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  • Right. It only takes one or a very few people to forcibly centralize power. It takes effort by an overwhelming majority working together to spread it out.

  • I just saw someone on Facebook saying the aurora being bigger than usual was caused by the weather radars.

    I mean ignoring the fact that the aurora has gone through phases for all of recorded history, the amount of energy it would take to generate that is enormous. Do they think we've launched a bunch of nuclear power plants into orbit to power these things? Or maybe the giant nuclear power plant in the sky might be the real reason?

    No, they just don't understand the scale of things because they're used to their small town thinking. Just like they don't understand how much a billion dollars is and why one persons shouldn't be allowed to have that much while others have none.

  • Like nearly every other "communist" regime that has existed in modern history, this is actually fascism pretending to be communism. Communism means the people hold power, here we have a single individual and his lackey's holding all the power. That's fascism.

  • And, though I don't know about this one in particular, just because you pay not to have personalized ads, doesn't mean you're paying not to have your data tracked and sold by this company or to not have tracking cookies added to your browser by them that other sites can use to target ads to you.

    It's just that they won't use the information they collect or buy or get from partners' tracking cookies or advertising IDs already on your system to target the ads you see while on their site and logged in.

  • It's not much power, so it's not likely to cause major or permanent damage, but it may affect others differently and could cause burns if left on too long like if someone is less sensitive and doesn't think it's live.

    And if the person is grounded and if they touch the hot side of the battery first there's a chance the charge could travel through the body rather than just the tongue. It's not enough to affect a heart, but might disrupt a pacemaker or other embedded device.

    And of the battery is leaking, it could cause permanent damage from chemical burns from the alkaline and poisoning from heavy metals which while unlikely to be deadly with just one battery, heavy metal poisoning is cumulative across a lifetime.

    So under ideal circumstances it is safe, but there are always risks with electricity and toxic chemicals, though relatively small.

  • Ouch, I never had that problem, but I only barely touch it, lol. It's a little shock and slightly numb briefly. But fortunately I never had full numbness that lasted more than a second or two. But I haven't done it in a long time since I have a tester now. 😁

  • Yeah, that works sometimes, but the way to fix it seems to change every time I have had to do it. And I have been using Wayland lately and haven't found a good way to do it that works with the latest versions.

  • That seems odd to me considering that antiabortion rules are on the line. I would think they'd be especially motivated to support Trump and get the Senate flipped Republican to keep a federal law from getting implemented to reverse the decision that government can force doctors to let you die if a fetus is the one killing you.

  • It failed often enough that it wasn't all that useful. A cheap battery tester is better. And for 9volts you can also use the tongue test, lol (don't really though). My grandfather used to do that all the time.

  • Glad I moved away from Windows on all my personal computers. Fedora with Plasma is so similar to Windows and so much better. If my non-tech partner can use it, then anyone can.

    Only problem is that Windows is better at resizing content on high resolution (4K) monitors. And ordering multiple monitors on the login screen doesn't always work right, but it's fine once logged in. And it takes a bit more to set up than preinstalled Windows that's on most computers when you buy them. But if it was preinstalled and set up already for the hardware like Windows usually is, it would be way better for nearly everyone.

  • Yeah, just hard to explain that to a layman, whereas "emulator" is a commonly known word. I get the difference, but most people don't.

  • It's not a high end game, so it should be fine to use emulation like proton and wine.

  • I don't know anyone spending less than half of their income on housing.

  • I mean if you're looking for people to con, then of course a huge group of people being actively conned so ridiculously easily is going to be a great hunting ground for them.

  • The answer to your question of why it's so hard to give artists your money is exactly the same as it has been for ages for all media. The few companies who survived the consolidation of the industry have done everything in their power to make sure they are the gatekeepers of content. They buy and merge or kill off any competing companies or technologies.

    They weren't successful with MP3s or with streaming because they didn't bother to understand the technology or that the Internet was the new marketplace and thought they could just do what they had done with physical media and pay for laws that protected their interests and sue everyone, but they ultimately lost control because you can't sue hundreds of millions of people like you can sue a few thousand stores. So they had to give the people what they wanted for a while so they could have time to buy up all of the companies.

    But they've now done that and paid enough to get the laws and precedents on interpreting those laws that they wanted, so courts are becoming better at enforcing those laws more quickly. So they can pressure new tech that pushes the limits on interpreting the laws to not last long enough to get people hooked. And now that they've reconsolidated most of the market and technologies as capitalism tends to do if you're patient enough and there's no possibility of monopoly regulation or market disruption, we're stuck with pirate or use the garbage they feed to us and most artists are back to having to sign their art away and sleep with executives to get the marketing and distribution from the gatekeepers just to get a chance at success. The rest have to rely on word of mouth and self distribution which even online can be expensive without the advantages of centralized hosting providers, merchant accounts, and bandwidth.

  • To get sorted to the top of the lists for biggest discount. To claim bigger losses in copyright infringement cases. And to increase the perceived immediacy to buy it to get a good deal to take advantage of impulse buying whereas if they have time to think about it they may not buy it at all. Plus rich people don't care how much something costs, so you'll get a few of them here and there buying it at full price.

  • You'd need to be able to replace the coatings on them. The scratch would likely be the easier part. The coatings might be hard to get. Most sold commercially are not as permanent and industrial ones are either very proprietary or require expensive equipment that wouldn't be worth it for a one pair of lenses.

  • And the Republicans that lose this year will do everything in their power to create as many lawsuits as possible so they can't possibly be worked out by next Jan. And they'll draw out those to avoid having to provide evidence and that will be the justification for the next insurrection attempts, likely widespread ones at all levels of government.

  • It's pretty fucked up. But maybe the solution is to make nudity more acceptable in the society. It's not a coincidence that South Korea is such a big target for it because sex and nudity are so taboo there. The US is not that much better, but enough that it doesn't feel as invasive to as much of the population and thus it doesn't have as much value to people using it to shame and control women. But of course that takes generations to change and would require a lot of women to do unsafe things to affect the change. So it's not something that will happen quickly.