I’ve ripped a good number of blu-rays to network storage. If you’re looking for older, less popular stuff it’s the best option. And older releases are usually just a few bucks. The new stuff I torrent because I can usually find a decent rip, but for stuff I want to put in my library a rip from optical disk is the best, but not free of course. You can even do it for free, public libraries often have a good collection of older releases on optical disk.
I can have trouble sleeping and have to battle fatigue at times. Not long ago I crunched the bumper of my car into the side of the garage because I was too mentally fatigued to drive. Didn’t do a lot of damage, scratched the bumper and did minor damage to the the wall, but something I would have never done if I was properly rested and alert. Mental fatigue is a strange thing, it can make you fail in performing simple tasks you do routinely.
I rarely use any kind of chat, but I used IRC sometimes back in the day. I was recently working on a thing where I needed to use Discord for some programming advice. I got the info I needed, but yeah that Discord is a convoluted mess. Newer hardly ever means better.
Great software, used it a lot. Also Handbrake.
I don’t know generally how people have reacted, maybe a lot just quit browsing that type of media altogether. They haven’t all flocked to the Fediverse that’s for sure. It’s grown a lot recently, but before the API mess Reddit had almost a half billion monthly active users. There’s like 150k right now between Lemmy and kbin so pretty insignificant in comparison.
I’m pretty sure the quality of posts on Reddit has fallen noticeably, they lost a a good number of mods and people have said it’s pretty obvious now.
What I find funny is the favorable references Spez has made to how Elon is running Twitter (X), but thing is it’s obvious now Twitter is intentionally being run into the ground. Since Spez is a Elon protégé I guess Reddit is being intentionally run into the ground.
Too many to list, but I take Tomato scores with a grain of salt unless they’re unusually low. I don’t know if I just have a high tolerance for crappy movies or scores are too intolerant there. I’ve also seen a good number with high scores I thought should be low. Sometimes they rate movies highly just for being unusual or for having some kind of social message, but that hardly ever means better.
The little blue bird on every shop window, website, and business card becomes a stylized letter that, hopefully, doesn’t look so threatening on the next iteration?
Haha, I know the most appropriate iteration, a red background with the X in a white circle.
Um yeah, I’m not seeing that. You can see monthly active users on https://the-federation.info/platform/21 and it’s been fluctuating up and down, no big jump. So I call bullshit on that article based on the metric there. Though no doubt as Twitter (X) implodes Mastodon will see the fallout with higher activity.
That’s the one thing I wish I had done was get a graduate degree or even a doctorate in a physical science, cosmology probably. Problem was after getting a BS in engineering school I was tired of school and needed to go out there and make money.
Anyway I love science and I read a lot about it, just wish I could understand the math for things like quantum mechanics and black hole physics. I could have done it, was good at theoretical math in college, but like anything if you don’t use it you forget it and I’m retired now.
Problem with being a scientist is it takes the same effort as becoming a medical doctor, but without the high paying job at the end. I have a lot of respect for scientists, they do it only for love of the field because they sure don’t get paid well.
This is the reason why all corporate media has become the dumpster fire it is (not just social media). They use negative emotion like fear and anger to promote engagement. So all you get as a viewer is stuff that gets you fired up. The quality of journalism is so low now they’re fabricating stuff to engage the viewer. Then there’s no journalistic accountability when they do get caught with their hand in the cookie jar.
How does it impact Chromium?
Chromium is the open source part of Chrome. I’ve actually run Chromium before, but it’s kind of hard to find a binary release. Chromium lacks some Google additions like an mpeg player and PDF reader. It’s also free of some annoying add-on stuff like that app tracker that runs a background process full time. Who knows what that process does really. Of course I have it disabled on my system, but you have to go out of your way to kill it.
Otherwise Google has the Chromium project under their thumb so they’re not going to do anything Google does not approve of or refuse to do anything Google wants them to.
Speaking of Google influence, it bothers me that Google is a big contributor to Mozilla. I think it’s mainly to stay out of hot water with the FTC. They know all too well what happened to Microsoft and Internet Explorer in 2001. They need to keep the competition alive. Still it makes me cringe knowing they could exercise their will on them as a big contributor. I mean everyone has a price, and in Silicon Valley it’s not very high.
and am stunned when I see the web without an adblocker.
