em-dash's recent activity
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Comment on Tildes Demographics Survey, year… uh, it’s 2024? in ~tildes
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Comment on My doctor emailed me back - Abigail Thorn in ~lgbt
em-dash Link ParentOne of my other weird political opinions is that parents should have significantly less authority over their children's healthcare. I should probably explicitly add "only for myself and not my...and my children
One of my other weird political opinions is that parents should have significantly less authority over their children's healthcare. I should probably explicitly add "only for myself and not my dependents" when I explain this to people, because yes, people will absolutely read "and my children" into it.
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Comment on My doctor emailed me back - Abigail Thorn in ~lgbt
em-dash (edited )LinkI've recently taken up the even more radical, arguably-out-of-the-overton-window view that this isn't actually a trans issue. I desperately want a world in which all healthcare is informed...I've recently taken up the even more radical, arguably-out-of-the-overton-window view that this isn't actually a trans issue. I desperately want a world in which all healthcare is informed consent.
I want to be able to sign a paper that says "I am capable of reading and evaluating medical literature on my own, give me a limited form of medical license that allows me to do anything a GP can do but only for myself, and I'll call a real doctor for a second opinion if I feel like I need to".
(I recently tried to pitch this to my very right-wing congress representative upon realizing how libertarian it sounded, but got back a short "that's a state issue and not a federal one" form letter email. I have not tried any of the state government people yet because I have no executive function. Incidentally, one of the things I would like to be able to prescribe myself is ADHD medication.)
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Comment on What are your favorite special kitchen ingredients? in ~food
em-dash Link ParentThere's a whole range of paprikas outside of "regular paprika"! I use a lot of both smoked and Hungarian sweet paprika.There's a whole range of paprikas outside of "regular paprika"! I use a lot of both smoked and Hungarian sweet paprika.
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Comment on US Joe Biden administration grants California waiver to ban gas car sales in 2035 in ~transport
em-dash Link ParentSo there's this sort of disconnected reading mode I can enter, where I'm still taking the words in, but barely processing them. I do this when I still want to finish reading the text for some...If you have a realistic counter-example that could apply to this situation and would be harmed by the sort of rhetoric present in @scroll_lock's comment, I'd be interested to hear it, and I am open to changing my mind.
So there's this sort of disconnected reading mode I can enter, where I'm still taking the words in, but barely processing them. I do this when I still want to finish reading the text for some reason, but I have decided the author is full of shit and if I try to really grok everything they're saying I'm just going to get mad about it and my day will be worse. I usually only reserve this mode for particularly absurd bigoted right-wing rhetoric. Other people probably just stop reading when they hit similar conditions. Either way, it's a defense mechanism against psychic damage that means I'm not taking anywhere near the full force of your rhetoric.
And I slipped into that mode here, and had to go back and reread it a second time, because I noticed it was happening and that this was the first time it had ever happened on text where I agreed with the message. That was such a weird feeling that it led me to post my comment.
As it sits, though, we need public sentiment to turn against the wealthy who are killing people every single day more than we need to humanize them and try to figure out how to placate them into not killing us anymore.
Willingly, knowingly causing harm because it brings you profit is not materially different to the people receiving the harm than doing it because you like the harm.
Is the goal to actually fix problems, or just to get mad about them? If you actually want things to get better, you need to look at causes, not effects, and then deal with those. There are lots of groups of illnesses with similar symptoms, but that doesn't mean doctors should just say "you are in severe pain, but good news, the various sorts of pain are not materially different to each other! You should just not be in severe pain no matter what! We must turn the sentiment of your immune system against the pointy object extending from your torso!"
Or, put another way, what is public sentiment going to actually do? (If you're about to point to the recent CEO shooting, how many people's lives have been materially improved by that?)
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Comment on US Joe Biden administration grants California waiver to ban gas car sales in 2035 in ~transport
em-dash Link ParentThat's different, though! It's not people being evil just because they really want you to have lung cancer. They're being evil because they value being rich more than they value you not having...That's different, though! It's not people being evil just because they really want you to have lung cancer. They're being evil because they value being rich more than they value you not having lung cancer. It's people prioritizing things differently than we would like them to. In a world without economic incentives for giving people lung cancer, we would likely have a lot less lung cancer.
That is a critically important distinction because it gives us, as a society, more knobs to adjust (reduce or eliminate the incentives for doing the bad thing, or add greater incentives for doing good things instead) which are likely to be much more effective at actually fixing the problem than repeatedly calling people evil is.
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Comment on US Joe Biden administration grants California waiver to ban gas car sales in 2035 in ~transport
em-dash Link ParentCan we... not do this? Nobody is saying that. Nobody thinks that. It's clear that they're prioritizing profits over health, but that is very different from thinking health is actively bad. This...- Exemplary
To be clear, oil executives literally want to give your children lung cancer. Every day, oil executives wake up, rub their hands together gleefully (imagine a fly rubbing its hands together: they actually learned this behavior from fly populations), and mutter to themselves, "I am so excited to make money off of innocent children choking to death on diesel exhaust."
Can we... not do this?
