curated knowledge is already here. With the current assault on public libraries, I expect that fairly soon, knowledge will once again be a privileged of wealth.
For the fun fact, shockwave do propagate in the interstellarmedium. Most likely a conventionnal nuke isn’t big enough, but we can see the shockwave from supernova explosion, and voyager did measure the moment it left the sun one.
Radiation may be another beast with a well designed bomb, it’s pretty hard to stop neutrons, and they do a lot of biological damage. However, radiation poisoning isn’t an instant dead. Like shoot a nuke, leave. Come back 2 weeks latter and everyone is dying. Radiation could definitely damage electronic but I would assume spaceship designer worked properly, and the humam will be poisonned before the electronic starts to fail. A note though. The 1/r^2 law would still apply and space is huge. Being 1km out of the explosion divides the dose by 100 compared to being 100m away. 10 km away would divide the dose by 10 000. So the death radius won’t be that big.
Okay, but now we’re comparing nukes and supernovae, and that’s kind of like comparing the erosion of a drop of water to that caused by a tsunami. Sure, the same forces may be at work, but they’re small enough to be negligible in one.
The massive EMPs that blasted the Pacific back in the day were generated with upper-atmospheric testing. The way it interacted with the upper atmosphere was special. If you set off the charge higher in space with no atmosphere, the EMP effect is lessened.
Yeah that’s my biggest note - radiation is a threat to people long term, but EMP destroying their spacecraft’s computers are the larger threat at longer range. ISS and other spacecraft routinely harden many systems for the increased radiation present outside the magnetosphere, but this kind of attack could easily overload those protections. Honestly this aspect terrifies me because it only takes a few EMP blasts in LEO to start a kessler syndrome situation of debris and dead orbital vehicles whizzing around at orbital speeds. That’s how we ‘lose’ space.
All the radiation that normally heats up the surrounding air into a giant fireball would heat up the walls of your vacuum chamber into a giant fireball.
That’s because it detonated in orbit, so it interacted with Earth magnetic field. Far from the planet, I think there wouldn’t be an EMP, unless the targeted ship has it’s own magnetosphere. But I’m not a nuclear physicist, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.
If I’m not mistaken the EMP wave is really just a part of the high intensity wave of photons of various frequencies emitted by the explosion, which also includes the so-called “bright flash”.
Some of those photons will have wavelengths that put them in the radio part of the spectrum so they can transverse materials which are not transparent to visible light frequency photons and have the right wavelengths to induce strong electrical currents in electronic circuits and even integrated circuits (which is what burns them) - depending on the length of a conductive line of material there often is a perfect radiowave wavelength to induce a current in it (though I confess that over the years I forgot the formulas to calculate this stuff)
I’m not a Nuclear Physicist but I have 1 year of University level Physics training and an EE degree (though focused on digital systems rather than telecomms).
Some of these names (like OpenVMS) are from before the term “open source software” was coined (which was in 1998). They refer instead to “open systems”, meaning computer systems with published specifications, interoperable hardware, portable software, etc. – things that might seem like obvious choices now, but were not in early business computing.
Yeah, OpenBSD predates “open source” by a few years and some people actually found the name weird at the time because there was such a strong association with “Open” being used to mean things like “controlled by an industry consortium rather than a single company”.
There was a joke in one of the BOFH episodes (Bastard Operator from Hell for those unfamiliar, look it up if you don’t know it, it’s worth it) that went like this:
“So I tell him, ‘you can’t port Debian to a car computer, it’s not an open system’ ha ha ha ha”
Even a heavily proprietary system like iOS is much more of an “open system” in this sense than old mainframes. It uses standard networking protocols, supports programming languages that have published specifications, third-party hardware exists …
People want to see more happening here. The fediverse is not quite the ghost town it was a year ago, but it's still pretty quiet, especially once you start digging into hobbies.
Of course, the good solution is not bot-driven, but human-driven. But people are lazy and think that they'd rather repost thousands of posts with a bot than figure out what links they think are good and post those.
I used to use a bot in one of my communities to help me out. Turns out it spammed way too much. Once I got feedback from the community I turned it off. I now have sources fed to me privately via RSS and then filter content based on what I think the community will enjoy and post it manually. Is it harder? Yes. But the community has more engagement, comments more, and votes positively more often since I started doing it this way. I also gain consistent new subscribers daily. I also have control over the “nozzle” so if multiple stories are worth posting but there are too many, I can sideline some for when the news slows down and post them later.
