Jpg is ancient, and gif, holy shit gif is from stone age.
I dunno, if you’re playing a video, you probably want x264 or better these days, no? For music, we use some variant of mp4 or lossless at this point.
Yet with pictures, for some reason we insist on the old shitty stuff.
Using jpeg or gif is like using mp1 for music and VideoCD for video. Come on now.
The only problem with webp is that there’s quality loss if you convert an already compressed jpeg into webp with high compression rate, like some web sites do. That can suck, but I don’t know how else to get people to use more modern formats. Otherwise we’d be using ancient formats into the 24th century.
This isn’t really relevant when webp is more optimised and smaller file size. People are determined to force things to be GIFs despite them looking terrible and taking up 50MB for 10 seconds of 720p looping video.
I never said GIF was all that great. Hell, beyond the fact that it was piss poor compression, it didn’t even have audio. 🤦♂️
Now MPEG1/2, MP3 and JPEG weren’t all that bad, considering the era of technology they came from.
I can definitely agree that modern compression has improved beyond that even, but at the same time now everything is automatically tagging in all sorts of extra data like, I dunno, the GPS location the image/video was taken. Like hey, let’s just broadcast everyone’s address to the rest of the world…
I’m looking at a MIDI file in a hex editor right now, it’s literally not a plain text file. Plain text files use carriage return and/or line feed characters to end a line of text. MIDI uses null to separate instrument notes and attributes.
Also, when was the last time you tried opening a MIDI file? Seems like half the media player apps and even some operating systems don’t even natively support it anymore.
Ok apologies. But you get my point, it’s a set of instructions made for actual hardware with built-in samples. I don’t think there’s any such thing in modern computers even beyond emulation on OS level.
Sound players are made to play sound, not instructions, and most people don’t need to play MIDIs. Even so, the actual playback experience then depends on the OS/hardware/whatever, which again is not something you expect from a sound player.
You can always use specific software to play MIDIs, which are better equipped for it with stuff like MIDI font support, instrument selection and other stuff.
It stands for animated png btw. It was an extension. The benefit was that it always rendered something everywhere, if it didn’t support the animation, because it would be read out as a regular (but suspiciously heavy) png in that case.
I brought it up because it’s yet another old-ass .gif solution that didn’t stick because people love the term “gif”.
It’s still bad compared to modern lossless algorithms. PNG is very old and even though PNG encoders have evolved, it is still fundamentally a decade behind modern lossless compression algorithms.
For example: JPEG XL in lossless mode compresses at least 30% better than PNG.
Also, PNG is not actually lossless in many cases. PNG only supports RGB colorspaces. If you try to store anything that’s not in an RGB colorspace (e.g. a frame of a video) in a PNG, you will lose some color information as colorspace conversion is not lossless. Example of someone running into this issue: stackoverflow.com/q/35399677
JPEG XL supports non-RGB colorspaces so you don’t have this problem.
Okay but that difference is not as critical as with jpg, which are also more abundant. The bigger problem with png is that people use it for things it’s not meant or designed for - frame of a video being case in point.
If anything, it just proves how lacking we are in other image formats, when we keep shoehorning clipart formats like png and gif into other duties. Well not lacking as in not having them, but not using them.
There’s no real reason why you shouldn’t use PNG for a frame of video. I’m not talking about using it as a video format, I’m talking about extracting a frame from a video and sending it off to an editor for inclusion in another video or image.
As a user, I would expect that I could use the most popular lossless image format if I want to losslessly share a frame from a movie with someone.
Of course I do agree that we need adoption of other image formats. We really should not still be cramming everything in PNGs or JPGs in 2023.
There is, exactly because png is made for strict rgb colorspace. Especially today when videos can be in HDR and with all kinds of color correction shenanigans, so which you won’t get back once you try to put the PNG back into the video.
But I’m not a video editor, so I don’t know what still format is best suited for this. I imagine real editors can deal with it, and for regular people who just make screenshots for memes, it’s good enough. As I said, png is still a good enough format, but let’s not use it for stuff like converting webp photos for further sharing.
I think we generally agree but I just want to clarify anyways. I’m not saying we should use PNG to store frames from videos.
What I am saying however, is that we should replace PNG with a modern lossless image format that is more flexible so users don’t have to deal with these issues. All this colorspace stuff should be automatically handled and I shouldn’t have to worry about it not being lossless. If I want to save a frame of video, I should be able to do it using an image format that everybody recognizes and accepts, it should not be a huge hassle and it should be fully lossless.
Yes. The problem is getting developers/companies to support anything beyond than just the basics. There’s enough formats that could work, but if the big players only support these formats, everything else is secondary. Just like many music players still play only mp3.
PNG compresses like nothing else when it comes to graphs, text, UI elements, digital drawings, comics, screenshots from apps etc. And doesn't suffer from "mosquito" artifacts and other .jpg nonsense. It was never meant to be used for photographs and other statistically "noisy" images for which .jpg works much better.
I think PNG is a good format even today. It’s lossless compressed, so there isn’t that much you can squeeze out of that with new algorithms as you can out of lossy formats with new and smarter approaches.
Sadly, PNG is being terribly misused on the internet too. What it’s good for is simple drawn graphics, which it can compress to oblivion. So it’s perfect for screenshots of say, your operating system’s windows. I took a sshot as I’m typing this, and it came out as 190 kB. Not bad.
