DefederateLemmyMl

  • Gen𝕏
  • Engineer ⚙
  • Techie 💻
  • Linux user 🐧
  • Ukraine supporter 🇺🇦
  • Pro science 💉
  • Dutch speaker
  • 1 Post
  • 62 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 8th, 2023

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  • I see military spending as a necessary evil, it’s like paying your insurance policy against the evils in the world. There will always be someone with a stick willing to beat someone weaker than them. So you could theoretically spend that military money on something “more useful”, but if all your friends do that as well, you won’t be able to enjoy that nice world for very long.

    Also, people usually highly overrate how much a country spends on defense and underrate how much is spent on social security. Where I live, in Belgium, with a similar military budget as Canada (in terms of % of GDP) they did a survey once and asked people to estimate how many euros out of €100 of tax money went to the military and other things. People on average thought it was €6.1 to the military and €17.4 to social security. In reality the proportions are just €1.3 to the military and €37.5 to social security.

    So I guess what I’m saying is: it’s okay to enjoy the cool noises without guilt. You paid for it, it’s necessary, and at least they’re providing people with some entertainment now.




  • A core memory of mine is getting flung off of one of these things because of the centrifugal force, falling on my back, and being unable to breathe for like 20-30 seconds … until I screamed at the top of my lungs, and things slowly returned to normal, while the teacher just went: oh you’re fine, don’t be a baby. I was 6.






  • Due to the energy crisis in Europe at the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as a cost saving measure some cities here in Belgium decided to turn off the street lights at a certain time. I think they went dark at 23:00 or 22:00, so your Cinderella Lighting scenario.

    I thought it felt quite peaceful to have some true darkness, and wouldn’t mind it back, but at the same time if you had to walk outside at that time, it could feel a bit unsettling even if I live in a very safe neighborhood. I also found that there were some practical issues like, not being able to see obstacles or the state of the pavement, so you had to tread carefully. I’d definitely buy a decent flashlight if they implement that again.

    Later, I suppose after complaints from citizens, they reverted to turning only every other streetlight off. I didn’t like that at all, it was the worst of both worlds. There were still patches where you couldn’t see properly, but none of the peaceful feeling of true darkness. Since a year or so it’s back to all streetlights all night.


  • Language is simply the intrafrastructure by which we touch another’s mind across space and time

    And grammar is the tool we use to structure our thoughts into intelligible phrases, so that our words convey the correct meaning to our audience. Sure everyone makes grammar mistakes occasionally, but if you respect your audience, you should at least attempt to use proper grammar and graciously accept it as a learning opportunity when a mistake is pointed out.


  • If your average Windows user calls tech support, they’ll get a simple answer

    They’ll get a simple answer alright. In fact, they’ll be lucky if they get any answer at all that is not reboot, retry, reinstall or some other cargo cult nonsense from some on-paper “MCSA” in a third world country.

    And sorry for going on a rant here, but Windows tech support forums are truly the shit tier of all tech support forums, because very few people actually have the skill to properly diagnose problems in Windows when something outside of the realm of expected behavior occurs. It’s all learned behaviorisms instead of understanding: reinstall your drivers! defrag your hard drive! run ipconfig /renew! clean your cache folder! delete your cookies! Never: “look in the system eventlog for an error event coming from this source, and tell me what the error code says”




  • people not knowing shit about tech is not their fault

    I don’t agree with much else of what you are saying, but you are quite right here. We should indeed not throw people under the bus because they’re not tech savvy and only know how to use Windows. They need to be defended from all those horrible anti-human and privacy invading practices by Microsoft and other Big Tech companies as well, and we should keep fighting and pushing back on those companies pushing their anti-human features, regardless of whether an alternative exists.

    BUT, ultimately Linux is the answer, and people are not wrong for pointing that out. It’s the only viable alternative that is user respecting by design. It’s the only way to free yourself from the abusive relationship between you and Microsoft, because much like an abusive partner, Microsoft will never change. So if you’re tech savvy, and you would be able to switch to Linux but for some reason you don’t, I have little sympathy for your Windows problems.




  • It was much easier to “hide” sit back then unless you were in the know in the industry.

    It wasn’t hidden. Everybody knew back in the day what an evil piece of shit he was.

    It has just been forgotten about and many current adults weren’t old enough, or even around, in the heyday of his evil empire, so he has been able to whitewash his image. My 50 year old ass remembers though. Fuck Bill Gates.


  • No 7 sucked too. It just came off the back of Vista which was a real hot mess, so 7 appeared better.

    The thing is, Microsoft has always had an adversarial (or abusive) relationship with its customers, forcing things on them that most of them don’t want. Like active desktop and IE integration in Windows 9x, “activation” and Fisher Price UI in XP, UAC in Vista, forced automatic updates in 7, that awful tile UI in 8.x, telemetry you can’t disable in 10, forced Microsoft accounts in 11 … the list is endless. And then when they back down on one thing, people are like: hurray, Windows is actually good now! … forgetting all the other things they have been forced to swallow in the past.