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NateNate60

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In a rare move, Pope Francis forcibly removed a Texas bishop who had called him too progressive (apnews.com)

Pope Francis on Saturday forcibly removed the bishop of Tyler, Texas, a firebrand conservative prelate active on social media who has been a fierce critic of the pontiff and has come to symbolize the polarization within the U.S. Catholic hierarchy....

NateNate60 ,

The Catholic doctrine of papal infallibility means that the pope has the power as head of the Church to declare something an unquestionable part of Church doctrine. This was last used to declare “the Virgin Mary went to heaven” as part of the Catholic doctrine. The “infallible” part of “papal infallibility” means that the pope’s decision on the matter is final and that is the end of the discussion.

NateNate60 ,

The Vatican is only all-powerful in theory. The internal politics of the Catholic Church unfortunately are still a big consideration. They can only send out so many inquisitors and upend so many clergymen before internal unrest starts spreading. The worst-case scenario for the Vatican is for there to be another schism in the Church.

Many of the Church’s institutions are thousands of years old and the Church is the oldest surviving Western cultural and political institution. It has a lot of baggage. I am not Catholic, but I still respect that Pope Francis has at least acknowledged the Church’s wrongs and is trying to nudge it in the right direction. There is so much inertia that even the Pope can only nudge, not steer. That’s why the doctrine of papal infallibility is only used in the way it is.

NateNate60 ,

Yes, it is. That’s because companies like trying unpopular policies in America first before moving them to Europe.

NateNate60 ,

Yes. You have to pay for postage. Americans pay nothing and Amazon forced them to pay one dollar. I’m sure retailers would happily trade free returns for a 14-day return policy that makes the customer pay for postage.

NateNate60 ,

That’s usually how it is in America too. Amazon started charging $1 if you took it to a courier office instead of a Whole Foods (Amazon-owned grocery store chain) if the Whole Foods was closer to you.

NateNate60 , (edited )

It’s just a regular grocery store, albeit a rather expensive one. They give discounts for Prime members. In the back, there is an area where workers accept Amazon returns and you can also pick up orders there in the odd chance you would ever do that instead of having it delivered to your home at no extra cost…?

Edit: I remembered that some people might want packages delivered here if they’re frequent victims of package theft

NateNate60 ,

I agree. The US Federal Trade Commission is actually taking legal action against them for anticompetitive monopolistic practices right now, which could result in the company being broken up.

NateNate60 ,

It depends. If the company dives in headfirst with anticonsumer practices in the EU, you’re correct; EU institutions will regulate them out. But there’s a much smarter strategy that works more often than I think you’d like to admit:

  • Start said anticonsumer practice in the USA
  • USA is slower to enact legislation against it
  • US customers get used to it
  • Inch EU customers into said practices
  • When confronted, point to the USA and say that the Americans are fine with it so it must not be that bad.
  • 50% of the time EU regulators respond with “oh, alright then”. The news of said practice being introduced into the EU appears on The Register for a day and then everyone forgets about it. Most EU consumers don’t realise it happened.
NateNate60 ,

Honestly, Whole Foods sold overpriced crap before they were acquired by Amazon and continued to sell overpriced crap afterwards. For comparison, a box of store-brand macaroni and cheese, obviously an American staple food eaten on a daily basis, costs twice as much at Whole Foods compared to a regular grocery store (Walmart, Kroger, &c.) and triple what it would cost at a cheap grocery store.

  • Pound of chicken breast at Whole Foods: $6
  • Pound of chicken breast at Walmart: $3
  • Pound of chicken breast at WinCo: $2

and

  • Frozen pizza at Whole Foods: $10
  • Frozen pizza at Walmart: $4

It’s like this for basically everything. If you’d normally spend $80 a week on grocery, you’d instead spend $150 at Whole Foods. But at least the food is organic, right??

NateNate60 ,

Disappointing result but this seems like something for the legislature to fix. Courts aren’t always the solution, sometimes you have to just fix the damn law.

NateNate60 ,

You’re getting a bit off-track here. The scenario is this: the company that provides the software for your care collects data. This part is unconcerned with Amendment 4. Amendment 4 prohibits the State from collecting information and searching unreasonably. It does not prohibit the private company that provides the software from doing so. That is what privacy laws are intended to protect against, not Amendment 4.

Amendment 4 also does not prevent the company that collected that data from providing it to the police upon request. Amendment 4 (and the rest of the US Constitution) applies only to the State. Private companies and private individuals are not bound by it.

