gary's recent activity

  1. Comment on The United States of pizza, mapsplained in ~food

    gary
    Link Parent
    Whoa whoa whoa, you guys might have popularized pineapple on pizza and maybe even invented the current combo of pineapple and ham/Canadian bacon, but pineapple on pizza was already referenced in...

    Whoa whoa whoa, you guys might have popularized pineapple on pizza and maybe even invented the current combo of pineapple and ham/Canadian bacon, but pineapple on pizza was already referenced in the US by the mid 1950s as "Hawaiian". I just learned all of this today but I'm gonna defend our contribution here as a pineapple-on-pizza-liker.

    ("might" and "maybe" in italics only cause I don't know that part of the history but it seems reasonably likely to me!)

    3 votes
  2. Comment on Single most useful program you daily use? in ~tech

    gary
    Link Parent
    I started donating $15/month when Logseq opened sync to early access. I quit after 8 months. If I had continued, I would have donated $495 by now and sync is still in beta also being rewritten.

    I started donating $15/month when Logseq opened sync to early access. I quit after 8 months. If I had continued, I would have donated $495 by now and sync is still in beta also being rewritten.

    2 votes
  3. Comment on As Internet enshittification marches on, here are some of the worst offenders in ~tech

    gary
    Link Parent
    Yeah, one of Apple's great flaws is their deprecation strategy. They get praise for their OS support counting from when they first started selling it, but those congratulating them often forget to...

    Yeah, one of Apple's great flaws is their deprecation strategy. They get praise for their OS support counting from when they first started selling it, but those congratulating them often forget to acknowledge that Apple sells hardware for many years after release. That third gen Apple TV was released in 2012, but last sale date was in 2016. The last update for it was 2020. So 8 years of support or 4 years depending on how you count it. Honestly, 8 is kind of low too..

    On the other hand the generation after that was released in 2015 so we'll hit 10 years soon on that one. It's a crapshoot with Apple.

    10 votes
  4. Comment on As Internet enshittification marches on, here are some of the worst offenders in ~tech

    gary
    Link Parent
    Depends on your TV, but some do.

    Depends on your TV, but some do.

    The researchers looked at TVs made by two leading manufacturers, Samsung and LG. ...

    They found that the smart TVs captured snapshots of audio or video as often as every 10 milliseconds, batched them and used an algorithm to generate a “fingerprint” representing all the content over a time interval, such as the past minute. This fingerprint was sent to a company server and matched against a database of all the content available through the TV service.

    10 votes
  5. Comment on As Internet enshittification marches on, here are some of the worst offenders in ~tech

    gary
    Link Parent
    Since you mentioned TV, Apple TV (the box). It's remained effectively the same device for at least the last 8 years. I can't even tell which Apple TV I'm using if they hadn't updated the remotes....

    Since you mentioned TV, Apple TV (the box).

    • It's remained effectively the same device for at least the last 8 years. I can't even tell which Apple TV I'm using if they hadn't updated the remotes.
    • It's fast, the UI is simple, and Apple isn't pushing ads nor selling your usage data.
    • It has apps for every major streamer, but if that's not your flavor, it's also got easy access to the TV store (formerly iTunes) where you can still purchase or rent movies at fair prices.

    However, most people I know get a Fire Stick, Roku, or just use the built-in OS, which do sell your usage data and show ads. The market has spoken and it chose the enshittified services.

    19 votes
  6. Comment on Is there a reason that we aren't seeing pushback to US President Donald Trump's blitzkreig? in ~society

    gary
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    It's the boy who cried wolf. That not only didn't* work from 2016-2020, but people are back to doing it today. I expend all my mental energy fact checking because even though I am in a liberal...

    It's the boy who cried wolf. That not only didn't* work from 2016-2020, but people are back to doing it today. I expend all my mental energy fact checking because even though I am in a liberal bubble, the disinformation campaign is just as real.

    It's hard to form any coalition to resist when everyone's attention is split amongst 10 different issues and you need to deduce which issues are even real to the extent claimed before you can decide what to prioritize.

    I am glad Jon Stewart is talking about this because there's a lot on the left that trust and will listen to him.

    * Okay, maybe it did work in that Biden beat Trump, but in the long run it didn't work since Trump came back quite easily a few years later.

    21 votes
  7. Comment on Is there a reason that we aren't seeing pushback to US President Donald Trump's blitzkreig? in ~society

    gary
    Link
    On some level, a majority of people secretly agree with a move towards the right. That's my theory. I was just reading today about three liberal moms that were shouted down when they questioned...

    On some level, a majority of people secretly agree with a move towards the right. That's my theory. I was just reading today about three liberal moms that were shouted down when they questioned whether it was a good idea to mix honors and regular classes in the name of increasing diversity. They weren't alone in their feelings; they were alone in their willingness to publicly state their opinions.

    Many parents had similar concerns. When School Committee member Paul Levy was campaigning in 2021, he spoke to more than a thousand parents and estimated that about 80 percent of them raised such issues.
    “Most painful to hear,” he says, “was that parents were saying, ‘I don’t dare talk about this, because if I do, I’ll be called a racist.’”