But what it’s so commonly used for, is people taking screenshots of photos such as from Instagram, and then reposting them. So instead of a tiny and shitty 50 kB IG picture, you get a 1.5MB PNG screenshots. Some then recompress it to a 1.5MB JPG for “maximum quality” when they realise they can’t upload PNG to photo sites.
I also very often encounter huge PNG photos with their extensions changed to JPG, and I don’t know how or why that is happening.
I also very often encounter huge PNG photos with their extensions changed to JPG, and I don’t know how or why that is happening.
Probably people uploading to sites that limit extensions thinking they’re clever by just changing the extension, or being straight up wrong in thinking the extension changing actually changes the file type.
The sites might not bother to check the metadata, and anything worth any salt that displays the image will ignore the extension anyway.
That sounds logical, but on most operating systems these days the extension is hidden, and/or you need to go through some hoops to change it. So I would think that most people who think that wouldn’t even know how to change it.
But more importantly, where do those PNGs come from in the first place? Sure, some are clearly screenshots such as of IG or TT, but there are tons of large PNG images that are clearly photos from cameras that someone just took and resaved as png (and later, or someone else, then renamed to jpg).
I could understand that happening occasionally for a bunch of reasons, but I’ve encountered this so many times, it’s pretty bizarre.
Btw it’s something you might not even notice if you aren’t using e.g. an image viewer that uses a different icon or background based on actual image type.
I suppose another solution might be that it falls under those lines, but some misbehaving services where they’re uploaded are giving out improper filenames and not confirming the type.
Though I can’t imagine many of those being incredibly popular, or, it’s just that images are recycled for so long that eventually many of them hit such a site in their lifetimes.
After reading through more comments in this discussion, maybe I have my answer, at least partially. A lot of people here suggest to use extensions and other ways to convert webp from the web to… PNG.
And then that PNG gets shared further…
Oh gawd if that’s why so many pngs are on the net… What a way to take a good idea and completely fuck it up. Now instead of a 2MB jpeg or 0.5MB webp we deal with 10MB pngs 🤦♂️
Just for you, I turned it into webp and made it 40KB. I could have also made it look less like garbage, but then it would have been 50KB, which is unacceptable.
Lemmy’s official conversions is 124 kB. Next time I’m making a meme, I’ll see how small I can make the size with webp. Should be better when I’m working from my original and not an already compressed jpeg.
people taking screenshots of photos such as from Instagram
This one really grinds my gears. Why do so many people insist on sharing text by taking a picture instead of pasting the text? Or better yet, just linking to the original? It’s such a waste of bandwidth :(
But requirements for audio hasn’t changed that much, and overall it’s a much older and thus mature technology, that there isn’t much left to figure out. Consumer CD format with 16bit 44.1kHz has been around for 40 years, and you don’t need much better quality than that. So there isn’t much left to figure out.
But images and videos are different. 20 or 30 years ago you didn’t need to commonly send 20 MPix HDR photos and HD to 4k videos over the internet. Shoehorning formats that were made for 640x480 pictures and tiny silly clipart animations just doesn’t make sense, especially with all the development that’s been made in that time. Newer compression techniques can help, but you can only do so much.
Shoehorning formats that were made for 640x480 pictures
Err…nothing in the file format spec restricts jpg to a particular size. I would actually argue that this undermines your point – bandwidth was incredibly limited in the 90s compared to what I see today.
Simple example: a 640x480 image is (at least) 307,200 bytes = 0.3M, so it takes at least 5.4 seconds to transmit over a 56k modem. A 4k image, same color depth, is 16000000 bytes = 15M. On a gigabit connection (what I have), that takes about 0.02 seconds.
I was taking more about quality than size in this particular comparison. In 1993 you were happy to squeeze through an image in any quality almost.
It goes hand in hand tho.
If you can compress a 50 MPix, 16-bit, high dynamic range image from a modern high-end DSLR to a reasonable size with a better algorithm and format, you’d also have an easier time squeezing a crappy 640x480 pic to an even smaller size. We just couldn’t do either so well 30 years ago.
It is more efficient. I thought it’s obvious, that’s why web sites use it, to save traffic and potentially storage. Hence my comparison to video formats. You don’t see YouTube playing videos in Real Media format.
It’s also more universal, combining features of jpg, png and gif. Gif especially is a dreadful format for what it’s commonly used. It was designed for tiny clipart animations, not HD video clips. Something like x265 can actually be hundreds of times more efficient.
Funny, this is literally one of the primary examples of something that GIMP did better than Photoshop (at least back when I was actively using GIMP a lot). GIMP has the "color-to-alpha" tool that allows for backgrounds to be faded into transparency (including converting the border of that object into translucent pixels that don't have the hint of the old background), which I remember being the easiest way to remove sky or other background from an object, and to place that object into a new background or other image.
I'm guessing that in the 10 years since, Photoshop has a bunch of those AI tools that can do that specific function almost automatically. But GIMP does do that specific task pretty well.
Erasing the white around an object is crazy easy in GIMP. select color, delete. done. That's one task that is easier in GIMP then in Photoshop in my opinion.
I’m really not trying to be a dick, but uhh… Look around? The world is literally on fire and efforts to put it out or even to stop pouring more gas on it are put down at every turn by capitalists in the never ending pursuit of more money for it’s own sake.
