True. And unfortunately certain privacy measures can make it easier to digitally fingerprint you as a user. Also my mind is still blown since I learned about canvas fingerprinting. EFF.org describes it as follows:
Canvas fingerprinting is invisible to the user. A tracker can create a “canvas” in your browser, and generate a complicated collage of shapes, colors, and text using JavaScript. Then, with the resulting collage, the tracker extracts data about exactly how each pixel on the canvas is rendered. Many variables will affect the final result. These include your operating system, graphics card, firmware version, graphics driver version, and installed fonts.
These settings are different from one computer to the next. But they tend to be consistent enough on a single machine to clearly identify a user.
Sounds like you're on the right path, and I know you didn't ask, but just wanted to chime in. I love cooking, and have both stainless and cast iron skillets. The circlejerk for cast iron is strong, but I have to say, it's genuinely the best available non-stick pan once it's seasoned properly. I can make a perfect omelette, sear scallops, steaks, sautee vegetables, & use it as a pan for oven roasting chickens and roasts. I use it for bread baking as well. They're cheap (compared to clad cookware) and I'm not sure I could damage my pan even if I wanted to. They're extremely sturdy, and hold heat very well. I clean mine with cold water and a stiff bristle brush, dry, lightly oil (when it looks like it needs it) & it's ready to go.
Down side to cast iron pans is that they need some care in the initial seasoning stages, and it stinks up the house when you season them (do it outside on the bbq if you have one!). It's a bit messy to keep them oiled. They're heavy and not ergonomic. Can't use them to simmer acidic sauces because that actually will soften and strip the seasoning, so I use my stainless for that. Get one, season it correctly, and you'll never look back.
Fair point. However, we still run in the same professional circles & there would be blow back. The fraud thing offends my core values on fairness, but its easier for me to leave it weighing on my conscience, than report it and stay up at night wondering if it will come back to bite me in my professional life and make it harder to keep a roof over my head and food on my table. It's a shitty situation.
Uncarbonated liquids are dead simple to titrate, it's true. For a carbonated product like beer, it's actually a much more complicated problem than it seems. The amount of foam you get on a keg pour of beer is effected by a lot of variables - how clean the lines are, how cold the lines are, how long the lines are, the diameter of the lines, whether you're using beergas or co2, how old the beer is, if it's keg conditioned or force carbonated, how recently the keg was moved into refrigeration, how cold the beer itself is, if it's the first pour of the day or if the tap has been running frequently, the mechanical design of the faucet, the temperature, cleanliness, shape, and size of the glass it's going into, and more. It's really fiddly business, I can't see how a push button system could take everything into account and render less wastage than a human operator with a feel for the system. Draft systems are voodoo, ask me how I know.
Anyway companies typically have an unrealistic expectation of what draft wastage ought to be. I would advise any bar to expect something like 15% wastage at minimum on professional draft equipment, more if they're using bargain grade hardware anywhere in the system, but ownership doesn't want to hear that.
Managed a shop for over 10 years and took on duties to the point that the owner was only there for a few hours a week in the morning to check emails. The store did record business during the early covid days, and never closed the doors for a single day. The staff was stretched thin, stressed, and everyone was working like crazy and a bit nervous about health because we had a couple older guys working with us and nobody knew the harm profile of covid at that time. The owner bought expensive store improvements (with profits, and fraudulently claimed federal covid benefits) instead of paying the staff, or even saying thanks in any way. See ya!
I want to report them for the fraud thing, but I'm the only one who knows about it aside from the owner, so they'd know it was me who reported it.
we’d need to make our society one that’s less hostile to having kids
You allude to some of this, but in addition, and as a precondition, we need to make our society one that's less hostile to the people that currently exist in it.
"An essential part of life in Canada, is living in Canada. Having a place to live cannot become a luxury and economic bargaining chip for the wealthy. It's a necessity and a cornerstone of the dignity and pride we have in the prosperity of our nation - that when we aspire to our highest ideals, everybody in this country has a seat at the table. This inclusiveness is what makes us who we are. That's why my government has an extensive action plan for housing, which includes comprehensive liaison projects with all the provinces and cities of this country to make sure that the federal government is doing everything it can to secure the basic human need of housing, and that it is something that is never out of reach for any of our citizens."
Speaking specifically about the 'Podcast Playlist' show - while I don't disagree that it can be an interesting nexus for new information, I don't think it needs to be on the air at all. If the objective is curation, that could easily and more effectively be done via an online feed where the shows are actually hyperlinked, tagged, & made accessible. I'm not a radio producer so, grain of salt. But from my armchair, seems to me that the CBC should aspire to something higher than 'content aggregation' or rebroadcasting material from other stations. I expect that sort of thing from a donation funded campus & community radio station where maybe someone isn't in the booth at 2am, but not from a national broadcaster that receives funding from Canadian taxpayers.
With Writers & Company, I was referring to the host stepping down. I don't know about you, but in my opinion, she kind of was the show in a sense. AFAIK there won't be any new episodes, and that's a loss.
More broadly, I like that Canada has a national broadcaster, I just think it could be better.
I kind of agree with your premise about education vs training. But, I know someone who just finished a PhD thesis on an aspect of social media. These people are out there & could probably establish rapport without much friction. And at the end of the day, I'd say it's better if these projects are spearheaded by people who have some wisdom about the waters that we're going out into. Though, yeah, I share your pessimism more generally.
Yeah, could be. I'd like to see funding for the CBC maintained, and think it's so valuable to have a national broadcaster. At the same time, can I take a moment to bellyache about CBC radio? Some of their programming makes me a bit sad. Like having a show that simply repeats podcasts produced by other people, occasionally about American news stories. There's no reason for that to be on the airwaves in 2023. Programs like The Sunday Edition, and Writers and Company are gone, and it seems like a lot of the spoken word programs are in the weeds on fringe issues. It's just not the first preset on my dial anymore. And it's too bad because I used to really look forward to tuning in. Maybe radio is dying, I don't know.
Won't different media companies have different red lines for what gets blacklisted and what doesn't, and wouldn't that be at best confusing, and worse, a political quagmire? Let's say (after the fediverse gains some momentum) an influential politician uses a self hosted instance to exclusively communicate their policies, and as a home for their political base, but leaves the server moderated well below an acceptable level on purpose. Are media companies obligated to defederate it? Will they? Seems like there is a whole new world of trade-offs and grey areas here.
Even if we assume troll instances are easily and effectively defederated and can't be spun up faster than they can be collectively blocked. Other than volunteer moderation, what stops an ocean of trolls from flooding better-known, federated instances?
Just want to make clear - I'm 100% an advocate for the fediverse, I'm here because I think it's awesome right now. I just worry about the chances for it to get drowned in troll/malicious/corporate material as it grows in popularity, and I'm trying to think if there are any ways to stem that tide. Seems reasonable to expect that it will start coming.
I didn't know about the BBC thing, that's a pretty big deal for the fediverse. A question though, in the linked BBC article, it seems like they're heavily relying on moderation to come from the home instance of anyone who posts a reply to a BBC post. If a self hosted troll server decides to start aggressively spamming these media accounts, or posts illegal material as replies to their posts, what could a media organization do to stop it? Is there any protection against say a wide network of troll servers working together?
Traditional social media at least theoretically has a better ability to shut this sort of activity down because they can see the whole picture of user activity and use algorithms to discover and ban bots. I worry that decentralization itself will become an attack vector for malicious activity.
True. And unfortunately certain privacy measures can make it easier to digitally fingerprint you as a user. Also my mind is still blown since I learned about canvas fingerprinting. EFF.org describes it as follows: