Akir's recent activity
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Comment on Leave the phone, take a camera in ~tech
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Comment on As a reindeer herder, I am watching Norwegian renewable energy projects threaten our land, livelihoods and an Indigenous way of life the state once tried to erase in ~enviro
Akir Link ParentWind is the single most aesthetically pleasing power generation format other than maybe a well maintained waterwheel. Gas and coal power plants on the other hand look like HR Geiger did industrial...Wind is the single most aesthetically pleasing power generation format other than maybe a well maintained waterwheel. Gas and coal power plants on the other hand look like HR Geiger did industrial design.
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Comment on Anyone else using the Zed editor? in ~comp
Akir LinkI currently have it installed but have yet to use it for anything substantial. The nice thing about it is that it’s very snappy, so it’s been my “fix the one file real quick” editor of choice.I currently have it installed but have yet to use it for anything substantial. The nice thing about it is that it’s very snappy, so it’s been my “fix the one file real quick” editor of choice.
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Comment on Five browser extensions to make every website more useful in ~tech
Akir Link ParentWith everything we do in the browser, it’s also important to remember that every extension you install is a security vulnerability. Most have access to all of the pages you access.With everything we do in the browser, it’s also important to remember that every extension you install is a security vulnerability. Most have access to all of the pages you access.
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Comment on Bowen Yang is leaving Saturday Night Live after tonight’s episode in ~tv
Akir Link ParentAgreed. It’s not bad to have that kind of character from time to time, it was just too often in the show.Agreed. It’s not bad to have that kind of character from time to time, it was just too often in the show.
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Comment on Bowen Yang is leaving Saturday Night Live after tonight’s episode in ~tv
Akir Link ParentI missed that when it came out! Dang, I forgot I wanted to see it but my husband was put off by the humor of it. Let me know if it’s worth hunting down.I missed that when it came out! Dang, I forgot I wanted to see it but my husband was put off by the humor of it. Let me know if it’s worth hunting down.
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Comment on Bowen Yang is leaving Saturday Night Live after tonight’s episode in ~tv
Akir Link ParentFire Island has him in a major dramatic role. But I think it was also trying to be funny? Bottom line is that it wasn’t a good movie.Fire Island has him in a major dramatic role. But I think it was also trying to be funny? Bottom line is that it wasn’t a good movie.
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Comment on Bowen Yang is leaving Saturday Night Live after tonight’s episode in ~tv
Akir Link ParentI really liked him but at the same time I found it really annoying that the joke seemed to be “here’s a flamboyantly gay character” at least half of the time. But it’s also been at least a year...I really liked him but at the same time I found it really annoying that the joke seemed to be “here’s a flamboyantly gay character” at least half of the time. But it’s also been at least a year since I last watched the show, so maybe I’m not remembering correctly.
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Comment on Your grocery store is a bewildering sea of overly processed food. Here’s why and what to do. in ~health
Akir Link ParentIt sounds like you are thinking about this in terms of a market, so allow me to create a market parallel: the obesity crisis is the same as the climate change environmental crisis. Both of them...It sounds like you are thinking about this in terms of a market, so allow me to create a market parallel: the obesity crisis is the same as the climate change environmental crisis. Both of them are effects that are directly caused by runaway markets that the government refuses to take dramatic enough intervention to stop. The lack of strong US guidelines on healthy eating allows for corporations to spin things the way that they want to - consider Veggie Straws pretending to be healthy equivalent to BP telling people to start thinking about their own carbon footprint so that they don't question how much damage they're causing to the environment.
Convenience is important but the problem goes far beyond convenience and into addiction. You know what's a really convenient meal that doesn't require any cooking? Pick any raw vegetables you want and have it with a can of beans. Alternatively, if you want something hot, you can often find frozen vegetables in stores sold in microwavable steaming bags that you can zap, optionally add the sauce of your choice (if you haven't bought a pre-seasoned option), and have an instant meal. You can also cook a potato in the microwave really easily.
