Skip Navigation

InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)R

rowinxavier

@ rowinxavier @lemmy.world

Posts
6
Comments
603
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • What laws (if any) should exist around recreational drugs?

    Jump

  • Broadly speaking laws should centre around enabling people to make choices in an informed and safe manner.

    If a product is not what it says it is then people can't mame that choice properly, so laws around quality control and labeling are a must.

    Advertising often clouds decisions and frequently reaches audiences outside the target market, driving consumption by kids etc, so none of that please.

    Tax should be significant on these items, but not high enough to leave illegal supply competitive or even cheap by comparison. Otherwise you get an increase in gang activity like we have had from raising our tobacco prices over the last 20 years.

  • Linux recommendations for a beginner on a Mac?

    Jump

  • Yes indeed, I wasn't sure about the architecture for the machine and when Apple started their own silicon, everything is happening both so fast and so slow, time is a flat circle.

  • Linux recommendations for a beginner on a Mac?

    Jump

  • Yes, Asahi is for Apple silicon, not Intel, I wasn't sure when they changed over from Intel to Arm.

    That said, if you have a fully spare computer which is not something you rely on for anything then installing the OS directly can give you better performance. I don't know how powerful your main machine is but if it is significantly more powerful than the old machine a VM may be faster on that, it just depends on the performance of each machine.

    Edit: I forgot to add, I used to work in IT doing support and I had Windows 7, Vista, XP, and NT all in VMs for supporting customers. I tried to get a reasonable Windows 98 image running but the hardware acceleration and comparability just wasn't good enough at the time to make it worth it. It was fun full screening Windows NT with everyone else using Windows 7, it looked so retro and it was lots of fun to tinker with.

  • Linux recommendations for a beginner on a Mac?

    Jump

  • A lot of people talk about Asahi Linux as a good distro for Apple hardware, I wouldn't know given I haven't tried Apple hardware for decades. That said, installing on the bare metal is great, but first I would recommend a virtual machine.

    Using a VM you can try different distros, test different desktop environments, and generally mess around without risk to your data or the usability of your machine in the early stages of figuring Linux out. Once you have tried a few and found a workflow that works for you you can install as a dual boot or even ditch Mac OS entirely. I would personally try a few different desktop environments including KDE, Gnome, and XFCE, along with some of the more obscure ones like in ElementaryOS and so on. Linux is all about options and choice so try some things and learn what works for you.

    Ultimately, don't take it too seriously. You don't need the right answer, there isn't one, just try some things and find what works for you. If it stops working you can always try something else later.

  • Flock Safety acting like Bricks and Minifigs. Bens doing jornalism, Benn Jordan and Ben Schneider.

    Jump

  • I still wear mine every day. I have a wonderful mask from an Australian company which is Marino wool and very comfortable. It has replaceable filters and a head strap so it doesn't pull on my ears. My clients have never seen my face and I have worked with some for more than 2 years. I do it mostly because I have some health issues that covid would not help, I work with immune compromised people, and my partner could really do well to not get sicker. I was wearing a mask in 2019 due to bushfires and I've not stopped since, I don't see myself stopping any time soon.

  • Beyond CAPTCHAs: How do we keep human‑pretending bots out of the fediverse?

    Jump

  • Yeah, sadly I have to agree, a fee won't do anything on its own. This would require a mix of features working together. Each makes botting a bit more painful and a bit less effective, but putting them all together makes it not worthwhile.

    Also, we don't need to make a space perfect, just better than other places. You don't need to be faster than the bear to escape, just faster than the slowest member of your group.

  • Beyond CAPTCHAs: How do we keep human‑pretending bots out of the fediverse?

    Jump

  • Ooh, I really like that idea! You are putting money in as a sort of deposit, but after a period of time it has served its purpose and the money can be returned. If I have to be active for say 3 months and also a certain amount of activity to get my deposit returned then burning the account after would be a pain in the arse and I would not bother. Having an account in good standing could also be a soft filter. Users could only show content from validated users and thus filter out all the bot junk, but if they wanted their comments and posts to show up they would go through the process.

  • Beyond CAPTCHAs: How do we keep human‑pretending bots out of the fediverse?

    Jump

  • I hate to use the example, but one of the worst places on the internet actually found a solution for this a long time ago. $10. By having a small, but meaningful, fee for the account people couldn't have unlimited accounts and there was a cost to getting banned. If you are posting bot slop you will be banned quickly and lose your $10. If you are not being bot like and also not breaking tonnes of other rules many times then you will not be banned and can keep your account.

    This works well enough most of the time. Getting a new account after your previous one has been banned can be done fairly quickly but that $10 adds up quickly and can fund the cost of reviewing and potentially banning bad actors. It doesn't solve the problem in full, but another thing you can add is region gating. In your profile you set where you are going to be dialling in from, including which VPN providers and so on. This means you have a fairly specific pattern of behaviour that is white listed in advance. Now if your account is compromised and starts logging in from other places it can be blocked quickly, and also potentially the login attempts can be blocked and a password reset process initiated.

    Another option would be to require a invite only process and have those you invite reflect on you. For example, if someone invites a friend and that friend invites not accounts then both people are impacted. If someone invites 9 good people and 1 abused account their ratio is 0.9, if they drop below some value then they lose invite privileges. If you consistently invite crappy people or abusive bots you get banned, but if it happens only occasionally then you lose your invite rights for a while. Those parameters are all tunable but should help to get things operating more smoothly.

    Also, having invite periods but closing invites most of the time can also kill off many bots. People using bots are lazy, they don't want to wait for months posting stuff and pretending to be a person to then use the accounts to post 3 junk things and then have the whole set banned. They want a large network of accounts they can throw away as needed. Make it slow, expensive, and consequential. Make botting 50 accounts cost $500 and also be a waste of time and the bots will stop coming.

  • Free Ink: open ecosystem for e-readers

    Jump

  • It looks like a cool project. I wonder if anyone is working on higher PWM frequency for people who are PWM sensitive. Most ereaders with front lights use PWM at a fairly low frequency to control brightness and it can be very taxing on the eyes. Dimming using DC regulation is slightly more expensive but it should be fairly manageable with this kind of open hardware project.

  • I hurt myself today

    Jump

  • The sourdough was unscathed, which was the problem, it deflected the knife better than my weak human flesh. Attempt 2 was successful, the sourdough was great, and it is a standard loaf which replaces all other bread so it became Vegemite toast, tuna salad sandwiches, boiled egg mashed with butter toast, and a vessel for butter with sausages. It is also gluten free, made with brown and white rice, buckwheat, and tapioca starch. Finally got sourdough working with gluten free flour, no xantham gum needed, just a touch of psylium husk (2g/500g).

  • I hurt myself today

    Jump

  • Yes indeed, a tea towel will do the job well, I just got some silicone mats to make the whole surface black (so I can see dirt and crumbs easier) and non-slip. It also does some sound absorption to reduce the noise level, but it isn't a huge effect.

  • I hurt myself today

    Jump

  • I did mine two days ago, took a chunk of finger tip out while cutting a loaf of bread on a cutting board which was not on a non-slip surface. People talk about how nice sourdough is, but never how dangerous. Worth it.

  • Just got a degoogled CalyxOS phone but can I leave the bootloader unlocked?

    Jump

  • On Pixel devices you can unlock and relock the bootloader as much as you like. Most other phones cannot do this because the manufacturer doesn't want you to install custom software. If I relock my bootloader on my Pixel 6 Pro it protects from one risk, someone gaining physical access to my phone and booting another operating system to access my data without my permission. This is handy, but not really a big risk for most people. Leaving the bootloader unlocked makes sense for your device and shouldn't cause any meaningful risk for you.

  • Is there a safe way to say you don't like something?

    Jump

  • Conversation have a flow, and sequence of performances from each participant. Saying "I'm tired of classic rock" is a stop point for the conversation. If you use this wording you are not making a space for their next response.

    Instead you could consider saying something more like "I'm not really into classic rock, do you have anything else?" Or even more directly just add "Do you have anything else?" to the end of your original statement. If you close the conversation around classic rock but open a new one about another genre or a request for their other preferences the conversation can go forward.

    That said, this is all masking. If you are not interested in maintaining that relationship it may be more trouble than it is worth then ending things there may work for you. If someone required that level of emotional work from my end but did not reciprocate by adopting strategies that worked with me I would feel it was pretty unfair and not really worth my time. Being flexible and kind is something that should be reciprocal, not one sided. Masking costs you something and you not masking costs them something. Meeting them half way may make sense, but it may also be pointless if they won't actually meet you there.

  • Going back into the closet

    Jump

  • Hey man, that sucks. I won't claim that things will be better because I can't know that for sure, but it does seem times are changing. When I was a kid a trans person was a punchline. When my parents were kids a trans person was a pedophile and worthy of death. The kids I work with now are aware of trans people and just accept it as part of human diversity, like hair or skin colour.

    If you can't be out now then don't be, you are the judge of that and nobody should be telling you what to do. That doesn't mean the future will be like today. There may be a day where it seems more possible or you find a new friend group. You may find that you can be more flexible in that group and take the risk, making yourself more comfortable. I would recommend not closing yourself to the idea, just accepting that right now it isn't working for you and you are putting on hold for a while. We all wait for things, that doesn't mean giving them up or never trying again, it just means waiting and making the best of your time now.

  • Best open e-Reader

    Jump

  • Honestly, if buttons matter to you I would not recommend the Kobo. It has one button, on the back strangely enough, which is the power button. Other than that it is all the touchscreen. In KoReader you can customise everything so different areas mean different things, but it is not at all physical, no actual buttons to press.

    That said, the process for getting KoReader working was so easy it was almost like it was intended, it is just dropping files in and rebooting. On a Kindle you have to type a bunch of commands in and use an exploit, which with any update could potentially be overwritten. Kobo seems to be willing to have your custom software without an issue.

    As for my experience, it has been a delight. The battery lasts a long time, the front light can be warm or cold and really quite bright, and software is quite fast and responsive, and colour is good enough for manga which is good for me, the black and white rendering is really nice for text and the fonts are quite nice. Overall a great experience, well worth the money for me. The only gripe I have is the lack up upgradable storage, but that is the same for all of them, nobody wants you to be able to buy a massive microsd card rather than pay huge amounts for their inflated internal storage.

  • Best open e-Reader

    Jump

  • I just got a Kobo Clara Colour and it was painless to get KoReader working on it. It runs well, is very responsive, and the battery life is great. It is not as powerful as some other options but for the price it is quite nice. The black and white version is about $30 cheaper here, so it is a fairly good value proposition.

  • If you need a portable reader, is there any reason to choose an e-reader over your phone?

    Jump

  • The difference in cost for a black and white or colour ereader is fairly minimal now, mine was about $30 more than the black and white. I'm using a Kobo Clara Colour. I have installed NickelMenu and KoReader and absolutely love it.

    The difference between that and my phone is significant. My phone has to be maximum brightness to be readable outside, but my Kobo is fine. Eink relies on reflected light so bright external lights like the sun don't make it look bad, they actually make it look better. The size is also a bit more suited to reading, though you are correct that phones are often close to that size now. These are reasons, but they are not the main reason.

    It can't do music or web browsing, nor can it have much in the way of apps and games. It can't get messages or emails, and notifications are not even supported. Why do I use it? To read. It is for reading while doing nothing else. I can decide that I will now read for an hour and just put my phone somewhere else, maybe on charge, while I do so. I can focus on that one task and smash it out without anything else getting in the way. It is glorious.

    I am going to get an MP3 player soon given how great my experience of separating reading has been. Using my phone for everything is great for travel but the cost is the constant intrusions. I have notifications off for most things and that helps, but the availability of everything all the time is just not something I cope well with. I think my phone will continue to be my camera for the most part, and my communication tool as well, but moving music and reading off seems to be a good path.

  • Locked

    Can someone lead me to some blender community ??

    Jump

  • I totally thought that would be about Blender, the 3d modeling application. Instead I found true joy. Thank you.

  • aww @lemmy.world
    rowinxavier @lemmy.world

    This little loaf loves his carpeted board

  • aww @lemmy.world
    rowinxavier @lemmy.world

    Glorious cushion guardian

  • aww @lemmy.world
    rowinxavier @lemmy.world

    My little hunter going after skinks

  • You Should Know @lemmy.world
    rowinxavier @lemmy.world

    YSK that you can/should budget yearly for long term purchases

  • Ask Science @lemmy.world
    rowinxavier @lemmy.world

    Warfarin dose in this study seems very similar in outcomes but does not meet non inferiority. Why?

  • Lemmy Shitpost @lemmy.world
    rowinxavier @lemmy.world

    Bream meame