This is exactly how bots should be used on the platform. Unleashing a firehose of bot-post content drowns out user activity - using a bot to source filtered content that’s actually interesting and valuable? I’m all for that.
There’s something I’ve noticed about Lemmy, mind you I don’t use any apps or whatever, just through the browser on PC, but, this one thing makes the platform feel so hollow and annoying.
Scrolling through whatever feed. All Active or whatever. You’re on page 2. You see an interesting title. You click on it to read the post and comments. You click back. You’re now on page 1 of the feed again. So it feels like Lemmy is really trying to be about 30 posts deep at any given time.
I don’t believe anything has changed neurologically or psychologally in the last decades.
There have always been people who are more susceptible to consume “trashy” (provoking, easy to consume) media.
Once it was low-quality newspapers (a german band once refered to them as “fear, hate, tits and the weather forecast”, which fits really well!), then it was trash TV, then mobile games, and now TikTok and stuff. Some people are just attracted to flashy stuff and can’t get enough dopamine.
It’s just that the latter example is very new, and everything new is automatically bad, no matter what.
There have always been young people who read books, create art, video game, listen or create music, have hobbies, and so on.
BUT, something has changed:
**One word: attention economy.**Capitalism realized, that especially in combination with ads, you can create A LOT of money by making easy to consume content.
If a platform uses dark patterns (emotional or funny content, reinforcement, short content instead of longer stuff, flashy stuff, likes, endless scrolling, keeping you as long as possible in the app, etc.), it makes a lot more money with it’s users.
Years of algorithms perfectionized manipulating you and your attention span with supernatural stimuli (as mentioned above).
What to do with those informations?
Notice, how boring Lemmy, RSS-feeds, and stuff like that are?
After checking my posts for this day, I’m done and do something different, like cleaning the kitchen. Now, I’m on the toilet and don’t have anything else to do, and I have fun answering you :)
That’s how our devices should work. I don’t wanna be a slave, I want to own my device, and not the other way around.
Tbh, I’m grateful Reddit went downhill. A year ago I could never imagine nuking my account.
I spent my whole teenage and now adult years (15 - now) on that shithole, was super addicted and couldn’t spend 2 minutes without checking my phone, even in meetings, dates, and so on. It was just as bad as vaping for me. I knew, that it was slowly killing every brain cell, but “loved” it too much.
Thanks, u/spez ❤️ You killed Reddit for me and made my new “Reddit” (-> Lemmy, but with the same app) THAT boring for me I bought an e-reader now to read books instead😂
This is exactly why I love Lemmy. I noticed it within hours of quitting reddit. The sheer volume of content on Reddit, plus the algorithms, kept my attention for hours. Lemmy just isn’t that big and probably 60% of the content I see is in swedish, gerrman, or dutch, which I can’t read, so I spend like 15 or 20 minutes max here and then go do something else.
I didn’t buy an e-reader I just installed Cool Reader which is free. But the result is the same. I probably read five books a month now where before it was probably less than one a year.
I really recommend trying an e-reader in your local shop or borrowing one from a friend if you can.
I’ve read books on my phone for about a year now, but the “feeling” isn’t right there, and I somehow get distracted a bit.
I’m really a fan of “a device should do one thing, and that really good”. I bought a camera, a reader, and so on because of that. My software habits are the same. I have dozens of simple apps on my phone and PC, and all of them serve one single purpose. Look up the UNIX-principle if you’re interested in more. (Sorry, this site is full of Linux-circlejerk 🙃)
The camera makes 10x better photos than every top tier smartphone (+ is a fun offline hobby that improves your skills!)
The reader gives you a display that’s super easy on the eyes, lasts for weeks on battery and doesn’t distract you.
My smartphone is only there for communication (Lemmy, messengers, calls) or if I have to quickly look up something on the web
Separating everything really also separates your mind, giving you peace.
