blindsight

@blindsight@beehaw.org

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blindsight, (edited )

Seems like this could be pretty useful. Probably overkill for my needs, but it’s nice that there are affordable fanless computers with this much power for 6W, now. We’ve come a long way from the Raspberry Pi Bi I started with!

The unexpected origins of a modern finance tool (www.sciencedaily.com)

In the early 1600s, the officials running Durham Cathedral, in England, had serious financial problems. Soaring prices had raised expenses. Most cathedral income came from renting land to tenant farmers, who had long leases so officials could not easily raise the rent. Instead, church leaders started charging periodic fees, but...

blindsight,

Really interesting avenue of research; who’d have thought that discounting future value, as a concept, would come from clergy in a tenuous political and financial position with the Reformation and the start of inflation.

I’m not an economic history expert by any stretch, but isn’t the 1600s the early start of the industrial revolution? Was the industrial revolution the cause of inflation? That would make sense, since it would be a major break in the value of capital in the short term to increase profits in the long term.

blindsight,

In Canada, I’ve never bothered with a VPN. Nobody in Canada has ever been successfully sued for torrent downloading of media, and BC courts have thrown out mass John Doe cases as a waste of the legal system’s time.

Even if it does go to court, there’s a principal in Canadian law that damages can be at most three times the value of the good (for punitive damages). For BluRay that’s, what, $50? They don’t want to go so the way to a judgement to give it that the entire legal process gets them a $150 judgement.

Even if courts go beyond treble damages, there’s a maximum fine of $5000 for non-commercial infringement. Even that isn’t with their legal costs to pursue.

So non-commercial piracy is de facto legal in Canada.

(IANAL, this is not legal advice.)

blindsight,

The whole movie changes if it’s a puff piece commissioned by Bruce Wayne after the fact…

blindsight,

Very well explained.

Anyone who’s on a variable rate mortgage and hasn’t increased their monthly payments significantly is going to be in a lot of trouble when they go to renew.

This might actually lead to housing prices dropping significantly.

blindsight,

I mean, they can try, but market forces are outside their control.

I don’t think the US wanted to have their housing market collapse in 2008 (?), but it happened nonetheless.

It would suck, psychologically, to “lose” 30% of my house’s value in a downturn, but it would be better for the economy if that happens. And, really, now that I’m a homeowner, all that really matters is the difference in house values when I go to sell/buy. So a downturn might actually be “good” for me, since the differential between this first and a “better” house would be smaller.

Right now, boomers are selling in hot markets to find lavish retirement, transferring wealth from the younger generation to older on massive volumes.

Vimms Lair is getting removal notices from Nintendo etc. We need someone to help make a rom pack archive can you help? (slrpnk.net)

Vimms lair is starting to remove many roms that are being requested to be removed by Nintendo etc. soon many original roms, hacks, and translations will be lost forever. Can any of you help make archive torrents of roms from vimms lair and cdromance? They have hacks and translations that dont exist elsewhere and will probably be...

blindsight,

I don’t think that’s an issue. Downloading a partial is a problem on private trackers since there are so few users, but on a public tracker, someone downloading a partial is just making the swarm a bit more robust: they are sharing connections details to other users in the swarm and are able to partially seed part of the content.

Hit & run torrent users are the bigger problem; they add nothing to the ecosystem. But, for example, if there’s a “complete early roms for all systems nointro unzipped” torrent, and someone only downloads and seeds the SNES section, then the swarm gets the benefit of someone sharing that section of the content.

You could even get a situation where there are no “seeds” but 100% availability, with different people sharing different sections.

I’m not fully looped in to why Anna’s Archive did what they did, but their massive 1TB+ torrent zips are pretty useless for most purposes. I’d be happy to download a partial and seed books in, say, a particular genre, but I’m not going to seed a partial of a massive zip file that’s useless to me without the full archive.

blindsight,

I don’t know the terminology, but so long as the torrent is active, you’re uploading. If you selectively download files, then you can only upload the chunks you have downloaded, obviously. Is that “seeding” if you aren’t a “seed” with 1.00 availability? idk.

I’d still count that as “seeding” since you’re running the torrent for upload only, but idk if there’s a precise definition somewhere.

blindsight,

I mean, sure… But a whole lot of people use Photoshop professionally without a license.

Krita is great, though. Their Android version is even fully featured, so you can use a tablet with a digitizer if you don’t have a drawing pad for your desktop.

blindsight,

The Team Fortress 2 community has come together in an attempt to brute force developer Valve into fixing a bot problem that has plagued the hero shooter for years.

Source

blindsight,

I don’t think this will affect housing, yet. Not much, anyway. This rate decision has already been widely anticipated and fully priced in to mortgage rates. The language used by the BoC sounds very similar, too, so I don’t think there’s any signal to the market that will change expectations significantly.

People on variable-rate mortgages will get a bit of relief, I suppose. But that won’t move the needle much on housing prices.

blindsight,

I have a lot of devices, but I rarely use most of them.

  1. My desktop is my main device for all my work from home. Work desktop for work at the office.
  2. My work laptop only gets used for client visits.
  3. My personal laptop only gets used when I need a second mobile device for work and Zooming with my family (to bring to where my kiddos are set up playing).
  4. My wife’s work laptop is her main work machine and her personal laptop is our evening TV.
  5. My Android phone is my ADHD dopamine machine most of the time. Some light work use.
  6. My gaming is almost exclusively on my Steam Deck (but I’m working on getting a WiFi mesh network so I can stream from my desktop to my Deck). Used nightly in bed.
  7. My 8 y.o. daughter’s tablet is an audiobook machine, some edutainment apps, and sleep sounds machine. Occasionally a screen for shows/art video tutorials.
  8. My 6 y.o son’s tablet is mostly podcasts and sleep sounds.
  9. My DSi is my wife’s Tetris machine.

TL;DR: I mostly use my desktop for work and Deck/phone for entertainment. My laptops see use a few times/month when I’m on the road for work or Zooming with family and basically never in between. But we have a lot of devices that have specific use cases for different members of my family.

blindsight,

The kids shirts in panel 9 just makes it.

Sadly, I’ve heard a lot of these almost verbatim. Sometimes I don’t like living in a small town.

blindsight, (edited )

When I use these services (when I’m given a gift card) I select $0 tip and tip with cash. I don’t trust the app makers to give them the tip. I hope parent poster does this, too. I thought tipping in cash was pretty common!

blindsight,

This was mine, but I’m assuming you weren’t referring to the BBC radio play, which is the best version of LotR ever made. The films had major distortions on the themes of the story and completely unbelievable characterization that destroyed all suspension of disbelief.

Sure, the CG was nice eye candy… but Gandalf getting into a shouting match with Elrond? Really? We’re okay with that?

Plus, skipping the correct ending of Frodo and Sam coming back to the Shire in industrialized dystopia missed key parts of their character growth and Tolkien’s anti-industrial themes.

And the massive over-focus on a love story that was barely relevant in the story? And a half hour epilogue of useless wide shots showing how amazing the wedding was and how everyone is doing so great now that they won? What a waste of time. They skipped one of the best parts of the book for that shit.

I could go on if I had watched the films more than twice and could recall all the other huge problems.

The books don’t hold up, either. Ain’t nobody got time to read 3-page info dumps of dense descriptive writing about plot-irrelevant details, or dense blocks of ancient history that demolishes any semblance of pacing left over.

He founded a lot of tropes of fantasy, so I know why he included all those descriptive details, but it just doesn’t hold up. Elf, big tree house, got it. You’ve got me for two paragraphs to fill in the descriptive details, but then let’s move on with the plot, tyvm.

If you’re a fan of LotR, give the 13-hour BBC radio play a listen. And of you’ve watched/listened to/read all three and disagree with me, I’d love to hear why (out of interest). Full disclosure: you probably won’t convince me, but I’m still waiting to hear someone who knows the source material justifying why the movies are so adored.

blindsight,

As a Canadian, that sounds even worse to me, lol. Ejected judges? That’s insanity. Judges should never be making decisions based on political expedience.

Judges should be chosen by people who are experts in the law based on their knowledge and experience.

In Canada, I suppose it’s loosely political, but it’s several steps removed from direct political appointment. The PM and cabinet appoint someone to be the head of the judiciary, confirmed by the Governor General, and Supreme Court judges can be held accountable by the Senate and House in cases of misconduct.

Ejecting judges would make it worse, but better, imho.

The best solution I’ve heard for the US wouldn’t require a constitutional amendment, it’s to make the Supreme Court position last 18 years before becoming a Justice Emeritus (or whatever) that’s mostly ceremonial. That takes away the incentive to stuff the judiciary with young judges, and adds stability that each presidential term is 2 justice appointments on a slowly rolling basis.

blindsight,

It’s just not the same for cognitive development and engagement.

