• 36 Posts
  • 127 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: June 11th, 2023
  • memfree@beehaw.orgOPtoChat@beehaw.org•Thoughts on the Debate: We're doomed.English
    1·
    1 day ago

    Not the person you were replying to, but the “doom” spouter here. I realize you are 100% right that my post might make people less inspired to vote. I’m sorry for that. I was very distressed at the time. My intent was to emphasize that: while a rational person might complain about either candidate, one is substantially worse and we MUST vote in favor of democracy when the other choice (and his advisors) are openly saying they want to dismantle the institutional expertise that understand how stuff works (which materials are suitable for building roads on various substructures, or where groundwater migrates and how to prevent contamination, and yes, how to figure out how a virus works). They call these people “the deep state”, which minimizes the reason we want them to keep their apolitical jobs. Of course the experts – like everyone --will likely have political opinions, but that doesn’t mean they are partisan. As long as they look at data and derive truthful results regardless of their personal politics, it doesn’t matter. Obviously we should fire those who can’t do their job or hide/ignore/promote information such that their results are distorted to favor a personal agenda (also knowing that some data SHOULD be rejected if acquired by dubious means, isn’t reproduced in other trials, etc.).

    Anyway, I apologize for the negativity. Thank you for calling me out! :-)

  • memfree@beehaw.orgOPtoChat@beehaw.org•Thoughts on the Debate: We're doomed.English
    4·
    3 days ago

    Keep it up! In fact, if you get criticized, you can point out that you’d rather have a leader you CAN criticize than one that gets treated like a God-ling. Point out that one of the differences in the generic liberal versus conservative thought is the idea that a leader might be flawed but generally good at leading versus the idea that everyone needs to support the leader (or the cause) no matter what – until their transgressions become too extreme and gets them ostracized. Please. Let’s criticize early and be ready to replace them sooner rather than later.

  • memfree@beehaw.orgOPtoChat@beehaw.org•Thoughts on the Debate: We're doomed.English
    7·
    3 days ago

    I hear you. A few years back I was rooting for Jeremy Corbin to be Prime Minister and could not understand how the populace didn’t choose him. More than that, I sympathize with people who dislike illegal immigration into their respective countries because, well, I can see how it FEELS like, “We built this country to be good and prosperous, and these folks want what WE built while they never built anything like it for themselves” – but that is a false perception for so many reasons (Was their home a colony or otherwise oppressed? Our ancestors built our countries, but we’re just born to them. Climate change is driving equatorial people to Northen climes – to countries complicit in the climate change that has made their homelands dry and cropless, etc.)

    So I don’t have a solution for immigration (which Trump harped on constantly). Fixing the climate might help for the long term, but for the short term it won’t fix that immediate complaint.

    I look at U.S. history and I don’t see a strong track record for austerity helping. More the reverse. In The Great Depression, one of the things that seemed to work was letting the government take on debt to give a bunch of people ‘stupid’ jobs so they could put that money into the economy. Of course, that came with stepp progressive tax rates, too. It was much harder to get rich when the highest brackets were up to/over 90% of income. I doubt the current crop of rich people would allow that to happen in the modern world, but I’d vote for it.

  • memfree@beehaw.orgtoAnimals and Pets@beehaw.org•Sleepy ducklingEnglish
    2·
    3 days ago

    What type(s) of ducks do you raise? I used to raise ducks, but never had abandoned eggs/ducklings. We did have cases where our neighbors lost an offspring (chick, gosling, duckling), and all the girls in our yard gave the visitors extremely wide berth. I also had a drake that objected to his own kids and tried to kill them, so we had to give him away. Ours were: Indian Runners, Black Swedes, and Pekins.

  • memfree@beehaw.orgtoGaming@beehaw.org•Technical quality of life adviceEnglish
    6·
    3 days ago

    I hate using AWSD as direction keys. I don’t understand why some games refuse to map the arrow keys to the same commands, but some don’t and it becomes up to me to manually set that right before playing anything.

    It irritates me so much to me that if a game doesn’t let me change the key mappings, I’m probably going for a refund rather than play at all.

  • memfree@beehaw.orgtoBrainWorms@lemm.ee•Five Men Convicted of Operating Massive, Illegal Streaming Service That Allegedly Had More Content Than Netflix, Hulu, Vudu and Prime Video CombinedEnglish
    5·
    9 days ago

    I’ve bolded the bits that stood out to me:

    Jetflicks, which charged $9.99 per month for the streaming service, generated millions of dollars in subscription revenue and caused “substantial harm to television program copyright owners,” the Justice Department said Thursday.

    The group used “sophisticated computer scripts” and software to scour piracy services (including the Pirate Bay and Torrentz) for illegal copies of TV episodes, which they then downloaded and hosted on Jetflicks’ servers, according to federal prosecutors. The men were charged in 2019 with conspiring to violate federal criminal copyright law.

    The jury convicted the five men of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement. In addition, the jury convicted Dallmann of two counts of money laundering by concealment and three counts of misdemeanor criminal copyright infringement. Dallmann faces a maximum penalty of 48 years in prison, while Courson, Garcia, Jaurequi and Huber each face a maximum of five years in prison, according to the Justice Department. A sentencing date has not yet been set.

    I wish the article told us which crime could lead to which sentence length. Is money laundering punished more or less than copyright infringement?

  • memfree@beehaw.orgtoPC Gaming@lemmy.ca•In 2018 a group of Valve staff tried to figure out just how efficient they were being—and found they were making more money per head than Apple, Facebook, and nearly every tech giant out there
    441·
    4 months ago

    Back in 2021, indie developer Wolfire filed an antitrust lawsuit against Valve that accused the gaming giant of anti-competitive business practices—including a long-standing habit of taking unfair cuts from game developers on its store. Valve’s 30% fees have come under criticism before—and they are notably high when compared to some other online platforms.

    Ouch. I didn’t realize they took such a big cut. On the other hand, authors trying to publish to Amazon’s kindle get hit with commissions from 30%-65% before any other fees, so Steam seems downright reasonable for that particular comparison.

    From where I’m sitting, though, I’ve plenty of complicated feelings. Steam might be the best option out there, but monopolies aren’t great for anybody—at the same time, business is business.

    Steam’s absurd efficiency could be a product of merciless penny-pinching from indie devs, but it’s just as likely we’re watching a well-oiled machine continue to belch out cash in an expected fashion.

    Is it really a monopoly with everyone from EA to GoG delivering games? I guess it is dominant enough to count. I have a hard time complaining when employees are getting good pay and I’ve continued to get good service from them. It might get scarey if/when Gabe steps down, but this all feels pretty fair for now.

  • memfree@beehaw.orgtoClimate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.@slrpnk.net•Some states are now trying to ban lab-grown meatEnglish
    4·
    4 months ago

    Crawford said that legislators had heard from NASA, which expressed concern about the bill’s impact on programs to develop alternative proteins for astronauts. An amendment to the bill will address that problem, Crawford said, allowing an exemption for research purposes.

    Opponents of the ban have said governments shouldn’t interfere with a nascent industry because of unfounded fears over safety concerns.

    The carve-out for NASA doesn’t make this bill any better. The bill is obviously stifling.

    That said, I really do want some extra checks that whatever agar-like substrate meat is grown in does not leech excessive quantities of hormones (think: rBST) or other chemicals into the packaged product. I would happily eat lab-grown meat, but I want to know that it is well tested for safety.