compared to the States, apparently bog standard there is like 87?
That’s not quite accurate. Octane ratings in most parts of the world are RON, which tends to be 8-12 points higher than the more difficult MON rating. In North America, the average of the two is used resulting in a lower rating for the same fuel.
Several messaging services that started on PCs already had mobile apps when Whatsapp got big so there must be a bit more to it than that. AIM, Skype, and several others were viable options with existing userbases.
Discoverability in this context meaning the ability to more effectively find public communities/people of interest. Alongside improving this however, respecting people’s decisions on whether and how they may be found, if at all.
I’ve been finding discoverability pretty good on Lemmy, but maybe that’s in part because the server I picked grew to be the largest not long after. Mastodon and the various microblog workalikes seem to have bigger problems there.
Backfill statuses when loading profiles from remote servers (Mastodon and workalikes)
Full text search, on by default, without a heavyweight dependency (Mastodon-specific)
Relay replies to all participants in a conversation (Mastodon)
An optional recommended feed with an algorithm (I know that’s a bad word!) based on favorites and boosts by people who often favorite/boost the same things you do
I believe you that Meta is a bad company with a clear track record of perpetrating harms any time there’s profit to be made. I am not, however convinced that small independent services blocking communication with them is a net positive for the world. Instead, I think there’s an opportunity to get their users to migrate away.
That’s not to say that some servers shouldn’t block them. For a tightly-moderated server, the scale of moderation problems it could bring is argument enough. There are good options for those who are looking for that sort of thing.
I don’t want my Lemmy server to block Threads unless it actually does become a moderation nightmare. I don’t intend to block it from my self-hosted Mastodon server either. In fact, I haven’t blocked anything there yet. I will if I run into anybody being a jerk, but it seems like bird photos and flashlight reviews don’t attract that sort of thing.
I read about WhatsApp and how people can’t part with Meta because of it, however no one on my continent uses it. Why is it so popular in the EU and other parts of the world?
I’d be surprised if people avoid Internet-based messaging because they’re worried about data usage. Text messages use a tiny amount such that they work well even on a throttled connection.
The fact that unlimited SMS became common early in the USA, and few people are messaging internationally probably explains it better.
There are reliable sources of drug information intended for professionals online, for example this AHSP monograph for pseudoephedrine. There’s a pharmacokinetics section with times to peak plasma concentration, half life, and a description of how the drug is eliminated from the body.
If you understand what those terms mean, you can probably make an educated guess as to what will happen when you split a dose as you propose. I’m going to guess that it’s really unlikely to be dangerous with most OTC drugs because those usually have large safety margins, but if you want a reliable answer to that, there’s probably a medical professional you could ask instead of random dogs on the internet.
So people throw out disposable vapes all the time. I cracked one open to take a look and it turns out they have a 18500 battery in it. So I was thinking of 3D printing a spacer to make it the same size as a 18650 and putting some shrink wrap on them. I just wanted to see what people who know more than me think. Is this a bad...
Most newer flashlights have over-discharge protection, and most flashlights with built-in charging terminate properly without overcharging cells. Both are true of the FC11, and its original battery is unprotected. It is a very popular flashlight, and I have never seen a post about a safety-related malfunction with one in any of the popular flashlight communities.
@dr_jekell has a point that cells salvaged from random low-quality devices may be unsuitable for another application (or even their original application). There’s a chance that the current draw will be too high, or the charge rate too fast, for example. There’s also a chance that the cells will be poorly manufactured and/or lacking the basic safety devices that even unprotected cells normally have. I don’t recommend using them.
As a rule of thumb flashlights only have LED driver in them and lack any sort of battery protection.
This hasn’t been true for a quite a while. Most Li-ion flashlights have a low-voltage shutoff.
Most 18650 batteries that you buy from reputable sources have built-in protection circuits.
Also not really true. Top-tier dealers like Illumn and Nkon offer both protected and unprotected options. Some popular flashlights (Zebralight, Emisar/Noctigon) only accept unprotected cells.
even most lithium cell chargers rely on the cell having built-in protection circuit.
No charger anybody should be using relies on that. Correctly charging Li-ion requires tapering current after reaching the target voltage, which can’t happen if it trips a circuit breaker.
I’ve been using one of the Javascript variants of this for a while. While that is a little heavier weight for the client than this completely static solution, it’s ultimately just a few kilobytes and minimal processing that’s fast even on old devices.
i think we need Cracked-style articles back. desperately. or like, a guy doing a weird thing and writing a piece on it. sites like those are declining faster than the glaciers.
A mechanism to promote quality on-topic content and demote noise can be pretty valuable, especially somewhere with a high population. The original thinking on Reddit (and I’ve been there long enough to know) was that people would use voting as moderation, not agreement or disagreement.
An upvote was to mean “content like this belongs here” and a downvote the opposite. There were no comments at first, but it reasonably applied to them as well once they were added. Unfortunately, votes are too simple and too opaque to maintain a norm like that. Were I designing a discussion system, it would probably use labeling like Slashdot rather than simple voting.
Make the UI require a label/reason for a vote, like Slashdot.
Slashdot doesn’t have a downvote. It has labels like “off-topic” and “flamebait” that serve to lower a comment’s score. It’s possible to misuse them of course, but that requires an active decision to do so; the obvious action is to pick a label honestly.