NateNate60 ,

Amendment 4 does not apply to the practices of a private company. That’s what privacy legislation is intended to protect against. Amendment 4 only applies to spying done by the State.

NateNate60 ,

Do you actually literally believe that (in the context of law), or is that just rhetorical speech?

NateNate60 ,

Correct and it is not illegal. It is an invasion of privacy but the law doesn’t prohibit that. Amendment 4 covers the Government doing it without the permission of the person who controls the information. It refers to “can the Government bust in or sneak in to get info”, not “can the Government make clandestine deals to buy info for surveillance purposes”.

NateNate60 , (edited )

This is getting off-track again—

Government agencies paying private companies for your information, or even just asking for it in exchange for something or nothing is legal. That’s because nothing was searched unreasonably (because consent was given by the controller of the information) nor was anything seized against the controller’s will.

You are not in the picture. The information might be about you but you don’t control the information, the car company does. From a legal standpoint, you are irrelevant for the purposes of Amendment 4 protection.

Amendment 4 protects the controller of the information from Government seizure but does not protect the subject of that information. Privacy laws are what are intended to protect the subjects of information. There is some overlap of course. For example, your computer has lots of information about you and what you did in the past. You would be both the subject of the information and the controller (since it’s stored on your computer).

Please remember, I am describing what the law is, not what it should be.

NateNate60 ,

If you want to call it that, you can. The State spying by proxy (paying or asking companies for info) is legal and not prohibited by Amendment 4. Amendment 4 does not protect the subjects of information. It protects the controllers of information (which would be the car company).

NateNate60 ,

I remember an Indian political cartoon being posted to Reddit a few months ago depicting a two women gossiping about another buying 500 g of tomatoes, and that she must be spending black money to be able to afford that many tomatoes.

Whats the best budget friendly way to transfer vhs tapes

Hiya, pretty much the title. I have a dozen tapes I want to backup before age takes its toll. My basic idea after watching some videos online is to buy a hardware based upscaler that can interface with my vcr then throw that signal to a video capture card and record on my computer. I’ll go with name brands to avoid problems...

NateNate60 ,

Your setup sounds fine. I would’ve suggested getting a capture card that will accept the analogue inputs of a VCR player, or an adapter to convert it to VGA, but that would only capture the video at its original quality (at best). You could then upscale it using computer software.

Xbox's new policy — say goodbye to unofficial accessories from November thanks to error '0x82d60002' (www.windowscentral.com)

Xbox’s new policy — say goodbye to unofficial accessories from November thanks to error ‘0x82d60002’::Got error 0x82d60002 on your Xbox accessory? There’s no fix, Xbox is going to block the use of detected unauthorized accessories with its consoles from November 12, 2023.

NateNate60 ,

Call me old-fashioned, but I think the free market offers an adequate solution for this—customers can tell for themselves which third-party accessories are bad and not buy them. Microsoft shouldn’t purposefully render them unusable. If you want guaranteed support, you’re always free to choose an official product.

NateNate60 ,

If PC players and PC games can handle cheating without needing to resort to banning third-party controllers, I see no reason that Microsoft magically needs to do so.

NateNate60 ,

I do not find this argument very convincing. There are much harder-to-detect ways to cheat on PC and yet anti-cheat systems remain fairly effective. Remember that an XBOX is, from a software standpoint, just a Windows computer with far less functionality and some tweaks for performance. There are black-box cheat detection techniques.

There is no way you can paint this move as pro-consumer. It’s an anti-consumer move with some positive side effects.

NateNate60 ,

Consoles are initially sold at a loss or no profit to incentivise people to buy games on their platform, where the real profit is made. However, at this point in time, yes, you can buy pre-built gaming PCs for around $500 that will run circles around an XBOX Series X or PlayStation 5. You can even buy a $300 office computer then pop an A580 or something in it and make it a fully-equipped gaming PC. Even more so if you use your own hardware and build it yourself.

If you’re just looking for something that works out of the box when you buy it, there are tonnes of people on Facebook Marketplace selling custom-built gaming PCs for around that price range that will still outperform lastest-generation consoles.

Don’t forget, when comparing performance, consoles generally use a mixture of medium/high settings to guarantee a steady 60 FPS whereas PC testing is traditionally done on Ultra/High presets.

