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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • but_what_about_.jpg

    whataboutism isn’t some magical phrase that you can utter every time someone brings up hypocrisy

    if we’re going to support sanctioning civilians based on their countries breaking international law, then we should not have double standards. otherwise it’s very clear to anyone paying attention that this is a geopolitical issue and not a moral one.

    and that’s what this is actually about. the US sanctions on Russia are a geopolitical tool meant to make the Russian re-subjugation of Ukraine more expensive. that’s it. US doesn’t actually care about Ukraine- neither this administration or the last.

    to me, that doesn’t justify banning individuals from participating in OSS projects. anybody that wants to contribute should be able to.



  • Research has shown it has historically had very little to no impact on policy. What it does do is harm the lowest rungs of society.

    For example a 2019 report on Trump’s Venezeuala sanctions estimate up to 40,000 people died. Mostly poor people who went without healthcare and medicine because the US froze all of the government’s funds and access to credit.

    In my opinion, I’d prefer if we just bombed civilians in the countries we sanction. It’s more honest. It really is a form of low level warfare. Something akin to a medieval raiding party




  • imagemagick handles almost all image files

    images ) ls
    001.jpg  002.jpg  003.jpg  004.jpg  005.jpg
    images ) convert 001.jpg example.pdf
    

    ffmpeg handles almost all video files

    ex ) ls
    rock.mp4
    ex ) ffmpeg -i rock.mp4 rock.avi
    

    if you use gnome there’s a nice little feature of the file explorer where you can just drag and drop scripts into ~/.local/share/nautilus/scripts/

    for example

    make a fish script (ignoring error checking for brevity here, my real script had a couple guard rails)

    /#!/usr/bin/env fish
    set file $argv[1]
    convert $file (basename $file .png).pdf
    

    then when you right click on a file in your gnome file explorer you can click the scripts option

    example

    and the script is right there so you can just easily convert with the press of a button

    example

    note, i crossed out some stuff that includes client names

    tldr: there are so many ways to do what you need to do there’s no reason to trust random websites you don’t know. there’s a lot of slimey people out there wanting to take advantage of people. and everybody should strive to be at least a little computer literate. the examples i gave here aren’t complicated. they’re simple commands






  • kava@lemmy.worldtoNews@lemmy.worldFlorida is now a solar superpower
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    15 days ago

    That’s true although it’s quite impressive regardless.

    First, the Florida state government is actively hostile to solar. Just a couple years back they passed a law that made it so you couldn’t sell your excess power back to the grid- a huge benefit of installing solar.

    This was at the request of FPL (Florida Power & Light) because just like in the federal government, the Florida government is essentially bought and paid for.

    So I don’t know the specifics in CA, but I’d imagine their government is more friendly to renewable energy.

    And we also need to consider CA has a little less than double Florida’s population and a little more than double Florida’s GDP.

    So the fact that Florida surpassed California’s solar usage is actually quite impressive, especially considering CA had a significant head start.

    It’s really a testament to how useful this technology is. Solar is not growing in Florida because it’s renewable or has lower carbon emissions, etc. It’s growing because it’s economically feasible.

    And I think it’s a good sign for the future of renewable energy. Also goes to show Florida is rapidly growing. Few years back we surpassed NY as the 3rd largest state (in terms of population).

    Right now Texas & Florida (and certain states in the SE like S or N Carolina) are the fastest growing states. Meanwhile states like New York, California, and Illinois are stagnating.

    In the next couple decades, Florida and Texas will eventually surpass NY and CA as the two most important states. And I predict they will both turn blue just like what happened to California.


  • just means they are in bed with Nazis

    Fascism is always the best business decision. This is the inevitable result of capitalism. The institutions on a good decade are strong and resilient. Oligarchy, yes, but still a more or less free society.

    Eventually though, there will be a series of crisis in succession that causes the establishment to weaken just enough for a strongman to slip in and take the reigns. In the 20th century it was the fallout from WW1 and the Great Depression. In our time it was COVID and the Ukraine + Israeli wars (and to some extent, 2008 housing crisis)

    One key part of fascism is that it is almost paradoxical

    a) A populist-driven ideology, which means it appeals to the lowest common denominator

    b) An elitist-driven ideology, which means it idolizes and puts value in the elites of a society

    What ends up happening is the state picks and chooses elite groups of people who end up running the show. So for example, if you are Zuckerberg or Musk or Bezos… you know that if you play nice with Trump that he will reward you and you will have certain advantages by having a friend in an authoritarian government. You also know that if you don’t play nice with Trump, he will try and hurt you using both legal and illegal mechanisms.

    Therefore, the best investment you could make is aligning yourself with the fascist state.

    This was always going to happen. Sort of like how humans eventually will catch a cold or develop cancer. The immune system on a good day is strong enough to repel these types of problems. But eventually, you will be under some stress for one reason or another and your immune system is not enough to stop the inevitable cold or what have you.




  • not claiming private organizations don’t have to the right to regulate speech on their platforms. was responding to statement

    I understand why there are exceptions for those in positions of power, but I’d be more than happy to live in a world where there weren’t.

    which to me implies some sort of state censorship on this type of material

    Really, I just wanted to understand the rationale behind the desire to ban this type of material.

    On the topic of Judge Roberts, on a similar although different legal issue

    He wrote the Court’s opinion in United States v. Stevens (2010), invalidating a federal law that criminalized the creation or dissemination of images of animal cruelty. The government had argued that such images should be a new unprotected category of speech akin to child pornography. Roberts emphatically rejected that proposition, writing that the Court does not have “freewheeling authority to declare new categories of speech outside the scope of the First Amendment.” Roberts also wrote the Court’s opinion in Snyder v. Phelps (2011), ruling that the First Amendment prohibited the imposition of civil liability against the Westboro Baptist Church for their highly offensive picketing near the funeral of a slain serviceman.

    In oft-cited language, Roberts wrote:

    “Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and — as it did here — inflict great pain. On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker. As a Nation we have chosen a different course — to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate. That choice requires that we shield Westboro from tort liability for its picketing in this case.”

    If Judge Roberts were to be consistent, and I make no such claims that he will ever be consistent, I believe he would likewise not support banning fake AI porn.



  • As shady as Mozilla is, they’re competing against a functional monopoly

    yeah this is a part we need to recognize. right now there are essentially three browsers. Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. Every other browser is some derivative of one of these- mostly Chromium.

    Google can change some small detail about how they render HTML or a small part of their JS engine and that has global effects all over the internet. Without a Firefox to compete, they will implement policies to hurt the consumer. People think just because Chromium is open source that this mitigates the risk.

    Google’s V8 javascript engine does not only power all Chrome and chrome-derivatives, it also powers nodeJS and therefore vast swathes of server-side javascript as well.

    it’s actually difficult to understate how much raw power Google has in determining what you see on the internet and how you see it

    we desperately need Firefox. I really hope that an open source alternative could be viable but it’s been decades and we haven’t had a real browser pop into existence. will the death of Firefox mean something else comes out? Or will the death of Firefox be the last nail in the coffin for a free internet?