I’m sort of on the same wavelength. You can get a pretty powerful phone for cheap if you don’t care about camera quality. I mostly only take pictures when people ask me to so I don’t care about camera quality. But if you do your research there are cheap Android phones with some of the latest snapdragon processors or whatever for cheap. Latest Samsung and iphone cost what they do because of the camera mostly. I don’t need a camera so I get cheap phones with strong hardware and basic cameras. Currently using a Motorola.
I will look into getting an e-reader though. Plan was always to spend less time on my phone. Photography doesn’t interest me. I’ve tried to get into it because hot girls are into it but I can’t even fake it.
I honestly wouldn’t buy a “cheap” phone in your place to be honest. They don’t last as long. Maybe take a look into Fairphone, or Google Pixel devices. Both can run many CustomROMs (if you’re into that), extending the life span and making it more private. I’m a fan of the Fairphone, since you can repair it yourself and it has (I believe) 10 years of software support ootb
Mine is completely unlocked and has no bloatware. I’ve had it for six years and it’s still going. As I said, do your research before getting a phone. Look at what hardware is in it etc. Only thing it doesn’t have is a fancy camera.
I will look into getting an e-reader though. Plan was always to spend less time on my phone. Photography doesn’t interest me. I’ve tried to get into it because hot girls are into it but I can’t even fake it.
Then don’t chase something you don’t enjoy! If you want to meet new people, be enthusiastic and have fun in what you’re doing right now, whatever it is. When I’ve learnt something in the last few years, then it is to have fun and enjoy yourself. Others will notice and will be interested into you.
You’re into books? Get a library card and ask the handsome lady next to you out. You enjoy collecting postcards? Weird, but interesting! Will be a great conversation starter. You get my point?
Yes I think you’re right. People haven’t changed, but the environment has changed - it’s continually getting better at manipulating us.
Lemmy does have a limited amount of content, but what it does have seems to be of higher quality. Which is perfect! We don’t need constant, cheap content.
I don’t think Lemmy has higher quality content, but it has less content which makes you interact with it to get more of your social media fix. I’ve seen this post a couple times passing by, and I’ve just come back to look through the comments because there isn’t anything new to see.
I would say higher quality content in that the comments are pertinent and not just jokes. Sometimes I’d spend a couple of minutes reading nonsense on Reddit before realizing, then I’d try to scroll way down for a fresh comment thread, then just give up on the post
There’s just as much “spam” (links to articles, low effort posts, etc.) as everywhere else. At the same time, the content is waaaay better.
Karma
The fact that you don’t have to keep your karma in mind here let’s you speak more freely.
If I would say “Pineapple on pizza is disgusting”, I would have been downvoted to oblivion on Reddit. Here, they just ignore it, OR, don’t downvote and tell me why I might be wrong.
Back to Reddit: That, in fact, would give me two options:
Delete this said comment, which would discourage discussions and make every community hive-minded, or,
Stay strong to my opinion, and loose the ability to post to many subs anymore, because I now have -5000 Karma.
I always chose 1… Here, I don’t care. And this mindset has lead to many great, mind opening discussions.
Even on subs like r/Changemyview or r/Unpopularopinion this culture didn’t exist. No opinion was unpopular, merely “weird” (like “I like my socks wet” and stuff). Every “unpopular” opinion was popular on Reddit. And elsewhere, everything was a fight.
On this site, disagreeing is only for useful discussions I had/ read too. It’s almost like an “anti-echochamber”, and I love it! I love my opinions being challenged.
One more result of that is that the upvote/ downvote function went from “I agree/ I find that funny” or “This is against the subs opinion” to “This comment is worth reading for others and adds value. OP put work into it”. WHICH IT SHOULD ALWAYS HAVE BEEN! This button isn’t for disagreeing, it’s for FILTERING out trash!
Algorithm
Also, there’s no algorithm. On many other social media, post that make you laugh (-> mostly dumb stuff or reposts) or promote strong emotions (mostly aggression and tribalism) got promoted.
Here, it’s somehow totally random. There’s so much “boring” stuff on my trending page. But, I’ve discovered many cool niche subs here I wouldn’t have otherwise. I didn’t know so many people were into collecting space rocks and model trains for example 😁
E.g., my own gourmet-mushroom-growing-community got super many views and comments from people who’ve never heart of that before. That was unbelievable!
On the other hand, there’s sooo much useless information, some opt-in filtering/ algorithm wouldn’t be bad tbh. But many say that about account karma too, which is a way smaller feature, and that has repercussions too (see above). Something like an algorithm would be HUGE, but also maybe hugely bad for this site?
