anaximander

One thing I often see is people not understanding the difference between secrecy and privacy. They ask why it matters if you're not doing anything wrong. A UK government minister actually said "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear", and then backpedaled when someone pointed out they were quoting Joseph Goebbels. The analogy I've seen is simple: I'm sure you don't do anything illegal in the shower, but I'm also pretty sure most people would be uncomfortable with a law that required you to have a police officer standing in you bathroom with a video camera to record you showering, just in case.

The other thing is the assumption that any information about you that the government actually has about you will only be used against you if you commit a crime, in which case you'll deserve it - if you're not a bad person then it's fine. This is a double fallacy.

First, we've seen that information can be used to do all sorts of things regardless of wrongdoing - if someone knows enough about you, they can use it to manipulate you. I don't mean blackmail or whatever, although that's an option. I mean that with a clear enough picture of your preferences and biases and habits, someone can tailor their actions and information to your psychology and make you think whatever they want you to agree with.

Second, it assumes that you won't ever commit a crime because crimes are bad things and you're not a bad person. This overlooks the possibility of you being mistakenly accused while innocent, but more importantly it overlooks the possibility that the government will change into something that holds different moral values to yours. Even in the modern world we've seen places outlaw abortions, or criminalise homosexuality, or pass laws on what religions you're allowed to follow. If that happens in your country and you find yourself on the wrong side of whatever arbitrary line they've now drawn, you may regret giving them so much information about you - information that lets them identify you, prove that you broke their new rules, and ruin your life in so many ways.

The default principal of any exchange with governments, businesses, or any entity taking your information should be to give as much information as is required for them to perform the operation you're requesting of them, and no more - and wherever possible to only engage with those entities that you trust to have that information; a trust that they earn by a verified and unbroken track record of ethical and trustworthy behaviour.

If people who break laws can't vote, and the government decides what the law is and appoints the judges who enforce those laws, then the government currently in power can decide who gets to vote. Obviously there's an incentive there to make laws that disproportionately affect those who weren't going to vote for you, and thereby remove most of your opposition's votes. That way lies dictatorship.

It also makes it hard to change bad laws. For a random example, there used to be laws against homosexuality. How do you think LGBT acceptance in law would be doing if anyone who was openly gay or trans lost their right to vote? How do you improve access to abortion if anyone who has an abortion, provides an abortion, teaches young people about abortion, or seeks information about abortions becomes unable to vote? How do you change any unjust law if the only people who can vote are those who are unaffected - or indeed, those who benefit from the status quo?

From his own comment, he's signing the NDA because it's the only way to find out what Meta want, and he figures knowing is better than not knowing. At no point has he indicated that he's going to work with them at all, and an NDA doesn't give them control or any guarantee of cooperation.

£5 says he comes back and says "I can't discuss details because of the NDA, but... no" and it goes no further.

A whole generation has been raised with tech that just works and if on the rare occasion it goes wrong, it goes very wrong and either needs IT/Customer Service/etc to fix it for you because the problem is very technical, or it's just broken and you get a new one. This means they have no problem-solving skills because none of the problems they've faced were solvable, and they're scared to get it wrong because getting it wrong breaks things in ways that are bad and expensive. Coming into an environment where trial and error is now not just ok, but expected, is a reversal of some deeply ingrained habits for them. That doesn't mean they can't learn, but it does make it a bit of a culture shock for them.

I think this highlights a very good point. It's totally ok for everything to gravitate to a central instance as long as that instance is run in a way that everyone is happy with. The key is the the moment something changes and users aren't happy, the decentralised nature of Lemmy gives those users an exit strategy - a way to replace the bad instance and carry on.

If a single Lemmy instance becomes the new Reddit and then pulls a move that angers the community the way Reddit has recently, users wouldn't be reduced to protests and hoping that management listen, they could just spin up new instances, mirror the content, and carry on like nothing happened.

Parts of it may actually be required under EU law. GDPR requires that anyone holding data on EU citizens comply with certain things, including a request to delete certain kinds of data. The EU has shown themselves willing to go after sizeable corporations for violations; most Lemmy instance operators are much smaller. This should probably be addressed before people find themselves on the wrong end of lawsuits.

