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smorrebrod

47 karma · joined March 24, 2021

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smorrebrod··on Unknown number of Texas voter registrations went unprocessed due to DPS error
> so alien to my European brain

Voter registration is mandatory in France.

smorrebrod··on Supreme Court's ruling practically wipes out free speech for sex writing online
Pornhub has banned many videos already. It forbids and deletes any amateur video not posted by the original author (to prevent revenge porn, non-consensual porn, repost of videos since deleted by the author, etc.) and also forbids certain keywords related to non-consensual porn like rape, sleep.

Mindgeek (company owning Pornhub and many other porn websites) are by no mean a company respecting sex workers as good as they should but they are putting an effort to stop nasty shit from their websites if only not to be banned.

So I would agree that Mindgeek websites are better than others. Not good enough but better.

smorrebrod··on Microsoft SEC 8-K: IRS is seeking an additional tax payment of $29B
This sounds to me like an gigantic amount of money. I looked it up and apparently it was $136B in 2019¹ and $111B today². And Microsoft, although it is the company with the most cash on hand, is not an outlier here with Alphabet at $121B and Apple at $100B².

I really don't know why they do this though.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/07/microsoft-apple-and-alphabet...

[2] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MSFT/microsoft/cas...

smorrebrod··on ‘Less than half’ fresh produce sold globally makes any profit
I had an anti-corruption mandatory course in a previous job in the naval industry. They talked about drugs hidden in refrigerated containers: they swapped the insulation material of the containers with cocaine. Apparently the goods in the containers did not spoil so thermal conductivity of cocaine is pretty low.
smorrebrod··on The deadline to migrate your Mojang account to a Microsoft account has passed
I'm baffled by how good minetest is now. Don't get me wrong they don't have feature parity with minecraft and likely never will. But the fact that they built the game as a voxel engine where people can add mods on top of it to make a full game is such a good idea! (eg. the default "minetest game" is a mod on top of the default engine, you can play other games)

Big plus for me: mod installation is seamless and when you want to join a server with other mods you don't have to install them locally.

Of course it still needs a lot of polish but it is really fun to play.

smorrebrod··on iPhone 12 withdrawn from French market for non-compliance with EU regulation
I don't know the spread of this movement but it does exist. For example, the national electric company deployed a new generation of electric meter (Linky) which can communicate data to your supplier using PLC. This communication of course emits EM waves so some people objected to the installation of this meter.
smorrebrod··on VanMoof acquired by e-mobility company Lavoie
Contrary to iron, silver or gold, aluminium has to be chemically extracted. The mineral you extract aluminium from is bauxite. This chemical process was mastered so recently that the Washington Monument is tipped with it just to show off. Even then the tip is so small that you can barely see it with your own eyes, but you can see it in Spiderman :)

https://thescienceof.org/spider-man-washington-monument/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPVzP2Jfdgs

smorrebrod··on VanMoof acquired by e-mobility company Lavoie
The lowtech magazine published this number¹:

> Scientists have calculated the lifetime carbon emissions of a steel bike at 35 kg CO2, compared to 212 kg CO2 for an aluminum bicycle.

[1] https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2023/02/can-we-make-bicycles...

smorrebrod··on ‘No way out’: how video games use tricks from gambling to attract big spenders
Not to dismiss your point but sometimes finding in rats do not apply to humans.
smorrebrod··on Dude, You’re Gettin a Dell
You are right I was comparing buying over the internet and talking to someone, but if I have the choice to talk to someone in person versus over the phone, I would prefer in person 100%.

For the video the other person posted, the DELL experience seems particularly shady since they are the only manufacturer which pushed heavily for insurance and financing. They did this experience twice (in 2018 and 2020) and this issue happened both times. So the website part of the product seems fine, however if you talk to a DELL salesperson then you may have to expect shady behaviour since it looks like they are encouraged to sell things you don't need.

But yeah, don't spend thousands of dollars over the phone, I agree.

smorrebrod··on Dude, You’re Gettin a Dell
I think it is fair to test the ability of a large manufacturer to sell computer through the phone. Many people do not know what they need to accomplish their work so asking the seller to sell them an appropriate product is not outlandish.