The problem with these meals, though, is that most people don't consider them to be real options. None of these meals are as rich as the least calorific option in any fast food restaurant. Heck, there's going to be a lot of people who reject these ideas simply because none of them have any meat in them. The point is that people have been sucked into a status quo of rich, highly palatable, calorie dense convenience foods which have direct ties to creating metabolic disorders. If we want to reduce or eliminate said metabolic disorders, we need to intervene to make it harder to get stuck in the cycle where people become dependent on these kinds of food.
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Comment on Your grocery store is a bewildering sea of overly processed food. Here’s why and what to do. in ~health
Akir Link ParentOne of my go-to daydreams is to open up an automat focusing on healthy inexpensive food.One of my go-to daydreams is to open up an automat focusing on healthy inexpensive food.
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Comment on Your grocery store is a bewildering sea of overly processed food. Here’s why and what to do. in ~health
Akir Link ParentWhat ones have you found? Those kinds are fairly rare in my experience, and the ones that I find tend to had a lot of added salt and fats. The few ones I found that met my standards were...What ones have you found? Those kinds are fairly rare in my experience, and the ones that I find tend to had a lot of added salt and fats. The few ones I found that met my standards were ludicrously overpriced, as much as $8 per (relatively small) bowl.
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Comment on Your grocery store is a bewildering sea of overly processed food. Here’s why and what to do. in ~health
Akir LinkThis article is kind of badly written, but to it's credit it made me realize something that was obvious in hindsight. There are people here who are skeptical of the UPF health claims or have...This article is kind of badly written, but to it's credit it made me realize something that was obvious in hindsight.
There are people here who are skeptical of the UPF health claims or have qualms about how nebulous the term are. Reading this has made me understand some of the nuances of their view that banning UPFs would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
In particular, it was the description of the veggie straws that got me. Veggie straws are the perfect illustration of the practical problems with UPFs. They are healthwashed to all hell; you would be forgiven if you thought that they were healthy to eat. Even reading the nutrition breakdown legally required might not be enough to make you understand how bad they are for you. The name makes you believe that they are perfectly healthy things that you can eat as much as you want and stay thin and healthy, but in reality they are as bad as, if not worse than, fried potato chips.
This rant is about to get very USA-centric but I think similar things can be said about other countries.
For any given organization, culture tends to come from the top down, and what is a country if not a very large organization? And when it comes to food, who are the most powerful people? Generally, they are the large food producing manufacturers: Nestle, Mondelez, Kraft Heinz, Coca Cola, etc. Obviously if they were to go unchecked, they would do all kind of unethical things, like selling fake ingredients and poisioning people. Heck, this is actually a thing that happened in the past. Upton Sinclair's The Jungle ended up mobilizing people to create a "pure food movement" which eventually caused the creation of the FDA to enforce regulation on food producers.
The problem is that since then the FDA has only become less and less powerful, and the power has largely been claimed by food producing companies who have outsized influence in how the FDA recommends people eat. The current Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the document telling people how they should be eating, is confusing, lacks specific actionable advice, and much more importantly, nobody seems to actually know about it. I literally just learned about it earlier this year. To the government's credit, they are currently revising it - a process they do every five years - but from what I've heard the current draft does little to address the current food environment and UPFs.
In contrast, both of the other countries on this continent have been doing far more to help their citizens in regards to nutrition and health. For most Americans, the only US dietary recommendations they may know if they have a kid in public school is MyPlate a much needed update to the rightfully maligned Food Pyramid. Now compare that to the image that is on the cover of Canada's Food Guide and you can instantly see how much better it could be at conveying information to people. I'd also argue that the MyPlate diagram gives actively bad advice by telling you to drink milk with your meal. In a country where people are already getting too much fat, and too much saturated fat especially, why are we telling people to drink their saturated fat?
But guidelines are just a first step. Every government should be putting legislation into place to protect the public health. That was the entire reason why the FDA was established, after all, but they have really fallen behind. Mexico, for instance, has had a strict front of package warning labeling system on foods high in sugar, fat, and salt since 2020, and that was an extension of FOPNL requirements that had started all the way back in 2014. Canada has a simelar law in place that will begin strict enforcement at the start of next month. And the US? They are just now starting to consider it.
