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Comment Re:A Walkable City? (Score 4, Informative) 199

Ireland, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Pakistan, Namibia, New Zealand, Liberia, Lesotho, and the Philippines also use the "soccer" term.

Many other countries (Afganistan, Algeria, Armenia, Bahrain, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Croatia, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Greece, - you know what fuck it I'm to the G's and I'm tired of typing them) call the game by some local name which sometimes translates to "foot ball" but not always.

Bottom line - this website is based in the US. Most of its users are from the US. Its not going to be uncommon for US English - where the game is called soccer - to be the language used here.

Comment Re:Known Unknowns (Score 1) 63

Think of it like the ancient Greeks measuring the radius of Earth and then realizing that there was a lot of the surface of the planet that, given their measured curvature, must logically be there but that they had zero knowledge of.

That example only works in hindsight. Yes, they had a somewhat accurate calculation of the size of the Earth, and therefore could potentially guess that there was "something" between Europe and swinging back around to Asia, but that is only now accurate because we've determined the actual size of Earth and what that thing in between is.

At the time until proven otherwise it could have just as easily been that their math was wrong the whole time.

Comment Re:the fonts are too small. (Score 1) 147

> There's also the Text Size slider under the Accessibility control panel.

There is no text size slider under accessibility on my machine (4k monitor, M1 Studio Ultra.)

What works, sort of, is to select the desktop then right click (or control left click), select "Show View Options" from the context menu, and then in there, select a text size from the drop down. You can also do this in the context of any finder window.

However, maximum selectable text size is 16pts — which is very small on a 4k display. As an "accessibility" setting, it's laughable. Which is perhaps why it's not under accessibility.

I have been using a free app from the Mac app store, "Loupe", which provides a comprehensive zoom capability much more convenient than Apple's "Zoom." It's not as good as actual reasonable control over system fonts would be, but it's better than being stuck with 16pt fonts.

Comment Re:Let the government step in (Score 1) 36

That said some sort of tax is probably preferable to bans since in the article above it mentions in places that banned bags it became a cat/mouse game of what a "bag" is.

Or what a "disposable" bag means.

Here one county banned disposable bags, so the local Walmarts in that county switched to a much thicker and sturdier plastic bag instead. They're still free though, so now they're effectively just handing out bags that consume 10x (or more) the plastic of the old ones to skirt around the law.

Article about this: https://www.ctpost.com/news/ar...

Comment Dark Energy (Score 2) 63

I've never really put much stock in the dark energy theory. For one - its another "placeholder" theory. IE, this thing exists with no proof because our equations don't work with this as a fudge factor.

That said, even assuming dark energy exists, and is what is driving expansion of the universe, then there's no guarantee that it will continue to strengthen over time. Indeed the expansion hasn't just been accelerating since the beginning. At the very beginning of the big bang expansion was much more rapid, then slowed down dramatically, then has been gradually speeding back up again.

The thing is, without knowing what caused the first slowing of expansion, there's no guarantee that expansion won't slow again eventually.

Comment Re:In-house can be practical (Score 1) 70

Is it online somewhere?

I have not shared it with the world, which I think is what you're asking. Nor do I plan to, at least anytime in the near future. This reduces the attack surface and the support loading.

Otherwise, yes, it's online — it's a networking WAN application bringing together people from widely disparate locations.

Comment In-house can be practical (Score 1) 70

The real question is where will everyone go now that Discord is enshittified?

After putting up with Slack... slacking... for a while, Ryver ignoring bugs and getting worse over time, I wrote my own system from scratch. No ads, no randos, no spam, no cost. I am running independent family and business instances.

It's got a decent set of features, including a broad range of text formatting (it does _x_ and *x* and emoji :) markdown-like formatting too, but that's just for the comfort of our oldies), audio/video media, wide image support, file and image user libraries, various carefully designed bots, a full range of emojis, post previewing, search, and an integrated to-do system.

Sometimes, if you can, you just have to say "nope" and put your nose to the grindstone a bit.

Comment Re:Neurosis Theater (Score 1) 395

There are lots of non-pretty people who dislike that more-pretty people can make an easy living by marrying wealthy partners.

There are lots of non-athletic people who dislike that more-athletic people can make an easy and wealthy living playing sports. Should we then ban the use of photos of athlete's faces?

There are lots of people who can't act and/or aren't good-looking that dislike that actors can make an easy and wealthy living playing roles. Should we then ban the use of photos of actor's faces? Should I go on? Models? Politicians? Firemen? Cats ?

Who will protect our feline friends from the outrageous exploitation of the fact that they are cuter than almost any human who ever lived?

I mean, honey, you may be cute, but cats have you beaten like a grievously dusty rug in that department.

The entire trend of "oh no, can't see / say / look at / admire / leverage" [a photo of a face] is absurd, and would actually be funny if it wasn't so outrageously wrongheaded.