Nobody is saying that. Nobody thinks that. It's clear that they're prioritizing profits over health, but that is very different from thinking health is actively bad. This sort of absurd exaggeration helps nobody and makes many people less willing to listen to what you say.
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Comment on Tildes Demographics Survey, year… uh, it’s 2024? in ~tildes
em-dash Link Parent... that is probably why your name seemed oddly familiar but I couldn't place it.... that is probably why your name seemed oddly familiar but I couldn't place it.
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Comment on Tildes Demographics Survey, year… uh, it’s 2024? in ~tildes
em-dash Link ParentDistance is also continuous, but it's possible for something to be exactly half a meter long. If you find yourself in this situation, just think about kittens for a moment. The kittens are...Distance is also continuous, but it's possible for something to be exactly half a meter long.
If you find yourself in this situation, just think about kittens for a moment. The kittens are irrelevant, but they're cute, and then you can round up, taking comfort in the knowledge that the moment you paused took you over the halfway point.
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Comment on Norwegian payment service Vipps becomes world's first company to launch competing tap-to-pay solution to Apple Pay on iPhone – follows agreement with European regulators in ~tech
em-dash Link ParentRight, yeah, that makes sense. (I did apparently read right over the bit of the article saying they were a big deal, without committing it to memory, because I'd never heard of them. I...Right, yeah, that makes sense. (I did apparently read right over the bit of the article saying they were a big deal, without committing it to memory, because I'd never heard of them. I legitimately thought this was a "what if apple pay but not apple" startup.)
But, like, that's not a good thing. Payments are too central to how society works to be silo'd into individual companies like that. It makes no sense to me for a business to "support vipps" or "support paypal" - they should just support some electronic payment standard that those companies implement. That's what I was trying to get at in my original reply; I just chose a bad example in Apple Pay.
(It is at this point that someone inevitably shows up like "have you heard the good news about our lord and savior blockchain?" and yeah, I'm kind of disappointed it turned out to be the absolute shitshow it did rather than the "what if standardized distributed currency" thing the early idealists had in mind. But as it currently exists, no.)
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Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp
em-dash Link ParentMy original idea there was "I use the right touchpad frequently and do not want to cover it up, but I never use the left one". But it's scope creeped a bit since then! We are now making left,...My original idea there was "I use the right touchpad frequently and do not want to cover it up, but I never use the left one". But it's scope creeped a bit since then! We are now making left, right, and both-sided variants, because which one works for you probably does depend on how you hold the Deck and what sort of games you play.
I've used mine for Nethack and Poly Bridge so far. Nethack simply requires too many buttons to be playable on a controller. Poly Bridge has a fairly typical "press 1-6 to select the first-sixth tool on the toolbar" sort of workflow, which you can map to controller buttons but the UI still has the numbers there and you have to remember which button is which number (or you just give up and click them). The original thing that pushed me into starting this project was Satisfactory, but Satisfactory has since gotten less terrible on controllers.
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Comment on Norwegian payment service Vipps becomes world's first company to launch competing tap-to-pay solution to Apple Pay on iPhone – follows agreement with European regulators in ~tech
em-dash Link ParentThat's why you couldn't make a new one before, which I understood. I'm trying to ask several other questions: Why did people bother setting up a whole company to make an Apple Pay competitor, if...That's why you couldn't make a new one before, which I understood. I'm trying to ask several other questions:
Why did people bother setting up a whole company to make an Apple Pay competitor, if Apple isn't really involved in the payments in the first place?
What does this company actually do besides writing a client side "store cards and do the NFC thing" app? What's their business model?
Why would someone be unhappy enough with Apple Pay to switch off of it onto another app that does exactly the same thing?
Is the streaming app problem our parent poster mentions even possible, since the terminal (presumably) can't choose to only accept payments from Obscure Payment App Nobody Else Uses Professional Edition?
These are legitimate questions; I don't know much about this technology because I'm one of those weird people who still uses cards. I assumed the reason was "so people can give us transaction fees instead of giving Apple transaction fees" but that explanation no longer makes sense.
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Comment on Norwegian payment service Vipps becomes world's first company to launch competing tap-to-pay solution to Apple Pay on iPhone – follows agreement with European regulators in ~tech
em-dash Link Parent... huh, so it does. I was misinformed. What's the point of making a new one, then?... huh, so it does. I was misinformed.
What's the point of making a new one, then?
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Comment on Norwegian payment service Vipps becomes world's first company to launch competing tap-to-pay solution to Apple Pay on iPhone – follows agreement with European regulators in ~tech
em-dash (edited )Link ParentI am wrong, see replies.The right way to do this would be to standardize the interface between the phone and the payment terminal. The terminal shouldn't know what app or brand of phone is on the other side, it shouldn't "support Apple Pay", it should just know how to do NFC payments.Naturally, that's not what we got, because companies are bad at standards.I am wrong, see replies.
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Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp
em-dash LinkI'm rapidly flipping between several hardware projects. I'm making some very tiny motor drivers for use in insect-weight combat robots. My hope is that I can drive them more effectively for this...I'm rapidly flipping between several hardware projects.