I think that much more concrete limitations should be put in place, but FOPNL is quite literally the least the government can do. with quality FOPNL laws, it would mean at the very least we would have less health-washing of products that are pretending to be healthy. Manufacturers would have to admit that their "made with whole grain oats" breakfast cereals are basically just desserts, and that their "better for you" snacks are still not good for you.
But there are many more important steps that governments can and should be taking to protecting public health, and I think the number one most important thing is quite simple and I don't think it's even particularly controversial: we should ban advertising food to children. Children should be brought up with good nutrition education, and advertising is going to undermine any attempt we make and lead to years of excessive- no, let's be honest: disordered eating. Potentially over the course of the child's entire life.
Without some degree of governmental intervention, all we will have are these news sources trying to do their best to tell you what you should be eating. That's what we have now, and anyone with half a brain can see that it's not working.
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Comment on Twenty years of digital life, gone in an instant, thanks to Apple in ~tech
Akir Link ParentTo be fair Samba is complex to get set up, especially if your distro’s package doesn’t have “common sense” defaults set up. But that’s because SMB itself is a nightmare of options left over from...To be fair Samba is complex to get set up, especially if your distro’s package doesn’t have “common sense” defaults set up. But that’s because SMB itself is a nightmare of options left over from darker times.
If a user doesn’t care about OS integration I’d suggest using SFTP with private key authentication instead. It’s much easier to set up and it’s more secure.
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Comment on Twenty years of digital life, gone in an instant, thanks to Apple in ~tech
Akir Link ParentI don’t think it’s too much to expect a person to be able to add records to a domain. Most domain providers have a very easy interface to allow users to do this. Granted if they accidentally do it...I don’t think it’s too much to expect a person to be able to add records to a domain. Most domain providers have a very easy interface to allow users to do this.
Granted if they accidentally do it wrong it’s not exactly guaranteed they will have good support to help them troubleshoot.
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Comment on Twenty years of digital life, gone in an instant, thanks to Apple in ~tech
Akir Link ParentIf you are only going to use it in your local network and you have a half decent understanding of network security (eg you don’t trust shoddy iot appliances and have a basic firewall setup -...Put your data in a NAS? Good luck, self hosting is a full time job
If you are only going to use it in your local network and you have a half decent understanding of network security (eg you don’t trust shoddy iot appliances and have a basic firewall setup - standard on pretty much every router), it really isn’t. A basic Linux box with Samba and whatever other basic file sharing daemon is pretty turnkey after you’ve set it up so long as your distro doesn’t push breaking updates (looking at you, Ubuntu).
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Comment on RAM is so expensive, Samsung won’t even sell it to Samsung in ~tech
Akir Link ParentDid I say something against patents? I’m not doing too well so sorry if I’m missing something here. Patents are fine, it’s the legal protection for trade secrets I’m against, as well as using...Did I say something against patents? I’m not doing too well so sorry if I’m missing something here. Patents are fine, it’s the legal protection for trade secrets I’m against, as well as using copyright to protect tech IP.
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Comment on I fixed my lactose intolerance -- by chugging all the lactose in ~health
Akir Link ParentI’m out and about for the whole day, so I can’t find sources right now but they can be found fairly easily.I’m out and about for the whole day, so I can’t find sources right now but they can be found fairly easily.
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Comment on I fixed my lactose intolerance -- by chugging all the lactose in ~health
Akir Link ParentIt’s actually gotten worse since then. Those advertisements were paid by a checkoff program, a voluntary program overseen by the government where a portion of profits gets taken off, kind of like...It’s actually gotten worse since then. Those advertisements were paid by a checkoff program, a voluntary program overseen by the government where a portion of profits gets taken off, kind of like a tax. A few years ago laws were passed to make it mandatory. The reason why cheese is in everything is not just because “everyone loves cheese”, but because that checkoff money goes into influencing wholesale customers - restaurants and food processors - into including it in their products. That’s the real reason why public milk and cheese campaigns are less common today: they just decided to market directly to the people buying from the dairy industry. Putting cheese in everything helps to make people crave dairy since dairy milk’s casein is metabolized into casomorphin, which makes it mildly addictive.
