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shadowfaxRodeo

669 karma · joined November 15, 2018

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shadowfaxRodeo··on Chernobyl’s Blown Up Reactor 4 Just Woke Up
It’s not dangerous?! Somebody tell the nuclear power companies. They’ll save so much money on security and safety. They could have a side hustle doing tours for school kids.

Of course it’s safe! This explains why Fukushima has such a thriving beach front community — and why three-mile island is such a tourist hot spot.

I guess that means dirty bombs aren’t dangerous? I guess nuclear weapons aren’t dangerous either!! Someone tell the CND, they’ve been wasting all their time protesting.

Wait, this is huge, the biggest conspiracy of all time. what about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they must be in on it too. Did they fake it?! Was the Cuban missile crisis an inside job? Is the Bikini atoll an advertising ploy for two-piece swimwear?

Does e=mc^2 or are Oppenheimer and Einstein sipping mojitos in the Bermuda Triangle with Elvis and Tupac?

shadowfaxRodeo··on Chernobyl’s Blown Up Reactor 4 Just Woke Up
> That doesn't seem to add anything to the discussion. I don't know what you're getting at.

I'm explaining why I'm against building nuclear power plants — it's a very simple point really:

- Do nuclear power plants require stability to be safe?

- Is the world becoming more or less stable?

All the other stuff sounds like a conspiracy theory.

shadowfaxRodeo··on Chernobyl’s Blown Up Reactor 4 Just Woke Up
You could make the exact same argument about nuclear energy. The same promises were made, and it has failed to deliver.

It doesn't address the main issue of nuclear — it's incredibly dangerous. For nuclear to be safe you need human security, human experts, funding, you need to not have tsunamis, earthquakes, pandemics, wars, terrorism, economic collapse.

That's not a promise nuclear can make — especially given that we've almost certaintly have passed tipping points that will make unrest and extreme weather likely.

At this point it's not about stopping the climate crisis, it's about limiting the damage, and preparing society for the inevitable consequences.

shadowfaxRodeo··on Chernobyl’s Blown Up Reactor 4 Just Woke Up
If you think there's no prospect of coal consumption going down, then we're headed for global calamity.

Knowing that it's a likely scenario that the world becomes wildly unpredictable, it's not responsible to also build nuclear reactors that require stability and maintenance to be safe.

shadowfaxRodeo··on Chernobyl’s Blown Up Reactor 4 Just Woke Up
I don’t think you’ll find many anti-nuclear people on HN that are also pro-fossil-fuel.

It’s a false choice, we can choose to not use fossil fuels, and decrease the risk of nuclear meltdowns and dirty bombs at the same time.

shadowfaxRodeo··on Chernobyl’s Blown Up Reactor 4 Just Woke Up
This is a false choice.

As the world gets more unstable due to climate change — an increased risk on pandemics, civil unrest, extreme weather events — do we really want abandoned nuclear power stations added to the mix?

So, don’t do either. use way less energy, rely on renewables and batteries for the rest.

shadowfaxRodeo··on How to permanently delete your Facebook account
Because it doesn’t collect personal data to sell to advertisers.
shadowfaxRodeo··on How to permanently delete your Facebook account
This is an excellent point.

I’m no influencer, but i do have a big family and lots of very close friends. I’m very lucky.

Many people are isolated and struggle to make and maintain friendships — especially over the last year. They don’t have the luxury of being able to take a stand.

shadowfaxRodeo··on How to permanently delete your Facebook account
Which messaging app do you think most people would join… one with nobody else using it, or one with everyone else using?
shadowfaxRodeo··on How to permanently delete your Facebook account
My issue is with Facebook, not with the network effect itself. Happy to use the network effect to get people off Facebook.
shadowfaxRodeo··on How to permanently delete your Facebook account
Understandably, people who don’t use WhatsApp, don’t think it’s weird that other people don’t use WhatsApp.

People who do have WhatsApp, probably have it, because most of the people they know have it.

shadowfaxRodeo··on How to permanently delete your Facebook account
I got rid of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp about 4 years ago. Facebook and Instagram was easy, but people who have WhatsApp really think you’re weird for not having it.

Deleting WhatsApp, while annoying for me personally, has resulted in many people I know joining Signal or Telegram — the network effect can be broken by being belligerent.

If you don’t want to have a conversation about why you deleted WhatsApp, simply say it’s a moral issue, nobody wants to know.

shadowfaxRodeo··on Dithered images and websites (2020)
I've tried it out, I'm still getting smaller AVIF files with dithering. Not like the saving you get by using a dithered png instead of a jpeg.

Depends on a lot of factors. You can keep turning the quality down on avif and get it lower than a dithered image. At some point I'd prefer the crispness of a dithered image over a blurry full color image.

Also, avif seems to do a really good job of lossy compression on dithered images.

shadowfaxRodeo··on Dithered images and websites (2020)
But you can also use a dithered AVIF — and save even more.
shadowfaxRodeo··on Dithered images and websites (2020)
But have you tried dithering AND using modern image formats?
shadowfaxRodeo··on Dithered images and websites (2020)
Hi there author of the article here, I did a lot of testing when I wrote the article, and even made a tool for dithering.

https://doodad.dev/dither-me-this/

It completely depends on what kind of dithering you do — ordered dithering with a small color palette will give you a much smaller file size than a full color jpeg.

WebP and AVIF also support lossless compression and can be used for even smaller file sizes using dithering.

shadowfaxRodeo··on Dithered images and websites (2020)
If you try to use lossy compression on a dithered image it will increase the file size. Using dithering and saving in a compressed lossless format will have drastically different results.
shadowfaxRodeo··on Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow
I wrote that previous comment before I fully understood the new specification. I'm still not entirely sure, but it looks like you're right.

I thought the rules were static, I see now they can be updated dynamically — which works perfectly for my use case.

shadowfaxRodeo··on Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow
I have a firefox version, and a safari one in the works. It has about 50 users on firefox and 1500 on chrome.

It works a bit differently to most content blockers, you can take a look here if you're interested:

https://prodtodolist.com

Anyway, the whole point is to allow people to get out of addictive loops, to take control of how they use the web, and most people aren't that tech savvy — they deserve to not be addicted to facebook too.

shadowfaxRodeo··on Google sets burial date for legacy Chrome Extensions, fears for ad-blockers grow
Removing webRequest's blocking will completely destroy my web extension.

It helps people get work done by blocking website's they're addicted to.

I've just started out on a new version, not sure what to do.

shadowfaxRodeo··on We are now Solar Powered
it's the opposite way round. png is especially good at compressing dithered images.

It's a reduced color palette, (in this case just black and white) so there's lots of repeated sequences. Which works very well with lossless compression.

shadowfaxRodeo··on The carbon footprint of streaming video: fact-checking the headlines
The carbon emmissions of the internet are often simplified to more data = more carbon — making streaming video the worst offender.

Streaming video happens most on fast, more energy efficient networks — so I think we overstate it's effect, compared to say a website with lots of images and scripts hosted on different servers, and accessed over 2g.

I'd love to hear from anyone with experience in this area who can suggest a place to learn more.

shadowfaxRodeo··on Sustainable web design
Video streaming is about 60% of the web. Not 99%.

But, in what sense in video streaming not part of the web?

Sustainable web design is just as applicable to streaming as e-commerce or a blog.

It’s also not at all the same as turning off a lightbulb.

It’s more like one action resulting in turning off millions of other peoples light bulbs.

shadowfaxRodeo··on Sustainable web design
And almost comically CRT screens.

Anyone remember blackle.com?

shadowfaxRodeo··on Sustainable web design
The energy usage is very small — as mobile devices are generally very efficient. But the impact it has on battery life is big — and using more battery results in the battery dying sooner and then the consumer needing to get a new phone.

A simple half-way solution to this is just to support a dark mode. People generally prefer it anyway.

shadowfaxRodeo··on Sustainable web design
Yeah, I'm not sure when that calculator was made, but somebody needs to make a better one.
shadowfaxRodeo··on Sustainable web design
In my experience, making a sustaible website means doing more talking, and a lot less coding. You are making less stuff after all.

It's also about creativity, having pride in your work, living your values.

shadowfaxRodeo··on Sustainable web design
I just read Sustainable Web Design by Tom Greenwood, one of the makers of the linked site.

One of the points he made was that it's very difficult to sell sustainable design, and much easier to just tell clients it's about performance.

His other observation was that clients care a lot if you tell them their competitor is doing environmentalism better.

shadowfaxRodeo··on Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'
Most of the activists I know are not developers, they don't have tech savvy people in their groups. And as far as I can tell developers will just add a million tracking scripts to anything without much thought.

I don't think this makes green movements fake. it just means that they don't understand security and privacy.

I couldn't even join my local group during lockdown because they only opperate on facebook.

shadowfaxRodeo··on Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'
Solutions to the climate crisis can all be broken down into smaller and smaller parts — small enough to be ignored — or small enough to be easily fixed.

For web developers that 5% is our responsibility, and we have the means to change it in ways many people cannot.

As for fonts — yes I'm sure it would make a big impact. Font files are a decent chunk of average page weight.

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