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Cake day: July 12th, 2023

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  • Forums instead of social media, IRC/ICQ/AIM for chat, websites were much more static… unless using Flash, newgrounds full of Flash games.

    FTP/IRC was source of media distribution until transitions to, bittorrent was new, and napster, limewire, kazaa were things. Newsgroups have existed for all time, but not really including them because less mainstream.

    Windows would allow broadcast messages to just pop-up on your computer. Needed to implement your own firewall like Zonealarm, these things weren’t just default… computers kinds of just ‘directly’ connected to the internet without any appliance in the way at first.

    Edit: Oh yeah, and Steam didn’t exist, so games were bought individually in boxes at stores, and valve games were like sharing your IP with friends, listing of servers… speaking of, early Counter Strike and stuff didn’t have any anti-cheat… if you added anti-cheat to your CS server when first coming out, people getting caught would be shocked, since they didnt know they could get caught, always in denial for ‘false positives’, and really find out who of your friends aren’t actually good and were just cheating all along.





  • I think this is a hyper/hypo chart in a way, two extremes of bad (over/under medicated).

    Maybe thinking of it like the ‘Goldilocks zone’ for planets, in the right distance from their star for life, like on earth.

    A measure of healthcare and mental health in your country. Somewhere between Norway and Finland is probably the right place to be (plus/minus a little); If you are not close to this zone, then there is something likely wrong/not being done right in your country.

    Could be there is little to no healthcare, you could be under economic collapse, severe unemployment, under authoritarian rule, may be rampant drug use, may be doctors over prescribing medication (and/or prescribing instead of treating), or just no care about mental health (maybe a “get over it” macho attitude toward mental health).

    Obviously always outliers, and every country is unique and cannot be conformed to this, but Norway and Finland generally rate pretty high on the happiness scale, so ~60-80 ppt (people per thousand) is a good range to shoot for.

    Edit: To be clear, not a perfect indicator type of things; Denmark is scored as a very happy country and scores close, but out of that mentioned range (maybe the range should be a little higher or lower, or have a +/- 10 or something attached); Iceland also rated very happy, but scores way out of that range (though there may be clear geographic reasons for that), and could be a clear indicator of the above mentioned “every country is unique”, and thus that may actually be appropriate antidepressant ppt for a country so far north.

    Also, a generalized chart of population for a whole country, should never be applied to an individual person.



  • Truck_kun@beehaw.orgtoScience Memes@mander.xyzsafety first
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    20 days ago

    The boiling method, and using ultrasonic devices so far sound promising:

    https://projectboard.world/isef/project/eaev062t-harnessing-ultrasound-for-microplastic-filtration

    Neither method is 100%, and sadly even if it were, there is no way to avoid ingesting microplastics. It’s basically in all food sources at this point. Any animal, or plant have them in them, and those sources are going to be exposed to them; even rain has microplastics in it now.

    I suppose the best way to actually avoid microplastics in the food chain would be growing plants in a greenhouse type environment (with dug up deep pre-plastic dirt?) only using properly treated water? For meats, I guess lab grown meat would be the way to avoid it, using plastic free (or less) sources for material?

    I’ve actually been throwing out old spices in recent years, but maybe I should be saving them. Maybe they are the last vestiges of plastic free spices, and will be worth a fortune to paranoid rich people that want flavor?


  • It’s definitely different for every person, and situationally dependent.

    If you are as well off as Taylor Swift and get to choose… yeah, rent if you don’t want to deal with the hassle of home ownership. You’re rich and will be fine no matter what you do.

    For everyone else, if you generally are going to work in the same geographic area (even if a bit of a commute) for the next decade… then yeah, if afforded the opportunity, buy. It’s better to own something if given the chance (in general).

    Hard to say in this current market. I took a 0% down payment mortgage out a decade ago, have paid off 30k, and have 200k in fake equity. Fake equity as the valuation is real estate bubble BS, and buying now could result in a massive negative equity (putting borrowers under water) if/when that bubble bursts, but simple fact of the matter is, as the above poster mentions, as long as you keep paying the mortgage, you actually get some equity/own something.

    Worst case, your loan does go under… you go bankrupt and end up… right back where you were if you were renting anyways.

    The way I like to look at it, is a mortgage (fixed) only gets cheaper. A decade from now, you’re making more money, but inflation has devalued your income? Your mortgage principle + interest did not change in that time, so inflation has technically made your mortgage cheaper; whereas we’ve seen rents double, triple, or even quadruple in the past decade.

