qob's recent activity

  1. Comment on Can you recommend tv shows with themes of grit, endurance, survival under hostile circumstances? in ~tv

    qob
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    1883 is a western miniseries about US settlers who are making their way across the great plains to find a better life and a young city woman who falls in love with the unforgiving harshness of the...

    1883 is a western miniseries about US settlers who are making their way across the great plains to find a better life and a young city woman who falls in love with the unforgiving harshness of the American wilderness.

    I'm usually annoyed by too much drama, but I sucked this one up for some reason I can't put my finger on.

    3 votes
  2. Comment on Nepenthes: a tarpit intended to catch AI web crawlers in ~tech

    qob
    Link Parent
    It's easy for an LLM crawler to identify itself as a search engine crawler or a normal browser. The web service has no way to tell the difference.

    It's easy for an LLM crawler to identify itself as a search engine crawler or a normal browser. The web service has no way to tell the difference.

    8 votes
  3. Comment on It's official: My back is shot in ~talk

    qob
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    I'm in the same boat, but a few years ahead of you. I also sit most of my waking life, and I also had a slipped disc. It pressed on a nerve and now I have some permanent nerve damage. It's not bad...

    I'm in the same boat, but a few years ahead of you. I also sit most of my waking life, and I also had a slipped disc. It pressed on a nerve and now I have some permanent nerve damage. It's not bad at all, just some numbness, and I can't lift my left foot as high as the right one, but this doesn't intervene with my life at all.

    I got surgery to remove the pressure on the nerve, which was the right decision in my case. Everything felt and worked better just hours after I woke up after the surgery.

    My lower back hurt for years before the disc blew out, and now I think it only got worse because I thought I had to exercise my lower back muscles if my lower back hurts. Only after the damage was done did I learn that's exactly wrong: You need stronger abs to relieve and stabilize your lower back. Your back muscles usually get enough exercise from daily movements (e.g. sitting down and standing up, tying shoes, pick something up from the floor, etc), but modern humans don't use their abs as much as they're supposed to. I've been doing planks regularly, and that seems to have fixed my back. I don't think you can break anything if you're doing too much planks (if you do them correctly), so that's my main advice.

    Another thing that seems to help me is to sit inclined backwards. I know, you're supposed to sit with your spine straight and at a 90⁰ angle to your legs, but that has always felt very uncomfortable and my back starts to hurt after maybe 20 minutes. Slouching is much more comfortable and seems to also be better for my back. Maybe I'm a freak, I don't know.

    Hope you get better soon!

    2 votes
  4. Comment on What hard scifi books could you recommend? in ~books

    qob
    Link Parent
    I haven't read Giants, I think. The Island is in the same setting as FFR, but it's with different characters, and as far as I can tell, it's not clear if it's even the same ship. With Peter Watts,...

    I haven't read Giants, I think. The Island is in the same setting as FFR, but it's with different characters, and as far as I can tell, it's not clear if it's even the same ship.

    With Peter Watts, I'm never really sure I understand what's going on. But that makes it great re-reading material. I've read Blindsight at at least four times and there are still details I don't get.

  5. Comment on What hard scifi books could you recommend? in ~books

    qob
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    If you like Peter Watts, I very much recommend The Freeze-Frame Revolution. The Rifters trilogy is also amazing. Also pretty much everything else I've seen from him, including his blog. (Yes, I'm...

    If you like Peter Watts, I very much recommend The Freeze-Frame Revolution. The Rifters trilogy is also amazing. Also pretty much everything else I've seen from him, including his blog. (Yes, I'm a fan.)

    In case you didn't know, you can download a lot of his works from his website.

    3 votes
  6. Comment on <deleted topic> in ~tech

    qob
    Link Parent
    I think it's virtue signalling. They show the people that they do something that is good, even if it's just on the label. Most people tend to not know enough about the details to see through it,...

    They can pat themselves on the back

    I think it's virtue signalling. They show the people that they do something that is good, even if it's just on the label. Most people tend to not know enough about the details to see through it, and those who do and call bullshit have to deal with accusations of not wanting to protect the children before they can explain why it doesn't protect them at all. It's the downside of democracy, and the only antidote is education.

    3 votes
  7. Comment on <deleted topic> in ~tech

    qob
    Link Parent
    Pornhub is just one site. Children will still have unlimited access to porn even if you somehow manage to block all domains that are dedicated to porn because you can find porn on sites that...

    Pornhub is just one site. Children will still have unlimited access to porn even if you somehow manage to block all domains that are dedicated to porn because you can find porn on sites that usually don't host porn, and because porn sites can just create thousands of new domains per second if they want to.

    And porn is just one topic that isn't suitable for kids. The internet simply is not a place to let your kids lose and forget about them, much like most of the real world.

    22 votes
  8. Comment on Tenant unions are coming. US landlords aren't ready. in ~life

    qob
    Link Parent
    The difference is that you would lease it from the local government, which should ideally be run like a community, not as a business, and definitely not for profit. Your lease wouldn't go to...

    The difference is that you would lease it from the local government, which should ideally be run like a community, not as a business, and definitely not for profit. Your lease wouldn't go to shareholders, it would go to the local community, like a property tax.

    But yeah, that was a shower thought and I have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about. I'm just tired of neofeudalism, and making it impossible to invest in land is one way to fight it.

    5 votes
  9. Comment on Tenant unions are coming. US landlords aren't ready. in ~life

    qob
    Link Parent
    Yes, of course. Housing cooperatives should be the default for multi-tenant housing and owning a house you don't use yourself but rent to someone should be weird. I even think owning land should...

    Yes, of course. Housing cooperatives should be the default for multi-tenant housing and owning a house you don't use yourself but rent to someone should be weird.

    I even think owning land should be weird, at least in cities, and the norm should be to lease it from the local government. If you die, the land goes back to the community and your kids get dibs on leasing it again.

    10 votes
  10. Comment on Tenant unions are coming. US landlords aren't ready. in ~life

    qob
    Link Parent
    Air BNB is essentially just another manifestation of private property ownership being the basic issue. If you own a house for profit, Air BNB is a great way to increase your rent per square meter...

    Air BNB is essentially just another manifestation of private property ownership being the basic issue. If you own a house for profit, Air BNB is a great way to increase your rent per square meter per time. Remove the ability to profit (excessively) from owning a house, and that issue is gone.

    19 votes
  11. Comment on Tenant unions are coming. US landlords aren't ready. in ~life

    qob
    Link Parent
    In existing homes. I don't know about other countries, but the average space per person has been doubled in my country in the last 50 years or so. And I'm not saying no housing should be...

    In existing homes. I don't know about other countries, but the average space per person has been doubled in my country in the last 50 years or so.

    And I'm not saying no housing should be constructed. I'm saying building new houses in popular places is a losing battle, because popularity moves and houses don't.

    8 votes
  12. Comment on Tenant unions are coming. US landlords aren't ready. in ~life

    qob
    Link Parent
    I don't think more housing would really solve the issue. Rent is high in popular areas (usually big cities) because everone wants to live there. If you increase available housing, the rent drops,...

    I don't think more housing would really solve the issue. Rent is high in popular areas (usually big cities) because everone wants to live there. If you increase available housing, the rent drops, so more people can afford to live there and drive up rents again. There is no equilibrium because there are millions upon millions waiting in line. This cycle continues until the city is eventually completely plastered with houses, making the whole place unlivable because the impervious surface kills the microclimate with heat waves and flooding. Now everyone wants to live in another densely-but-not-too-densely populate area. Rinse and repeat. And if we ever want to win against climate change, building hundreds of millions of new homes is impossible.

    In my opinion, the issue is private property ownership. Popular land is a very scarce resource and it should not be subject to market forces. Housing should be rented to cover the costs of housing, not to increase profits for investors. One such solution that I really like is the model where everyone who lives in a house partially owns that house, and when they move out, they lose it. Here in Germany, this keeps rents very low even in high-rent cities. Together with city-owned houses that are also rented at cost but managed by the city should drop rents dramatically.

    Of course, this is a pipe dream and will probably never happen on large scales, but I don't see any real reason why this shouldn't work.

    16 votes
  13. Comment on Legacy is a delusion in ~talk

    qob
    (edited )
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    I think most people would actually agree with you because legacy is not the goal, it's just an effect of the goal. The actual goal is to have a positive impact on the world. If I can improve the...

    I think most people would actually agree with you because legacy is not the goal, it's just an effect of the goal. The actual goal is to have a positive impact on the world.

    If I can improve the lives of those around me, I will obviously be remembered in a positive light when I'm gone. When people say they care about their legacy, they are taking a mental leap from "I am a good person" to "people know that I am a good person" to "I am such a good person that people will remember me even when I'm no longer around".

    5 votes
  14. Comment on Tom Merritt's opinion on if Mozilla should join Chromium in ~tech

    qob
    Link Parent
    Yeah, but I don't see how anyone can make a browser more popular. Google can tell their users that Gmail works best with Chrome (and make sure that's true). They can gear Chrome towards the ad...

    They can limit the influence by making a fork that could be more popular

    Yeah, but I don't see how anyone can make a browser more popular. Google can tell their users that Gmail works best with Chrome (and make sure that's true). They can gear Chrome towards the ad industry, making it more likely that any random website works better with Chrome. They can invest billions in building a brand so that Chrome feels better than all the alternatives, even if it isn't. They can influence web standards to make them more complex and geared towards how Chrome compared to other browsers, wasting scarce development resources of other browsers.

    Basically, they can do everything they have been doing since they first announced Chrome. Why would they stop if there's another alternative or fork?

    4 votes
  15. Comment on Tom Merritt's opinion on if Mozilla should join Chromium in ~tech

    qob
    Link Parent
    I don't see how anyone could even attempt to limit the influence of Google within Chromium. There is no democracy. It's Google's browser. If I create a project on GitHub, I might accept...

    I don't see how anyone could even attempt to limit the influence of Google within Chromium. There is no democracy. It's Google's browser. If I create a project on GitHub, I might accept contributions, but I'd still be in control of the project. If someone forks Chromium, there would be another browser with 0.2 % market share and that's it. Even if someone could take over Chromium development, Google could just fork it and 90 % of users would (be forced to) switch to Google's fork.

    15 votes
  16. Comment on US officials urge Americans to use encrypted apps amid unprecedented cyberattack in ~tech

    qob
    Link Parent
    Only in theory. In practice, everyone (state, companies and consumers) uses all kinds of IT products from the US. There are efforts to mitigate this, but that would cost money and political...

    I gather things are better in the EU due to better regulation, but I'm not sure how much better.

    Only in theory. In practice, everyone (state, companies and consumers) uses all kinds of IT products from the US. There are efforts to mitigate this, but that would cost money and political effort, and there's always something more important than changing a somewhat working system.

    I think the issues are very similar across the world, and they basically come down to this: With physical products, they feel bad if they are creaking, leaking, gunky, etc, even as a complete layman. An IT product can have all kinds of severe issues and still feel fancy and polished. And then there are things like social media or mass surveillance, for which we haven't really understood the large scale consequences they can have on societies, even if they were impeccably implemented.

    12 votes
  17. Comment on The CEO of UnitedHealthcare (insurance company) has been assassinated in NYC in ~news

    qob
    Link Parent
    But AFAIK those were "reverse" revolutions, i.e. the goal was the opposite of democracy and equality.

    But AFAIK those were "reverse" revolutions, i.e. the goal was the opposite of democracy and equality.

  18. Comment on Missing camper found safe after more than five weeks in Canada's Northern Rockies in ~news

    qob
    Link Parent
    That just opens up more questions! How do you survive a wolf chasing you? You can't outrun them, so even if you somehow survive this, how do you get so far from your path that you can't find your...

    "But he did say that he did get lost because he was getting chased by a wolf."

    That just opens up more questions! How do you survive a wolf chasing you? You can't outrun them, so even if you somehow survive this, how do you get so far from your path that you can't find your way back? If the wolf was really chasing you, he'd be on your throat in seconds. Maybe he saw the wolf from far away and went too far away from the path to avoid an actual encounter? But I wouldn't call that "chased by a wolf".

    4 votes
  19. Comment on Coffee prices surge to highest since 1997 on supply fears in ~food

    qob
    Link Parent
    And no society has been truly fighting for a government that takes climate change seriously. Far weaker societies have brought down and revolutionized far more powerful governments throughout...

    And no society has been truly fighting for a government that takes climate change seriously.

    Far weaker societies have brought down and revolutionized far more powerful governments throughout history. Uncountatble lives have been sacrificed for less serious issues. In modern societies, not a single drop of blood would have to be shed to change government policies, yet we keep investing our money on maximizing consumption. Everyone hates Amazon, but they keep increasing its overwhelming market share because of the better service, i.e. it allows them to consume more crap more conveniently.

    I'm so tired of people.

    4 votes
  20. Comment on United States Department of Justice will push Google to sell Chrome to break search monopoly in ~tech

    qob
    Link Parent
    I don't have an answer to your question, but I want to point out the absurdity of this situation: A browser is infrastructure modern societies increasingly rely on for their core functionality. It...

    I don't have an answer to your question, but I want to point out the absurdity of this situation: A browser is infrastructure modern societies increasingly rely on for their core functionality. It costs a tiny fraction of other infrastructure like transportation, energy, justice, etc. Yet here we are, struggling to figure out how to maintain something that is, in comparison, quite simple, for the benefit of all.

    With Linux, we have an example that shows this is possible. We just need to figure out how to get there. But I would bet real money that Chrome will be bought by some other mindless for-profit corporation or a whacky billionaire, things will become a lot worse and everyone will just keep using it. It's so frustrating.

    6 votes