Let’s start here: are you a capitalist? Do you own any actual capital? I don’t mean your own house or car, that is personal property not private property or anything resembling the means of production.
I ask because many people consider themselves capitalist when really they are just workers who happen to own a bit of personal property, and they make themselves essentially useful pawns for actual capitalists.
And, if you’re not an actual capitalist, why are you so pro capitalism?
I’m really not trying to be a dick, but uhh… Look around? The world is literally on fire and efforts to put it out or even to stop pouring more gas on it are put down at every turn by capitalists in the never ending pursuit of more money for it’s own sake.
Well I mean it’s unclear to me that we’re much worse than previous points in history. I’d rather have the climate crisis over the nuclear one, or either of the world wars, or live under a feudal system where I’m owned by the local lord in his castle.
I sympathize (and agree) with the belief that the current system isn’t serving everyone, much less serving everyone equally. But the world is a complicated thing and we’ve got >7 billion people to feed! I think we should be very careful before deciding “yeah it’s time to tear down the existing systems and hope that there are better systems out there”. It’s easier to make things worse than to make things better.
Let’s start here: are you a capitalist? Do you own any actual capital? I don’t mean your own house or car, that is personal property not private property or anything resembling the means of production.
I guess? I’ve wanted to start my own business a couple of times. I’m a programmer, so I’ve toyed with the idea and done some research into creating a few apps which I believe people would find useful, and might pay my bills. I don’t own a house or a car-- I live in an apartment in a mid-size US city.
I ask because many people consider themselves capitalist when really they are just workers who happen to own a bit of personal property, and they make themselves essentially useful pawns for actual capitalists. And, if you’re not an actual capitalist, why are you so pro capitalism?
I’m guessing you’d consider me a pawn, but I don’t. I fit your description of owning a bit of personal property, and being a worker. I’ve worked for some large companies in the past which are supposedly the “actual capitalists”. But I promise they don’t give two shits about social good (or social bad). They are just desperately trying to make products that people want to buy. In my view, it’s a pretty good system which constrains huge organizations like Apple to making devices, when the alternative is that they could be setting up their own governments.
Yeah, and if they serve the needs of customers better, then they’ll be given encouragement (money). If they don’t, they’ll be given discouragement (they lose their investments). Seems like a good system, no?
Of course, corruption and regulatory capture subvert this system and are bad for everyone, but those are subversions of capitalism.
Are they really subversions? A pure capitalist society is determined purely by incentives and the rules of economy (supply and demand and such). If it’s in a business’s best interest to do something unethical, they will do it. They will band together to price fix, they’ll collaborate to pay workers the bare minimum, they’ll create monopolys and duopolies to get the most money possible, because in a capitalist society, money is the #1 incentive. Government regulations are anti-capitalist policies to prevent these things from happening - although maybe not as effectively as they should be, given how things are.
Capitalism is defined as a set of rules/regulations that allows people to own the capital that they produce. Regulatory capture is when an organization gains control of the regulations to subvert other people’s ability to own their capital. This is why I say that the more regulatory capture that happens, the less capitalist the system.
And yes! Capitalist systems heavily incentivize caring about money and nothing else. But the system also makes it so that when people act purely selfishly for money, that it results in good outcomes for everyone. That’s why I think it’s a good system.
For example, if organizations price-fix, it heavily encourages a third party to undercut them. If they try to prevent the third party by legal means, then that’s not capitalism.
Just chiming in to say that if organizations price fix, it’s pretty rare a 3rd party can sustainably undercut them. The price fixers can agree to drop prices way lower, sell at a loss until the 3rd party is forced to price fix too or go out of business, and then resume the fixed price
So the outcome from a customer’s perspective is that the price fixers have dropped their prices way lower? That’s good, no?
And then once the 3rd party goes out of business and they resume their high price… they’re encouraging a new 3rd party to try again. So the prices lower again.
Meaning there’s pressure on prices to be lower, which is what we want. Therefore, good system.
Of course, I’m not saying it’s ideal. But is there a better system?
What you’re talking about is a tendency towards monopoly.
The most efficient way to organize industrial capacity is in large centralized productive systems, because it gets the per unit cost low. These ‘economies of scale’ are the best way to offer the lowest prices to the consumer for industrial goods by far.
The problem arises because this creates a centralized power structure. We call the people who control this power structure capitalists. The capitalists use this structure to force unfair labor contracts on their workforce.
The ‘better solution’ is democratic oversight over the centralized productive apparatus. Which can be in the form of regulations from democratic institutions on the centralized productive apparatus; or just as well workers collectively owning the company they work for.
Matt Bruenig has a some really informative videos on how that might look.
For most purchases, people really only have vanishingly few choices of companies to buy from. A truly free market might work, but the profit motives that have corrupted our political, legal and regulatory systems has made most markets into oligopolies. These companies work together to manipulate prices, without ever directly communicating in a way that can be punished.
For a free market to really drive prices down there needs to be real competition. When eggs went up in price, they allegedly did so because of avian flu. But that flu only affected a small amount of the production. Cal-Maine, the largest egg producer in the country, lost no egg production at all. Yet they increased their prices massively. If the market was working as you say it does, Cal-Maine would have kept their prices low to capture more market share. Instead they saw that other producer might have to raise prices and preemptively raised their prices.
For most purchases, people really only have vanishingly few choices of companies to buy from
Purchases such as…? Because basically all the things I purchase I have pretty solid options for, especially when you consider that a lot of good are interchangeable with each other.
The prisoner’s dilemma is a mathematical example to introduce students to different models where cooperation and competition have different outcomes. You can also design game theory systems where competition is generally a prefered action. The actual question is which model better reflects our contemporary realities, but regardless, there are great arguments to claim that cooperation is better most of the time if we assume that the participating actors are aware, intelligent and capable of taking free decisions.
Good outcomes for everyone by acting selfishly? Oh boy! Let me tell you about the distant past of 2008 when selfish/greedy actions could have crippled the entire world economy but instead governments bailed out the selfish/greedy corporations and left all non-corporation people affected to flap in the wind.
And that’s skipping over the COVID-19 capitalism fuckery, dot com bubble, healthcare, housing in 2020’s etc.
Capitalism is a cancer and it is literally killing people for the sake of money. But here’s a $1 so just forget about all those useless bad things.
But the system also makes it so that when people act purely selfishly for money, that it results in good outcomes for everyone.
Why do you think this??
Look at all the constant environmental disasters and harmful products that happen because corporations did the math and determined that paying a few million to lawsuits every once in a while is cheaper than being more careful. “Voting with your wallet” does not work because the big corporations undercut the competition and bombard us with advertising to ensure they will win no matter what.
Hell, most of us are on here because Reddit started doing scummy things in the name of money, and we’re a tiny fraction of their userbase; Reddit is still unfortunately doing pretty much fine. Is that the best outcome for everyone?
You’re forgetting economies of scale. Let’s take phone plans. A few giant companies have infrastructure (cell towers) built across the country. Coverage is extremely important - a phone plan with coverage in a small area isn’t anything anyone will want. How is a third party supposed to compete? They’d need enough money to set up nation-wide infrastructure, contracts with phone manufacturers to make sure phones are compatable, and they need to do all that before they even sell anything. Even if you try to compete, how do you make your prices competitive after spending that huge amount of money?
For example, if organizations price-fix, it heavily encourages a third party to undercut them. If they try to prevent the third party by legal means, then that’s not capitalism.
If the goal is profit, then using any means available to increase profit is the promoted method. This includes creating barriers to enter into competition. This could be things like temporarily selling at a loss until your competition runs out of money. It could also be using your money to influence politics to get laws in place that make it harder for others to compete with you. It could also be many other methods.
It also means increasing profits through other means, such as cooperating with other companies to not compete (this is called a trust, and it’s supposed to be illegal, but we all know it isn’t always, for example the oil industry). If they all agree to not lower prices to compete with each other then they all make more money at the expense of the consumer. Obviously this is bad, which is why most capitalist countries are supposed to prevent this by law (so, obviously capitalism isn’t that great alone), with limited results.
Capitalism also assumes perfectly rational actors in order to have good outcomes. Anyone who’s interacted with another person knows this isn’t possible. Without perfectly rational actors, the “best” outcomes are not guaranteed. There are far too many ways to obfuscate information and manipulate people. For example, in the case of a trust forming the consumer likely has no way to recognize that in order to work for their own interest over the interest of the companies trying to screw them over.
Basically, capitalism leading to ideal outcomes is a fairytale told by capitalists to ensure they aren’t questioned. They tell you that it’d your fault if you don’t get the best outcomes, but this isn’t true. They know it isn’t true, but it’s in their favor. They use their influence to make sure the fairytale stays intact though. Capitalism is the newest large religion. It asks for faith, takes your money, and provides you with nothing.
No, that is not the definition of capitalism. Where did you even hear that? So, in your vision of capitalism, the board of directors gets no money ever, because they produce nothing. The capital they have is produced by laborers.
You probably won’t see this, but I hope you will amend your definition of capitalism:
Capitalism is defined as a set of rules/regulations that allows people to own the capital that they produce.
You know this, right? We all know a trust fund baby is perfectly capable of using the wealth they were born into to buy a factory, mine, apartment complex, or shares in all of the above. (Hence profiting off of value they did NOT produce.) We all know capitalism does not distinguish in any way whatsoever between this form of capital ownership and the self-made variety.
“Capital they produce” and “capital they acquire / inherit / use stolen money to purchase” can both be wielded the exact same way. That’s the point of capitalism.
And this is only half of why, “that they produce” doesn’t work in this definition. The other half is that it contradicts the definition of “capital.”
Capital is literally “any form of property that can be used to collect the value of other people’s labor.” That is the opposite of “ownership over the things you produce.”
The exact opposite.
To “own the capital you produce” one must personally build the means of production. Otherwise, the owner is owning the capital someone else produced.
And you’ll find the vast, vast, vast majority of almost every form of capital (patents, copyrights, factories, burger machines, server computers, office buildings, mines, mine equipment, oil rigs, oil tankers, power plants, land, the list goes on) does not belong to the people who turned the screws, drew up the plans, welded the seams, mined the materials, performed the research, wrote the movie script, poured the cement, or otherwise PRODUCED the capital.
It belongs instead to the people who funded it. The people who, under capitalism, own it.
