Overzeetop @ Overzeetop @beehaw.org

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2 yr. ago

as a consumer accepting that

That's the special condition we get in the US, though - there is little or no effective choice across the spectrum. Without regulation, corporations will become asymptotic to maximum financial extraction techniques. There are few real choices at the consumer level and the barriers to entry are such that a single consumer - or even an uncoordinated (read: without a national, staffed organization) - cannot circumvent the system.

So…these heat pumps are doing recirculating hot water systems? I presume they have a heat exchanger that either heats the flow directly or has a (small?) reservoir tank that connects to the legacy system?

I ask because nearly every heat pump in the US is forced air and I’m not even aware (and I work in the architecture industry) of a residential product that uses an exterior heat exchanger to heat water. Your outdoor heat exchangers are indistinguishable from ours (the small units we refer to as “mini-splits”).

Maybe in somewhere free like the EU or SEA. In the US, most phones bought from a carrier (and most sales are that way, some exclusively so) are locked so that no other SIM (e or physical) can be used.

Okay - how about corporate data; deep dives into intimate corporate workings and connections by financial wonks.

This isn’t “shady companies mining data in secret” - these are registered, for profit corporations who’s stated goal is to collect, sort, and mine trillions of bytes of information and provide output of any cross section in any sort order to anyone with a big check book. Koch brothers. Disney. Russia. Anyone. The problem isn’t that the NSA is doing its job with budgeted funds, it’s that we allow this service to exist.

At this point, I think the only possible solution, aside from the obvious and cheaper life without parole, is to move to a pneumatically operated guillotine. We know that any post-separation convulsions are entirely disconnected from the brain. Sure, it's a little messy, but retribution and vengeance have their drawbacks. Just clean up the mess or stop executing people.

On a realistic note, I would not be surprised that holding his breath led to his "torture" with CO2 building up in his blood as he intentionally writhed and resulting in actual discomfort as the body reacted to the CO2 even as the lack of oxygen in the breathing mix caused him to lose consciousness. It's his final act to make a posthumous case (real or sensational) against his executioners. I find it hard to imagine that trace CO2, in even welding N2, would be sufficient to cause a reaction unless they intentionally got a gas mix (I don't weld with N2, but 75Ar/25CO2 is very common for MIG).

It's not that at all. I keep tabs on several far-flung friends and relatives on FB. Zero spam. TBF, I make it a point to click on ads for things I don't need but don't mind seeing (rockets, 3D printers, vocal jazz stuff). Of course, I'm on IPv4 with my whole household, so if I search for hiking shoes, everyone in the house gets FB ads for hiking shoes. I got a bunch of ads for Merino Wool outerwear in mid December. My wife was kind enough to get me several base layers for Christmas. There is no good and bad, just poor internet management and hygiene (IMHO).

At the risk of playing devils advocate, are they not allowed to subscribe to newspapers without a warrant? This is publicly purchasable information bought by a (checks notes) agency with the expressed mission if gathering as much data as possible.

If Rep Wyden wants to prevent this, the first - and most important - legislative action is to prevent its collection and sale, not some anti-TLA circle jerk about the NSA buying it on the open market.

With the small carve out exception of people who are fine with the antisocial behavior and management style of the owner, Inertia is the only reason. Governments, influencers, corporations- they all have a following and an established channel which involves minimum expense to maintain.

Across a stage? Do you really think Trump will attend a debate? Or that his followers will care either way?

No, the play here is you have to find someone that 30% of the electorate will actively vote for. You've already lost the anti-zionists, the envronmentalists, the Cubans, the Catholic hispanics, the student loan forgivenessers, the low-taxers, the gas-pricers, and the libertarians. EV enthusiasts are gone too, since half are listening to Musk as a demigod and the other half are mad that everyone is throwing their weight behind his charging standard and giving him patent royalty money. No, what's left (ha!) are the milquetoast republicans and globalist democrats who you must court enough to register actual votes in actual precincts. Oh sure, there are a handful of centrist body autonomists who are mad about Roe (but weren't preemptively angry enough to vote in Hillary) that you have in your back pocket, but there has to be enough to counter the brain-washed MAGA crowd. And the MAGA crowd may be a little less confused about whether early voting is Liberal Ballot Box Stuffing or part of the MAGA master plan to spread Patriotism and a Can of American Whoopass™ and get their votes in early this time.

None, of course. This is an ivory tower sort of article, a pining for an America that doesn't exist right now. She's the Left's version of Matt Gaetz saying that Mike Johnson is too liberal and rolls over for the Democrats. It's a good path to a D loss in the fall, and Vladimir must be excited to have her on his team.

There is nobody else with the name recognition or independent/middle clout - the swing voters the Ds need to win. Who are you going to put up - Kamala? Bernie? The middle/middle-right would rather stay home and sit on their hands while Trump drags out his base in the big red states. The best possible outcome is for Biden to take the economic momentum into a win and then step down and give the next generation 3+ years to forge their path. Of course, if you're a Lefty, you don't want Kamala either, so the only option is for the entire administration to step away and watch a true Left slate fail miserably in every swing state.

