ironsoap

ironsoap , 2 days ago

Favorite quote:

But the left’s determination has already reassured many politicians. “They can’t back out of this, because the first person to do so will end up with their head on a spike,” said Sandrine Rousseau, a prominent Green MP.

ironsoap , 2 days ago

Alternative link non paywalled

archive.ph/vY4le

ironsoap , 15 days ago

Trying to find independent analysis that I read, but can’t find it. This will likely have the most impact on swing voters in the 7 states, which are the most important voters in the US. Everyone else is much more likely to have already made their mind up. And remember about 50-66% of the registered voters in the US actually vote even in a presidential year, although the electoral college complicates the proportional representation of those voters.

From Washington post article

With 158 days until Election Day, he is fighting for a plurality of 30 million voters in seven battleground states — a far cry from the tens of thousands of Iowa party activists he courted a year ago. His advisers have long feared that a felony conviction could hurt Trump with independent voters, particularly skeptical suburban women. In places such as the Atlanta suburbs, those voters cost him the 2020 election.

ironsoap , 15 days ago

For Lemmy.world a donation would help keep it alive without all the crap. Servers are cheaper then they were, but still not cheap.

https://ko-fi.com/fhfworld

https://bunq.me/fhf

https://opencollective.com/mastodonworld

https://patreon.com/mastodonworld

https://en.liberapay.com/fhf

ironsoap , 2 months ago

Seconded

ironsoap , 2 months ago

Why yes, we even had a balrog…

ironsoap , 2 months ago

Jellyfin is great. Worth the time and effort to get it setup. Infuse is worth the money as an AppleTv frontend too.

You will definitely need toimprove your lan speed though. I’drecommende getting off WiFi for as much of the media as you can. If not that, put in triband WiFi connection and wire them in if possible. Mesh will work, but bring your speed down.

ironsoap , 2 months ago

Two point one: That’s how many children everyone able to give birth must have to keep the human population from beginning to fall. Demographers have long expected the world will dip below this magic number—known as the replacement level—in the coming decades. A new study published last month in The Lancet, however, puts the tipping point startlingly near: as soon as 2030.

It’s no surprise that fertility is dropping in many countries, which demographers attribute to factors such as higher education levels among people who give birth, rising incomes, and expanded access to contraceptives. The United States is at 1.6 instead of the requisite 2.1, for example, and China and Taiwan are hovering at about 1.2 and one, respectively. But other predictions have estimated more time before the human population reaches the critical juncture. The United Nations Population Division, in a 2022 report, put this tipping point at 2056, and earlier this year, the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital, a multidisciplinary research organization dedicated to studying population dynamics, forecasted 2040.

Christopher Murray, co-author of the new study and director of the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), suspects his study’s forecast is conservative. “With each passing year … it’s becoming clearer that fertility is dropping faster than we expect,” he says. Because the 2030 figure is already a hastening of IHME’s previous estimate of 2034, “I would not be surprised at all if things unfold at an even faster rate,” he says.

SIGN UP FOR THE SCIENCEADVISER NEWSLETTER The latest news, commentary, and research, free to your inbox daily A drop below replacement fertility does not mean global population will immediately fall. It will likely take about 30 additional years, or roughly how long it takes for a new generation to start to reproduce, for the global death rate to exceed the birth rate. Even then, because countries’ fertility may vary dramatically, global fertility rate is a “very abstract concept that doesn’t mean much,” says Patrick Gerland, chief of the Population Estimates and Projection Section of the U.N. Population Division. But he says the trend points to a world increasingly split between low-fertility countries, in which a diminishing number of young people support a burgeoning population of seniors; and high-fertility countries, largely poorer sub-Saharan African nations, where continued population growth could hamper development.

Estimating when the world will reach the turning point is challenging. The new model from IHME is based on how many children each population “cohort”—people born in a specific year—will give birth to over their lifetime. It captures changes such as a move to childbirth later in life. But full cohort fertility data are thus far only available for generations of people older than 50, and so the IHME model builds projections within itself to try to capture trends as they are unfolding.

A steady decline Global fertility has been dropping for several decades. Low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa and high-income countries such as the United States and Japan are expected to dip below the level needed to sustain the human population in the coming decades. But a new model says the global fertility rate could drop below the replacement level as soon as 2030.

D. AN-PHAM/SCIENCE In contrast, the U.N. and Wittgenstein models are based on each country’s total fertility rate, or the sum of age-specific fertility rates, typically for those between the ages of 15 and 49, which is considered reproductive age. As a result, temporary fluctuations in childbearing behaviors—say, people decades ago delaying giving birth to children so they could advance in their education and careers—can throw off their projections, and they can miss longer term changes in childbearing behaviors. These models may have been prone to undercounting fertility in the past, then finding a temporary rebound in fertility rate, and therefore predicting a longer time frame for world population decline.

ADVERTISEMENT This is one reason that Wittgenstein is considering moving to a cohort model, says Anne Goujon, director of the Population and Just Societies Program at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, one of the three institutions that form the Wittgenstein Centre.

Other factors also contribute to the differences between the projections, including how the IHME model accounts for four variables that impact fertility, including access to contraceptives and higher education among those who give birth. (The other two models generally do not, although Wittgenstein considers education.)

Regardless of when the turning point comes, “growing disparity in fertility levels could contribute to widening of [other] disparities,” says Alex Ezeh, a global health professor at Drexel University, who was not involved in the Lancet study. For middle- to high-income, low-fertility countries, falling below replacement level could mean labor shortages and pressure on health care systems, nationalized health insurance, and social security programs. Meanwhile, low-income countries that still have high fertility are at heightened risk of falling further behind on the world’s economic stage, Ezeh says. “They will not be able to make the necessary investments to improve health, well-being, and education” with too few resources to support a booming population.

Although some experts, including Goujon, think there isn’t yet reason for alarm, others call for urgency. “This is going to be a very big challenge for much of the world,” Murray says. “There’s a tendency to dismiss this as sort of like, yeah, we’ll worry about it in the future. But I think it’s becoming more of an issue that has to be tackled sooner rather than later.”

ironsoap , 3 months ago

It’s very sweet of you to do so.

If she has not already I’d see if she has a local library onlinedigital library card

Overdrive/Libby give access to a huge number of free books via the library.

Otherwise I would suggest audible just for the ubiquity of it and it’s large library.

ironsoap , 3 months ago

What are a few? Any good lists?

ironsoap , 3 months ago

For those who are to lazy to check the link, it’s an Electronic Support Measures (ESM) mast and station. Essentially a highly specialized series of antennas, receivers, and processors designed to listen for Radio Frequency transmission on the battle field. Generally used in multiples to triangulate and track.

ironsoap , 3 months ago

This alongside using Backblaze is what I would suggest assuming you are thinking online. Cheap and reliable, also relatively easy via a cron job. help.backblaze.com/…/1260804565710-Quickstart-Gui…

ironsoap , 3 months ago

In technical terms you mean doing an incremental or differential back up to a local network storage location, correct?

ironsoap , 3 months ago

Deezer for one. Doesn’t have quite the same amount of music, but I don’t seem to have the issue with travel considering I am literally away for half the year.

Many others though.

lifewire.com/best-alternatives-to-spotify-5217870

ironsoap , 4 months ago

Anyone have the unwalled content?

ironsoap , 4 months ago

The end is the most enlighting vs the legal losses:

With most jurisdictions dodging the questions at the heart of the case, it can create a misleading impression that things have gone well for the former president.

“The cases have gone poorly for Trump,” Derek Muller, a Notre Dame law professor who has followed the cases closely, wrote Friday in a blog post. “He lost on the merits in the only two jurisdictions that got to the merits, Colorado and Maine.”

ironsoap , 4 months ago

The Red Sea Conflict Is Scrambling Shipping. Europe Is Bearing the Brunt. Europe is again on the front line of the latest geopolitical tensions, a development that threatens to widen the economic gap between it and the U.S. By Paul Hannon and William Boston Jan. 18, 2024 11:00 pm ET

Ships traveling through the Red Sea carry about 40% of the goods traded between Europe and Asia. PHOTO: LUKE DRAY/GETTY IMAGES For the second time in three years, a conflict in Europe’s unruly neighborhood is threatening to weaken an already struggling economy while a more robust U.S. is watching from a safer distance. This time, attacks by Houthi rebels in Yemen targeting cargo ships in the Red Sea have persuaded more carriers to opt for the safer but longer and more expensive journey around Africa via the Cape of Good Hope. Those detours are raising freight costs and leading retailers to worry about running out of stock. Some factories have suspended work in the absence of needed parts. Should the threat persist, economists think the decline inflation Europe enjoyed last year could slow down, pushing back a potential cut in key interest rates. “This is clearly one of the major downside risks to growth, and upside risks to inflation,” said Ana Boata, chief economist at insurer Allianz Trade. “We could talk about a recessionary risk.” Re-Route Shipping companies with vessels idling in or near the Suez Canal are considering taking a detour around Africa. The Cape of Good Hope route is considerably longer and burns more fuel, making it less popular than the Suez Canal option.

Major world shipping routes Suez route Cape of Good Hope route Other Example: Singapore-Rotterdam, Netherlands Rotterdam Med. Sea Suez Canal Atlantic Ocean Singapore Indian Ocean Cape of Good Hope Distance Round-trip voyage Suez route 8,301 naut. miles 34 days 11,758 43 Cape route Sources: Jean-Paul Rodrigue, Hofstra University (global routes); Bimco (distance, voyage) The latest geopolitical flare-up could cement a growing asymmetry between Europe and the U.S. As a large energy producer, the U.S. has emerged arguably stronger from the crisis sparked by the Ukraine war. And while some of its imports transit via the Suez Canal, their share is comparatively small, and the Pacific offers an alternative route for cargo out of Asia. For now, the interruptions to supply chains are on a modest scale compared with the more widespread blockages seen in 2020 and 2021, and their economic impact is likely to be proportionately smaller. Businesses have also learned lessons from interruptions during the Covid-19 pandemic, and have larger inventories than they did then. IKEA boss Jesper Brodin said the Red Sea conflict has lengthened its shipping routes by about 10 days or longer though its customers aren’t affected. “The huge difference at the moment is that we have recuperated after the pandemic,” he said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “So that means our stocks in our warehouse are in good shape.”

Discount retailer Pepco said conflict in the Red Sea has had a limited effect on product availability, but could hurt supply in the coming months if it continues. The discount retailer—which houses Poundland in the U.K. and Dealz and Pepco in continental Europe—said Thursday that Houthi attacks on vessels were leading to higher spot freight rates and delays to container lead times. But coming in the wake of a global pandemic and the largest European war in eight decades, the escalation of the conflict that began with an attack on Israel by Hamas in early October is a reminder that the outlook for the global economy is increasingly shaped by developments beyond the reach of economic policymakers. Ships traveling through the Red Sea carry about 40% of the goods that are traded between Europe and Asia. The Houthis initially claimed to target Israeli ships or those bound for its ports but in practice, their attacks have been indiscriminate. That has prompted more operators to divert their traffic around the Cape of Good Hope.

