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Comment Re:A simple solution (Score 1) 80

They actually can (at least a few months ago), with some work.

There's a Kodi add-on that will work with Netflix but you have to use special software on a Windows box and log into your Netflix account there to get an authorization key that you then transfer over to your Pi. That said, the experience is very different - there's only a set of directories that you browse and see the files for various shows you watch.

This page details how to do it: https://pimylifeup.com/raspber...

Comment Re:Easy to say for him (Score 3, Insightful) 151

Yes. This is a pretty straightforward "Guy demands that sellers of complimentary goods accept smaller margins in way that sounds like he cares about user experience".

It may be true that studios and theatres have fallen into a counterproductive trap: there's an obviously self defeating race to the bottom if theatres keep getting squeezed and responding by making the theatre experience worse which then reduces ticket sales and makes their fixed costs even less supportable so they make the experience yet worse; but the studios hold far more of the cards than the theatres do here.

Comment Re:It will never change (Score 1) 151

In an unhelpful sense we know that advertising works by how much is spent on it. What we do not know is whether advertisers justify their cost by influencing consumer behavior as they allege they do; or whether they are exceptionally effective at targeting the people who set ad budgets. Or potentially a mix of the two. Someone is definitely having their behavior influenced in a big way though.

Comment Seems plausible. (Score 2) 91

Given how tightly a lot of meetings are really wrapped up in power (all the ones that could have been an email but are about who you an force to show up and all the ones that could have been an email but are about cutting someone out of the loop in a visible way) it tracks that the desire to be in your meeting while skipping your meeting would come from the top; probably accompanied by some questionable theories about how your management is so valuable that even a mechanized distillation of it will better the minions exposed to it.

Comment Re:Great (Score 1) 28

This is just a wrapper. They will use it to lock down an actual life saving solution, so unless you pay the literal blood money, you can't access the cure - or even worse, poison yourself or your patient in the process.

No this is much worse than a non-solution to a non-problem, it's a distinct obstacle to sharing, distributing or using an actual solution to a real problem.

Comment Re:Just my opinion (Score 5, Interesting) 147

Except that was already done, and done brilliantly by Deep Space Nine. In reality, the Star Fleet Academy idea had a very old lineage, to the smoking shambles that was Star Trek V, when the idea was posited of having a prequel with the TOS characters, or at least the main ones, portrayed by younger actors, during their Academy days. It was pretty quickly rejected because at the time they didn't think audiences would buy the idea of new actors playing Kirk, Spock and Bones.

Of course, in the end, that was effectively what the first part of the 2009 Star Trek, which, for me at least, proved that the guys who rejected the idea in 1989-90 were spot on. But other people like the Kelvinverse films, so to each their own.

The real problem isn't writing per se. There were no lack of justifiable complaints against Voyager and Enterprise. The real problem is that no one really knows where to take it. The whole 32nd century gambit is because no one really knows how to portray the technology of the intervening period. The Enterprise temporal war rubbish demonstrated just how incredibly problematic it can be for an established sci-fi franchise to push itself across a broad timeline when you start with ships that go multiples of the speed of light, create holodecks and replicators and have computers so intelligent they can create conscious beings, and that's just by the 24th century.

With James Bond they can just keep resetting the character over and over again, and updating the gadgets along the way. Star Trek, for all its faults, has established a sort of permanent 70s-ish technology vibe, and because it's more fantasy then science fiction, the controls for the super planet buster never have to change! That franchise fell on its sword more because of a lack of imagination, lazy writing and an obvious desire not to pay Extended Universe authors some royalties for a cache of rather interesting ideas, and ultimately having to go there anyways.

In all cases, I think the fan base is the worst enemy. No franchise like Star Trek is ever going to measure up to the mythology of the older series. TOS really has entered the realm of cultural myth, and TNG, though everyone forgets how much the first season was disliked (and on rewatch a few years ago, I have to say it feels like a wonder that it ever got a season 2), isn't far behind. Even DS9's critics have finally stopped talking, and for my money, it is the most consistently well-written and well-acted of all the Star Treks. But that kind of legacy is absolutely toxic, because if you try to be too different everyone screams "It isn't Star Trek", and if you try to be similar in tone, then everyone complains "We've seen it all before!"

Comment Re:Just my opinion (Score 1) 147

"Strange New Worlds was a nice partial deviation from this - they still made sure to pander to all the current 'sensitivities', but if the writers of the show didn't love the original series and its fundamental qualities, I don't know who does."

Have you even seen the original series? Racism, bigotry, classism, human rights, ethics, not to mention nationalism, were all dealt with. TNG went further, particularly with Riker's penchant for rather open sexual interests, and of course DS9 dealt with everything from war crimes to the undermining of civil society. Voyager and Enterprise in their turn covered similar issues, though perhaps not always as ably as the first three series did.

While I would agree the way Nutrek at times has tried to do social commentary has perhaps suffered from a lack of metaphor and allegory, which the older series' writers at times had to work through since things like interracial kisses and non-binary identity would have, at the time, caused stations to go apoplectic (and indeed some did, with the Kirk-Uhura kiss). But I suspect more than just some iffy writing is at play here. Everyone accepts, well almost everyone that is, that mixed-race couples can kiss in public, and most people accept gay couples and class and racial equality. But if you try to push further into social liberalism, past what many conservative elements in society have been forced (kicking and screaming the whole way mind you), well suddenly it's all evil woke trash trying to reprogram our brains.