Skimming headlines, occasional (short ) articles, and reading pithy comments is vastly different from sustained reading of a single text.

The first is what my dopamine-seeking ADHD slips into multiple times daily as I procrastinate doing my work; the light “popcorn” reading I’m doing is intellectually engaging, on some level, but it’s also further fueling my atrophying attention span. And I’m almost exclusively getting surface-level, easily shared ideas that lack nuance.

Actually sitting down and focusing on a text, even if it’s a pulp fiction story, works the brain in different ways, requiring sustained attention and deeper comprehension on whatever topic we’re reading about (or more involved stories).

So, yes. You’re right. Many still are reading a lot. But not reading books is still a huge problem for our society.

And I’m glad that I do both; reading is my primary source of entertainment, professional development, and personal growth. I just hope I’m successful in raising both my kiddos to be readers. (1 of 2, so far, but the youngest is only 6…)

And I think it’s time to get off Lemmy and get back to my book.

Patriarchy has everything to do with men, but at the same time, nothing at all (bikepacking.com)

Patriarchy has everything to do with men, but at the same time, nothing at all. In a male-centered society where maleness is associated with power, what’s really being centered is power itself. What’s suppressed is mutual relationality. Patriarchy is intertwined with colonialism, racism, and other oppressive social...

blindsight,

Agreed. I saved this article. I’m going to try to find a place to put this in an online course for grade 12 students. This was my quick Sunday of the big takeaways I write for myself to remember when I try to put this into a course:

She frames the fear of male violence around masking emotions leading to anger, and desiring closeness but only knowing how to pursue closeness through using the power of masculinity in the patriarchy.

blindsight,

To add to what the other poster said:

I’m not an expert, but my understanding is that noise cancellation works by inverting sounds waves to deaden the sound. So, like, if you add sin(x) and –sin(x) you get 0.

This system is actively adding inverted sound waves to cancel most sounds. What makes this system unique is that it samples the voice and uses the unique “voice print” to selectively not invert the sound waves from the targeted voice.

Or that’s what I’m getting from reading this, as a layman.

Instead Of Banning Books, Idaho Library Decides To Ban Kids In Response To New Law On ‘Inappropriate Books’ (www.techdirt.com)

Public libraries are supposed to be places for communities to gather and learn, with an important focus on being a place for kids to gain access to information. But thanks to a moral panic in the GOP about “indoctrination” in libraries, it seems that at least one library has decided to shut its door to children....

blindsight,

I initially thought this was just a way of protesting the law, but looking at how it was written, I think this was literally their only legal option. I’m not sure how any library can stay open with the laws as written. I don’t think schools can have basically any books, either.

blindsight,

It’s missing filling the start bat with a massive Copilot box and weather/news widget. Or maybe missed an opportunity to make Clippy the AI assistant.

I love-hate it.

blindsight,

The top 10% own almost exactly ⅔ of all US wealth. (66.9%)

No need for hyperbole when 90% of the population controls ⅓ of the wealth and the bottom 50% only controls 2.5% of the country’s wealth. (Same source as above).

blindsight,

But, like, cats wear out by use, not time. (For the most part.)

A car is good for, say, 300,000 km. If you drive 300K in it, then you “fully used” the car.

That’s like saying a pad of paper isn’t used when it’s sitting on your shelf. Technically true, maybe, but the pad is used up when it’s out of sheets. It doesn’t make sense to measure the utilization time for a consumable, like paper or a car.

blindsight, (edited )

I mean, yeah. The point of collectibles like that is in owning the thing, not using the thing. Read the ebook instead.

Or the BBC radio play, which is the best version of LotR ever, including the original books and films, and I’ll die on that hill.

blindsight,

The deleted scenes and commentary audio tracks were cool, but idk if I’d actually watch any of it now. I heard years ago that there’s a whole system for “MST3King” a movie manually with community commentary tracks that effectively do the same thing and I’ve never cared enough to figure out how to set it up and try one, so I don’t know if I’d ever actually watch a DVD commentary even if I had the option.

Maybe it would be cool for Taskmaster, since I’ve seen every episode so many times and continue to rewatch it? But I rarely re-watch anything anymore. And I don’t think TV shows got commentary tracks anyway.

And deleted scenes could probably just be found on YouTube, I assume? I don’t know because I haven’t cared enough to search, lol.

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