• 21 Posts
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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: August 15th, 2023

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  • Flags have always been poorly standardized outside of system apps and tools. Generally, -u should equal --update (and depending on how the app was written, may warn for --up: “Did you mean --update?”) Single tick flags are generally combinable: -ua or -ls. I have seen long single tick flags somewhere, but can’t remember where. (Your -update example.) Various python libraries than handle flags have helped a ton with getting people to use the same patterns, so that is nice.

    You just summed up my first experience with systemd many years ago.

    systemctl != sysctl. Both somehow got wedged into the same index in my brain and took years for me to correct. On top of that, <service> <action> was reversed to <action> <service>. (Or was it the other way around?)

    I was convinced from my first experience with systemd that the person who wrote it was the purest form of evil. (It’s leveled out a bit over the years, so it’s tolerable to use these days. Still not a fan though.)


  • Not really a fan of any argument that turns any bias to 11, but whatever.

    Efficiency is really the winning point though as combustion engines are horrendously inefficient. Investment cash is better spent improving electric motors instead of squeezing more out of traditional engines. Even if the dial moves from, say, 90% efficient to 91% efficient for electric motors, that would be significant. If we could magically create a “heat battery” that stores heat captured from combustion engines, that would be nice. There are plenty of uses for captured energy like that, but I don’t see that as anywhere near practical for daily use vehicle ls.

    Battery recycling still likely needs more improvement, but unfortunately, that will be driven more by future resource limitations. To my understanding, we are still finding new ways to extract lithium and still developing better battery chemistry. That is good, but doesn’t really provide more incentive to improve recycling. (There is are cost/benefit factors in play, I speculate.)

    If there is a darker underbelly to EVs, it’s the batteries. They have their own set of long-term problems and mass adoption would be problematic in that regard.

    Charging stations need to be at every gas station and just as convenient to charge as it is to fill up. Our power grid is likely not supportive of that quite yet. Having had to stop at a number of sketchy gas stations in the past, having to stay at one of those longer than needed is not usually high up on my favorite things to do. Still though, getting a just enough charge to get to a nicer place could still be a good option. Availability of charging spots needs to be improved. (It’s good now in most busy areas, but poor in some other places.)

    I drrive a hybrid now, only because I like the option of carrying around my own charger. It’s not perfect, but it is a decent intermediate step as I will eventually get an EV in the future.

    Saying that EVs are just as bad or worse is just a bad argument and doesn’t really need to be countered with what is basically a rant. The benefits and efficiency isn’t really debatable with well manufactured vehicles.

    As far as I am concerned, modern EVs are still emerging technology and need several more generations of improvements before I fully convert. They are neat, but not neat enough for me at the moment. I’ll coonvert soon enough, but not quite yet.




  • Shocked expressions, big red arrows pointing to nothing, titles based on shock, surprise or open-ended questions are videos I tend to avoid. I don’t particularly care to watch a video where the first emotion had is sympathy for desperation. (It makes you almost question the emotional state of most of the users that “the algorithm” tuned itself for, TBH. I say that only as an observation of scale when looking at the sheer numbers of viewers that YouTube has.)

    Sticking with the subtle stuff is just fine. A picture of the host smiling with an informative title and thumbnail is OK, and not very gag evoking.

    Blaming “the algorithm” for having to do that shit is likely a very real thing. However, I will religiously watch channels that produce good content first.

    Either way, I have conflicting views: A person has to earn a living, but when emotional exploitation is used in this way, I don’t know what to think. Is it really harmless? Not sure about that yet.





  • There absolutely is a darker side to Lemmy, but for the most part, many of those “legacy” instances have already been pruned from the federation that we are in now. (I suspect there are smaller, highly niche, “Lemmy” bubbles that even I wouldn’t want to go looking for that have never federated with the larger group. There are also various branches you can explore via instances that keep their doors mostly open.)

    On the surface, and depending on what you consider toxic, the misinformation campaigns that are run on Lemmy seem fairly normal, but can get fairly dark if you understand the sources and start to do broader geolocation estimation of some of the participants.

    There are still the occasional DDoS’s and the occasional CSAM posters, both of those are only a degree or two away from the really nasty shit.

    The biggest issue now, and probably will always be, is how easy it is to avoid bans. Some seriously troubled users have generated hundreds of accounts across multiple instances just to troll and appear to generate traffic to specific communities. (“you_emm” being one of the worst, but its posts are fairly easy to sniff out still. It will actively search for untagged mentions as well, hence, my obfuscation.)