    Note for the curious: While FDA and similar loans can get you lower down payments, what I used for 0% was a USDA Rural Development loan - only allows you to buy in certain areas (not metros typically), but you may be surprised what areas do qualify - check out the map, anything not highlighted qualifies - zoom on in, maybe that ‘small town’ a 10 minute drive outside the big city does: https://eligibility.sc.egov.usda.gov/eligibility/welcomeAction.do … even winning a bid on homes in the current market may be tough though…


  • The unwelcoming post title aside (I assume in jest)…

    A single takeaway of my personal opinion from this series of polls is that Gen Z is comfortable with themselves, don’t feel the need to hide, and the older generations are following suit and/or the long fought battle for social change from the older generations have finally yielded an environment that people can just be themselves.

    I’m 100% straight millennial (and thus didn’t have to deal with this struggle personally), but I can for sure say the general culture today, I would feel comfortable being out in, but in 2012… I would not have been. Still dealing with people I thought were accepting people falling for the the Prop 8 BS from… what was that, 2008?

    Proud for having a generally more accepting and welcoming culture/society.




  • I saw your post that you downloaded Voyager.

    I love Voyager, but if you already haven’t noticed, Voyager stopped supporting the version of Lemmy that beehaw uses. If you intend to stay on Lemmy, and/or use Voyager, then beehaw probably isn’t the best choice, since beehaw will not be updating Lemmy versions, and plans to eventually leave Lemmy.

    That said, beehaw is a great community, just bear the above in mind before making such a switch. I will probably join another instance when beehaw’s lemmy instance closes down, but until then, I have great respect for beehaw’s team, the community they have built, and generally making this a safe place for it’s users, so I will likely stay until that switch happens.


  • The linked batteries all appear to have energy densities of about 130 Wh/kg or less.

    I wasn’t denying sodium batteries are not commercially available/viable, just pointing out that while currently available sodium batteries have lower energy density than lithium ion batteries, in the lab, sodium batteries have the ability to reach similar energy density to currently commercially available lithium ion batteries.

    The linked batteries are plenty useful for many purposes. I would gladly use them for home energy storage, electronics, or recreation vehicle use. I’m generally wary of lithium battery safety in outdoor, or high heat environments, and look forward to safer options becoming more available/common.



  • That a handful of extremist republicans can grind the government to a halt, is a sign of how weak the republican party has become.

    It literally only takes about the same handful of republicans to work in a bi-partisan fashion to completely neuter the movement and get the government working, but they are all too scared of Trump and his followers, and deciding to retire early instead of tough it out.

    None of this is necessary if you just don’t lock arms with the crazies on the most inane shit you don’t even believe in.


  • I keep hearing ‘sanctions arent working’.

    And every now and then I see things about them working; it’s almost like sanctions are a long game that don’t immediately show all the results in want within 3 months, and you need to keep them up long term. That said, of course when some don’t comply with those sanctions, it will permanently alter the landscape as the sanctioned try to work around them. Russia’s movement toward the Yuan, and reliance on China and N. Korea are not going to be undone anytime soon, if ever.

    Pre-Ukrainian invasion, 1 USD was ~78 Russian Rubles. Now, that 1 USD is valued at 92 Rubles. After the start of the war, the Ruble lost a lot of value immediately, but appears to had gained value for a few months, and has steadily decreased in value as the sanctions drag on, and seem to have semi-stablized at a much lower value than going into the war. As a generalization, it appears looking back to 2003 (max on the chart i’m looking at), as Putin’s leadership drags on, the Ruble has steadily decreased in value (in 2003, it only took about 30 Ruble to value 1 USD). Looking at other major economic powers in the world is like looking at an inverse chart, where their currencies have increased in value against the USD consistently.




  • I’m curious how an oil refinery in Russia affects global oil prices in any significant way? I would imagine it would lower prices globally.

    Don’t refineries turn oil into fuel, like gasoline? To the best of my knowledge countries don’t typically export gasoline, do they? I thought they exported crude.

    Wouldn’t being unable to refine crude, mean they need to export more crude, since they can’t indefinitely store it, thus bring down oil prices? In the short-term, I wouldn’t be surprised at an increase in global price due to news media/speculation, but long term effect, I could only imagine global crude price going down.

    On the other hand, I would of course think local gas/fuel prices would skyrocket in Russia due to not being able to refine it.

    I’m sure I’m very much wrong in my logic; if someone on the internet wouldn’t mind correcting me with a proper explanation. Of course this is all based on refinery attacks, I didn’t read this specific article, but I am not aware of oil rigs/oil extraction sites being attacked (that would clearly be a separate situation if it is happening).