Comment Re:Neurosis Theater (Score 1) 395

Imagine a big lab where male researchers put playboy pictures on the wall.

That's not even a remotely reasonable take or example for what's happening here. This is a woman's face . It's a "Playboy picture" only in the sense that yes, it appeared in Playboy. It's not a nude. Pictures of, just for instance, Peter Sellers and Steve Martin have also appeared in Playboy. Should we now ban crops of these gentlemen's faces from those photos from appearing in an image processing example? I mean, seriously. It's puerile. Stupid. Regressive. Ridiculous.

Do you think that is professional ?

If a person's face, even, OMG, a handsome man or beautiful woman or other, should be used for an image processing example? Yes. Absolutely. 100%. Is it professional? Yes. Absolutely. 100%. I'm not in the least offended by the idea, nor should I be. It's a picture of a face. As for beauty, again, not offended regardless: male, female, trans, androgynous.

Do you think female researchers would feel comfortable working there ?

With pictures of people's faces on the wall? Even, OMG, women's faces? Well, if they don't, they need some therapy. What they don't need is for the walls to be sanitized so they can pretend that good-looking people don't exist, aren't interesting to others, and are somehow offensive in and of themselves.

What about people who fear cats? Should we then ban all pictures of cat's faces from lab walls and studies? How far do you want to take this? What about agoraphobics? Would you have us ban pictures of the outdoors from lab walls and studies? What about amathophobics? Should all labs have privacy walls so no one sees powders on the bench? What about, OMG, a picture of a pile of powder on the wall? JFC, call the Powder Police immediately.

Look, if you — or whomever — don't want to appear in Playboy or some other publication, I'm 100% behind you. Don't. Don't sign a contract that gives them rights to any photos. As for what other consenting adults have chosen to do, just fuck off, please. The only one in need of your take is you. As soon as you start telling me what I can do with a picture of someone's face, presuming copyright issues are squared away, I'm going tell you to fuck right off.

And what is triggering you ? Are you afraid they're going to come for your porn ?

Quite aside from the neurotic absurdity of the anti-adult-porn movement, no, this is something else entirely. This is moving normal things into the realm of moral panics. It's a bad thing. Entirely. On its own.

Trump and his american taliban allies are the ones you should be afraid of.

I am about as anti-regressive and anti-Trump as you can get. Lefter-than-left in almost all social and economic aspects, conservative only where it seems to me to be logical to conserve already-achieved progress. An outlook that includes conserving the achievements of separating personal liberties from absurd moralizations insofar as we have managed that thus far.

The problem here, what makes it worthy of comment, is that this particular moral panic in-a-teacup is straight-up regressive.

Comment Neurosis Theater (Score 1, Troll) 395

The thing is there is a moral panic

A perfect storm of toxic feminism and neurosis.

The copyright holder is okay with it, and they own the rights to the image. The researchers using it are okay with it. The only "offensive" thing [cough] about this image is that she is beautiful, and that is what is actually triggering these people.

Comment Perfect world (Score 2) 27

In a perfect world this might work, but in reality most of your DVD's will walk off never to be seen again.

Doesn't even have to be malicious - back in the real days of Netflix and Blockbuster people would keep DVD's all the time because they just forgot to take them back or were too lazy to. Plus a dwindling number of people even have DVD players at home. I could technically connect up an older game console but that's the only way I'd have to watch one now.

Comment Re:Cheaper entertainment (Score 1) 82

Except you forget capitalists are always on the lookout for ways to increase their capital and that includes cutting costs without lowering purchase price with increases their capital gains

Um, no. Capitalists are always looking out for themselves. That means trying to get your business (and capital) - either by making a product better, or by selling it for cheaper, because in a free market economy if your product isn't good enough a customer will buy a competitor. There's a reason Wal-mart and Amazon are the behemoths that they are - they sell products cheaply and conveniently and as a result TONS of people shop there.

Similarly, you as a customer in a capitalist market are also always looking out for YOURSELF (trying to maintain your capital). You seek out the product that best suits your needs - either by function or by cost, and purchase that one instead of the competitor.

Occasionally the market needs some guardrails to prevent monopolies or price fixing collusion, but overall it works tremendously well.

Comment Re: Cheaper entertainment (Score 1) 82

As far as the grandparent's concern about it being "possible to see a movie" without spending a fortune, here's an idea: Try - maybe just sometimes - skipping the movie. I go to the movies maybe once or twice a year. I don't feel that I'm spending outside my means, and I don't feel that I'm missing anything. If the actors' game or movie is too expensive for you, don't buy it.

It sounds like that's what they're already doing, and they're saying that a technology that allows them to see the movies more often as a boon.

Your comment was akin to responding to a guy who says "I'm having trouble financially. I'm not starving but I'd like to eat more often." with "How about you eat less if the food costs so much?". It's pointless and not productive.

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