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Comment on RAM is so expensive, Samsung won’t even sell it to Samsung in ~tech
Akir Link ParentI used the soap as a simplified example but there are countless other examples in technology where I think that intervention is needed. Colgate-Palmolive does not continue to buy out all...I used the soap as a simplified example but there are countless other examples in technology where I think that intervention is needed. Colgate-Palmolive does not continue to buy out all production of plastic pumps but Apple does buy out all of TSMC’s production of each new production process they make. Beyond that technology companies who make microchips and related technology are protected by an unfair innovation stifling doctrine of trade secrets which allows them to have monopolies of essentially infinite length for their niches. There’s essentially only one company who can make the lithography machinery that the entire industry depends on, for example. Chip fabs have processes that nobody else has access to or even understands fully how to implement, and countless small designers have gone defunct because they don’t have a means of outspending the big boy’s R&D budget and can’t go through an open development model because the same people would just steal all of their work, bring it to market faster, and crush them.
I won’t say that making tech development completely open would lead to a better market or world; I don’t think it’s possible to predict all of the effects of such a major change. But I do think that relaxing some of the IP protections that we give some of the world’s largest corporations could make things better for everyone. That includes copyright as well.
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Comment on Fitness Weekly Discussion in ~health
Akir LinkThe good news: I filled all of my Apple Fitness rings this week, and every day I exceeded my move goal by at least 50%. The bad news: any calories lost to exercise were easily regained with a...The good news: I filled all of my Apple Fitness rings this week, and every day I exceeded my move goal by at least 50%.
The bad news: any calories lost to exercise were easily regained with a vengeance by an endless parade of vacation food and alcoholic beverages.
I’m going to try to trick myself into thinking it’s not that bad by weighing myself when I get home and then seeing what it is again in the morning so the number goes down slightly.
I used to agree with this kind of thought, but now I’m pretty much the exact opposite.
The primary reason is that a few years ago I made the decision to do more to live in the moment. Get off the phone more, go to places, and do things without needing to photograph everything. Which is not to say that I don’t take photos, just that I’m not letting it get in the way of things or interrupt experiences. I found that it really helps me enjoy the moment dramatically more than if I’m focused on taking pictures, and it actually helps me remember the thing more at least up to the medium term.
The reason why I am posting this now is that I haven’t really been looking back at the pictures I took, but since I have an iPhone, apples photo app automatically makes albums it calls “memories” that I was looking through during some downtime at a theme park yesterday. And it had me going, “woah, have I always been this good of a photographer?!”
When it comes to making pleasing photographs there are two factors that come into play: framing and lighting. There was a third one, post-processing, but automatic settings are pretty spot-on these days unless you are actively looking for a specific aesthetic. And looking through the actual film roll of the memories I found out that I was subconsciously doing a simple old trick that photographers always knew: take a lot of pictures and select the best ones to show. It’s just that Apple’s AI did the selection part for me.
But Apple actually has two other pieces of “magic” dedicated cameras don’t have. Number one is Live Photos. It’s basically a super short video of the moment before the photo. It’s not much but it does a lot to bring out the context of the memory. The second is the simple act of swiping through photos. If you are taking series shots, there’s something strangely magical about cycling through them and seeing something almost-but-not-quite like a movie. It encourages you to “fill in the gaps” so you feel what was happening at the time. I have a beautiful series of me kissing my husband who is not a big fan of public affection and having him turn around and kiss me back, and I love it. I suppose you could do something like that with a flipbook, but who actually does that with photos? A flipbook is something that you have to actively make as well, compared to something you can be surreptitiously surprised by.
Yes, I am sometimes jealous of super high quality shots from “real” cameras, especially because I don’t own an iPhone Pro and can’t get long shots, but at the end of the day the rather ephemeral and subjective benefits of shooting with a camera actually overwhelmingly outweigh dedicated cameras for me.