GoatOnPony's recent activity
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Comment on Is British English actually better than American English? in ~humanities.languages
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Comment on Spirit Airlines shutting down after rescue talks collapse in ~transport
GoatOnPony Link ParentA working antitrust ecosystem will have more, smaller companies. That will be a more volatile ecosystem with new entrants coming and various ones failing as the margins for companies will be...A working antitrust ecosystem will have more, smaller companies. That will be a more volatile ecosystem with new entrants coming and various ones failing as the margins for companies will be thinner and their ability to absorb significant shocks reduced. If nothing else, more companies existing in a market just means a higher number of companies going under if every company has some chance of failure. In theory, this volatility is good (at least for markets which aren't necessary goods) as new ideas enter and weaker companies fall out. Whether or not the airlines market is working in that theoretical mode I'm not knowledgeable enough to say, so this is more just a comment that more companies failing kinda should be expected under an antitrust regime.
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Comment on San Diego now has so much water that it's selling it in ~enviro
GoatOnPony Link ParentLawns are roughly half of all residential water use, they haven't gone away and are still the largest single source of residential water use, this isn't a matter of 'start installing'. We've spent...Lawns are roughly half of all residential water use, they haven't gone away and are still the largest single source of residential water use, this isn't a matter of 'start installing'. We've spent years nagging people about lawns and it seems to be basically just treading water (pun intended). If you care about lawns insist on apartment buildings and density which will probably have more impact on lawn usage. I also doubt that the years of nagging people about lawns has made them suddenly pro water conservation.
More importantly, the drought crisis(es) in California is not caused by residential lawns. They're about 4-5% of statewide water usage, which is not nothing, but still not enough to make or break the state's water budget in isolation. If we magically snapped our fingers and removed all lawns it wouldn't be enough to cover the shortfall in drought years. I'd love to see lawns reduced, golf courses torn out, and more efficient park landscaping, but I do genuinely worry that it's been made an outsized point of contention relative to the impact it has.
This is more like antibiotics resistance rather than vaccines. With vaccines regular people are the total group of recipients and everyone really does need to do their part. With antibiotics, the vast majority of usage is on farm animals, so pestering people about responsible usage of antibiotics is a drop in the bucket compared to what we need to be tackling which is farm animal welfare. I don't want to completely minimize self responsibility, but some battles are more about the systemic factors than any individual action can meaningfully make.
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Comment on San Diego now has so much water that it's selling it in ~enviro
GoatOnPony (edited )Link ParentI think there's a distinction worth drawing between a few overlapping elements around water conservation: cultural water use practices to maintain and improve efficient usage of water building...I think there's a distinction worth drawing between a few overlapping elements around water conservation:
- cultural water use practices to maintain and improve efficient usage of water
- building political will to fix structural issues
- shaping the narrative about what the issue is
Instilling discipline in people about the first doesn't necessarily help the latter two. Much of the time focusing on the individual water practices actually hinders those goals by having people focus on individual footprint instead of the industrial/agricultural footprint, similar to discussion about carbon footprints. Discussion about where water is sourced is an element to building the political structure in as much as we can get people to care about the majesty and ecosystem importance of waterways, but that's not usually the messaging I hear.
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Comment on San Diego now has so much water that it's selling it in ~enviro
GoatOnPony Link ParentThe crazy thing to me is that overall (total, not per capita!) residential water usage has gone down/stayed constant in California despite the population doubling. Urban water use is also a tiny...The crazy thing to me is that overall (total, not per capita!) residential water usage has gone down/stayed constant in California despite the population doubling. Urban water use is also a tiny portion of water usage in the state relative to agricultural use. Southern california is a little different in that residential use is higher and there's less agriculture, but still the trend AFAIK is a lot of population growth without much change in water usage.
This is part of why I'm always annoyed that we worry so much about drought in the state when residential use is already very efficient (excepting perhaps lawns). While agriculture has also gotten more efficient it's still the biggest user and has way more space to change, primarily to stop growing water intensive crops like alfalfa, almonds, or rice.
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Comment on What steps can the average user do to secure their data privacy? in ~tech
GoatOnPony Link ParentIt's very hard to maintain privacy without security, so I don't think they're neatly separable concerns. That xkcd comic is overused IMO. There's a meaningful category of threat modeling where you...It's very hard to maintain privacy without security, so I don't think they're neatly separable concerns.
That xkcd comic is overused IMO. There's a meaningful category of threat modeling where you assume the bad actors are malevolent enough to use restraint but not going to torture you, ie. regular cops and not the CIA or even a random pickpocket who will flash a phone at your face as they run away but won't beat you up in a busy area. In the US a biometric passcode is not as protected and you can be compelled to unlock a device with a fingerprint/face scan as part of a search and they're not going to bust out the wrench for a passcode. Courts in the US hold that forcing a passcode would violate the fifth amendment so there's additional legal protections. As for the periodic requirement to use a master password, that doesn't help very much, police and criminals have tools to keep a device awake indefinitely after one unlock. Better is to know how to put the device into lockdown mode and do that whenever you are in a place likely to involve police or pickpockets.