I once had a phone reboot upon connecting to a specific hotel wifi network, then bootloop until I took it out of range. Sometimes things just break. Military interference seems unlikely; a phone carrier, and by proxy a government with jurisdiction over one can track any phone connected to the network regardless of the software running on it.
It’s useful to immediately save the logs from logcat when something like that happens. There’s often enough information in there to find out why a crash or reboot occurred, or at least what part of the OS was responsible for it.
I had hoped that as most younger adults now were kids who grew up with computers, the average person would have a pretty good understanding of how they work. I never expected everyone to be a programmer or sysadmin of course, but to have a general sense of things like whether data is stored on their device or remotely, how to find out if an app install is risky, and whether a prompt requesting permissions, a password, etc… is reasonable.
For the most part, I don’t think that has happened. The average person doesn’t know how to use a computer and isn’t going to learn.
I don’t think we need a sinister plan to explain how we got where we are.
Most people are interested in some outcome, and want the easiest process to achieve it, not to learn about the process. They want to play a computer game, not learn about graphics drivers. They want to take a picture and send it to their friends, not learn about communications protocols or camera settings.
It’s not just tech. They want to cut their food, not learn to sharpen knives. They want to drive to their destinations, not maintain their cars. Maintenance-free tends to outsell serviceable in most product categories.
Geek Squad didn’t come about because people didn’t have the ability to access the inner workings of their computers, but because they didn’t want to put in the effort to learn. Getting the defaults right so most people don’t have to change settings before your product is useful is good design even when your product offers lots of access to the inner workings.
I do, however see the trend of software requiring remote attestation about the OS it’s running on as sinister. Google even recently tried to bring that to the web.
Wurkkos stuff is usually fine. It’s also usually less durable, reliable, and efficient than Acebeam.
The duty lights section is intended for people who are using lights in safety-critical situations and life-threatening emergencies, so it’s reserved for brands with a well-established reputation for reliability. If that’s you, I suggest paying the extra and bringing a backup. If it isn’t, lights like the Wurkkos TD series are fine.
The US Department of Justice and 16 state and district attorneys general accused Apple of operating an illegal monopoly in the smartphone market in a new antitrust lawsuit. The DOJ and states are accusing Apple of driving up prices for consumers and developers at the expense of making users more reliant on its iPhones.
Perhaps they aren’t lying, but claims about security often involve theoretical weaknesses that aren’t practical to exploit in the real world. Apple is very skilled at making sure those claims align with their business interests.
Four years ago there were refrigerator trucks full of corpses and a mob was storming the capitol to overthrow the government on behalf of a would-be dictator.
Nothing resembling either of those things has happened yet this year, so I think in a lot of ways we’re all better off regardless of our individual circumstances. Only the second one has much to do with who’s president though.
What’s the worst car you’ve ever driven?
You Can Now Follow President Biden on the Fediverse (wedistribute.org)
Both President Biden and the White House have enabled the Fediverse integration on Threads.
Does anyone know of any free-speech oriented Lemmy instances?
I’m interested in an instance that only blocks illegal content and spam.
Anduril firmware adds dark mode (github.com)
Enshittification Continues: Discord to begin showing advertisements on it's free platform (archive.is)
They supposedly can be disabled in settings- but we all know that won’t last. They’re going full Microsoft Skype mode and it’s only a matter of time.
Reddit started blocking VPN users on old.reddit.com (lemm.ee)
At this point, I’m not even going to bother trying to go on there anymore.
What are some ways you think discoverability might be improved across federated platforms?
Discoverability in this context meaning the ability to more effectively find public communities/people of interest. Alongside improving this however, respecting people’s decisions on whether and how they may be found, if at all.
Are you seeing a massive uptick in pro meta propaganda as well?
I will probably be harassed for this but I feel like I need to act....
Why is WhatsApp so ubiquitous everywhere BUT North America? (midwest.social)
I read about WhatsApp and how people can’t part with Meta because of it, however no one on my continent uses it. Why is it so popular in the EU and other parts of the world?
Is it safe to take a second pill a few hours after the first if the directions say "1 to 2 tablets?"
Over-the-counter diphenhydramine, for instance, at least in my country, says adults can take “1 to 2 tablets every 4 to 6 hours.”...
Reusing vape batteries in flash lights? Is this a crazy idea.
So people throw out disposable vapes all the time. I cracked one open to take a look and it turns out they have a 18500 battery in it. So I was thinking of 3D printing a spacer to make it the same size as a 18650 and putting some shrink wrap on them. I just wanted to see what people who know more than me think. Is this a bad...
Comments on a static website, powered by Mastodon (www.stevegattuso.me)
What do you miss from the old internet?
i think we need Cracked-style articles back. desperately. or like, a guy doing a weird thing and writing a piece on it. sites like those are declining faster than the glaciers.
Fairphone 3 (LineageOS) acted weird in France (near military bases), possible explanations?
Hi...
United States v. Apple is pure nerd rage (www.theverge.com)
Wurkkos TD series question
tl;dr: duty lights on the arbitrary list vs the wurkkos “tactical” lol light, what makes the comically less expensive td0x series worse...
US sues Apple for illegal monopoly over smartphones (www.theverge.com)
The US Department of Justice and 16 state and district attorneys general accused Apple of operating an illegal monopoly in the smartphone market in a new antitrust lawsuit. The DOJ and states are accusing Apple of driving up prices for consumers and developers at the expense of making users more reliant on its iPhones.
Biden is using the 'are you better off today' question to contrast himself with Trump (apnews.com)