    In the opinion piece, it states that more parents this year are raising a fuss about the issue and there's developing support for a rollback on the school committee now. Systems naturally move back to the middle of a bell curve. You can move somewhat in one direction, but if you move strongly that way, there will be a snapback. Status quos exist for a reason; most people liked the status quo enough for a status quo to develop.

    So on crime, illegal immigration, quotas, etc., people got fed up with Democrat policies. People are willing to let Republicans "cook" for a while to undo what they were fed up with. Will the brakes apply in time though or will Republicans overshoot what the majority want?

    15 votes
  8. Comment on US Pentagon shocked by Donald Trump’s order to house migrants in Guantánamo Bay in ~society

    gary
    Link Parent
    Do you truly believe that they'll execute 40k? Would you reconsider what you know to be true if that doesn't come to pass? I do not contest that the conditions will be poor, but come on, if those...

    Do you truly believe that they'll execute 40k? Would you reconsider what you know to be true if that doesn't come to pass?

    I do not contest that the conditions will be poor, but come on, if those 40k are likely to be executed, we should all take to the streets right now.

    11 votes
  9. Comment on Steam Brick: No screen, no controller, and absolutely no sense, just a power button and a USB port in ~tech

    gary
    Link Parent
    I wouldn't say they go out of their way to make it difficult. They once made a change that specifically helped out Asahi Linux; they just keep quiet and don't acknowledge publicly that they're...

    I wouldn't say they go out of their way to make it difficult. They once made a change that specifically helped out Asahi Linux; they just keep quiet and don't acknowledge publicly that they're doing so.

  10. Comment on US President signs order restricting gender-affirming treatments for anyone under 19 in ~lgbt

    gary
    Link Parent
    This part is not accurate, although I can see how there could be a leap there. The text in the executive order is: First, it's the DoJ, not the FDA, directed to begin investigations. That has...

    it also maintains that any positive studies on transitioning is to be deemed 'misleading' and to have the FDA begin investigations into researchers and organizations that support or post the studies

    This part is not accurate, although I can see how there could be a leap there. The text in the executive order is:

    Sec. 8. Directives to the Department of Justice. The Attorney General shall:
    ...
    (c) prioritize investigations and take appropriate action to end deception of consumers, fraud, and violations of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act by any entity that may be misleading the public about long-term side effects of chemical and surgical mutilation;

    First, it's the DoJ, not the FDA, directed to begin investigations. That has different implications.

    Second, it does not say "any positive studies on transitioning is to be deemed 'misleading'", but I can see the worry that the administration would do that. If so, it would be a separate action from this executive order though. This is the most important part because to do what you said would be a huge overreach and likely make what Trump's doing blatantly unconstitutional to the point the entire thing gets rolled back. But because he's not saying that, I fear that this will remain in place. FWIW, Erin Reed's analysis of section 8 also does not say that the EO relabels all positive studies.

    Third, there is a difference between "misleading the public about long-term side effects of chemical and surgical mutilation" versus publishing a study on effects of drugs. You can go on YouTube and make a video that WonderDrug performs miracles and that would be misleading. You could publish a paper that says "WonderDrug in patients exhibited these behaviors: ..." and it would not be misleading (probably).

    However, with the administration the way it is and the other horrid things it's doing towards transexual individuals/community, the fear of abuse is legitimate. The difference is that the words didn't say that and that's also an important thing to note.

    11 votes
  11. Comment on US President signs order restricting gender-affirming treatments for anyone under 19 in ~lgbt

    gary
    Link Parent
    That's a different executive order that Erin analyzes. They analyze the one discussed in the OP's article here on their substack.

    That's a different executive order that Erin analyzes. They analyze the one discussed in the OP's article here on their substack.

    11 votes
  12. Comment on Nvidia’s $589 billion DeepSeek rout is largest in market history in ~finance

    gary
    Link Parent
    I'm trying to distill down what you wrote for my own understanding and I get to "why was Nvidia worth so much before this week". Is that a fair understanding? If the large valuations are mind...

    I'm trying to distill down what you wrote for my own understanding and I get to "why was Nvidia worth so much before this week". Is that a fair understanding? If the large valuations are mind boggling, I can only say that we will likely see that more often and at even larger magnitudes in the long run as we globalize and countries flock towards a handful of suppliers in certain industries.

    For Nvidia specifically, well they're pretty much the only player in town selling shovels to this gold rush of AI. The demand is so hot that there's only a handful of countries able to even purchase them in real bulk. I'd even argue there's only two and one of them was kneecapped by the other. So you have this incredible equipment that everyone in the world would buy if they could, but you sell them faster than you can make them such that if you sold to just two countries, you'd already be over capacity. So of course Nvidia would be mega valued. If only I foresaw that, sigh.

    As for why the drop is both large yet unconcerning: Nvidia wasn't cash constrained before the AI spike and they aren't cash constrained now. The company's survival is solely predicated on whether or not they can continue to stay competitive in their product offerings lest a competitor takes market share. To stay competitive, they need to design and architect the next generation, but at some point the funding stops being the bottleneck.

    4 votes
  13. Comment on Should leftists in the US be armed? in ~society

    gary
    Link Parent
    Misread you in the last reply to mean X -> M/F, but you meant M/F -> X (made before the administration change), but now the M/F -> X applications are in limbo post administration change right? And...

    Misread you in the last reply to mean X -> M/F, but you meant M/F -> X (made before the administration change), but now the M/F -> X applications are in limbo post administration change right?

    And thanks for shedding more light here, cause after reading the article I see it's not just X. Gender changes in the past might be disallowed now. What a clusterfuck.

    3 votes
  14. Comment on Should leftists in the US be armed? in ~society

    gary
    Link Parent
    True, I hadn't thought about how people might want to preemptively change it just in case it causes them problems traveling back to the US after a trip. But passports take a while anyway and it's...

    True, I hadn't thought about how people might want to preemptively change it just in case it causes them problems traveling back to the US after a trip. But passports take a while anyway and it's only been a week since Trump took over so it very well could just be slow bureaucracy in addition to the chaos he's enacting. I can't imagine they want the X to remain.. but who knows.

    3 votes
  15. Comment on Should leftists in the US be armed? in ~society

    gary
    Link Parent
    To clarify, it's for people submitting an application (first passport or renewal) where the application has an X for gender. People already with passports with an X marker are overwhelmingly not...

    To clarify, it's for people submitting an application (first passport or renewal) where the application has an X for gender. People already with passports with an X marker are overwhelmingly not likely to need renewal yet since passports are good for 10 years and X was allowed starting in 2022. (Pretty much) no one who already has an X should be losing that, but going forward, no one will be able to get an X until this policy change is rolled back.

    6 votes
  16. Comment on Restaurants close across China in ~food

    gary
    Link Parent
    It's apparently the opposite. The Wikipedia page says neijuan is a direct translation of involution and a relatively new term. So technically, translating it back to involution just feels natural...

    It's apparently the opposite. The Wikipedia page says neijuan is a direct translation of involution and a relatively new term. So technically, translating it back to involution just feels natural for Chinese speakers translating into English?

    Besides, English speakers use words all the time that other native English speakers aren't familiar with. I'm more likely to know auspicious than remember what pithy (used in thread by stu2b50) means.

    6 votes
  17. Comment on US President Donald Trump suggests Palestinians leave Gaza and ‘we just clean out’ territory in ~society

    gary
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Trump has not stopped aid to Israel*, he's lifted the restriction on 2000 pound bombs, and is now proposing a temporary ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip. Suggesting Harris was the better option...

    Trump has not stopped aid to Israel*, he's lifted the restriction on 2000 pound bombs, and is now proposing a temporary ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip. Suggesting Harris was the better option is not insane at all. We can only hope at this point that Trump accidentally stumbles upon a better solution.

    *One of just two countries that the temporary foreign aid halt does not apply to.

    21 votes
  18. Comment on MOS brings macOS' smooth scrolling to any mouse in ~tech

    gary
    Link Parent
    Yeah if you happen to try it again and know what settings you did to make it work, I'd love that. I saw this solution as a result of @rodrigo's post (thanks btw!), but I'm not a fan of Logi...

    Yeah if you happen to try it again and know what settings you did to make it work, I'd love that. I saw this solution as a result of @rodrigo's post (thanks btw!), but I'm not a fan of Logi Options. If I could get mouse behavior to work well on macOS it'd go a long way to helping me like the platform.

    3 votes
  19. Comment on MOS brings macOS' smooth scrolling to any mouse in ~tech

    gary
    Link Parent
    Huh, wonder what we're doing or using differently. I'm browsing on Safari with an MX Master 2 and the free scrolling is quite jerky. When scrolling at high speed, the frame rate feels like it's...

    Huh, wonder what we're doing or using differently. I'm browsing on Safari with an MX Master 2 and the free scrolling is quite jerky. When scrolling at high speed, the frame rate feels like it's 30fps. When I decelerate, the wheel sometimes moves with no movement on the page at all. I haven't used a Magic Mouse in a few years now, but I still have a Magic Trackpad and that is worlds different from third-party mice.

    3 votes
  20. Comment on How nine popular YouTubers helped US President Donald Trump win a second term in ~society

    gary
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    It's the wrong comparison to be making. It's when there's a direct comparison ("men" vs "women") being drawn that the lack of one is an obvious indicator. Not only that, but we've started seeing...

    It's the wrong comparison to be making. It's when there's a direct comparison ("men" vs "women") being drawn that the lack of one is an obvious indicator. Not only that, but we've started seeing more and more young men of Gen Z struggling to find their place in this world. Even if you don't believe that "men" needed to be on the list, this list existing was an own goal on the Democrats. Which voter on the fence found this list and then voted Democrat because of it? It was a strategic blunder if nothing else.

    The struggles of being male and the struggles of being white are very different here.

    7 votes