Having said all that, I think the better approach is biometric on the device itself (and know how to put the device into lockdown mode anyway) and then use individual apps which require a passcode/pin to access ala signals PIN.
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Comment on What’s the best 3D-printed thing you have? in ~talk
GoatOnPony LinkI really enjoy one of my first prints which fixed a door catch in my apartment. It's just a simple extender onto the strike plate to help the door latch actually catch and keep the door closed. It...I really enjoy one of my first prints which fixed a door catch in my apartment. It's just a simple extender onto the strike plate to help the door latch actually catch and keep the door closed. It helped establish the magic of being able to fix a real world problem in a direct, lasting way.
I also have a few prototypes of a tinker toy esque connector to join cardboard strips into a structural form. It never worked particularly well, but the idea of taking card board boxes, cutting them into strips and then making a giant version of tinker toys is just so appealing to me!
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Comment on I made a website with free and low-cost resources for web development, game development, privacy, graphics, small web, etc in ~tech
GoatOnPony LinkThis is an awesome resource! Thanks for putting it together and sharing - I'll have fun looking through them! Some quick suggestions for additions: Maybe mention static site generators? Creating a...This is an awesome resource! Thanks for putting it together and sharing - I'll have fun looking through them! Some quick suggestions for additions:
- Maybe mention static site generators? Creating a whole website whole cloth from html can be intimidating whereas an SSG is just markdown -> run SSG -> push to host
- I've been digging into gemini (no, not that gemini, this gemini) using the lagrange browser and visiting gemini://skyjake.fi/~Cosmos/ and gemini://warmedal.se/~antenna/
- I like this little project: wander console which is like a decentralized stumbleupon (if you remember that website) and very easy to host given an existing static site. If anyone does pick this up let me know and I'll add you to my console
- Please mention RSS! RSS is soooo good and lots of websites still have feeds. Being able to get people's blog posts delivered in one place is :chef's kiss:. I good reminder that I need to put my opml file up on my website to help share around TTRPG blogs that I'm aware of
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Comment on Medium term cold storage options? in ~comp
GoatOnPony Link ParentI'll admit that I didn't look super hard when I set it up since I knew I wanted tailscale to access other services running on the NAS, but you're right you can use the syncthing community run relays.I'll admit that I didn't look super hard when I set it up since I knew I wanted tailscale to access other services running on the NAS, but you're right you can use the syncthing community run relays.
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Comment on Medium term cold storage options? in ~comp
GoatOnPony Link ParentI have the same setup of syncthing + tailscale and the tailscale is there so I can give syncthing a magic url/IP address which can reach my NAS/desktop which live behind a potentially changing...I have the same setup of syncthing + tailscale and the tailscale is there so I can give syncthing a magic url/IP address which can reach my NAS/desktop which live behind a potentially changing residential IP. Similarly if I'm out and about with my laptop and phone the two can sync even if I'm on some random network and therefore given some unknown IP address.
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Comment on No one can force me to have a secure website!!! in ~tech
GoatOnPony LinkI like the video and I like Tom, super interesting and accomplished person. The video is provocative and that provocation is useful in that it's useful to ask people to re-examine the base...- Exemplary
I like the video and I like Tom, super interesting and accomplished person. The video is provocative and that provocation is useful in that it's useful to ask people to re-examine the base assumptions every once in a while. Laying out my own biases, I work in areas related to security and privacy but wouldn't consider myself an expert. Having said all that, I have a fair number of disagreements with Tom's complaints.
First, Tom lumps https and warnings about https in with other user hostile design to lock people into specific vendors. This is a category error - not every annoyance is vendor lock in or bad friction put there maliciously to extract something from users. No company wants to deal with HTTPS and if they didn't think it necessary they would not have it. Chrome and other browsers added those frictions because it addressed real user harm and mitigated actual attacks (ISPs inserting ads into web pages, public wifi snooping, government data collection, phishing attacks). I'm fine with quibbling about how the interstitial should look (I hate that the proceed is pushed to behind advanced too), but ultimately I do buy that users need some protection from taking unwittingly risky actions and that the friction does more good than harm.
Second, Tom seems to believe that because a server could be compromised or MITM'ed during ACME to establish domain ownership that this is hypocrisy and equivalent to any other MITM attack later on. I'm not particularly convinced by this argument, forward security is still good and website owners are in a much better position to notice and correct that attack than a random user. Users also face different MITM adversaries than server owners do. I'm not setting up a server over public wifi, but users will connect to the website from there. Making any MITM attack harder to accomplish seems like a very worthy goal to me.
Third, Tom downplays the connection between security and privacy. Banks are not the only sites that need security. You need security in order to have privacy and even a static site should still protect outsiders from seeing what content was accessed.
Fourth, there's a fair bit of bashing of CAs. I agree that CAs have bad track records and should be policed better. I also don't like the hierarchical nature involved. But, trust on the internet is hard and this is hardly the only hierarchical or centralizing portion (DNS, ISPs, browsers, search, social media network effects). Relative to other effects CAs are pretty unimportant. The internet is a giant game of picking entities to trust who then delegate that trust out further. I don't think there's any unequivocally better alternatives, let alone better alternatives for non technically savvy users. It's impressive that we at least get the level of control to pick who we root our trust in. If users pick Microsoft or Google or Apple or Mozilla as that entity then that's a valid choice and likely far better as a practical matter than asking users to make individual decisions about trust on the internet. If Tom wants to pursue different sources of root trust, he's able to do so.
Ultimately, I'm sympathetic to the general complaints about centralization and some of the specific complaints about HTTPS in particular, but I don't like the framing.
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Comment on What have you been watching / reading this week? (Anime/Manga) in ~anime
GoatOnPony Link ParentIf you liked the lgbtq elements of TWFM, have you watched the show its plot is based on/lifted from, Revolutionary Girl Utena? Knowing that the plot is based on Utena, which is much older and much...If you liked the lgbtq elements of TWFM, have you watched the show its plot is based on/lifted from, Revolutionary Girl Utena? Knowing that the plot is based on Utena, which is much older and much more surrealist, helps with knowing why the plot is so all over the place at times.
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Comment on Government-appointed Norwegian Nuclear Committee says no to nuclear power – should build up expertise that will make it easier to make such a decision in the future in ~enviro
GoatOnPony Link ParentI'll add another issue with nuclear power that I don't see discussed much which is that uranium mining is concentrated in Australia, Canada, Russia, and Kazakhstan. While Australia and Canada...I'll add another issue with nuclear power that I don't see discussed much which is that uranium mining is concentrated in Australia, Canada, Russia, and Kazakhstan. While Australia and Canada would be a 'safe' supplier to Europe, the world is a topsy turvy place right now and having a large portion of your power come from imported sources (whether that's oil or LNG or anything else) doesn't seem like a good bet. Solar, wind, and battery storage are much more sovereign (and decentralizable) power sources.
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Comment on Nation's largest urban battery is being built in Daly City, California in ~enviro
GoatOnPony Link ParentWhy do you think we have a long way to go before we roll out grid scale battery? I ask since we're already in the midst of that transition, the US added 19 GWh of battery storage last year and the...Why do you think we have a long way to go before we roll out grid scale battery? I ask since we're already in the midst of that transition, the US added 19 GWh of battery storage last year and the pace is only growing. Battery + solar seems to be the cheapest and cleanest way to transition the energy system over and it's only going to get cheaper and safer.
I'm not sure I follow all the bits of the later portion of your comment, but battery fires are much less frequent and probably significantly better than either of the ongoing air pollution, CO2 emissions, or environmental catastrophes caused by fracking, oil spills, pipelines, massive human risks during transit, etc. Oil and methane (I dislike the term 'natural gas') extraction and consumption have had world changing impacts, so I'm firmly in the camp that solar and batteries are necessary and better than the status quo.
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Comment on Software job openings surge this year, defying AI fears in ~tech
GoatOnPony LinkI wish there was more analysis of where these job openings are coming from within the tech industry and what types of jobs (in particular pay and seniority) are open right now. There's been plenty...I wish there was more analysis of where these job openings are coming from within the tech industry and what types of jobs (in particular pay and seniority) are open right now. There's been plenty of recent large layoffs going on, so the tech industry has /something/ going on. Oracle and Amazon both have had 10k+ person layoffs this year already and https://www.trueup.io/layoffs, the same place generating the job opening data, also shows a steady rate of layoffs within tech. That suggests a more complex answer than just tech is back to it's normal growth. In terms of AI fears for software engineering, I expect people to care as much or more about the pay, working conditions, and job stability as the single metric of number of openings.
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Comment on Surf Social (from the makers of Flipboard) in ~tech
GoatOnPony Link ParentI knew I shouldn't have used the term protocol without having a more baked proposal... But I guess I'll still respond more even if the protocol suggestion wasn't actually the thrust of my original...I knew I shouldn't have used the term protocol without having a more baked proposal... But I guess I'll still respond more even if the protocol suggestion wasn't actually the thrust of my original post. I was suggesting being able to convert everything into RSS, not a new meta protocol.
My desire is that a central service like surf.social shouldn't need to exist. I jumped the gun on assuming there were technical rather than social reasons for it. I want to accomplish whatever surf.social is doing from within the RSS readers I already use. On reflection I think that's already possible, just maybe cumbersome, so this was ignorance on my part of how to accomplish it.
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Comment on Surf Social (from the makers of Flipboard) in ~tech
GoatOnPony Link ParentMy point was to have something that can aggregate across RSS, Atom, atproto, activity pub, and any other feed like surface and re-expose it as a single feed. Which yeah, it'd be exposed as an...My point was to have something that can aggregate across RSS, Atom, atproto, activity pub, and any other feed like surface and re-expose it as a single feed. Which yeah, it'd be exposed as an RSS/Atom feed. The point was more that there's still annoyances at getting everything munged into RSS, although looking around I do see stuff like https://github.com/open-risk/atp2rss, so perhaps it's easier than I thought.
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Comment on Surf Social (from the makers of Flipboard) in ~tech
GoatOnPony LinkThe core idea seems useful, collecting up various feeds into one place solves a real pain point. I also like the UI, very clean and can separate out by medium which is an unusual choice for...The core idea seems useful, collecting up various feeds into one place solves a real pain point. I also like the UI, very clean and can separate out by medium which is an unusual choice for slicing up the feeds but I find it a relevant dimension.
I'm a little worried about two things though.
First, while the feeds regular users can create are namespaced by username, I don't find that particular helpful. There's lots of feeds sharing similar names and just generally being very similar to each other. Basically right now the search and discoverability for feeds is kinda poor.
Second, I really wish this stuff was a protocol and open source software for domains to host themselves than having it all run through surf.social. The general framing of 'helping the open web' by asking for accounts and viewing other people's content through their website is weird. Seeing verge.surf.social instead of going to the verge and getting a nice collected feed from them directly means we're still getting intermediaries. For a moment and movement trying to get away from centralized control and monopoly gatekeeping, it's just a little too similar for my tastes. All of the underlying feeds are still open and available through other means, so I'm not worried - if they decide to start putting up interstitials and ads and other hurdles (as other sites have done in the past), the offramps will be a lot smoother.
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Comment on Can we talk about rice cookers? in ~food
GoatOnPony Link ParentYeah, I'm actually really surprised by all of the other suggestions - I bought a small rice cooker from some random Asian supply store for like $20 9 years ago and the thing is trucking along just...Yeah, I'm actually really surprised by all of the other suggestions - I bought a small rice cooker from some random Asian supply store for like $20 9 years ago and the thing is trucking along just fine. I think dialing in the precise amount of rice and water is the important part, so maybe also pick up a kitchen scale. The basic rice cookers have no moving parts and are dead simple commodity appliances. They're markedly simpler than toasters and I wouldn't even go out of my way to buy a fancy toaster.
Also the convenience of even a cheap rice cooker is great, so little counter space for a set it and forget it device. It takes care of one part of the carbs + veg + protein that makes up most meals and going from juggling 3 things to 2 things during it's surprising how much it helps.
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Comment on The bot situation on the internet is actually worse than you could imagine. Here's why. in ~tech
GoatOnPony Link ParentCaveat up front that I don't really have any reliable data to back up the following statements and I could easily turn out to be incorrect about the direction of the internet. Prognosticating is...Caveat up front that I don't really have any reliable data to back up the following statements and I could easily turn out to be incorrect about the direction of the internet. Prognosticating is errorprone!
Some bots are fine, search crawlers, rss/atom feed readers, etc in theory are net directors of traffic or at least wouldn't likely detract from traffic. The bots at issue in the current internet though have a different purpose, they're LLM training data scrapers, RAG query answer bots, and other ingestors of data who have no (or negative) interest in sending traffic to my website. Their aim is to provide an alternative within which users have no need to leave, they are building a generic competitor to all other websites. A competitor which is well funded and desires to take your traffic. Trying to make their lives difficult is a very small, probably ineffective, but maybe collectively useful way to delay them taking the content and giving people who come to my website directly a benefit. I view it as attempting to prevent them from keeping everyone in their walled gardens while the rest of us can only feed their machine.
Having said all that, I don't think excluding bots is a particularly effective approach - instead I'd rather try to find audiences who actually want human content instead.
Not a linguist, but languages do have some objective differences but not in measures we'd reliably agree on as having a better direction. For example, spoken languages convey information at roughly the same rate regardless of how quickly it sounds like it's being spoken. Some languages require different pieces of information to be considered, eg. there's languages which encode how reliable a piece of information is (first or second hand) or have more or less tenses or gendered pronouns, but saying any of those features are objectively better is extremely hard. It seems like everyone is capable of conveying or inferring from context all the necessary bits even if their language doesn't require or explicitly encode for it. Some languages maybe make slightly different tradeoffs about what gets priortized.
Also interesting to look at constructed languages which explore a bunch of different features and ideas of languages, but no constructed language has ever really taken off.