Quarterly observations Q3 2023: What signs of collapse do you see in your region?

happysmash27 · 2022-04-14T03:59:49+00:00

Other than the more gendered language of "mankind" instead of "humankind", I like the 1976 audio a LOT more than the 2016 audio. Despite both being from Disney, the 2016 audio seems a LOT more fake and... Disneyfied, with fake cheerfulness, all the promotions of Disney IPs, the gift shop, the mickey mouse voice... I've only watched the very beginning (switching from one to another) and I pretty immediately dislike the style of the 2016 ride. I also like the style of pillars in 1976 more than 2016; they look modern but do not look fake like the 2016 ones.

happysmash27 · 2022-02-16T10:53:31+00:00

Location: Pasadena, Southern California.

There is snow in the ground. What?!?? I've never seen this before here, and from what I've read it hasn't happened since the 50s! We just had highs of 32°C three days ago (according to Acuweather), which isn't that hot, sure, but certainly not cold! Very chaotic weather, and I'm surprised I've found no other posts about this anywhere, as I've never seen this and my family were pretty shocked about it too… Maybe the weather is very localised; it happens near Filmore station but near Sierra Madre Villa station only around 10 blocks away it is significantly warmer. So, maybe it's just not widespread enough to be reported quickly. I may post some pictures if I can get some good ones; currently the only daytime picture of this I have has a person in it.

First Texas, now Southern California, perhaps. I suspect climate change, which causes more extreme weather, but as weather ≠ climate, it is also possible that this is just a one-off aberration. Will have to see if such strange weather continues into the future.

happysmash27 · 2021-03-06T22:22:53+00:00

A lot of people like to assume a lot of people online are hypocrites, but I often find that the supposed "hypocrites" they are talking about are actually two separate groups.

I'm not sure whether liberals fall into this category or not though.

happysmash27 · 2021-01-10T09:34:06+00:00

X-Post from https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/ku2n9u/a_mass_fatality_event_california_struggles_with/. I think it fits well with my other X-Post today, since it is two major collapsey things happening at once in the US. Collapse of the US into... something else, is looking more and more likely at this point.

happysmash27 · 2021-01-09T23:05:12+00:00

Unfortunately I have been slow on updating these threads (maybe I should make a bot for this... or better yet, just go on SaidIt more frequently like I have been doing with a Discord I moderate), so one of the observations that would otherwise be in Q1 2021 if I was more timely is actually in the Q3 2020 thread. It is the following, by /u/mierda:

r/collapse is collapsing under its own weight, so, pioneers, I am just a humble refugee.

SE TX: No hard freezes yet and we are starting the second week of January.

From https://saidit.net/s/collapse/comments/5cdd/quarterly_observations_q3_2020_what_signs_of/qzkj

happysmash27 · 2020-10-17T03:58:29+00:00

In this case, isn't it corporate welfare that is destroying the free market? And as for socialism in countries, don't the world banks and the CIA have a hand in many of their failings?

Yes and yes. Or, at least in my opinion (not the same person you replied to, but I agreed with them).

happysmash27 · 2020-10-17T03:56:20+00:00

It doesn't, IMO. It may leave a country without crucial industries for a while, but if we just stop bailing these companies out, they will know that they can't keep taking such big risks, and there tend to be alternatives in a truly free market anyway.

happysmash27 · 2020-10-03T07:24:59+00:00

Which one is which?

happysmash27 · 2020-09-19T03:57:15+00:00

If by bubble you mean staying at home, definitely.

happysmash27 · 2020-09-13T22:22:01+00:00

My life is mostly digital, so all lockdown meant for me was that I didn't have to constantly worry about commuting and packing up things, for example bringing enough food, since I have everything at home. So I wouldn't consider it stolen time at all, perhaps even the opposite, since I'm no longer forced to waste time constantly commuting from place to place and packing and unpacking things. On principle I opposed forced quarantine, but I don't want to be forced to waste hours of my time constantly commuting to and from school only to put my health more at risk either.

happysmash27 · 2020-09-13T19:19:34+00:00

Cloudflare is also bad for a lot of other reasons. One of the most annoying to me is constantly having to fill out captchas to access sites as a Tor user, with some sites even breaking when their assets are stored on separate Cloudflare domains which require one to go to the assets manually to fill out the captcha. Cloudflare also promotes search engine monopolies by blocking alternative search engines from crawling their sites. I really don't like them.

“The purpose for which this subpoena is sought is to obtain the identities of the individuals assigned to these websites who have exploited ACE Members’ exclusive rights in their copyrighted works without their authorization,” ACE wrote while requesting the subpoena.

My, I absolutely hate this group, but I have to commend them for actually using proper terminology. Many people erroneously refer to copyright infringement as "theft", despite them being legally distinct concepts with completely different reasons for existing, with property being a natural right, and copyright being a temporary, government-granted monopoly designed to encourage the creation of the arts. Referring to it as such was even ruled as "pejorative" in MPAA v. Hotfile. Perhaps that is why the ACE avoids doing so.

happysmash27 · 2020-09-09T09:01:36+00:00

WOW! I haven't seen such a good debunking in a long time, especially not of something I actually agreed with before seeing the response. Do you have a source I can link about this?

happysmash27 · 2020-09-09T09:07:40+00:00

Cultural appropriation is implemented as such a stupid idea, as if cultures can't be shared and spread. The way some people apply it, it sounds like something right-wing nationalists would come up with, not the left! I very much disagree with the concept, and think that we should freely share the best aspects of our cultures as much as possible, should we want to (I can understand that others may want to be more isolationist for diversity of cultures, but I come from a multicultural society and am mixed race so I prefer mixing).

happysmash27 · 2020-09-09T09:13:51+00:00

I don't like either of these options too much, especially because of how vaguely "terrorist" is defined. Perhaps make sure it is legal for people to defend their location and physical property, though, and arrest those who kill or severely and intentionally injure others. Also arrest people for arson. But is a mob shouting at someone in an intimidating way, for example, "terrorism"? Or does just being in a protest where some do bad things count as "terrorism"? Because I do not think that should be a jailable offense.

happysmash27 · 2020-09-09T08:56:51+00:00

Bottom right looks female to me.

All the others, on the other hand… I'm pretty sure are only partially what they label them as, or even barely/not what they label them as at all. I doubt Biden would be very competent at this point (due to aging), Bill Gates, to my knowledge, is not really a scientist (maybe a computer scientist or science enthusiast though???), and George Floyd was more of a victim than a hero, to my knowledge. And I'm pretty sure Michelle Obama is not very oppressed at all, or at least isn't in the present moment.

happysmash27 · 2020-09-09T08:51:24+00:00

Why not use the original meme?

happysmash27 · 2020-09-09T08:50:44+00:00

I don't quite get it. If you are implying that she could easily be duped to launch nukes, though, skills or lack thereof in one area do not necessarily translate to skills or lack of skills in another. I can imagine getting duped at a hair salon myself, but I can't imagine getting duped to put people's lives in danger so easily. We (almost) all make mistakes, especially in less serious areas in life like services.

happysmash27 · 2020-09-06T01:59:29+00:00

Still not going to buy their DRM-infested junk, though, regardless of if a pirated release occurs or not.

happysmash27 · 2020-09-06T02:01:06+00:00

Part of the reason so few have died is because of the intensive prevention measures. Also, I hear the effects of COVID-19 can still be pretty bad even if they don't kill you.

happysmash27 · 2020-09-01T21:03:22+00:00

Probably none for a while; just because all guns are legal, doesn't mean I will suddenly have money to pay for them or time to practice.

happysmash27 · 2020-09-02T01:14:55+00:00

I believe 0.

happysmash27 · 2020-09-01T03:01:18+00:00

Now I'm wondering what my skull shape is, as I am mixed.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-30T01:43:44+00:00

I am very happy Android supports alternative app stores even on the low-end non-rooted phones, and am glad that I had installed the fediverse apps I use from F-Droid in the first place. It is a very good app repository indeed, and very good for sorting through all the proprietary malware to only the good free/open source apps. Like the SaidIt app, for instance! Thank you very much for releasing it on F-Droid :) .

happysmash27 · 2020-08-29T08:06:23+00:00

I just don't feel like arguing the bad point, yes. I haven't actually convinced myself I was wrong about it yet, as much as I have tried, but am very tired of dying on that hill which I don't even particularly care about.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-28T22:37:23+00:00

The Reddit thread I found out about this from may also be of note. It also links to a Hacker News thread on the same topic.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-29T01:53:18+00:00

Exactly how opaque are these web bundles? Even if they all come from the same domain, it should be possible to block ads based on the content itself, such as with the rule I made to block the excessive anti-adblock messages from TVTropes (no matter what they appear every single time with no breaks):

tvtropes.org##body > div:matches-css(z-index: 100001):has(div:has(h2:has-text(/^This is page #\d* you have viewed this month without ads/)))

happysmash27 · 2020-08-29T01:37:18+00:00

THANK YOU SO MUCH! We finally have a catchphrase we can use against police brutality that people won't accuse one of being a racist for!

happysmash27 · 2020-08-28T11:55:22+00:00

Where, exactly, do people advocating for pedophilia use hundreds of accounts and VPNs to create the appearance of being the popular majority? I always feel it is the opposite.

…I believe that all information should be free, and a while ago made the mistake of extending that idea to child pornography. Because I don't feel like arguing about it again, let's just say I was wrong about it.

In real life (in Southern California), it is not uncommon for people to agree with me or be indifferent, but on every single platform online, whether Reddit, Raddle, SaidIt, Twitter, etc, inevitably practically everyone will disagree with me VERY STRONGLY, ban me, or say something like "can't advocate violence, so K stands for anything but kill. KYS", even when I am only talking about people's reactions to the opinion rather than advocating for the opinion itself (which is way more effort than it's worth, for a form of expression which I do not like and don't think should have existed in the first place, but which unfortunately is still made of 1s and 0s and therefore fits with my definition of "freedom of information", with a bunch of exceptions too long to write here when the opinion itself is not the point).

…On second look, it seems that now exactly one other person in that specific thread ended up at least partially agreeing with me.

But my point is, that in general, the consensus online is usually near-unanimously against anything even close to pedophilia, to such a large extent that I usually try to avoid going anywhere near the subject for fear of being permabanned. I think the risk of astroturfing is much larger for other topics. I could be wrong, but I have not seen anywhere where pedophilia is not heavily shunned.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-25T22:31:09+00:00

Is it really a complete monopoly though? In most areas, plenty of alternatives exist; people are just reluctant to switch to them. It may be hard, but it is possible, as evidenced by the fact that we are not discussing this on Reddit right now.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-25T22:42:08+00:00

One of the few references I do not understand at all, not even through popcultural osmosis. I don't view erotic things that often in the first place, view even less erotic things with females in then (and when I do am usually not searching it out), and don't view anything erotic which is commercially-produced at all, so this is in a completely different sphere than I am in.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-25T02:38:40+00:00

I hate Cloudflare. I have to constantly fill out captchas when I browse over Tor for more and more sites, and they promote search engine monopolies too. It's too bad SaidIt has so many DDOS attacks, because otherwise it would be much easier for it to avoid it (SaidIt also uses Cloudflare). I'm really glad more resistance is building against it, though, because it does many things that I really dislike.

There is no way to solve the captcha without enabling Javascript and Cookies.

Actually, Google's Recaptcha used to work fine without Javascript, and often even worked a bit better. But now they've switched to HCaptcha, and I need to keep enabling it again.

