As someone that has used ad blockers for just about as long as I have been able to, I would like to think that this is true. However, I’m not entirely sure that it is. I’ve heard that a surprising percentage of people just don’t even know that ad blockers exist. If that’s the case then they may be very well aware of what is happening. (Using made up numbers for the sake of argument since I don’t have real numbers) Like if only 5% of users use ad blockers and doubling the number of ads they show only brings that to 10% then it is certainly worth it financially. I doubt that if you were to graph that curve it would be linear - there is certainly a point where you inundate users with so many ads that even non-technical people will start learning about ad blockers. Regardless of what the real numbers are, I would be very surprised if they are making decisions this big without at least being aware of what those numbers might be. And if they can make a small amount of money indefinitely but they have evidence to suggest that they can make even more money also indefinitely then the financial motivation is obvious. Not all infinities are the same size.
Unfortunately that is simply not true. If you had to take a guess, how long does a chicken live that is born into the animal agriculture industry and what does its life look like? Go watch Dominion ( youtu.be/LQRAfJyEsko ) and learn what modern animal agriculture looks like because I promise you it is not a life free of abuse where they are safer than they would be in the wild with plenty of food to eat. If you are paying for animal products then you are not only paying for the animal to be murdered but are also paying for the abuse that it suffered for its entire short life before that point.
Also I’d definitely argue that murder is a form of abuse. Defined as: “treat (a person or an animal) with cruelty or violence, especially regularly or repeatedly.” If you wanted to discuss semantics it would be more accurate to say that it is impossible to murder an animal since the most common definition would probably be “the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another”. There is a second more loose definition though that uses the language “kill (someone) unlawfully and with premeditation”. I would argue that an animal IS a “someone” as they are an individual with their own unique perception of the world. As such I do believe that it is possible to murder an animal. That being said, it is completely irrelevant to the morality of what is happening whether we call it murder or abuse or we come up with all new words to describe what’s happening. No matter what you call it, we are creating unfathomable amounts of completely unnecessary suffering by forcefully breeding (aka raping) animals and forcing them to live unimaginably awful lives which are ended very very prematurely because money and yummy.
In my experience they often do go vegan overnight though. The key tends to be actually connecting the food on your plate with where it came from and accepting that animals are capable of suffering. Once that connection is made, animal products simply aren’t seen as food anymore and going vegan overnight is the only logical conclusion.
Some people may be further along the spectrum towards being vegan when this connection is actually made but regardless of if you are vegetarian, “only eat free range meat”, or an unapologetic meat eater, once the connection is made they are vegan.
Yes, that is my point. Whether someone is vegetarian, “trying to be more ethical” but still eating meat, or just a meat eater that has never even considered ethics, there is nothing that says you have to go through all of those steps to becoming vegan. In my experience, regardless of how far along you are in those “steps” once you make the connection between the food on your plate and the animals that it comes from and you realize that they are suffering for you, you go vegan. That could be meat eater to vegan, “ethical” meat eater to vegan, or vegetarian to vegan. My point is that in my experience that process does happen overnight.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) pressured Republicans to name the specific crime they are accusing President Biden of as they proceed with their impeachment inquiry....
I don’t think she’s really talking to them or expecting them to suddenly admit what they are doing and change their actions. I feel like she’s moreso talking to the American people. I know personally it at least gives me a modicum of hope to see that there are still people who will stand up for what’s right and call them out on the floor of Congress. It’s certainly better than living in a world where no one challenges them anyway.
I agree that those people need to understand her point the most and that they likely won’t even if they did hear it unedited but even the people who are already on her side like myself still need to hear it. Not because we don’t already understand what she’s saying but because it shows that we haven’t given up yet.
The Justice Department is poised to sue Apple as soon as Thursday, accusing the world’s second most valuable tech company of violating antitrust laws by blocking rivals from accessing hardware and software features of its iPhone....
(Not who you replied to) I think they might be more concerned about the possibility of Trump being in power than the litigation being shelved as a result.
The survey isn’t about the “niche” subset of the population that is religious. It is about the composition of the entire population. Not a subset of the population so that isn’t relevant.