    But for the most part, the bullshit is easy to filter out. When you stumble across a specific niche, they tend to niche themselves super hard, so beware. All-in-all, Lemmy is chill and fairly quiet which is why I still use it.



  • In most cases, I believe it’s a mix of hormones and traditionalism. Men have generally been more likely to seek grandeur by participating in violent activities, or, violent activities are demanded by their particular social group. Sometimes a mix of both.

    I think it also it boils down to how gender roles are taught by different cultures. If men are taught to be the risk takers, it only makes sense that boundaries and laws will get pushed more by men. After all, intentionally breaking a law may simply be viewed as a calculated risk and not as something that should never be done.

    Honestly speaking, it seems too easy of an answer to just blame male physiology. The social aspects of this can’t be ignore either.



  • Domestic borrowing is helpful, but in Russia’s case, they will need to fully control every aspect of their economy as well, from capping prices on all consumer goods to directly propping up critical domestic manufacturing companies.

    I won’t pretend to know all the details of how mostly isolated wartime economies function. Still, borrowing from the public is a huge part of this, but most of it based around simply keeping the people thinking their currency has value while giving everyone jobs to manufacture goods for the war effort. (If taxation becomes extreme, then they start manufacturing bodies for the war effort from people who can’t pay or doge.)

    Russia still has active trading partners and can still barter raw materials for other things. The gas shortages due to fires at refineries caused by “careless smokers” is really hitting them hard though…

    But yeah, like I mentioned before, wartime economies are a thing and they can function for quite a number of years. Up to and during WW2, deficit spending and taxation for Germany was insane. (Most of that debt was cancelled after the war as Germany had no economy left to pay it back.)

    They just fake their economy for while, until they can’t. That’s an extremely simplic way to put it, but for idiots like me, it’s easier to understand.

    Simply “printing more money” doesn’t work and the “real” economy becomes mostly goods, services and guns. Extreme inflation will drain bank accounts naturally, I speculate.

    Feel free to completely correct me here, but there seem to be way to drain bank accounts without having it perceived as government theft, is my main point. (TBH, currency value makes little sense to me with the ways governments print and burn it at massive rates. It’s just all … fake to me.)




  • There probably isn’t a way around removing the battery, after more thought.

    Eventually, unless the battery is properly managed, gas buildup may eventually win and turn it into a forbidden pillow. Controlled battery destruction/ventilation sounds like a fun, but lengthy science project for this problem, IMHO. Gasses need to escape the battery, but phone shouldn’t go boom in the process. Deep discharge + adding vent holes after may work in some way.

    Lithium batteries mainly explode and cause fires mostly because of any stored energy and gas buildup that deformes the battery causing a short circuit and thus, fire, to my knowledge. The lithium isn’t as reactive with water because it isn’t pure lithium? My knowledge is extremely limited on keeping lithium from exploding. (I think I remember videos of lithium batteries being unrolled that still explode in water, charge or not.)


  • It’s a sharpie, and I speculate it may have been specially for fabric (if there is such a thing), further adding to the preservation conundrum.

    But anything alcohol based (or is a substance that has molecules around the same size) would melt a sharpie really quick.

    You got me thinking about this differently now, specifically about different solvents that would have been in your spray primer. Acetone is common in epoxies and primers, and it will aggressively remove sharpies as well. (Water is also a solvent, and smaller than acetone or isopropyl, but something something polar/non-polar, or something. Sharpie ink is naturally hydrophobic anyway, but not completely.) Other, equally effective solvents exist to remove sharpie and also, well, act as a solvent for other uses.

    So, point being, you just eliminated what is likely to be a fairly large range of possible coating options to choose from, which is a good thing. (I completely forgot solvents are a huge thing to consider, as did a few others here.)




  • That was a combination of words I wouldn’t have ever thought could be in a single sentence, but yet, here we are.

    While not my preferred cup of tea, death metal shows and crowds are super wholesome, usually. My daughter is a big fan, so I got the honor of taking her around Dever to various dive bars so she could learn the ropes of these kinds of events. We both got to see Party Cannon in a super small venue, so that was fucking awesome! (I have since released her to find her own demise and she has only lost one fingernail and had to nurse one or two fairly serious bruises since. Neat.)

    I get it, and y’all are generally my kind of people. ;)