Jesper Brodin said the Red Sea conflict has lengthened IKEA’s shipping routes by about 10 days or longer. PHOTO: DENIS BALIBOUSE/REUTERS Last week, Tesla said delays in delivery of components caused by the rerouting of ships would force it to suspend production at its only large factory in Europe, the GigaBerlin plant outside Berlin. Volvo Cars, the Chinese-Swedish automaker, said gearboxes needed to build conventional combustion vehicles at a plant in Belgium were delayed, forcing the company to halt production for three days. Volkswagen, Europe’s largest carmaker by sales, said its plants hadn’t been affected, but that it continued to monitor the situation in close contact with its suppliers. VW said it was rerouting shipments, which was causing some delay. Oxford Economics estimates that a ship traveling at 16.5 knots from Taiwan to the Netherlands via the Red Sea and the Suez Canal takes about 25½ days to complete the journey. But this rises to about 34 days if the journey is diverted around the Cape. Extra traveling time reduces the annual capacity of each ship, and can have a knock-on effect on freight costs on other routes, including those between Asia and the U.S. According to the Freightos Baltic Index, the average cost of transporting goods in a container across the globe doubled between Dec. 22 and Jan. 12.
Those times could lengthen even further if diverted ships have to wait to take on additional fuel to complete their unplanned journeys at overstretched African ports, of which South Africa’s Durban is the largest. “We haven’t seen tremendous congestion in Durban,” said Ami Daniel, CEO of shipping consulting firm Windward.

Attacks by Houthi rebels in Yemen have disrupted global shipping. PHOTO: YAHYA ARHAB/SHUTTERSTOCK For Europe, the impact of the crisis would largely depend on the extent and duration of the disruption. Economists at Allianz Trade calculate that a doubling of freight costs sustained for more than three months could push the eurozone’s inflation rate up by three-quarters of a percentage point and reduce economic growth by almost a percentage point. With the eurozone’s economy already weakened, that could push it into contraction during 2024. Paolo Gentiloni, the European Union’s top economic official, told reporters on Monday that the situation in the Red Sea “should be monitored very closely” because it could cause energy prices and inflation to rebound. There are several reasons why the crisis’s impact on Europe’s economy might be less severe than previous episodes of surging freight costs. For one, businesses have been through a number of supply-chain disruptions over recent years and believe they are better prepared. “We are affected by the crisis,” said Matthias Zink, CEO of Schaeffler Automotive Technologies. “But it’s under control. Maybe the explanation is that we have a lot of experience now in this resilience or in the reaction to these crises.” Stellantis, the French-American-Italian maker of Fiat, Peugeot and Jeep, said it was compensating for delays in rerouted ships “by using some limited airfreight solutions,” adding that the delays had “almost no impact on manufacturing to date.” Patrick Lepperhoff, a consultant with Inverto, a unit of BCG, said past crises had made companies better prepared for sudden shocks. Many companies invested in IT to gain better visibility on their supply chains and got closer to their main suppliers, he added. In addition to greater preparedness, the economic environment is also different from during the pandemic—a global event affecting supply chains around the world. The current crisis is local, leaving suppliers with more alternatives and many businesses now hold bigger inventories than they did before the pandemic struck. In Europe, weak consumer demand has padded this cushion. “The Red Sea is not as dangerous to global trade as the events were a few years ago,” said Lepperhoff.

ironsoap , 5 months ago

Speedy Gonzalez with some good luck, good accuracy, or both. The way to drop on a bully.

ironsoap , 5 months ago

In a different part of the thread.

streamable.com/1ubjlx

ironsoap , 5 months ago

Me too, but funny how well it works.

ironsoap , 6 months ago

Looks like industry got what they wanted.

ironsoap , 6 months ago

I think they dodged that as well… arstechnica.com/?p=1989111

“Android users’ hopes that Apple’s iMessage would be forced to open up in the European Union have been dashed. Bloomberg reports that iMessage won’t qualify for the EU’s new “Digital Markets Act,” allowing Apple to keep iMessage exclusive to Apple users. …”

ironsoap , 7 months ago

Yea, is there a ‘best of’ yet?

ironsoap , 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago)

The answer is essential greed, aka corporate fiduciary responsibly to increase shareholder profit.

Gomes reportedly sparred with Google over its decision to set its metrics on the total number of user queries. The former head of search reportedly balked at this metric because an improved search functionality should ideally prioritize answering users’ questions with as few clicks as possible. Google, the DOJ argued, benefits from users taking longer to search because the company can run ads against each of those queries. Around 80% of Google revenues reportedly come from advertising. If a user needs to refine their search a few times to get what they’re looking for, or if they have to scroll deeper through the results, more ads can be served to them.

Innovation can be driven by capitalism and seeking a more efficient product, but here we see where capitalism can stifle it as well. Lack of competition and regulatory capture disincentivizes innovation.

ironsoap , 7 months ago

Article like this explain how they might be trying to look good and yet still do an end run.

ironsoap , 7 months ago

Based on this, it looks like an attempt to negotiate with the consumers “directly” and make it look like they are being active.

ironsoap , 7 months ago

I understand this as the California Effect and similarly the Brussels effect. While both do change company policies, I do understand that many companies are going to continues to try and avoid a regulatory ruling as there is so much status quo market loss on the line for them.

This article describes how they’ll be trying to use MOUs with nongovernment bodies to mollify consumers and regulators.

ironsoap , 9 months ago

I really wish they brought back Reader mode. I kept the old version of firefox side by side just so I can force some pages into it. Makes reading soooo much easier.

ironsoap , 9 months ago

The last Firefox on android that really worked for me with the about:reader?url=http://… Ability to force pages into it was 68, which I keep around for that reason.

Can 117 do it on all pages?

ironsoap , 9 months ago

Not disagreeing, but isn’t there also protectionist incentives to at least assembly them in the US too? Benn a while since I remember reading it, but seem to remember there are many tarrifs, tax incentives, and etc that make it a complex situation for auto makers.

ironsoap , 9 months ago

I work on a ship and am in the Galapagos right now. Thr island is covered in Starlink terminals and they’ve changed the internet existence here. Posting this via public starlink WiFi. I have a friend in the Philippines, and same there, huge impact.

His point about your US centric point is valid.

Starlink has many issues network wise, but the price point is per country so it is still being well used around the world in rural existence.

ironsoap , 10 months ago

What adapter does the KVM?

ironsoap , 10 months ago

To quote some of it:

The Wagner Group has established operations in several African countries, where many of its operations focus on security issues. It has often provided security services and paramilitary assistance and launched disinformation campaigns for troubled regimes in exchange for resource concessions and diplomatic support. Wagner is most active in the Central African Republic (CAR), Libya, Mali, and Sudan, all of which have a tenuous relationship with the West due to colonial legacies and inherent political differences.

What does it do? Wagner’s services vary based on the needs of its clients, which include rebel groups and regimes, and its funding ranges from direct payment to resource concessions.

Evaluating the U.S. Military Contribution in Afghanistan Combat operations. Wagner troops have supported African governments in combat operations against rebel groups, and vice versa. Approximately one thousand Wagner troops entered CAR in 2018 to defend the government of President Faustin-Archange Touadéra against rebel attacks on the capital, Bangui. In return, Wagner subsidiaries received unrestricted logging rights and control of the lucrative Ndassima gold mine. Similarly, Wagner Group forces deployed to Mozambique in 2019 to help fight the self-proclaimed Islamic State in the northern Cabo Delgado province. However, the group failed to contain the insurgency and withdrew from the area after a few months.

Security and training support. Wagner acts as a security service for vulnerable regimes. The group served as a part of a personal protection detail for Touadéra and helped train CAR’s army to prepare for possible coup attempts. Wagner has operated in Sudan since 2017, training Sudanese troops, guarding mineral resources, and suppressing dissent against the government of President Omar al-Bashir, all in exchange for gold exports to Russia. In many cases, Wagner’s support is supplemented by official Russian military assistance, such as in Mali, where the armed forces received combat and surveillance aircraft from Moscow.

Disinformation campaigns. Prigozhin also owns the Internet Research Agency (IRA), an online “troll farm,” and the Association for Free Research and International Cooperation (AFRIC), both of which are under U.S. sanctions and have worked alongside Wagner. The IRA previously outsourced work to individuals in Ghana and Nigeria that sought to inflame political divisions in the United States ahead of the 2016 presidential election, while AFRIC has sponsored “phony election monitoring” in several African nations, including Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Prigozhin has also been accused of co-opting Pan-Africanist movements to promulgate anti-French and anti-Western messages.

ironsoap , 11 months ago

Economical perhaps, but this is the sort of stupid ass shit that epitomizes how fucked the growth based economy is in this climate changed era. Developer’s think a few years down the road, but have no economic incentive to build it as a cradle-to-cradle build rather than a cradle-to-grave build.