For example I wanted to buy a sewing machine but didn't know anything about them though I knew what I wanted to do with it. So I went to a nearby shop and asked the seller what they recommended and actually ended up with an appropriate product. Maybe for computer related stuff this is not the good way to do it anymore idk.

smorrebrod··on Wayland on OpenBSD
> But they really don't. They might have familiarized at one point of time, but that snapshot is not where the world is at now. They cannot really expect that the world around them will stop developing, so their know-how and hacks stay current.

Maybe we have different experiences. I am not working in a computer related industry so the people I know who use Linux are the only one following tech news, self hosting services, etc. So in my experience they are more familiar with their software. But my point of view is necessarily incomplete.

What I wanted to say was that people who do not know enough to be able to not run in circle, do it because they feel attached to them after becoming familiar with them after so many hours learning their paradigms, their inner workings, etc.

Again, it may be my incomplete POV but I have never seen any Windows user look at source code to try to understand a particular function to adapt the software to their workflow. I've seen numerous Linux users do this.

smorrebrod··on Wayland on OpenBSD
I think it is because Linux users tend to be more familiar with their software than users of other OSes. They chose it and they configured them, sometimes for hours.

Also they may have bent software to their liking and when you change something so important as the way images are rendered, then their particular workflow can go haywire.

I was in the community for less change (wayland, systemd, etc.) however now I tend to agree with you, I don't really care if I can still send emails, watch my DVDs and play some games.

smorrebrod··on P1030680: Unbroken Enigma message (U534, 01 May 1945)
I think your theory is correct. Back when messages where not checksummed, the French Navy used to do exactly this and sent abbreviations three times in a row. I'm quite certain that the French Navy was not the only one to do this since our communications techniques were heavily influenced by foreign nations like the US.
smorrebrod··on Plain text journaling in Vim
Wouldn't `cal -m 1` show the year 0001 ?
smorrebrod··on CPR's true survival rate is lower than many people think
Yes, the article says that half of the people resuscitated by CPR wished it didn't happen. The linked paper explicitly says this figure is valid for in-hospital administered CPR, so definitely people belonging to group 2.
smorrebrod··on This blog is hosted on my Android phone
That last part scared me! I tend to have ADB debug over USB always enabled on my phone but I'm not in any way enabling debug over wifi now I know this.
smorrebrod··on Ancient Greek terms worth reviving
That's why developed countries tend to educate their citizen for free.
smorrebrod··on Framework announces AMD, new Intel gen, 16“ laptop and more
I have a cheap laptop with a broken case and a flaky screen. Repurposing it as a desktop pc with a small case like this would be really nice.
smorrebrod··on Emulating Pokemon Emerald on GPT-4
It is actually just French.
smorrebrod··on Improved audio rendering with an optimised version of memcpy (2013)
Yep, once met an hydraulic engineer who thought his wife could find leakages through magnetic fields while looking at a map of a power dam.
smorrebrod··on Stanford researchers find only 3% of HTTP runs on port 80 [pdf]
Although I admit it is a niche, retro computing web pages can be found unencrypted to allow access to ancient computers incapable of performing TLS computations.
smorrebrod··on Poste.io – Complete Mail Server
Thanks!
smorrebrod··on Poste.io – Complete Mail Server
How can I check if a connection is TLS or STARTTLS?
smorrebrod··on Poste.io – Complete Mail Server
Isn't 465 safer since 587 uses STARTTLS and STARTTLS can be downgraded?
smorrebrod··on How to design a sailing ship for the 21st century? (2021)
It depends on ship type. For example methane carriers are expected to hit 40 years of lifetime while some low-end bulk carriers are scrapped after only 15 years.
smorrebrod··on The digital pound: A new form of money for households and businesses?
Yes they are a thing but it can cost something like 1€ to actually use it. Although online-only banks now offer it for free.
smorrebrod··on The digital pound: A new form of money for households and businesses?
To be clear, I'm from France and I have not heard of free instantaneous bank transfer with major banks
smorrebrod··on The digital pound: A new form of money for households and businesses?
One sound usage I read for a digital currency like this is person-to-person instantaneous transfer without having to give IBAN data and waiting 24h.
smorrebrod··on An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down
I don't know if that's what you're talking about but you can sue your lawyer for professional negligence if they didn't do their job properly.
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