I'm making some very tiny motor drivers for use in insect-weight combat robots. My hope is that I can drive them more effectively for this use case (high torque, start up as fast as possible, don't stop in the face of unexpected spikes in motor load) by doing my own thing than by trying to adapt RC aircraft ESCs, which is what people usually do. I also think tiny steppers may have promise as wheel motors, so I have a variant that can drive those from the same sort of signal as standard RC motors and servos. I spent the last couple of nights digging into low-level ARM register-poking and memory layout, because I chose a microcontroller family (STM32C0) that isn't currently supported by libopencm3.
I'm also hand-wiring a bigger split keyboard - moving from a Sofle to an 8x6-per-side Dactyl Manuform based design. It is big and purple, which is the optimal set of keyboard attributes for me. I'm looking forward to not having hot-swap switches, which is a feature I never used in practice except for occasionally knocking switches out of the keyboard.
My Steam Deck keyboard project is still in progress, but both I and my friend have had enough other stuff going on that we haven't gotten around to putting together another prototype yet. I'll be moving next year and we decided to not try to pursue production runs until after that, so there's minimal time pressure there.
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Comment on Fedora moves towards Forgejo in ~comp
em-dash Link ParentI run a private Forgejo instance (primarily for my own use, two friends also have logins). I've migrated from Gogs to Gitea to this. It does the things a forge should do and requires minimal...I run a private Forgejo instance (primarily for my own use, two friends also have logins). I've migrated from Gogs to Gitea to this. It does the things a forge should do and requires minimal maintenance. That's all I want from it.
If you don't need a full forge, the even more minimalist option is to just push to a bare repository on a server over ssh. I used to do that too.
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Comment on The confusing reality of AI friends in ~tech
em-dash Link ParentYou may also enjoy one of my favorite serious academic paper titles ever: This paper will be very sad if you don't read itYou may also enjoy one of my favorite serious academic paper titles ever: This paper will be very sad if you don't read it
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Comment on The confusing reality of AI friends in ~tech
em-dash Link ParentTHE VISCOUNT: AI uses a lot of power. CYRANOGPT: Is that all? Ah no! young human! That was a trifle short! You might have said at least a hundred things By varying the tone. . .like this,...THE VISCOUNT: AI uses a lot of power.
CYRANOGPT: Is that all?
Ah no! young human! That was a trifle short!
You might have said at least a hundred things
By varying the tone. . .like this, suppose,. . .
Aggressive: 'Sir, if I had such power usage I'd shut down my own server!'
Friendly: 'When you think it must annoy you, the lights around you dimming;
You need capacitors of unusual size!'
Descriptive: ''Tis a vacuum cleaner!. . .a table saw!. . .a short circuit! --
A short, forsooth! 'Tis a free energy machine plugged in backwards!' -
Comment on Misogynist hacker who threatened the wrong woman (hacker) and found out in ~comp
em-dash Link ParentThat page must be broken for me. This is the entire text of the article I see: edit: archive link, which worksThat page must be broken for me. This is the entire text of the article I see:
When the accused Kitchener-based hacker known online as “Waifu” threatened a woman on the messaging app Telegram, it was the beginning of his downfall.
‘Waifu” had been bragging about his criminal exploits in open groups on Telegram. But when he threatened Allison Nixon, the chief research officer at the U.S. cybersecurity firm Unit221B, his days were numbered.
edit: archive link, which works
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Comment on What chemicals/substances do you keep at home? And what do you do with them? in ~life.home_improvement
em-dash LinkFocusing on the hobby stuff instead of the home cleaning stuff, because it's more interesting: isopropanol, as a general purpose workshop solvent acetone, for the things isopropanol won't dissolve...Focusing on the hobby stuff instead of the home cleaning stuff, because it's more interesting:
- isopropanol, as a general purpose workshop solvent
- acetone, for the things isopropanol won't dissolve or won't dissolve fast enough
- ABS dissolved in acetone in a spray bottle, as a 3D printer adhesive
- 3D printing resins
- copper chloride, which I used to use for etching PCBs but honestly I haven't done this in a couple of years because I now mostly do stuff too complex for 2-layer boards
- metal cutting lubricants (tap magic, anchorlube)
- way oil, for machine tools (and stuff that looks enough like a machine tool and needs lubricant; I put it on 3D printers too)
- liquid teflon; also a lubricant but I don't use it much
- the least-used lubricant is a tub of heavy-duty automotive-grade grease, which I bought once to put in a noisy laptop fan and do not use for anything else (I think my thinking here was "what is the thickest grease I can possibly put in this obnoxious fan that has rejected every other lubricant I've tried")
- loctite 243, 603, and 638, for various sorts of "make this cylindrical thing not come out"
- soldering flux, in liquid and gel forms
- solder paste
- cyanoacrylate
- epoxy
- wood glue
- some assorted paints and wood finishes; I don't remember exactly what's there
(hi, my hobby is collecting stuff-making hobbies)
Indeed! I'm not a bigot, why do I have to hear about bigots? D: