• 0 Posts
  • 20 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: July 11th, 2023

help-circle
  • NGnius@lemmy.catoTechnology@lemmy.worldServo vs Ladybird.
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    10 days ago

    We are discussing what someone would use when writing about a hypothetical person.

    And that changes it how? It’s insulting to misgender someone, though I can understand how you’d think that there’s no harm in insulting someone hypothetical.

    I suggest you do some research on the history of language

    Per your suggestion, “they” has been used to refer to a singular person since the 14th century. “He” is currently masculine-only. I apologize if you misunderstood my use of “never” to refer to things around the 18th and 19th century (when it apparently was considered bad to use “they” in the singular) when I presumed that there was an implicit limit to modern usage of English.





  • Regular smart watches are such a luxury good that I’m surprised they’ve been growing up until last year. Realistically most people don’t need a smart phone that’s more than like $300 and I can’t imagine spending more than that on a smart watch which just duplicates most of the features of a smart phone (and adds a few more sensors if you’re lucky).

    The rise in kids smart watches is a bit alarming to me, though. If the reason for it is truly that parents want to track their kids more, that’s really bad for the kids for two big reasons. First being that kids need to learn how to behave without their parents always watching, and second is that if the parent can see where the kid is then probably so can the company who made the smart watch. Maybe they’ll make a smartwatch which sends location data over something like the Signal protocol to mitigate 3rd party tracking, but I doubt there’s a big enough demand for that for any of the major companies to do that on their own.







  • NGnius@lemmy.catoAsklemmy@lemmy.mlWhy would'nt this work?
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    2 months ago

    Relativity would prevent this. If the train moves at the speed of light, then nothing inside it will move because time will stop. The amount of trains inside trains doesn’t really change much except the effect of time dilation (slowdown) on each train. You can’t actually accelerate to the speed of light.


  • While light bulb sockets don’t change much from region to region, they definitely aren’t all the same. For the bulbs (not the bars), there’s two large categories: Edison screws and bi-pin. Edison screws also come in a lot of sizes. When compact fluorescents were rolling out, they got a new bi-pin connector from the USA: GU24. My whole home has GU24 fixtures (not by my own choice), but my lamps are Edison screws.




  • NGnius@lemmy.catoAsklemmy@lemmy.mlWhat do you donate to?
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    4 months ago

    I just sat down to do my annual donations, so I’ve got the list ready to go:

    • local food bank
    • local safe injection site
    • Signal
    • KDE
    • OpenMedia (closest thing to EFF in Canada)

    A few places I couldn’t afford to donate to this year, in case anyone needs more ideas:

    • archive.org
    • EFF
    • miscellaneous software projects I’m using (mostly Steam Deck plugins because I’m in that community a lot)
    • Gnome

    I also give a bit to Tor and The Beaverton monthly.


  • NGnius@lemmy.catoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.worldAre you in support of UBI?
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    17
    ·
    edit-2
    4 months ago

    Your first example only works for goods that are completely optional, which is very rarely the case. For example, smartphones. Nobody technically needs one, but almost everyone in western countries has one. If every company that makes a smartphone increases their prices, people will still buy them because they basically need them. I believe this is the principle of inelastic demand (or low elasticity) – car fuel is a more traditional example.

    Your second example doesn’t work when the cost of entry into the market is really high. This is very common in high tech. Take semiconductors for example. There’s basically one big name in chip manufacturing (TSMC) and a few runner-ups (Samsung, Intel, etc.). The latest node is infamous for being very expensive and low capacity. Why aren’t there new competitors constantly breaking in to the market?

    UBI is a great idea and will help things, but it’s not perfect so we shouldn’t expect it to just completely fix capitalism. The best way to fix capitalism is to get governments (which are all in charge of capitalism) to fix it with regulations. UBI will be a major regulation/step in the right direction.




  • I like to divide my spending into two broad categories: needs and wants. For example, I need food and shelter to survive, but I only want that really cute blahaj (even though it feels like I need it). Things that I want I can skip, things that I need I cannot. You have to be very honest with yourself for that to work well though.

    Of course life is not fun if you’re only surviving, so it’s OK to treat yourself occasionally with things you want. Just make sure you’re saving enough before spending on “wants”.

    It’s also often possible to break down “needs” further, since you may need some functionality (e.g. something to eat, something to hit nails with, etc.) but the specific item is not a need. I will prefer the cheapest option if I don’t have any other requirements. I tend to like things that’ll last though (they’re usually cheaper in the long run), so I’m willing to not cheap out if that’s a factor.

    I am a very pragmatic and minimalist person though, so I don’t think this advice will work for everyone.