I will say that PCs do require a bit more technical knowledge and maybe some tinkering to get the best performance though. If all you do is game and you know nothing about how to do anything else on the computer, I would recommend the console ten out of ten times.

NateNate60 ,

Regardless of any amount of argumentation, the end result is that cheating on PC isn’t really that big of a problem.

Sometimes people want to use “shitty controllers” though. They’re much cheaper than official ones and in many cases work just as well. In my case, I have a $25 controller I bought off Amazon for my Nintendo Switch that also works for my PC and has RBG lighting and wired/wireless dual mode. It in all respects is better than a $70 official Nintendo controller and I suspect it’s the same for XBOX.

NateNate60 ,

That’s true, I miss secondhand PC games too.

PCs have other benefits too, such as free online access that would require a subscription on consoles. Unrelated to gaming, a PC can be used for other things too. The only non-gaming use for a console is as a home media player. A PC can do that and much more. A gaming PC also makes an excellent productivity machine, whereas you can’t exactly edit spreadsheets and presentations on most consoles (except the Steam Deck).

China rushes to swap Western tech with domestic options as U.S. cracks down (www.reuters.com)

China rushes to swap Western tech with domestic options as U.S. cracks down::China has stepped up spending to replace Western-made technology with domestic alternatives as Washington tightens curbs on high-tech exports to its rival, according to government tenders, research documents and four people familiar with the matter.

NateNate60 ,

Reveal all the backdoors? No way. They’ll flaunt the GPL any day of the week and we won’t know about the backdoors until 10 years after the CIA has already found, exploited, and mined 10 PB of data out of them.

NateNate60 ,

The large container is cheaper but I prefer the flavour of prepackaged units and it’s easier. They are still much healthier than other breakfasts and the cost is still just about twenty cents per bag anyway.

NateNate60 ,

I found the nutritional label, which reports 10 grams of sugar per packet. That, to me, is reasonable. I did not look up the nutritional information of the cereal, but remember that sugar content isn’t the whole story. The cereal is more or less deficient in nutrients whereas oatmeal isn’t. Oatmeal is a complex carbohydrate.

As another example, if you had a banana and whole oats, no sugar, that meal would be obviously very healthy but nominally have 15 g of sugar.

NateNate60 ,

If you have one cup of skim milk with your oatmeal, assuming the oatmeal has absolutely no sugar at all (which isn’t the case), you’d be having 13 g of sugar. I usually like to mix in a spoonful of brown sugar with my oatmeal, adding another 5 g of sugar. Maybe you don’t do that; everyone’s different. Putting in half a banana would add 7 g of sugar.

A packet of Quaker cinnamon flavour instant oats has 10 g of sugar. If you have two packets, it is roughly equivalent to making regular oatmeal with half a banana (7 g), a spoonful of brown sugar (5 g), a tablespoon of peanut butter (1 g) and half a cup of milk (6 g)

Granted, the combination of making it yourself is a lot more nutritionally whole, but if we’re just comparing sugar content, it’s actually not that bad.

NateNate60 ,

Could you edit your link? It’s a 404 for me

Banks in Hong Kong can print their own money. There are 8 different designs in circulation. (lemmy.world)

Before someone asks why there isn’t insane inflation from banks printing an infinite amount of money for themselves, the Hong Kong dollar is pegged to the US dollar. In order to be allowed to print HKD, banks must have an equivalent amount of USD on deposit.

NateNate60 OP ,

There was an infamous scam a while ago where Zimbabwean $1,000 notes were the same shade of orange as Hong Kong $1,000 notes.

Has HP printers always been this bad? (sh.itjust.works)

So my mother recently bought an ET-2800, By HP we had an HP printer before and we got a new one because the old one would not work with my sister’s Windows 11 Laptop. So I had to set it up for my mother, the manual said you can use it without the app. But there was no way to physically do that. Anyway, I downloaded the app on...

NateNate60 ,

I have an Epson EcoTank printer. It’s a colour inkjet printer but it came with these ginormous bottles of ink that you pour into a tank. I’ve printed thousands of pages for three years and I still have around a quarter of the included ink left.

I didn’t need to install any drivers on Linux or Windows, just adding the printer was enough. It connects to your WiFi network and works as expected. My only complaint is that after not using it for a few weeks, you’ll need to run the “clean print head” utility on the printer and might need to realign the print heads. But other than that, it’s great. Photo quality is pretty meh though.

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