Let's imagine there was somehow zero rental market. Imagine there was a law against purchasing a dwelling and then not actually using it as your residence. People still need to live somewhere, so there would be a demand for housing. People would see a profit in meeting that demand, so someone would build and sell housing. Currently, those who can't afford to buy a home have rental as a cheap alternative. Without that, there would be an open niche for something to meet the need for housing. There would be a market pressure to solve the discrepancy between the price of housing and the available capital of the average person. House prices might be forced down, salaries might be forced up, I don't know what would happen precisely but there would be a pressure to make it possible for people to live somewhere.

You can see evidence for this in what happened in a lot of major cities. People have been able to use one home that they own as collateral in buying a second, and then use the income from renting it out to pay that off plus a little profit. That leaves them with two properties as collateral and a little cash spare, making it easier to do it again with a more expensive place. Rinse and repeat and you've got wealthy landlords buying up all the properties so there's no need for the people selling those properties to drop prices to where first-time buyers can afford them - the usual dynamics of supply and demand that keep prices in reach of buyers have been disrupted, and the two types of buyer separate into two tiers that get pushed further apart, getting harder and harder for people to jump from the lower tier to the upper. This is how you end up with people paying £1000 in rent while the bank tells them they can't have a £700-a-month mortgage because they can't afford it, and that £1000 a month leaves them nothing left over to save up for the £30,000 deposit they'd need anyway. The market pressure that led to this situation are obvious, and reversing those pressures is the most obvious way to fix the situation.

Apparently the viewport was rated for 1300m, and they were driving to 4000m. The fact it survived as long as it did is testament to the manufacturer's standards. The fact that it failed is utterly unsurprising.

Also the inspector they hired to verify the sub's safety was denied when he requested equipment to scan and test the hull integrity, was fired when he raised these concerns, and was sued for leaking company secrets when he tried to report it to OSHA.

Honestly the only surprising part is that it survived the previous thirteen dives before this one.

As a space behind your house where kids can run about and play, that is safer and nicer to look at than a concrete or bare-earth yard, then I totally support it, particularly if you're in a climate where they don't need much help. As a big pointless expanse to look at and not use for anything, or in parts of the world where keeping the lawn requires massive effort and expense and continual watering, it's a huge waste. And if you're going to have a lawn, at least put some flowerbeds around with pollinator-friendly plants.

My garden has a lawn, because I have a toddler. It also has deep borders stuffed with plants, and at this time of year you can't go half a minute without seeing a bee or a butterfly or something. Also, in this part of the world I don't have to do much to keep it looking good, besides mowing it and chucking a bit of seed on the occasional worn spot.

The fact that Lemmy can federate is an advantage on its own, even if in practice we mostly don't. A federated Reddit wouldn't have had to resort to the blackout; users could have spun up their own instances, defederated from the central instance, and carried on, cutting the problematic management out with very little actual loss to the rest of the community. Even if a single instance ends up dominating, the possibility of federation is a big win for users.

When you speak, those in hearing hear your words, and then they're gone. You speak again, and can choose to say things differently. Thus, the spoken word evolves. New phrases, new pronunciations.

When you write, the written text exists and persists, potentially for a long time. At various times in history, writing has been something that took time or expensive materials, so it was less common to do it for trivial or short-lived purposes. It's easy to forget in the modern digital age with the disposable, ephemeral nature of Twitter and text messaging, but by its very nature, writing is designed to last. Therefore, it evolves more slowly.

That brutally simplifies a whole field of linguistic research, but it's an explanation.

I've been a professional software engineer for over ten years now. I didn't study anything to do with computers until I was 20; I'd been aiming for a different career and was halfway through a degree before I discovered I didn't enjoy it and wasn't getting very good grades, so I swapped.

While at uni, I was part of the student mentor program where I did teaching assistant work for the lower years. One of the students in the lab group I assisted was a guy in his forties who'd seen his factory job automated away and decided if computers were going to take his job, he'd go learn how to work with computers and move into the sector that was creating jobs rather than removing them. He was a good student and picked things up quickly. I have every confidence he's still out there doing well as an engineer.

22 is a perfectly fine age to start. If you've got the right attitude - the desire and motivation to focus on your studies and put in the work - you'll do great.

One thing worth being aware of beforehand though is how a lot of your studying might go. The professor I assisted in those labs told me about an observation that's been made in the teaching profession, and I saw it in action myself. A lot of computer science and programming is about finding the mental model that helps you understand what's happening, how the computers work. Until you find it, you'll be stuck. Then, something will click, and it'll make sense. The professor told me they don't see the usual bell curve of grades - they see two. One cluster of students at the bottom who don't get it, and one higher up who understand. A lot of learning computing is less of a linear progression and more a process of running into the wall until you chance upon the particular explanation or analogy or perspective that works for the way you think, and then suddenly that particular concept is easy, and it's onto the next one. This series of little clicks is how you progress.