Tor users and VPN users are also a victim of Cloudflare.

I am a Tor user on desktop and, as mentioned above, I am constantly plagued with captchas all the time the more sites use Cloudflare. Worse, some sites are broken even after filling out the captcha, since their assets are locked behind another Cloudflare-protected domain, meaning I must go to the assets manually to fill out even more captchas to get access to them.

My VPN, AzireVPN, always works fine though. I believe this is because it is smaller than a lot of the bigger VPNs, which is one of the main reasons I chose it. At the time I switched, it was also not blocked by the Great Chinese Firewall.

However, it is not viable for me to stay on my VPN on my main computer, since if I put it on system-wide, none of my websites are accessible, but if I use network namespaces to use only my browser through it (which is a pain to set up in the first place), my audio will not work, since Pulseaudio is running in a different network namespace.

Thank you for this article, by the way. Now I have even more ammo against Cloudflare.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-25T02:15:24+00:00

Reminds me of appeasement with the Nazis.

Not to say BLM are like the Nazis, of course; one could say one is like Hitler because they drink water and Hitler also drank water and it would be about as valid… but in this specific aspect of appeasement I think a similarity may be able to be drawn, assuming this fire was actually caused by BLM rioters and is not just coincidental.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-25T22:33:05+00:00

Supposedly, from what I hear, enough to form a large enough majority that Republicans stop vetoing everything they try to pass through.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-23T23:42:36+00:00

I believe I've actually had even more tabs open in the past at some point, but now I have a few less. Still many thousands of them, though. Tree Style Tabs is now a necessity for me to view, organise, and close them. This is one major reason I use Waterfox and Palemoon over Firefox (since the addon is a lot less powerful on Firefox since they removed XUL).

happysmash27 · 2020-08-23T23:53:22+00:00

I've never met anyone that said both of those things at the same time, but there are probably some hypocrites like that. I agree with the top headline and disagree with the bottom.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-23T23:51:44+00:00

Terrible joke, absolutely terrible and unfunny! I groaned… But I enjoyed it anyway somehow, and now I don't know how to upvote it. I guess I will just vote it as "fun" anyway.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-23T23:40:27+00:00

I too have thousands of tabs open. The vast majority aren't critical at all, but some are still important, and it's a pain to sort through all of them to find the ones that are important and the ones that aren't.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-23T23:34:38+00:00

Actually, her father "is of Samoan and European ancestry" according to her Wikipedia page, so she is actually partially white.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-23T23:46:58+00:00

I think COVID-19 is significantly larger of a threat than terrorism, although still relatively small now that people either have herd immunity, or have been preventing its spread well enough that the threat is still low. It is also much easier to mitigate spread of it without taking away people's rights; just encourage people to stay inside if possible and wear masks, while still allowing them to do otherwise if circumstances demand it or if they are just very stubborn.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-24T00:31:13+00:00

For the same reason "SJW" is an insult; it is a word certain political positions use to denote another specific alleged political position which they dislike. I remember people on the left asking very similar questions on why "SJW" is an insult.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-23T23:58:40+00:00

You're only looking at the part of the young generation which is on TikTok; other parts of my generation on other platforms may be different. Nevertheless, I was born in 2001 (and just turned 19 a couple days ago) and see no problem with any of this except for being on the proprietary platform TikTok (and the personality traits in the conclusion paragraph), so maybe there is still a grain of truth to this judgement.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-23T05:35:53+00:00

Note added by me, because the original headline is slightly misleading. Nevertheless, this is still yet another example of abuse from proprietary platform holders.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-21T19:11:50+00:00

TBH, I mostly just dislike it when people act like saying "all lives matter" discounts black lives.

Saying "save the ocean" doesn't mean "don't save the whales". It means "save the ocean including the whales".

I like being inclusive and I like being pedantic about language, using gender-neutral pronouns, and using "trunk" for the main git repository instead of "master". I should be able to include everyone without being associated with white supremacy.