IT sounds all gloom and doom, but if the original had been that effective we'd have a smaller vaccine-denier population right now. Silver linings and all...

I've heard of that in Portugal! Barbershop is actually an art form that was appropriated from African slaves who brought an oral tradition with them to America and morphed from the spirituals they sang; it was developed more though the Vaudeville practice and modern barbershop (the organization and preservation of the art form) started as a lark in the 40s. The less I sing it, the more I enjoy it when I do - it's very distinctive, so a little goes a long way.

Many Linux distributions have very good user experience for beginners

I 100% agree. The issue isn't beginners, it's people who already know windows, and only windows. They'd be just as lost switching to OSX. Kids pick up chromebooks easily, but most adults - the ones who have 5-8 year old machines with only 8GB - are completely lost. I tried to get my mother onto LibreOffice (okay, Open Office...it's been that long) and it lasted less than a week and one panicked old-lady newsletter deadline. She was utterly lost, and no amount of help would get her out. To be fair, she gets lost when her phone updates to the newest major OS revision.

I choose one of those niche distributions since I have advanced requirements.

I chose windows for the same reason - specialized industry where nearly all tools are written for Windows. I have $15k in software, $200k in setup and procedures, and $100-200k in training I would have to redo to switch to linux, and while that was happening I would have zero income, so double those numbers for net losses. That's assuming I could even find perfect analogs in the linux world, which is unlikely, and that I was willing to receive and send non-standard files to all of my colleagues. I could consider Wine/Proton, but then I'd have to learn it or risk losing $2000/day plus the cost of tracking down repairs if anything (like an update) broke a critical piece of software. It simply not worth the financial risk.

Barbershop. I know, weird, right? It gets weirder. This is a weekend event - a "brigade". The best way to describe it is like a pick-up basketball tournament. 100 guys show up, they get randomly (by position forward/center/guard or bass/bari/lead/tenor) into 25 "teams". Instead of basketball plays and general sport, we all learn - note perfect - twelve fairly complex songs. Each team gets assigned one of the songs and, after an hour of rehearsal, compete against one another (we have voice judges, like the Olympics have gymnastics judges). It's all for shits and grins, but mostly for the brotherhood* of shared song. We split up and do programs for local school music departments, and all get together to form a 100 man chorus for a benefit concert the second nite. Unlike most choral events, we all know the same songs, so you find three others and go. All day and all night for two days. Lunches or dinners at local restaurants often turn flash-mob performance.

Again, it's weird from the outside. From the inside it's like 99 friends best friends or family members, but without the family discord.

*There has almost always been women in barbershop, but we were officially separated into our own societies/organizations until recently. Falling numbers will do that - it's an old art form and the men who were around when it is popular are passing on. Anyway, several of these weekends are now gender inclusive and, from what I understand, awesomer as a result. I'll get to go to my first in two months. We're also adding semi-modern repertoire. Sugar (maroon 5) and Feel it Still (Portugal The Man) are on the song list, for example. Last weekend they threw in a Garth Brooks and Joe Diffy songs. Not 2023/24, but not 1923/24 either.

5000 civilians (women who have borne children) killed is just a statistic; 2 mothers killed each hour is horrific and brutal. Love the intent, hate the headline. I'm with you, I'd prefer they not attempt to ply me with "think of the children mothers" rhetoric. This is a humanitarian disaster; it's a shame so many humans have been immunized to destruction and empathetic grief by religion.

in the code that was talking to the ink cartridge.

So the flaw is in the printer or driver, and HP has just admitted to shipping an insecure, nay negligently dangerous, product to consumers?

So far, so good. Sang with a hundred people over the weekend and haven't gotten sick (yet). Small victories.

This is like people abandoning a stick shift and rigid frames/chasses for modern automatic/CVT and and unibody with crumple zones. The latter are complicated, expensive, and inefficient - but substantially more forgiving to the average driver who merely wants to get from A to B with the minimum amount of effort. Linux will be there for people who choose to dedicate hundreds of hours a year to the hobby of computers. For everyone else who doesn't want to open their laptop to replace the keyboard, update their wireless card, and clean or replace the system fans and solder in a new power connector, buying a new laptop with the extra horsepower (to overcome the code creep) will offer them all those things at a price cheaper than even taking them to the corner repair shop to get the mechanical failures fixed.

Oh, it didn't take Israel for the venture capitalists among them to want to harvest defense money. AI support has always had a contingent that intends to use it for military purposes. Same with remote vehicles. Same with robots. Same with, well, pretty much every advance in science - chemical agents, biological agents, lasers, space, nuclear power. Practically anything we create has a military use if you're morally bankrupt or thirsty for power or money. Nearly every project starts out with "to serve mankind" as its goal.