Once you've got a few core concepts down it's easier to work out how new things fit into the mental model you're constructing, but be prepared for the early bits to have some frustrating periods where it feels like you aren't getting anywhere. Stick at it, and look around for other resources, other books or tutorials, other people to explain it their way. I frequently saw a student look totally clueless at my explanation, but another student who's understood what I said would paraphrase it slightly differently, and that was all it took for the clueless student to suddenly understand and pass the exercise. That lightbulb moment is as fun to experience yourself as it is to bring about in others. You just have to hang in there until it happens.

A lot of food places, particularly eat-in restaurants, are just perpetually struggling. Half the staff are on minimal pay, or the owner's friends and family helping out. They struggle and lose money for a few years before finally folding. A regular who has no idea about the industry buys the place and keeps much of it the same because they always loved it. The process repeats.

It restarts at random.

Very much an industry of two halves. Some companies absolutely do not care about you and will drive you to do more with less and for longer hours until you burn out, and then replace you with the next poor sucker. Offers will bend over backwards to look after their people and maintain a working environment where everyone gets a say and is happy and able to be at their best. Which one you get can be a total coin flip, and even sat talking to them in a job interview it's sometimes easy to mistake one for the other.

A lot of the punchlines are "ha ha, aren't they weird?", which hits totally different if you're the sort of person who the character is an obvious caricature of. Doubly so if the weirdness in question is associated with some form of neurodivergence. For some people - myself included - a lot of the laughs in that show feel very much like they're laughing at you, not with you. It's only funny if you identify more with the people on the other side of the joke.

Plus Logitech gear is, in my experience, pretty well made. My Logitech joystick lasted easily ten years, and I've got a Logitech mouse that's about twelve years old and still works fine.

Yes.

I started looking at writing a bot that comments on conversations with links to similar discussions happening on other instances, which might help these scattered discussions to find each other and join up.

Interviewers don't mind you describing flaws in a company to explain why you left, if those flaws are real flaws. What they hate is when a candidate blames their failings on the company rather than honestly identify and take responsibility for their own shortcomings.

What that means is that if you're going to say something bad about a former employer, keep it brief, stick to factual, provable things with minimal emotive content, and describe how that meant they're a bad fit for you. If you can describe a way your employer did things badly, explain why you weren't in a position to change it, and then describe a better way that you wish they'd do and that happens to line up with how your potential new employer does do things, that can be a good way to show you'll fit in because you agree with their practices or management style or whatever it is.

Honestly I think that's just a failing of community ethos. It'd be nice to bring back the expectation that people make the bare minimum attempt to check the rules of a community they're trying to participate in, and let moderators just assume that everyone has read the sidebar rules. If you haven't, and you break a rule by accident... well, tough luck, you'll get the same treatment as everyone else. Next time, read before posting.

I love how well this little aircraft has worked out. The official mission for it was to validate an idea - to conduct five flights to demonstrate that it was possible, so that future missions could potentially include a little scout drone that could fly ahead and help find routes through difficult terrain. Then it worked so well that they started doing that on this mission, too - they're past fifty flights now and have been using photos from Ingenuity to plan Perseverance's next moves. The team who built this little drone must be thrilled.

If prices go up, and stay up, eventually things like salaries have to go up too, at least a bit. If you need a certain amount per month to live when last year you could get by on less, you'll need a job that pays you enough to live. In theory if the price of goods has gone up then the value of whatever you're producing for your company has gone up so they can afford to give you the extra (in practice they take a lot of the extra as profit and pass on just enough to retain employees and no more). Of course, it's the same physical item, so eventually it all sort of balanced out.

You can see this if you look at it in the long term. In 1970 the average salary in the UK was something like £1200 per year, and a house cost £4500 or something. Today the average UK salary is over £27,000 and a house is around £285,000. The houses haven't got 61 times larger or anything, that's just inflation. So, yeah, you kind of are just stuck with it.

This is why Right To Repair is a big deal. Not just because it reduces waste by fixing what might have been thrown away, not just because it allows you to do what you want with the device that you supposedly own, and not just because it breaks the monopoly and requires pricing of repair services to actually be competitive - although all those things are important. It's also because if a device can be repaired, some people will be encouraged to learn how to repair it, and in doing so they'll learn a valuable problem-solving mindset. We need to be mindful of how we first introduce young people to technology to avoid this learned helplessness and instil the attitudes that will allow them to function when they're adults and it's now their job to look under the hood and make it all work.

I used to work at a place that made smart chargers for EVs. They did all sorts of intelligent scheduling, V2H and V2G, grid response and load shedding, some really clever stuff. The standard for most charger interfaces allows for the vehicle to communicate a load of information to the charger, and almost none of them implemented any more than the bare minimum. I'm many cases the charger can't even tell how full the car's battery is, it just has to charge until the car disconnects itself and stops charging, and assume it's done so because it's full. So, I wouldn't be surprised if Teslas don't communicate as much over OBD as you'd expect given the standard it supposedly implements. Manufacturers seem to be quite content to keep that stuff proprietary wherever they can.

The EU is also working on Right To Repair legislation that iirc has something to say about reasonable prices for repair supplies and spare parts. In that case, even if only Apple-made batteries work, they'd still be affordable, or at least within a reasonable percentage of what they actually cost and not marked up enormously.

The thing with science is that you can't just accept things because they seem obvious. The scientific method exists for a reason. Sometimes things that look obvious turn out to be false, and sometimes proving an obvious thing to be true is a necessary first step to have a solid foundation from which to build other more nuanced hypotheses. Either way, the point is that studies aren't all about finding some new and surprising conclusion. Sometimes they're about taking something you were pretty sure of already, and making it into actual science.

Also included in this are reviews on things that are not the product - I remember seeing one that was like "great product, but I'm giving it one star because it was delivered late and the delivery driver was rude" - and reviews based on the buyer's own failings, like "I didn't read the assembly instructions and put it together wrong, and then it didn't work properly, so I'm giving it a negative review".

Simplest implementation is that an instance searches its own content while sending requests to federated instances and merging their results in with its own based on whatever method the instance admins want (whether it puts its own results at the top, or treats them as one set, or whatever). That could cause a lot of traffic and has a load of latency while your search spreads out hop by hop, to the instances that yours is federated with, to the ones they're federated with, etc. Plus you'd need a mechanism to stop instances from sending a search to an instance that's already got it, to avoid hammering instances that have multiple federation paths to yours. Not an easy problem.

You might be able to do some kind of index publication where an instance publishes the most notable posts for other instances to include in their indexes, so that when you search it could show you results from among hot posts elsewhere in the fediverse - not an exhaustive list, but a search within posts that are getting attention.

There's also other stuff I'd be tempted to experiment with, like using some kind of TF-IDF ranking to choose what counts as "most notable", rather than just activity or view count, so that posts that are particularly relevant to certain topics could be publicised. An instance could even choose to filter that, so for example an instance who chooses to focus on tech topics could publicise highly-relevant tech posts but filter out politics keywords even when a post gets high relevance scores, so that political discussion on that instance is less visible, even when searched for.

Translation: "I support people being able to voice their opinions, as long as it doesn't affect me being able to do whatever I want".

The water level will be affected by the car's acceleration, which is likely also affecting your inner ear and causing the illusion in the first place.

Part of it will depend on what data you're holding, and part will depend on who's running the instance. A lot of people won't be covered, but I'd wager there's some here and there who need to consider it.

Stoicism says something similar, although it gets there via a very different route.

Continuing to support demand for beef at current rates as the population grows means that beef production must increase. That means we need more cows. Where do you propose we put all those cows? The current solution has been to cut down trees to create usable land. What's your alternative?

Any of that could be done; there's some parts that are more challenging but there are certainly harder things that have been solved by open-source software. I know almost nothing about how Lemmy's innards are built though, so I couldn't hazard a guess as to how much effort any of it would take. Some of it could possibly be achieved through separate services that you could host alongside a Lemmy instance, or entirely on their own, while other parts would really work best as features within Lemmy's own codebase.

It's more, point out past employers' flaws where it doesn't look like an excuse for your own, or where you can use it to show that the reasons you left that employer totally won't apply here because this place is better in exactly the ways you're looking for.

This is the same thing that happens with Windows and Mac. Your issue was hardware; you could have tried any of the other manufacturers who make Android phones. It's like saying you stick with Mac because you don't like Dell - there are other hardware brands who use the same operating system.