And even on to "save the whales", sometimes that does lead to people disproportionately paying attention to the whales instead of the other creatures, though a better example would be "save the pandas". People often disproportionately pay attention to cute or interesting endangered animals like pandas or tigers, while ignoring saving other species that might be easier and more practical to save. The latter point about other species being easier/more practical to save has nothing to do with BLM/ALM, but the point is that sometimes paying attention to one part of the picture specifically, brings attention away from the full thing, paying attention to one animal instead of the entire ecosystem. We need to end discrimination and police brutality, and these don't only happen with black people. Perhaps we can start with the latter, as it seems to be the bigger issue lately and is easier to define, IMO.

PS: Despite somewhat disagreeing with the point, I'm still up-insightfuling your post anyway, as I do think it contributes to discussion in a site which is otherwise biased against BLM. Whichever community I am in, I like seeing the viewpoints which are underrepresented in it.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-21T19:51:05+00:00

My favourite phone brands are Fairphone, Purism, and Pine64. All of them have removable batteries, headphone jacks, and SD card slots in their phones. All of them allow one to install one's own OS. Both Purism and Pine64 sell Linux phones, and Fairphone sells fair trade phones which are also very modular and fair to the user. Purism's Librem 5 includes hardware kill switches and even removable modem and WiFi/Bluetooth cards. Both the Librem 5 and Fairphone are designed to last as long as possible, and the Pinephone probably is too. And the both Librem 5 and Pinephone even have open source schematics.

I also love my Happy Hacking Keyboard Professional2, as it is very high quality and has a UNIX keyboard layout. It is one of the electronic products which I think is most likely to last my entire lifetime.

Another open source project of note is the MNT Reform, which is probably the most repairable and open source laptop available today.

I also dream of getting a libre Talos Secure Workstation some day, and have for a very long time. It is open source hardware and powerful too, a very rare combination.

The only one I have personal experience with is my Happy Hacking Keyboard Professional2. For my 18th birthday, I got a Librem 5, but despite it being my 19th birthday today, it has still not arrived yet because of many delays pushing the Evergreen batch further back. They are making lots of progress though!

Edit: Vitamix blenders are also very high quality from what I hear and from my own experience. I have only heard praise for them, and after this side of my family got one, I have found it is amazingly high quality and capable indeed (it can even make vegan milk and heat up soup!). In my opinion it is one of the nicest things in this apartment, along with my keyboard.

Oh! And I almost forgot! Very old Dell monitors are also very good! My two Dell 1907FPVs with a copyright date on their manual of 2006 are some of the oldest things I own and still work perfectly. Looking at their manual, their quality control is astounding:

Dell-branded monitors undergo exhaustive testing for performance, reliability, durability and compatibility with Dell systems. Under our H.A.L.T (Highly Accelerated Life Cycle Testing) regimen, Dell engineers push our monitors well past specified tolerance limits for heat, cold, vibration, shocks and drops, to ensure that they can withstand real-world conditions.

They even drop-tested the desktop monitor! Wow!

I have no idea how their new monitors are, but their old monitors ubiquitous on Craigslist are great.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-21T18:59:14+00:00

Your Holyness, which types of hormones does one take to become a forex trading robot anyway?

happysmash27 · 2020-08-21T18:52:02+00:00

Free speech advocates will stand with you too! And many libertarians. I lean fairly left, and very libertarian, and dislike that ip2 was banned, even if I disagree with the sub itself.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-21T18:29:25+00:00

Some of us are fairly left-wing too, but got banned and removed more and more often as censorship got stronger. Nevertheless, it will eventually get to the point where we run into problems, too, if this trend persists. I really hope it doesn't.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-21T18:23:58+00:00

I'm glad it was only IP2, at least, that was the problem, as that sub is bad enough that I blocked it myself (and it takes a LOT for me to block anything at all).

I'm still disappointed though :( , as I oppose censorship even of things I dislike.

Hopefully we can get a decentralised platform at some point that doesn't rely on server hosting like this. Who knows what they will decide is unacceptable next?

happysmash27 · 2020-08-21T19:37:06+00:00

The governments tried to pretend that locking down for only a few weeks, then months, would make sense, but those of us in the loop already knew it would be necessary to lockdown for a lot longer to completely eliminate the spread of the virus. But the governments won't say that, because then people wouldn't accept the lockdown, and because they themselves wanted to open up the economy as soon as possible. It will probably take longer than expected to get a vaccine, too, and might take a LOT longer.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-21T18:53:21+00:00

Hopefully by then we have a decentralised platform.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-21T18:44:29+00:00

Me too. SaidIt is best when there are both right and left wing opinions side-by-side, IMO.

It still occasionally happens today, too, but often there seems to be a bias to the right, because the right tends to be more censored online from what I see.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-21T18:26:31+00:00

SaidIt isn't dead yet! But perhaps we should look to moving towards something more decentralised.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-21T19:30:15+00:00

What about gaming?

…I say, when the vast majority of my games work on Linux anyway, I switched to Linux from Mac for more game support, and recently I found out that even GTA Online works in Wine and have been enjoying it a lot recently.

But still, what about, say… the newest Microsoft Flight Simulator??? Aha!

I just boycott those games (and even games which run on Wine, but not natively; I got GTA V for free from the Epic Games Stote), but others may be more entrenched in the Windows ecosystem than me.

I'm having a hard time playing devil's advocate against my own OS preference here. I don't even have a Windows install.

…But my point is, that another acceptable use for Windows may be for gaming. It shouldn't be necessary most of the time, but if one already has games that will run on Windows but not Linux, either natively or in Wine, than a dual boot for the sole purpose of playing those games shouldn't hurt too much. Perhaps try Linux for the other games though, as Linux tends to be faster and lighter than Windows with more control.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-21T18:47:16+00:00

What about the GDPR would make it so hard for SaidIt to host there?

happysmash27 · 2020-08-15T16:11:07+00:00

As you might have guessed, it's GPT-3 again. GPT-3 is very convincing in Turing tests even with very basic configuration, and can pretty convincingly emulate the type of human who always pretends they know everything and convincingly sounds like it when they actually don't, but, as seen in posts linked from it (the article linked at the beginning of this comment, not in this post), can even communicate when a question makes no sense or its reasoning when given the right seed. It's amazing, pretty scary, and makes me really want to learn more about AI to stay ahead of the curve, as have many things lately.

Porr says he wanted to prove that GPT-3 could be passed off as a human writer. Indeed, despite the algorithm’s somewhat weird writing pattern and occasional errors, only three or four of the dozens of people who commented on his top post on Hacker News raised suspicions that it might have been generated by an algorithm. All those comments were immediately downvoted by other community members.

That's one of the scariest parts ↑ . People thought GPT-3 was a real human and downvoted people suspicious of it for what seemed like an ad hominem attack. It was at this point in reading that I decided to X-Post to SaidIt.

Some online content has so little substance that it seems like it was written by bots. How do we tell it apart from stuff actually written by bots? And… what if some of this stuff was already written by bots before, but we just didn't notice?

Can you prove I'm not a robot? You might get a decent idea by diving deep into my account history under this username (it goes back almost 10 years now and includes my voice on YouTube), but if I did not have such account history, I suspect it would be quite a challenge these days.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-15T16:14:27+00:00

You're fast. I hadn't even finished writing my own comment on this post before you replied! Thank you for the link. I guess I will have to edit my submission statement to be a comment on your post as well.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-12T21:53:31+00:00

I'm pretty sure SaidIt itself welcomes all political views provided that they adhere to the Pyramid of Debate, which is why I love this site so much. You can find people with many political views here, all over the spectrum.

Perhaps there is a bit of a bias against liberalism, though, since non-liberals are more likely to be censored and therefore seek out an uncensored alternatives to other sites, while liberals are less likely to be censored and do the same.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-12T19:44:47+00:00

Black people are not a homogenous hivemind, though. People of any ethnicity can vary a lot, so although this may be true for some, it is probably not true for others (like you?).

happysmash27 · 2020-08-12T21:02:33+00:00

People are angry at Moz, I am angry at them too. But there is no other web browser vendor out there that cares for you.

Actually, there are NetSurf, Waterfox, and Palemoon, but they are even smaller, and desperately in need of more development. I really wish either Mozilla would bring back XUL, or more people would use Waterfox or Palemoon, because my web browsing experience is becoming incompatible with more and more sites, but I am unwilling to give up well-integrated tree style tabs, a roomy bookmarks toolbar, and addons toolbars.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-12T20:03:49+00:00

Just a headline? No text? No explanation? No explaining the reasoning of this idea to those that don't currently agree with it? I am disappointed.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-12T22:18:53+00:00

It looks like K-Meleon is going to switch to Goanna too, from the Wikipedia page, which is the same engine used in Palemoon. So, soon they will be in a larger combined group of users, which could hopefully bring more support to both projects! (At least from what I understand, as I am only just reading the Wikipedia page now. I only recently heard about it in a screenshot in an article about the web as it was several years ago, which makes sense, given that it's a Windows browser and I've never used Windows as my primary operating system.)

happysmash27 · 2020-08-12T19:30:00+00:00

Insightful and funny! (Because it's such a different perspective than I had before, I guess, and because it's funny to imagine Google highlighting only Linux searches). You make a very good point!

happysmash27 · 2020-08-12T21:05:58+00:00

Needs more context. How many deaths were there in 2018 and 2019? Is something causing them to reduce?

Also, part of the reason deaths are so low is that people are wearing masks and social distancing. But what if these practices also lead to less deaths in other areas? Less going out means less car crash deaths, and more wearing masks also means people catch less non-COVID diseases.

I do agree, though, that this is interesting.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-12T21:54:56+00:00

Hopefully some good ideas will come out of this, rather than the common pattern of shoehorning something ideological in.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-12T22:03:39+00:00

Keep it up with the quality humorous content! I've found myself upvoting lots and lots of your posts lately.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-12T21:59:22+00:00

My usual method for hosting anything is to just dump it somewhere in my /Upload directory on self-hosted happysmash27.me. External services are just too much of a hassle with their file size limits, file type limits, censorship, etc.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-12T21:44:58+00:00

Product choices like these can be traced directly back to who provides the biggest web browsers, and why they’re doing it. Google is fundamentally in the business of advertising, which is why they have absolutely no interest in limiting ad impressions, or preventing the sharing of your personal data. I suspect that this is primarily why they don’t bother with password manager features, either, though it’s an open question.*

Wait, Chrome seriously doesn't have a built-in password manager?? Is that why people use weird separate ones? Every browser I have used for a very long time now (Firefox then Palemoon then Waterfox) has had this feature.

Speaking of which, I really wish more people would use Waterfox and Palemoon. They are falling behind with support for a few websites (especially those from Google), but they have support for amazing features I am unwilling to go without, usually through XUL addons, including tree style tabs, a roomy bookmarks toolbar, and support for extra toolbars for addons.

Alternatively, Firefox could just add back in XUL addons. These were a primary reason I switched to Firefox in the first place, but now Firefox is just turning into a lame Chrome clone in regards to addons :( .

happysmash27 · 2020-08-12T19:57:33+00:00

I just wish Mozilla would bring back XUL. Waterfox and Palemoon are having a hard time keeping up!

happysmash27 · 2020-08-12T19:39:23+00:00

Both are pretty horrible, TBH.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-12T19:27:17+00:00

Homeland Security Worries Covid-19 Masks Are Breaking Facial Recognition, Leaked Document Shows. So from my viewpoint, it looks like there are more nefarious motives to stop people from wearing masks than to get them to wear masks.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-11T23:33:45+00:00

Lol.