Anti-capitalists are not against people owning what they produce. In fact, in America, there is a distinctly anti-capitalist business model that thrives in numerous cities called a “cooperative” (co-op for short) that is owned by either (a) customers, or (b) workers. And a worker co-op is literally workers “owning what they produce”, but is considered market socialism by anyone who cares about using words correctly.
I would love if co-ops replaced corporations. Any anti-capitalist would. Even Maoists would tell you, “a society full of co-ops would be wonderful. The only reason I don’t find that sufficient is because capitalists would use violence to crush co-ops just as they have used violence to crush governments that didn’t favor US corporations.”
All anti-capitalists want people to be able to own what they produce. The system that robs people of their control over what they produce is exactly what anti-capitalists have been struggling to overthrow.
(Aside: many anti-capitalists support a “corporate death sentence” where any company that commits a crime causing more damage than it can afford to repair can have its assets seized and turned into a cooperative and given to its workers. This allows a company deemed “too big to fail, because too many workers would lose their jobs” to be kept running and keep its workers employed while also punishing the people whose decisions caused the damage. The investors would lose their shares, and the CEO elected by the investors would lose their job and their shares. Everyone else would be fine.)
Main point: I think before asking,
why do so many people dislike capitalism?
You need to first ask,
how do people define capitalism, and is it possible for the thing I like (people owning what they produce) to be protected in an anti-capitalist organization or system?
Well I mean it’s unclear to me that we’re much worse than previous points in history.
That’s interesting, because to me it’s very clear. After all, small isolated pockets of people ruining their economy and the environment they depend on is quite a bit different from all of humanity everywhere doing this.
That’s an interesting perspective! Care to share some data?
Personally, I think the fact that the median person in capitalist nations has enough food to eat is a pretty big plus! I don’t think that’s been the case throughout most of history.
That’s an interesting perspective! Care to share some data?
Well, of course the data on what our actions (much of which are due to and based upon capitalism) are doing to are environment and climate, and inevitably must lead to given the implicit but incorrect assumption of infinite resources of that system, is everywhere and basically impossible to ignore these days, isn’t it? And, almost as easy to find is the data on other cultures killing themselves off (in the, at the time, limited scope of their part of the planet) due to their actions, such as Easter Island.
You don’t own your own home and you feel this way? Yeesh. Have fun paying your landlord’s mortgage for the rest of your life as buying a house becomes more and more difficult.
Well I mean it’s unclear to me that we’re much worse than previous points in history. I’d rather have the climate crisis over the nuclear one, or either of the world wars, or live under a feudal system where I’m owned by the local lord in his castle.
You’d rather have the climate crisis as it currently stands. I think you’ll change your tune on that in coming decades but by then it’ll be far too late to actually do anything about it. You’re also more insulated to it’s effects than many millions of people around the world who are already losing their lives, homes, livelihoods, etc and this is only a sniff of what’s to come. Also, peasants in feudal times on average had more time off, made more money comparatively, and were able to travel more (yes, even serfs) than your average American currently. The chains just look a little different, they aren’t gone.
I sympathize (and agree) with the belief that the current system isn’t serving everyone, much less serving everyone equally. But the world is a complicated thing and we’ve got >7 billion people to feed! I think we should be very careful before deciding “yeah it’s time to tear down the existing systems and hope that there are better systems out there”. It’s easier to make things worse than to make things better.
We’ve got 8 billion people to feed and are doing a terrible job of it. Take under half of Elon’s wealth alone and you could feed the entire world, yet instead we laud these modern day dragons for their “success,” instead of slaying them for the good of the people. It’s easier to make things worse for you, than better for you. Billions of people currently suffering terribly for the profit of others would vehemently disagree. Also, just because the unknown is uncertain doesn’t mean it should be feared. We know capitalism isn’t working for the planet itself, yet people would rather stick to it because it’s enriched a small fragment of humanity. You happen to be in the side of the boat that isn’t currently underwater, but make no mistake that the water is pouring in.
I guess? I’ve wanted to start my own business a couple of times. I’m a programmer, so I’ve toyed with the idea and done some research into creating a few apps which I believe people would find useful, and might pay my bills. I don’t own a house or a car-- I live in an apartment in a mid-size US city.
You are not a capitalist.
I’m guessing you’d consider me a pawn, but I don’t. I fit your description of owning a bit of personal property, and being a worker.
You are a worker, so why look out for the interests of an entirely different class that doesn’t do the same for you?
I’ve worked for some large companies in the past which are supposedly the “actual capitalists”. But I promise they don’t give two shits about social good (or social bad). They are just desperately trying to make products that people want to buy.
Therein lies the exact problem: profit is the only motive. And to get profit, capitalists have shown they are willing to do everything, damn the consequences to others, to society, to the planet. Climate change isn’t a whoopsie, starving, desperate people aren’t a whoopsie, train derailments aren’t a whoopsie, even most wars (every American involved war since WW2) are not a whoopsie. They are all the predictable results of capitalists choosing to rake in more profits at the expense of you and I.
In my view, it’s a pretty good system which constrains huge organizations like Apple to making devices, when the alternative is that they could be setting up their own governments.
Why would they need to set up their own governments when they control ours? How exactly are they constrained? Google is arguably more powerful than most nations’ governments. Sure, most of that is soft power, but if trends continue it won’t stay soft for much longer.
I’d rather have the climate crisis over the nuclear one, or either of the world wars, or live under a feudal system where I’m owned by the local lord in his castle.
Give it a couple of years, because the world is going to get a lot, lot worse than it currently is (which is already pretty bad, for folks around the world). The World Wars will be nothing in comparison, and at least a nuclear war would be a relatively fast end.
I would reply asking if the people that are making these claims are actually the labor. Are service workers actually the ones producing anything? Western labor is compensated quite well relative to the rest of society which is why these ideas never go anywhere in the West. If you are not an actual laborer, why are you so pro-labor power?
It’s not illogical to be pro-Capitalism while not owning any “means of production” if it means you still have better outcomes.
There are no true Capitalist countries and no true Socialist countries. It’s not even a spectrum; it’s a giant mixed bag of policies. You can be for some basic capitalist principles (market economy, privately held capital) and for some socialist policies (safety nets, healthcare) and not be in contradiction with yourself. There’s more to capitalism than the United States.
I think OP was seeing a lot of “burn the system down” talk. Revolutions aren’t bloodless, instantaneous, or well directed. Innocent people will die and generations will suffer. It’s stuff only the naive, the malicious, or the truly desperate will support. And if you’re here posting it on the daily, I don’t believe you’re that desperate.
I think this conflates capitalism with lack of coordination. We could fix global warming today via regulation. Even if our government was socialist, it would probably still not be curbing emissions due to trying to achieve some other non-capital goal.
Second, there isn’t any need to falsely imply our species is going to die because of climate change. No model points at that. Billions of people having crappier lives and dying sooner should be enough motivation.
Hmmm, its those kinds of extreme statements that make me a bit suspicious. Is global warming really an extinction level event? I can imagine terrible civil wars over resources and increasing displacement from natural disasters, but total eradication of the human race is afaik not a possible result of global warming.
It’s kinda like when they called it world war 1 and 2 - it didn’t actually include the entire world, but it did include so many countries that people considered it to be the world. The amount of people that could die or be affected by global warming could kill billions. Billions.
That’s way too simplistic. It’s not just big corporations that block each and every measure to mitigate climate change.
Ask a small home owner, or car owner, why they are against climate change measures. They will point out that their life would need to change, and that’s why.
Climate is fucked primarily because people are unwilling to look around the next corner. That corporations are the same is more a property of them being comprised of people rather than capitalism per se.
Capitalism would work with wind and solar parks just as well as with coal.
And yet, the giant oil corporations lied about climate change and subverted efforts to develop renewable energy back in the 80s when it could have actually helped. They did that to line their pockets, fucked over the entire world, and have had no repercussions for it. Don’t act like it’s the people’s fault. A large large portion of the damage to the climate was done so executives could save an extra .1% of profit for themselves.
Ask a small home owner, or car owner, why they are against climate change measures. They will point out that their life would need to change, and that’s why.
It’s perhaps a little tangential to the “merits of capitalism” topic, but it’s worth noting that the circumstances that caused such a large percentage of the U.S. population to own single-family houses or cars – the Suburban Experiment – is substantially the result of deliberate policy choices by the Federal government starting around the 1930s:
The Federal Housing Administration was created, which not only published development guidelines that embodied the modernist^1^ city planning ideas popular at the time (they literally had e.g. diagrams showing side-by-side plan views of traditional main-street-style shops and shopping centers with parking lots, with the former labeled “bad” and the latter labeled “good”), but also enforced them by making compliance with those guidelines part^2^ of the underwriting criteria for government-backed loans.
The Federal government passed massive subsidies for building highways, while comparatively neglecting the railroads and metro transit systems.
Of course, that isn’t to say that there wasn’t corporate influence shaping those policies! From the General Motors streetcar conspiracy to the General Motors Futurama exhibit at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, it’s obvious that the automotive industry had a huge impact. It’s less obvious – or perhaps I should say, less “provable” – that said influence was corrupt (in terms of, say, bribing politicians to implement policies the public didn’t otherwise actually want) rather than merely reflective of the prevailing public sentiment of the times, but I don’t disbelieve it either.
TL;DR: I’m not necessarily taking a position on whether it was proverbial “big government” or “big business” to blame for America’s car dependency, but I am saying that it’s definitely incorrect to characterize it as merely the emergent result of individual choices by members of the public. Those individual choices were made subject to circumstances that both government and business had huge amounts of power over, and that fact cannot be ignored.
^1^ For more info on “modernist city planning” read up on stuff like the Garden City movement started by Ebenezer Howard, Le Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse, and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City. In fact, I remember reading somewhere that Wright himself helped write those FHA guidelines, but I can’t find the reference anymore. : (
^2^ It would be irresponsible not to point out that redlining and racial segregation were massively important factors in all this, too. However, this comment is intended to focus on the change in urban form itself, so hopefully folks won’t get too upset that I’m limiting it to this footnote.
The saying among the caving community is that cavers go in to save spelunkers. The only people who really call it spelunking are people who don’t go caving very often.
That’s probably why digital displays still have analog speedometer options. At a glance it’s easier to tell what’s happening with your speed, rev count, and other levels like fuel.
But much of that utility is useful for manuals and ICE-powered cars.
Unfortunately because of the digital spedometer, the analog one usually suffers.
My mid-2010s c-class has an analog spedometer which is absolutely useless as it does not have a full needle and the fonts, spacing and colors are made to blend in with the interior instead of being readable.
All this makes me use the digital one, which is very distracting and usually lagging behind, especially when quickly accelerating.
Reading very-fast-changing data is probably the only good argument I’ve seen for the superiority of analog guages in modern cars. A fast changing digital display is impossible to read. But practically speaking, when the data is changing that quickly, typically precision isn’t important.
If car companies cared (which they clearly don’t) they could make digital displays better, by having a low refresh rate when there is low acceleration (to avoid distracting the driver), increase the refresh rate under heavy acceleration to display more current data, and apply some kind of effect to the fast changing digits to convey a sense of how fast they’re changing even if they’re changing too fast to read. Think of the odometer style altitude readout on old airplanes, where even if you can’t read the number you can tell wtf is up by how fast the numbers are spinning by.
This isn’t to say that digital guages are better. They’re just different. It’s a personal preference thing.
But you’re absolutely right that the analog guage has suffered from neglectful design in recent years.
Short answer is no. Safety of a program is in its implementation, not in the visibility of the code.
Most of the internet runs on opensource code, most companies that require highest security rely on open source programs, while companies relying on proprietary software are victims of hackers, malwares, ransomware every second (I am not going to name names to avoid useless wars).
That said, not all open source code is safe to use, as no all closed source software is safe to use. Bigger projects, used by many and used by experts are usually safe, most often even safer than close source counterparts.
Smaller projects are as safe as any random software downloaded from internet, unless you are able to read the code yourself. Many are safe, many aren’t, few are malevolent.
Be careful and research the program you are installing for security concerns.
If you want to download big stuff like debian, fedora, blender, gimp, krita, chromium, vscode, docker, k8s (I don’t know what you are into) just be sure that you trust the source from were you download binaries. The same as for any closed source software
Except Chromium can still access the Chrome extension store. The VSCode extension store is not included with the OSS version, which seriously hampers the usefulness of the app.
Tankies are Red Fascists. They're essentially communism-flavored authoritarians. I would contend they do not qualify as "left", "leftists", etc but far-right. They support and defend Soviet Russia and the CCP, specifically defending their atrocities and oppression.
I don’t see why not since progressive leftist describes where their beliefs lie and authoritarianism describes how they go about enforcing their beliefs.
Really depends on how specific you want to be with the definition of leftist though.
Sure, I guess I equate a desire to be subject to an authoritarian, strongman type leader as something that appeals more to people on the right. We’re a diverse and messy species though so there’s likely someone, somewhere who will be the exception that proves the rule.
I suppose it's always possible to believe in a benevolent dictator who will use their authority to establish whatever system it is that you think is "best", even if it's not authoritarian. Lots of revolutions try that.
Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy as a whole[1][2][3][4] or certain social hierarchies.[5]
According to emeritus professor of economics Barry Clark, supporters of left-wing politics "claim that human development flourishes when individuals engage in cooperative, mutually respectful relations that can thrive only when excessive differences in status, power, and wealth are eliminated."[6]
So maybe? If you had a truly benevolent dictator that promoted equality, freedom (limited to everything except changing nature of government) and prosperity for all then that might fit? But in the real world, not effectively.
I’ve seen plenty of people start off with good intentions and then they change when they get a taste of power.
“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority.” - Lord Acton.
Can there be such a thing as a progressive/leftist who is pro-authoritarianism?
Not really.
Progressivness is about freedom, authoritarianism about the lack of freedom.
But someone could hypothetically be an actual communist and an authoritarian. Because communism is just an economic system.
In practice the only way it would work is “mob rule”. Like what happened during the French revolution where people rose up, killed the ruling class, and then distributed their wealth.
But even that wasn’t the same because the mob didn’t attempt to distribute it equally. Everyone just grabbed shit.
I think it’s especially confusing to people with a two party political system, because economic and social policy start to get intertwined, when they’re two different things.
Which a cynic would say is intentional so that no matter who gets elected, the wealthy win.
A cynic or a realist? All political systems have to have some checks against human greed and avarice or things quickly turn to shit for the average person. If you can’t vote someone out, that’s an important check you’re giving up.
Honestly, as a smoker, it’s a godsend. The smoke goes away so quickly, it has higher nicotine than cigarettes when purchased the RIGHT way, and since I can now smoke inside, I can puff on it all day every day as I work from home!
In all seriousness, it’s worse imo. It sets the precedent from the 50s of smoking EVERYWHERE and now without any of the negative outward effects like smell or yellowing of the teeth/walls.
It’s honestly made my addiction worse. To each their own for sure, but in my experience it just made my bad habit SLIGHTLY healthier, but much more accessible.
It requires a significant amount of willpower to break the addiction, but for those of us that do not, definitely do not pick this up. It will not help. If you have that willpower, it is useful.
It seems useful for people who were addicted to cigarettes by providing a potentially less harmful alternative.
But, for the generation that didn’t have addiction to cigarettes prior to E cigarettes I wonder how many went on to pick up the addiction to nicotine they otherwise wouldn’t have, since smoking cigarettes seemed to be going out of style.
I do kind of wonder what the end game of addictive product development is. I mean, if you assume that technology can both reduce negative side effects and make the product more-potently-addictive, absent some sort of social movement or something opposed to them, I would think that we would get closer to a point where there is stupendously-addictive stuff that has no intrinsic harm other than the addiction itself, but that the addiction could be crippling and extremely hard to kick.
Wireheading is a term associated with fictional or futuristic applications of brain stimulation reward, the act of directly triggering the brain's reward center by electrical stimulation of an inserted wire, for the purpose of 'short-circuiting' the brain's normal reward process and artificially inducing pleasure. Scientists have successfully performed brain stimulation reward on rats (1950s) and humans (1960s). This stimulation does not appear to lead to tolerance or satiation in the way that sex or drugs do. The term is sometimes associated with science fiction writer Larry Niven, who used the term in his Known Space series. In the philosophy of artificial intelligence, the term is used to refer to AI systems that hack their own reward channel.
Wireheading, like other forms of brain alteration, is often treated as dystopian in science fiction literature.
In Larry Niven's Known Space stories, a "wirehead" is someone who has been fitted with an electronic brain implant known as a "droud" in order to stimulate the pleasure centers of their brain. Wireheading is the most addictive habit known (Louis Wu is the only given example of a recovered addict), and wireheads usually die from neglecting their basic needs in favour of the ceaseless pleasure. Wireheading is so powerful and easy that it becomes an evolutionary pressure, selecting against that portion of humanity without self-control.
There are tons of harmful chemicals and tar you aren’t inhaling by vaping, instead of by combustion with traditional cigarettes. Not sure if they’re worse.
It's not though. Your inhaling nicotine - which does not cause cancer or any other health issues - and water vapor. Probably burns your throat which can't be too great, but no internal damage except from the mental standpoint of addiction.
Honestly I’m not yet in that camp. Sure for short term it is for a fact much better than analog smokes, but we know nothing of the long term.
Gotta remember: for quite a while, doctors recommended cigarettes. Sure tech and general knowledge have improved drastically since then, but the method of proving a hypothesis is still done the same way: testing.
I hope it is better. Maybe I’m just getting jaded in my age.
Quick correction: the base isn’t water, it’s a combination of propylene glycol and vegetable glycerine. Barring sensitivities, these are GRAS—Generally Recognized As Safe for human consumption.
Source: I make joose.
PS: Stay away from any flavours containing diacetyl.
You could also argue that that doesn’t apply to everyone. I treat vaping like it’s smoking, and I have from the start.
On the health side, I don’t want other people to be exposed to my bad choices either in public or residential buildings. So, I only vape when I am far away from others out of respect for them.
From another angle, I don’t enjoy the residue buildup that would happen over time. Imagine that stuff building up on your walls, in your PC, on your counters and cabinets, etc. The vapour you exhale doesn’t evaporate like steam in the sense that it isn’t water.
I think it might be an individual thing. You have the choice whether or not you treat it like a cigarette. It sucks going outside in poor weather, but it makes me actually want to quit more.
Estimates put out after research by Public Health England suggest that vaping is 95% better for you than smoking. So unless you’re vaping 20x more than you were smoking you’re probably benefitting.
Use your willpower in a small burst to buy a low nicotine juice and literally throw away the high nicotine stuff. You need to actually toss it and never use it again. Yes, it costs money, but do you want to quit or not?
Now use the low nicotine juice for a set amount of time (say, a month) and then switch to zero nicotine juice. Try to keep the same flavors you’re used to already.
Eventually you will stop smoking because youre only getting the positive feelings from the habit itself and not the nicotine.
good job, and well done! this, of course, will require constant vigilance, not merely one single effort. hopefully, a common protocol can be developed - perhaps a set of maintenance tools for instance admins - to help manage large numbers of inactive and otherwise suspicious accounts, especially making it easier and more straightforward for those instance owners with less experience managing large user databases.
in the meantime, perhaps it would be useful to create more extensive documentation and guides for instance admins on the subject?
Instead of reddit, why not talk about something more positive on your date, like how many tickets you are going to buy for my new movie, “Barbie”, only in theaters July 21st?
Great to see such a talented star already participating on Lemmy! Even without seeing the movie, I know the Oscar’s as good as yours:) Good luck with the film, and I’ll definitely go see it in theaters with my SO (twice, even).
Wait, Barbie™ ? The upcoming fantasy comedy film directed by Greta Gerwig from a screenplay she wrote with Noah Baumbach? Based on the Barbie fashion dolls by Mattel? The first live-action Barbie film after many computer-animated direct-to-video and streaming television films? The film starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as Barbie and Ken, respectively, alongside an ensemble supporting cast that includes America Ferrera, Kate McKinnon, Issa Rae, Rhea Perlman, and Will Ferrell?
None. Not going to watch it because it shows a map with China’s nine dash line. China has been harassing our fishermen and coast guards here in the Philippines, in our own waters. The government is also planning to ban the movie.
I heard about this, but I really can’t find anything resembling that on the disputed frame. Like, it has to be there because a government probably checked it better than me, but where exactly?
Hello Academy Award nominated character actress Margot Robbie (sometimes I get mistaken for you). Is it true you were cast in Barbie because you have plastic feet?
It feels like I found a nice mom n pop shop but Walmart and Starbucks are trying to force their way on the same block. I get that you can defederate or block communities you don’t want, but having FB shove their way in this space feels intrusive.
kbin.life
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