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1,118
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • It would probably be some synthetic American government cheese-like product.

    Which I'm sure if the Germans had come up with it and not the Americans would also be described as being nutritious

  • That's correct. It's intended for a US audience.

    If it were based on the European Overton window and you were American then there's a good chance you would complain about its centre being centre-left for you.

    It's not wrong; you're just not in the intended audience.

    It's not really possible to give internationally correct ratings. What an American considers centre-left is different from what a Frenchman considers centre-left, which is different from what a Pole considers centre-left. You can only report one, and the other two will then complain about it being wrong from their perspective.

  • Someone just told me that it "labels everything short of fascism as 'left-leaning'" and "tries to shift the Overton window" even further right than it already is in the US.

    And I suppose that is correct if your idea of the spectrum of normal political opinions is restricted to what you see on Lemmy, especially if your instance hasn't defederated from Hexbear yet.

  • I'm honestly quite concerned that his cronies might actually succeed in stealing the election this time around.

    They learned from their mistakes.

  • Why are we supporting this shithole? If the US wants to play hegemon and we're not even doing it to promote democracy, world peace, or anything else like that. There's not even a profit incentive here. If Israel collapses next month, we could get over it in a matter of weeks.

  • $20 fee to talk to the gate agent

  • If you can't take the heat, get out of Ukraine.

  • Because I am a developer and I have also been a sysadmin, and I really do not care. Yes, the format is good but I'm not particularly excited for it.

  • And I suppose sysadmins and application developers are not people?

  • This is not an opinion. You have made a statement of fact. And you are wrong.

    At law, something being publicly available does not mean it is allowed to be used for any purpose. Copyright law still applies. In most countries, making something publicly available does not cause all copyrights to be disclaimed on it. You are still not permitted to, for example, repost it elsewhere without the copyright holder's permission, or, as some courts have ruled, use it to train an AI that then creates derivative works. Derivative works are not permitted without the copyright holder's permission. Courts have ruled that this could mean everything an AI generates is a derivative work of everything in its training data and, therefore, copyright infringement.

  • My argument is not "we have a current standard", it's "people don't give enough of a shit to change".

  • I think this might sound like a weird thing to say, but technical superiority isn't enough to make a convincing argument for adoption. There are plenty of things that are undeniably superior but yet the case for adoption is weak, mostly because (but not solely because) it would be difficult to adopt.

    As an example, the French Republican Calendar (and the reformed calendar with 13 months) are both evidently superior to the Gregorian Calendar in terms of regularity but there is no case to argue for their adoption when the Gregorian calendar works well enough.

    Another example—metric time. Also proposed as part of the metric system around the same time as it was just gaining ground, 100 seconds in a minute and 100 minutes in an hour definitely makes more sense than 60, but it would be ridiculous to say that we should devote resources into switching to it.

    Final example—arithmetic in a dozenal (base-twelve) system is undeniably better than in decimal, but it would definitely not be worth the hassle to switch.

    For similar reasons, I don't find the case for JPEG XL compelling. Yes, it's better in every metric, but when the difference comes down to a measly one or two megabytes compared to PNG and WEBP, most people really just don't care enough. That isn't to say that I think it's worthless, and I do think there are valid use cases, but I doubt it will unseat PNG on the Internet.

  • No, this law was last used to prosecute Cold War spies.

    Snowden was prosecuted for leaking national secrets, not treason. To be fair, he is technically guilty, but it would be a travesty of justice for him to be punished for it. I'm glad the Justice Department decided to let him off.

  • Rail competes with flights and driving for business. People are choosing not to take trains because it's worse than flying or driving. If you build it to the point where it's better than flying or driving, people will use it. Americans have no aversion to trains, they have aversions to bad service. See the Brightline projects and the Acela Express. High-speed, high-quality rail can work and be profitable in America.

    Road tolls in Texas compete with being unemployed. People have no choice but to drive and pay because of Texas's horrendous urban design.

  • Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason

    18 USC §2381