Edit: to be clear, I understand that there may be some niche subsets within this survey that may not be represented because there are only 20 people in the US that believe in that weird religion, but again, that has nothing to do with the larger, non-niche subsets which are absolutely represented with enough accuracy to draw statically significant conclusions with a sample size of 1000
Fortnite, Apex, Tarkov, Battlebit, Faceit, Activision games like CoD, Blizzard games, and literally hundreds more.
E: or better yet, probably just don’t use any technology because Google and other are constantly tracking you and what you do. Probably best to just throw the smartphone away
The only reason plant based meats haven’t been way cheaper than animal meat the entire time is because of how heavily subsidized the animal agriculture industry is. Without the government literally single handedly propping up the industry it wouldn’t be a viable way to make money.
It’s interesting that they would choose to blur them if it’s that sensitive considering blurring things isn’t actually destructive and if you were to figure out the settings they used to blur then you can easily apply the opposite effect to unblur the image. To be truly destructive they should use black boxes over faces.
And regardless of the method they use it really shouldn’t take long to do either.
That’s a fair point. I have never seen it done from a video before specifically, but I am positive that it is a technique which is theoretically possible given that there is enough data in the image. Obviously if the image was grainy to begin with then it doesn’t matter what you do to it, you won’t get anything better than the original. And regardless of how the file is exported, as long as you can take a screenshot of the video afterwards and there is enough definition in the image I don’t see how this technique couldn’t be applied.
Edit: and to be clear, I don’t know what specific transformation(s) are traditionally used in video editing. For all I know it could be a long list of transformations that are all coded to happen with the click of a button to make it more difficult to unblur. But even that isn’t entirely safe. There is just literally no reason to not use a black box/elipse or whatever in cases where the data is actually sensitive.
Poured first latte in June. Happy with my progress so far. Here’s a flat white and a swan that I poured today. There’s always still room to improve and remember, no matter where you are in your latte art journey, I think your art is beautiful :) and I’m sure tasty as well....
There are tons of great content creators in the coffee world. One of the one’s that I felt I learned a lot from in the beginning especially was Lance Hedrick. Here’s a shorter overview sort of video that will help a lot to get started (www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohzsOjkYf5M). And a slightly longer more in depth guide that he’s made as well (youtu.be/kVEvII6YalE?si=1VZG48hkWNszD-kN). Emilee Bryant is another great content creator that makes similar videos.
As far as what equipment you need goes, it sounds like you probably have everything you need to get started. I don’t know what the milk jug looks like that comes with that machine or if it even does or if you’re using it, but I will say that I think that having a quality milk pitcher can make your life easier. That’s not to say that you can’t use what you have because you almost certainly can. But if you’re looking for cheap ways to improve your setup that might be where I would start but again, it is almost certainly unnecessary to see improvement. Ultimately, making latte art is just something that you have to practice. Where the videos and advice from other people comes into play is knowing how to practice. But you’re still going to have to put in the work.
Some general advice that I can give: latte art is a result of many small variables all being controlled at once. Some of the variables have a smaller impact on the final product and others are much more crucial to focus on, especially in the beginning. Knowing what went wrong and how to fix it is a skill all on it’s own, but in order to get to that point, first you have to even be aware of what those variables are. Some of the big ones off of the top of my head that I think would be good to focus on as a beginner
-Milk texture: If you don’t have good milk texture it will be much harder or potentially impossible to make art. There are plenty of videos talking about how to steam milk and what good texture looks like for latte art. I would recommend looking that up if you are interested in learning more about that. In fact, as a beginner I would say that you should really put most of your effort into working on this before anything else. Here’s a video on the topic to get you started (www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTC3dJvwgUI)
-Spout proximity: When you are adding your initial milk to the espresso before you start your art you want the pitcher to be high up so that the milk builds up speed from the fall and sinks below the surface and incorporates with the espresso to make your drink. When you start your art you want the pitcher to be very close (think approximately 1 cm) to the surface of the drink so that you can gently “place” the foam on top and it doesn’t have time to pick up speed and fall through. I see many beginners try to make art with the spout of their pitcher way too high and no design appears as a result. In fact, if you place a blob of foam down first and then intentionally lift your pitcher up, you can actually sink that blob of foam.