Build the same damn curtain wall floor plans in a dozen cities, so they all look ugly and don’t improve the quality of life, because it’s cheap, makes short term money for people who already have more then they can spend, and leave it to the kids to deal with everything in the future… Grrrr {rant off}

Sorry, bitter old fart chiming in.

ironsoap OP , 11 months ago

I’ve got one to sell if we could figure delivery out. How can I contact you?

ironsoap , 11 months ago

"The European Commission on Thursday unveiled its annual strategic foresight report, setting out its focus for the coming years.

The 21-page document illustrates the EU’s take on where the world is going. It’s also a rough guide to understand the ideology of Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who still hasn’t indicated whether she intends to continue in her role for another five years.

Spoiler alert: There are no major surprises. The report includes many of Brussels’ favorite words: “open strategic autonomy,” “resilience,” “sustainability,” and “geoeconomics.” The overarching idea is that the EU needs to beef up its autonomy as the golden age of globalization comes to an end. But in so doing, it must push forward its green transition at the cost of €620 billion per year and clamp down on domestic inequality.

POLITICO unpacks the details and answers critical questions about the EU’s big-picture exercise.

1. The return of geopolitics The world is ever more divided between the West and China — and Europe cannot be a bystander. “The time where liberal democracy was the model of obvious choice is over,” said Commission Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič in a press conference on Thursday when the report was unveiled.

The Commission foresees a “battle of offers” as Europe and the U.S. jostle with Beijing to lure developing nations over to their side. The key takeaway is that the old model of globalization — built on free trade and global supply chains — is gone. Instead, we’re entering a new era of “geoeconomics.” In a nutshell, that means Europe must cut back its strategic dependencies on other countries and instead tap its domestic resources and boost production on the Continent.

2. A sustainable economic model The EU needs to adapt its capitalist model to a new age where net zero and sustainability are the overarching priorities. Though the Commission’s proposals might freak out hardcore neoliberals, they do reflect a new post-COVID economic consensus where the state plays a larger role. “It [the EU] should also consider how to reduce the tax burden on labour and to shift it to other tax bases less detrimental to growth, also to address inequality in a context of population ageing,” reads the report.

One of the most eye-catching ideas is to consider in GDP estimates noneconomic factors such as life expectancy. Šefčovič indicated that with these new rules, the size of the EU’s economy would exceed that of the U.S., China and India (separately, not combined).

3. Boosting investment The European Investment Bank (EIB) must scale up its role and cough up the lion’s share of the €620 billion needed to finance the Green Deal and REPowerEU each year. “[It] should provide stronger support to strategic investments relevant to the two [digital and green] transitions such as raw materials, green tech or biotechnology, especially for cutting-edge projects,” reads the report.

The document is thin on details — but senior officials told Playbook that one way to achieve this would be to review the EIB’s mandate and expand its role.

4. A more skilled workforce The EU’s workforce is more educated than ever — but new industries are struggling to fill vacancies. Problems include a mismatch in skills, rising numbers of low-quality jobs, and too few women studying STEM subjects.
5. Too much inequality Life is getting tougher for lower-income workers, who are bearing the brunt of climate change while paying more for food, and other goods and services. To make matters worse, inequality among EU countries is increasing, not to mention the wealth gap between young and old.

Record levels of wealth concentration are stifling social mobility and fueling political polarization. The answer? More redistribution, according to the report.

6. Crisis of democracy It is pretty rare for EU officials to analyze political headwinds — but that’s exactly what they do in the final section of the report. The argument is not exactly original: Polarization and disinformation are pushing EU voters towards populist parties. And for that, there is no easy solution.

ironsoap , 11 months ago

NYPost so I’m going to start with a grain of salt and wait for more sourcing to come out.

With that said, I love the way you put that. I could not agree more.