I'm might not agree with whatever message it's pushing, but it is a funny comic. I guess that's already reflected in my voting, though. Hurray for seperate funny and insightful votes \(^ω^)/ !

happysmash27 · 2020-08-11T23:29:22+00:00

Well, nothing we can do about it now. The metaphorical cat is already metaphorically out of the metaphorical bag.

I think race mixing is good, though, since it makes people less prone to racism, and also because more diverse genes can help weed out genetic defects. It's hard to judge people based on race when you yourself do not fall into any solid racial category.

Disclaimer: Am saying this as a mixed person. Not that all mixed people necessarily feel the same as me, though. I bet there are at least some who feel differently.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-11T23:44:34+00:00

$5 is actually a lot for me, since I have 0 monthly income, and it would almost double my monthly expenses, currently which are about $7 per month to my VPS (which I am working on using for a cheap commercial VPN to try to get some source of income) and coming out of my slowly shrinking bank account.

Would $1 be worth it though, after fees? Because I think I can afford an extra dollar a month in this case, given how important SaidIt is to me. I couldn't afford it at all if I gave that to everyone I would like to support, but SaidIt is important enough to me that I can prioritise it.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-11T06:12:49+00:00

Isn't this only showing searches for democratic candidates though? So even if a state mostly searches for Republican candidates, it doesn't matter as it is only paying attention to democrat ones, which there will usually be at least some searches for. A similar map could probably be made of searches for Linux distros, but that wouldn't imply that Linux is the majority operating system in most states.

Also, just because one is searching for a democratic candidate doesn't mean one supports them. One could very well search a candidate they don't like to read bad things about them, or search a candidate they don't have an opinion on to form an opinion about them.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-12T01:38:37+00:00

Hello.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-11T06:19:38+00:00

Try accessing the site over Tor. Usually that would be horrible advice as Cloudflare will always serve to Tor users a captcha one needs to fill out in order to view the site… but a captcha is better than not being able to access the site at all.

(Speaking of which, how are you posting this???)

I really hate Cloudflare and how annoying it makes it for Tor users, especially when assets are stored on another Cloudflare-restricted domain and one has to go to them manually to fill out yet another captcha. It also promotes search engine monopolies. Sadly, moving SaidIt back away from it might be pretty hard, since it still gets so many DDOS attacks.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-11T07:38:19+00:00

Permalink: https://blog.chriszacharias.com/a-conspiracy-to-kill-ie6.

Instead of outright dropping IE6 support, what if we just threatened to?

Hey, isn't that exactly what Google Docs has been doing to "old versions" of "Firefox" (which for me are actually just Waterfox or Palemoon)? They always say it will be unsupported but it never actually happens (which I am glad, because I am not willing do use a browser with a horrible, barely-customisable UI with no extra toolbar support, roomy bookmarks toolbar, or even decent tree style tabs).

He responded “Oh, I just figured you guys copied the banner that Google Docs had put up.” I was confused. How could Google Docs have beaten us to the punch on this? I opened up Google Docs in IE6 and sure enough, a banner very much like ours was showing at the top.

Wait, what?? Is Google Docs seriously that old‽‽

happysmash27 · 2020-08-11T06:23:32+00:00

I think it's usually neither. Many groups do… things, whether it be the rich and powerful, governments, organisations, or even just an unorganized group of individuals.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-10T18:14:45+00:00

They didn't want me to wear a mask when I first started wearing them, though.

happysmash27 · 2020-08-09T23:35:15+00:00

I oppose Teaspring banning any type of merchandise, but support them being legally allowed to ban whatever they seem fit. Thankfully, I don't believe Teaspring is much of a monopoly, so it should be pretty easy to find an alternative to them.

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