BananaTrifleViolin

BananaTrifleViolin, 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago)

And the commanding officer only tried to stop them when they heard the last victim asking for help and realised it was in hebrew.

Seems the IDF shoots first and asks questions later. This is what's happened to unarmed jewish hostages, who were shirtless, holding a white shirt on a stick which is the universal sign of surrender. What about the million people living in gaza coming up against this? Holy fuck.

BananaTrifleViolin, 6 months ago

I don't understand? You can download Dosbox and Dosbox-X in desktop mode and add them to Steam like other apps. Why do you need a website?

BananaTrifleViolin, 6 months ago

It's also disingenuous lies. This money is being spent over 11 years so is more in the realm of £750m a year.

This is also a classic trick of the Conservative government and is why the NHS is also in a mess: they steal money from capital investment budgets and use it to spend on day-to-day operational stuff.

In the NHS they took money from the capital budget and diverted it to day to day spending, claiming it as "new money". It was an increase in day-to-day spending but it was not new money. Instead NHS trusts now have big backlogs of equipment and buildings needing replacement and being used beyond intended life cycle because the money was stolen.

Pot hole repair is day-to-day road maintenance, not infrastructure or capital investment. HS2 was a new capital project. This is just more bullshit lies by the government and a huge issue here is how shit journalism is now. The BBC hasn't questioned this spending pledge at all, instead it's posted a bullshit superficial article on potholes.

BananaTrifleViolin, 6 months ago

Incase you still don't, it's referencing a late 80s to mid 90s sitcom Married with Children. It's surprisingly good. Katey Segal who voices Leela played one of the main characters, Peggy.

BananaTrifleViolin, 6 months ago

Nah, this needs legal reform. Intellectual Property laws have been set up to benefit rights holders, not general citizens. They have been extended and reinforced again and again thanks to intense lobbying from rights holders to make bank under the current system.

The defense is always thrown out that it protects the livelihoods of smaller IP holders. However a system that enshrines IP rights for things for 70 years after someone has died for example is patently not there to protect the author; is is there to enrich those who buy or inherit rights yet had nothing to do with their creation.

IP laws need drastic reform. Abandonware is just one of many examples where citizens have to break the law to bypass the shitty status quo.

BananaTrifleViolin, 6 months ago

Almost the whole of black Friday is a nonsense. The only things worth buying are things you would have bought anyway but know are on discount.

Many items prices go up for a period before black Friday so they can then be discounted, and manufacturers even have cheaper versions of models of their products that they supply to discount chains and companies like Amazon for black Friday.

The only things I'd buy on sale are items I'm watching via camelcamelcamel which have hit discount, or software on discount. There are a few specific items I need to buy that I might buy if they're genuinely on discount but most of the stuff thrust in your face during the sales is cheap tat or lies.

BananaTrifleViolin, 6 months ago

Mozilla needs funding. By taking money from Google and DuckDuckGo specifically for search it allows Firefox to remain independent and the software it produces is underpins lots of other even more independent privacy respecting software.

The eco system around Firefox needs Firefox to survive. Unless a better funding source comes along Firefox would be in jeopardy. Having. Said that Thunderbird has been successfully turned around due to a well run community pursuing donations and volunteers.

It would also be good if countries stumped up some of the funding Mozilla and other crucial open source projects like Linux need, to maintain a strong software ecosystem. Similar to how many European countries fund national broadcasters to maintain media diversity.

BananaTrifleViolin, 6 months ago

So big mistake here: NAC is not harmless. It does have side effects and it also has toxicity at high doses.

It has not been studied in long term use orally or IV, it's main use bomg short term use for paracetamol overdose treatment. Inhalation is more studied but it is not absorbed into the body in the same way.

We think it is safe but we haven't actually done human trials to be sure. What we have found in mice is that high doses can cause lung and heart damage and also when it comes to alcohol it is protective if taken before alcohol consumption BUT it amplifies the toxicity to the liver if about 4 hours taken after alcohol. All of this is summarised on the Wikipedia page which looks to be good quality.

Overall it may be a useful drug but don't take it off label or self medicating. Medicine is littered with unexpected effects of drugs that only came out once it was too late. Thalidomide is a good example - a "wonder drug" for nausea used in pregnancy that was not tested and caused horrific birth defects which only became evident when it was too late.

Your body is not a lab, be careful experimenting with supposedly "safe" drugs.

BananaTrifleViolin, 7 months ago

Yeah this is exactly right; an inability to separate their own political stance from their professional role. For the law firm, there is also a lack of insight and common sense around wading into such a controversial and difficult issue in such a way.

This is the text from their newsletter:

Hi y'all.

This week, I want to express, first and foremost, my unwavering and absolute solidarity with Palestinians in their resistance against oppression toward liberation and self-determination. Israel bears full responsibility for this tremendous loss of life. This regime of state-sanctioned violence created the conditions that made resistance necessary. I will not condemn Palestinian resistance. Instead…

I condemn the violence of apartheid. I condemn the violence of settler colonialism. I condemn the violence of military occupation. I condemn the violence of dispossession and stolen homes. I condemn the violence of trapping thousands in an open-air prison. I condemn the violence of collective punishment. I condemn the violence of phosphorous bombs. I condemn the violence of the United States military-industrial complex. >I condemn the violence of obfuscating genocide as a "complex issue.” I condemn the violence in labeling oppressed people as "animals." I condemn the violence in removing historical context. I condemn the violence of silence.

Palestine will be free.

Your SBA President,
Ryna

This was in the NYU LAW Student Bar Association's SBA Weekly newsletter.

BananaTrifleViolin, 7 months ago

Or was this the first example of gurilla paid advertisement in the comments section? "How do I advertise my dental practice? I know I'll pretend I was disturbed by a telegram and they shall print my complaint! And it shall goeth viraleth"

BananaTrifleViolin, 7 months ago

Yeah I found the article a bizarre read. It talks about ActovityPub and Mastodon but fails to mention the fediverse at all. Instead it talks about the "pluriverse", some random new term pulled from some paper, and paints a vision of people spread across various commercial social media platforms.

Either it's a blind spot In their research or an agenda so deliberate omission, but regardless it seems strange to talk about the disintegration of social media and even Mastodon but not what Mastodon is a part of.

But I agree the general themes are there - it's basically talking about the impact of enshittification but without using the term.

BananaTrifleViolin, 7 months ago

Sounds like the journalist didn't understand the memo.

The key messages that I'm seeing flagged up are that they did find a method which basically involves former trump supporters giving their reasons for disavowing him, and that trumps share of the vote dropped 4 points where they ran ads versus a 5 point growth where they did not. That's a 9 point swing against trump by running ads - that sounds pretty effective.

That they found things that don't work are also positives as it means they've refining their method. We remain early in the primary process nota single vote has been cast yet and there are still 3 months until the the first vote.

The problem is a 9 ppoitn swing against a candidate doesn't mean much when there isn't a viable alternative for that to benefit. What they really need is a candidate to coalesce republican opposition behind. At the moment none of the candidates seem up to it.

BananaTrifleViolin, 8 months ago

This has already been confirmed a non story. He said this around the launch time and Larian have since confirmed that the section has been found and played.

This article shows the poor state of gaming "journalism". Stories taken from each other and no actual work done by the "journalist". So false rumours spread.

Kotaku have an updated version of the story, link below. I have no idea if they broke the story first or are another of the copycats though.
https://kotaku.com/baldurs-gate-3-astarion-voice-actor-hidden-area-section-1850860934

BananaTrifleViolin, 8 months ago

It's disturbing that there isn't a good process for removing judges at the end of their career. Being "nudged towards retirement" by family after you are beyond your ability to perform the job is appalling. It's the arrogance of presiding over other people's lives through legal cases until you decide you don't want to anymore rather than whether you should that's so bad. What about all the citizens getting suboptimal legal judgements?

BananaTrifleViolin, 8 months ago

I get where you're coming from but I think you're overstating the impact in this day and age. If this had been 1995 it'd be a big deal. Now it's rediculously easy to install any alternative you like for free.

Libre Office is an entire free fully features office suite.

I'm less bothered about removing WordPad than I am about Microsoft advertising and pre-installing it's products in Windows - they force Edge on people, they push OneDrive and preinstall a preview of Office. That's the real problem - not losing WordPad.

At one point Anti-Trust / Anti-monopoly regulators globally punished Microsoft for pushing Internet Explorer to consumers and for a long time in Europe had to offer a choice of Browsers to download on new Windows installs. Now it's allowed to get away with abusing it's dominant position to force it's products on consumers.

BananaTrifleViolin, 9 months ago

Interesting that while there is only 2 instead of 3 in a pack, the total weight has gone down only 22% (from 255g to 200g, instead of 170g if the weight dropped by a third/33%). So the actual salmon pieces may be bigger?

This is still shrinkflation but there has probably also been previous hidden shrinkflation in the individual salmon pieces too and that bit has been slightly undone.

BananaTrifleViolin, 9 months ago

I think a large part of it is inappropriately making 30 mph areas 20mph and also poor enforcement.

I live on a long wide 20mph road and I can't stand the people going at 40, 50 or even 60 or 70 mph at times. But I don't think my road should have been 20mph, it should have been 30mph. It seems it was easier to stick some 20mph signs up to say "we've done something" as a way of discouraging some people going at more rediculous speeds and hope most go at 30mph.

Instead what was needed was actual investment in the road - speed bumps, narrowing the road with choke points and passing points, physical rather than painted cycle lanes - that kind of thing.

Fortunately after years of pressure our road is now going to be in a LTZ (Low Traffic Zone). Both ends of my own long road are blocked off to allow pedestrians and cyclists only through, and my main road is being split into 3rds with X-junctions being turned into filters(Instead of X it's now > and < with no connection). If you're driving you can only turn into one side street while cyclists and pedestrians can pass through as normal. We've had a trial for a while and it's been very effective - my whole block has been split up with filters so you can't use it to pass through to reach the main roads around it - this has stopped the arseholes using my road as a shortcut and speeding at 60 mph.

People are still going at 30mph but the twisting and turning through the block means you can't really get up to anything more than that and also unless you're going to a house in the block it's pointless to even enter.

So while I abhor speeding, I would argue these stats reflect bad road management - over relying on 20mph speed limtis as a cheap alternative to actual road management and redeisgns which are expensive (and difficult in many parts of the UK with lots of very old and narrow streets inherited from previous eras).

BananaTrifleViolin, 9 months ago

Sorry but there is a lot of bizarre takes in this thread. I work in healthcare - the issue here is she LEFT you during a procedure to deal with another patient after comencing your procedure. What!? What other patient - she had already started a procedure on you and had anaethetised you and then left the room? And then by the time she came back and continued the procedure she got to the point where she couldn't provide any more anaesthetic?

The whole thing sounds like a mess. If for example she is running multiple rooms at the same time then that is frankly bad practice and greed.

Your friend's feedback that you "made the dentist feel threatened" is also bizarre. You're the one in the dentist chair, mouth open while someone is approaching your with drills and metal work. If she felt "threatened" then she should have abandoned the procedure completely - not leave and come back. Patients can be very anxious and tense - thats normal and either you know how to deal with it or you don't. As a health care professional on the occasions you can't deal with it, then you don't proceed - stop, make it safe and get someone else to do it. This was an elective procedure to fix a crown - why on earth would she then proceed with a procedure after having felt "threatened" - it doesn't make sense.

That dental practice sounds like a joke to be honest. Either your dentist is inappropriately treating multiple patients at the same time or she is indecisive - feeling threatened, walking off for safety but then coming back and completeing the procedure makes no sense and just made everything worse. You're hardly going to be less tense with this dentist after that experience.

Find another dentist.

BananaTrifleViolin, 9 months ago

You can use any browser you want, just be aware of what the downsides are when you do.

The issue with Chrome and Chromium based broswers is the power that Google exerts over the internet via the Blink engine. Although other companies use the same technology, Google controls it and shapes it for it's own commerical gains.

The other big alternative is also proprietary with Apple's Sarfari and WebKit ecosystem.

Vivaldi is a nice browser but it is still run by a private company and it still monetises you to an extent. In vivaldi's case it is currently fairly inocuous - they have referral deals with search engines for the default search, and deals with companies for default bookmarks. But it seems to be currently a more trustworthy browser. Ultimately though, it is part of the Blink ecosystem and supports Google's increasing domination of the browser engine space.

Mozilla and Firefox remains the only truly independent browser, run in a not-for-profit and fully open source way, on the Gecko engine. It's existance helps maintain the neutral aspects of the Web - instead of sites being designed for one browser, it encourages web site and services to be truly standards compliant. Firefox monetise users in a similar way to Vivaldi but that money is used to actually maintain and develop Gecko and other Mozilla technologies, while Vivaldi use that money to maintain Vivaldi the company - they don't need to fund most of Blink as it's made available by Google.

But no one is obliged to support Firefox or open technologies. It's a personal choice what browser you use and there are many valid reasons beyond open standards to chose a browser. I use Firefox for multiple reasons; I genuinely like it and am used to it, but I actually also use Vivaldi and even Chrome on occasions (sometimes to view crapily designed ad heavy or tracking sites without having to disable lots of privacy extensions etc in firefox to make it work; I use Chrome as a bog standard sandbox when I want to dump crap sites out of my main browser but still want to quickly view it for whatever reason).

Pick a browser you like and don't feel guilty if that happens to be chrome based.

BananaTrifleViolin, 9 months ago

You can make zips using 7Zip. I use 7zip and send Zips to other people, but use 7z compression for my own files. Zip files are more ubiquitous and readily opened by most OS; certainly Windows opens them natively, and I assume MacOs does.

Of course it also depends what you're sending. I wouldn't send secure files in just a zip even with encryption due to zips flaws. I would use 7z eoth encryption as a minimum, and more secure methods depending on how valuable the data is.