Yes the karma system here is way better! It definitely reduces the hive mind mentality.
I don’t think we need any kind of algorithm though. That would only serve to make the popular stuff more popular and the niche stuff gets buried. Maybe if I could personally filter out communities that I’m not interested in?
Yes the karma system here is way better! It definitely reduces the hive mind mentality.
Sure, but we have to make sure we communicate what the up-/downvote function actually is for. Many Reddit-refugees would otherwise just keep it as a “I agree”-button, and nothing would change for the better.
Maybe if I could personally filter out communities that I’m not interested in?
I agree with the sentence before, but I don’t think filtering out everything you’re uninterested in is remotely possible. Yes, you can filter out some specific communities you dislike, like all those Linux-subs, if you find them annoying. (OH, btw.: That was a comment in one of their/ our memes, and when one guy, coming from outside the sub, complained this stuff is constantly on his trending page, someone suggested “We’re only 3 popular subs. Just blacklist us and you’ll never hear from us again” it really resonated with me!)
Alternative?
I personally would rather enjoy a “promote” than “bury” function, something like a “GigaUpvote™” for posts you wish others to see too. Market the up- and downvote button as a quality filter, especially for comments, and if a post gets a certain ratio of up- and downvotes, comments and promotions, it will appear on the “popular”-tab.
Just as an additional function, IF YOU WANT. Keep the “old” spirit for those who prefer it, and suggest it for newcomers to find new content. And make it easy to toggle off for social media junkies like myself.
Your concerns about the need for an algorithm is correct.
But, instead of “personalized content”, users should be able to make their own algorithm, with subscription and filter lists. I use uBlock Origin to block content you named as ‘tribalist’ (good take!).
But maybe I’m more sensitive. I don’t find Lemmy boring, I can lurk here for hours. So I also blocked the ‘prev/next’ buttons just to stay on the first page (I’m an eccentric person).
Not sure it is higher. Last week a cop was ambushed and murdered and of the 50 plus comments, every single one of them were praising the murder. I see that kind of mentality far more here.
I can relate so much, but instead of only Reddit stealing my time it’s a bunch of other things as well. Mostly gaming and random series.
But yeah I remember going thru 8th grade by scrolling reddit all day, school was boring af. Now I only use Lemmy on the bus (rn) or checking for replies before I go to sleep.
I learned very much from yall, and I’m almost convinced reading is worth it, idk what to start reading tho… Maybe a future tale
RSS feeds have made my attention worse. It almost becomes a chore to get my bearded to zero content unread. I also shove my YouTube subs and podcasts in there though.
Yes and no. I think it makes sense when you separate it a bit more.
Instead if throwing everything in one list, create profiles/ categories/ folders/ whatever.
I use it mainly for the public state media in my country. Those “media hubs” are a horrible UX (despite being insanely expensive!) and to fix that I add some of their shows into my RSS, so it works similar to the YouTube subscription box, because somehow german media people are still behind 30 years… In that way I fix that shit for myself because they can’t…
I don’t use it for example for news or YouTube, since both have a timeline already built in.
Getting off reddit was one of the best things I’ve done for myself in years. I’m still fairly active on lemmy thanks to having a lot of free time at work but I’ve also been reading and making an earnest effort to enrich my mind again. Feelsgoodman
I noticed that I take a lot more care and attention on my posting on lemmy in general. The conversation can be much richer than it is on Reddit and I feel that it’s worth my time to sometimes write several paragraphs, cite sources and really dig into a topic. Be it star trek lore, political theory, or the weather. It’s nice to have a space where thoughts can be challenged and discussed without it devolving into a shit slinging competition. I also don’t find myself on lemmy much when I’m not at work which has led to me being more present in my home life I’ve been able to get more done around the house. I have terrible ADHD and it came as a surprise how much easier it’s been, it’s still difficult but it’s better. I find I’ve just slowed down a bit and been more attentive overall. I won’t attribute that wholesale to reddit as I’ve been making other lifestyle changes lately but being online too much was certainly an issue and it’s made those other changes easier by virtue of having more time.
I’m on a big political theory bend right now as far as reading goes. I’ve read the conquest of bread, mutual aid, the state and revolution, bullshit jobs, some of capital (it’s boring as fuck lol), the dawn of everything, some short writings from Malatesta, and a few others I’m blanking on right now. I’m also working my way through the Lord of the rings as well. I plan on revisiting some old favorites down the line too.
As for recommendations, I can’t praise The Dawn of Everything enough. I lumped it in with politics earlier but it’s really not (in the traditional sense). It’s co-written by anthropologist David Graeber and archaeologist David Wengrow. In the book they attempt to go through the historical, anthropological, and archeological record to construct a grand narrative for the development of human society. They offer some very compelling evidence against the old myths of the noble savage or primitive barbarian that have been the dominant theories of human social development since the late enlightenment. It’s truly eye-opening and fascinating. Also, if you haven’t read the Lord of the Rings before, do yourself a favor and give it a go, you won’t regret it.
There are a few book communities here, but I’m blanking on which instances they’re on at the moment. I’ll have to go through my subscribed pages and come back to link them
I noticed that I take a lot more care and attention on my posting on lemmy in general. The conversation can be much richer than it is on Reddit and I feel that it’s worth my time
Yep, same. I’ve also spent A LOT of time in this quarter just creating content and answering comments. But, none of it felt like wasted energy and I don’t regret anything. I was able to strengthen my created community, help others in topics I’m interested in, and so on…
I have terrible ADHD
Again, same. Medication and meditation helped a lot making me more mentally balanced and being able to read a book or doing hard mental work.
Also, when I let my thoughts drift, I think about all those great interactions I’ve had this day and not how shitty everything is in general, like it has been on Reddit. That really took a strain on my wellbeing, and I reduced my usage of it long before taking the plunge and switching to Lemmy.
Book recommendations
I “really” started reading not a long time ago. That was just something I was never able to due to said untreated ADHD, but now, I can, AND I LOVE IT!
I just started reading the Witcher books after playing through The Witcher 3. Even though I played it for 400 hours “without break”, it really hurt when it ended, and I wanted more from this immersive, disgusting, magic, beautifully crafted world. Those books (I’m into 2/6 now) are way better than I could have ever imagined and really help me break out of all this RL shit. Those books also demonstrate again how capitalism, Hollywood and Netflix transform a piece of european culture (which TW is based on) and extremely interesting characters into something as shallow and americanized as the series on Netflix. Different topic…
On the more “nerdy” side, I’m currently reading “Running Mycelium” from Paul Stamets right now. It’s about how mushrooms could save the world, for example by filtering out toxic waste or plastic from the environment, giving us a sustainable building solution, new medicinal horizons (e.g. antibiotics), and so on.
Yeah, otherwise, I have a lot of books in my reading list and already downloaded.
I will definately take a look into your recommendation, that sounds like a possibility for me to be fun at the next party 🙃 Text
I dropped reading for most of my adult life, I had a hard time with it as a child too before I got diagnosed but my symptoms were a lot less severe then too so it was still easier than it currently is. Im poor and don’t have health insurance so I’m unmedicated which IS NOT fun lol. But I’m making it (barely) work.
The witcher is a series I’ve wanted to get into for a while, glad to hear the books are as great as they sound! The games are fantastic so I’m sure the source material only gets better. Mycology is fascinating topic as well. I’m an amateur grower and forager when I can bother to get off my ass. It’s a pretty dope subject and an even doper hobby if you’re in the market for one.
If you want a fun YouTube recommendation, Crime pays but botany doesn’t is a good channel. He’s an Italian from Chicago with a lot of passion for ecology and reducing mans influence on nature. Most of his videos are just him walking around the woods and pointing out cool plants lol. But he has this guy on his videos on a semi-regular basis, Adam Rockefeller. His specialty is on psylocibin mushrooms of all varieties and there’s some really enlightenimg info on them in those videos. From field identification and testing to genomic sequencing and plenty of other stuff. The guys a savant. He doesn’t seem to have a large independent presence online but it’s always a pleasant surprise when he shows up. I have a suspicion you would enjoy it
I was bitter about RiF but it didn’t really sink in that I was not returning until I realized it was all just in bad faith. No point in going back somewhere that doesn’t respect third-party apps or its own users. All the developments since then have made that very clear.
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