True, True, it’s damn near unusable. You take it for granted what a job your blocker is doing for you.
I know my uBO has saved me from some hostile shit. So yeah it’s a part of my browser security. I have it configured to a stricter blocking mode so it’s not just blocking ads for me, it gets other stuff that can be a problem.
Anyway I’m aware of the Manifest V3 business and being on Chrome I’m just waiting for the hammer to fall before going to Firefox. If they start adding DRM as well, I’m out of there quick.
Yeah, yeah, I know, just go to Firefox now, but I don’t really want to deal with a new browser and all my custom stuff until I have to. I’m old and that shit is super hard to motivate on for me. Not to say I’m inept, I mean I’ve spent my whole career in tech, but old dogs and all.
For me it was easy because Reddit was really my only outlet. Never been a big social media user, but I’ve been using forums as long as I’ve been on the internet (a long enough time not to admit). So yeah it was a pretty easy transition other than a little bit of a learning curve in understanding how Lemmy and the Fediverse works.
Only instances with a “.ml” at the end of the name may or may not be affected. Lemmy is a collection of instances so the loss of a few will not cripple the whole thing. Content over the whole is not greatly affected.
If your home log-in instance is one that’s affected, you’ll have to find a new one. You’ll know right away because the instance will be unreachable. Not a big deal, last time I looked there was over 1200 instances to chose from.
Another consideration is any communities living on an affected instance may have issues. All communities are common to Lemmy, but each originates from a particular instance. We’ve not yet seen a major instance go down so I don’t know how Lemmy deals with communities getting orphaned like that.
lemmy.ml is still up as of right now. Possibly they contracted a subscription to the domain name to keep it up. They had to do something to retain it otherwise the site would be unreachable. If lemmy.ml does have to change names it will be a hassle since I’ve got a good number of community subscriptions there.
This wouldn’t happen to an instance with a regularly subscribed domain name. Problem is the .ml domains were free and the associated country decided to claim them back. The risk of using a free top level domain is something that should have been considered. I don’t think it’s worth the risk versus the cost savings considering how difficult it is to migrate a Lemmy instance.
Thanks for that, was concerned about keeping my subscription to that community. Keep us posted and let us know where you end up so I can change over my community subscription.
Anyway I think the lesson learned here is don’t use free TLDs. Lemmy is not at all designed to deal with domain name changes.
Never used that slang. That “brah” slang came from Hawaiian surf culture. The first time I heard it used commonly was when I went there to surf in the early eighties. Never picked that up, always sounded weird to me. There was other Hawaiian slang I didn’t like because the local surfers at the time were not nice people. They didn’t like the “howlie” surfers and would take any opportunity to terrorize them. They would say “you like beef?” or “you give me stink eye?” in a hostile tone. I mean back then California surfers could be territorial and you’d just avoid the few places where you might get hassled, but they had nothing on the Hawaiian locals, meanest on the planet. It’s weird because the Hawaiians were generally welcoming and nice, but the surfers, forget it. Probably not like that now, but I don’t know, haven’t surfed there since.
CO meter for sure, but a CO2 meter? It’s actually a good idea to have CO alarms in your house if using natural gas powered appliances. However CO2 is only a concern if you’re in a hermetically sealed environment like a submarine or space ship. I suppose it could be useful to check proper ventilation in the home, but normally you can just open a window.
Anyway the Earth has a carbon cycle, in other words it filters natural CO2 emissions through environmental processes. The problem is the amount added by industry is more than the natural carbon cycle can process. So levels are steadily increasing.
When we talk about zero carbon footprint we mean sources from industry like driving gasoline powered cars, generation of electricity, and production of consumer goods. A good amount already comes from natural processes like volcanos and erosion so we don’t actually need a zero carbon footprint, just need it low enough to avoid overwhelming the natural cycle.
At a personal level it would be just about impossible to have a zero carbon footprint. If you had a solar and wind powered home off-grid and used it to charge an electric car you could be well below average. However any consumer goods you use put carbon in the air to produce them. Even if you went full native you’d still be putting carbon in the air burning wood and candles.