-Flow rate: the velocity of the milk coming out of the pitcher at various stages of the pour is an important factor in your art. I won’t go into how and when and why you should be pouring faster or slower since it’s honestly really not the thing to focus on now and there are plenty of videos that could do a better job anyway. Just be aware of flow rate as a concept and notice how flow rate affects the way the milk behaves in different situations.
-Timing: This is a bit of a broad category, but generally speaking, there are several critical moments when pouring latte art that we should be thinking about. First of all, when you let milk sit in the pitcher the foam will start to separate from the more dense liquid. We don’t want that. So as a general rule of thumb, once you’ve steamed your milk you should be trying to keep it moving by swirling it in the pitcher to prevent that separation. What you described as “a blob circle of foam that pours into the cup at the very end” could very well be caused by letting it separate before pouring. What happens when you do that is the liquid all comes out first and only at the end does the foam come out. It could also be a milk texture issue or spout proximity issue though. Once you’ve actually started pouring, knowing when to stop incorporating milk and to start your art is very important too. If you do it too soon, you won’t have added much foam in the cup yet and the design will flow across the surface of the mug like water and hit the far wall. If you do it too late the foam will be stiff and you won’t have much room left in the cup meaning you will have a hard time getting any momentum at all, causing a small design.
Anyway… I’m done rambling now I suppose, lol. Apologies for the wall of text. To summarize, you don’t need any more equipment to see improvement. I would focus on milk texture as a pretty high priority, but also at least start thinking about these other things as you’re pouring even if you can’t control every variable at first (hint: you won’t be able to and that’s okay). At least that way you have something to actually think about and ask yourself afterwards, “was the milk too foamy? did it separate too much? how was my spout proximity? did I start my art too early/late?” etc.
It was actually for a regular customer who gave me permission to take a photo to share with my coworkers since I just started so I’m actually not sure how it tasted but I’m confident that it tasted good!
Carnist logic… or lack thereof
cross-posted from: lemmy.vg/post/92700...
As a long-time user hearing YouTube wants to play extra ads when I pause a video (lemmy.world)
When I die, turn me into soup (lemmy.world)
Just wanted to say hey to you
I keep posting things and deleting them. Sometime I hope I’ll feel ok enough to keep one.
Ocasio-Cortez demands GOP specify actual crimes in Biden impeachment inquiry (thehill.com)
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) pressured Republicans to name the specific crime they are accusing President Biden of as they proceed with their impeachment inquiry....
Justice Department to sue Apple for antitrust violations as soon as Thursday (www.seattletimes.com)
The Justice Department is poised to sue Apple as soon as Thursday, accusing the world’s second most valuable tech company of violating antitrust laws by blocking rivals from accessing hardware and software features of its iPhone....
Religious 'Nones' are now the largest single group in the U.S. (www.npr.org)
[News] Foxy AI, A Virtual Companion Service Using AI 'Influencers', Generates $30K Monthly Revenue (nypost.com)
Article Summary:...
Riot is bringing Vanguard into League (www.leagueoflegends.com)
A Demographic Time Bomb Is About to Hit the Beef Industry (www.wired.com)
Speaker Johnson Explains Holdup In Releasing Jan 6 Tapes: ‘We Have To Blur Some Of The Faces’ To Protect Them From The DOJ (lemmy.world)
Latte Art Progress!
Poured first latte in June. Happy with my progress so far. Here’s a flat white and a swan that I poured today. There’s always still room to improve and remember, no matter where you are in your latte art journey, I think your art is beautiful :) and I’m sure tasty as well....
Progress update on the latte art. Pretty happy with this rosetta. (lemmy.world)
Wife is Japanese and LOVES ube, so naturally an ube latte (yes it has espresso in it) (lemmy.zip)
cross-posted from: infosec.pub/post/1310834
Still a beginner but getting better! (lemmy.world)
Bank of America fined $150 million for consumer abuses including fake accounts, bogus fees (www.cnbc.com)