In other words, many have not progressed very far at all, and because TOS and TNG in particular had to hide the underlying message beneath makeup and latex, the less progressive fans can watch it and, well, almost willfully miss the point of The Outcast (TNG) or Let That Be Your Last Battlefield (TOS), assuming, I suppose, that the metaphor is buried so deeply they don't have to challenge their prejudices.

Comment Re:Feminism - it's about getting even, never equal (Score 2) 277

Thank you for taking the time to read all that! You are right, of course. It is something of an unsolved problem with the design. The question of "exactly what work are these draftees contributing?" is something I'm still working on; it may not literally be core parenting or teaching work, but actually more like e.g. hanging out with your cool uncle on the weekend who helps you learn life lessons. Maybe said uncle isn't exactly teaching or parenting material, but he still has something to contribute to building a child's character, and is assisting the parents just by being around to lighten the load. The Big Brothers Big Sisters charity seems to indicate that this is a sound principle with incredible ROI.

There would also be mandatory training to teach people the skills needed to do this work (critical to figure out what goes in there.) Also I'd like to hope that the system would "even out" over a few generations; if we assume the root cause of dangerous personalities like BPD or NPD is being trapped (or in an echo chamber) with a toxic parent figure, the practice of this "socialized parenting" is essentially guaranteeing kids have alternative support networks that can soak some of those traumas. Efficiency would never reach 100%, of course (does it ever?) and there would always be some difficult people for whom alternative credit would need to be devised, but in any substantial system there's always other work to do—maybe a truly broken person contributes by grading homework or something.

Comment Re:Feminism - it's about getting even, never equal (Score 4, Interesting) 277

I can't comment on your masculinity. I don't know you. But it seems like you're wounded, so let's cauterize it.

In a very strange sense, it is true that males are disposable, but this fact is built into sexual reproduction by evolution itself. In virtually all species, if one parent is responsible for carrying offspring and the other isn't, then by definition the former parent is anchored longer in the reproductive act, and is thus in need of protection during that period.

Mammals in particular have an "experimental male, stable female" genetic strategy where more pronounced variation in traits (height, academic performance, et cetera) is presented in males. With each generation these traits then get folded back into the matrilineal trunk, which is less affected by them. This specifically happens with traits on the X chromosome via Barr body inactivation.

So there's one answer that you can settle on, if you want to feel really shitty. You are disposable. Society isn't responsible for this, though. The game was rigged tens of millions of years ago when some fucking fish somewhere evolved live birth. Unless you're a salmon, you've drawn the short straw.

But there are a couple of other angles worth considering.

First of all—who is doing the disposal of all these men? Women aren't the ones declaring wars, or cheaping out on safety equipment, or blocking legislation that reduces gun violence. We didn't invent conscription and we didn't bomb the World Trade Center. I mean, fuck, Pete Hegseth is systematically firing female generals and wants to stop women from volunteering to serve in the military, even if they meet all the physical requirements for service. These bloodthirsty assholes are the ones actually killing you, and they should be your #1 enemy. All of these problems are reduced by a factor of ten just by moving to Canada, where the reproductive laws are basically the same as any blue state.

Now, as for reproductive politics... I used to be a fairly left-libertarian person on this issue and felt that the real problem was that people are immature assholes to each other. It seemed to me that custody and child disputes only happen at all because the people involved had shitty parents, and that the only solution was to get rid of societal expectations; live and let live, make it easier for single moms to get good jobs so they don't need alimony in the first place. (Another "-mony" word, but this time from -monia, "condition," + alo, "nourishment.") But these days it's pretty damn clear to just about everyone that the last thing civilization needs is yet more isolation and atomisation.

I think the actual solution is to turn parenting into a social obligation. It's a little different from how things are now, but I think the benefits would be worth it.

Consider the consequences of what would happen if made the following into a moral principle: your parents' generation raised you, so you have a duty to raise the next generation. In this system, every adult is expected to have and raise 2 kids, or contribute the equivalent amount of work to paideia by helping to raise the kids of strangers, teaching, tutoring, babysitting, et cetera. This would have the additional benefits of making childcare cheaper, reducing the work parents actually have to do alone, and reducing the power and scope of serial child abusers (can't hurt a lot of kids if positions of power over them aren't a viable career.) Experts would still exist for key jobs like high school teachers.

Parents still get to choose who they hire to help raise their kids, so you don't have to worry about some weirdo brainwashing them. Since virtually every adult is going through the labor pool, there's a ton of choice. Both parents and helpers would be anonymized during this selection process to reduce biases around gender, appearance, etc.

The enforcement is as follows: anyone refusing to do this work would be slapped with heavy taxes and might even have trouble getting good jobs later on in life, the same way having no high school diploma, or bad credit, or a criminal record can haunt you currently. (There would be waivers and exemptions, deferrals if you can show you're making progress, etc.)

For parents going through divorce proceedings, most of the gendered BS goes away. In situations of joint custody, there's less concern about which parent gets priority because it isn't just 2 people raising the kids. If a parent doesn't want custody during a divorce at all, then they're basically downgrading to the "default" option of paying their debt to society, and there's no real shame in it. The one who gets full custody won't have as much of a burden than a single parent would today because the broader safety net of socially subsidized childcare exists.

Comment Re:Why is this the responsibility of nerds to fix? (Score 3, Insightful) 277

The proximate reason is that there are no editors on Slashdot.

The broader reason is that the fortunes of tech companies are often caught up in financial headlines, so publications that cover economics are invariably syndicated here. The intended audience of these publications—the capitalist class—is deeply anxious about any changes in their host organism that may result in the contraction of their debt-based casino, so they eat up stories with pearl-clutching themes. Naturally, slave shortages are a major concern.

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