aleph

aleph , 52 minutes ago (edited 30 minutes ago)

As an atheist who is not anti-religion, I wholeheartedly agree. The religious do not have a monopoly on irrationality, or weaponizing ideology.

I see many atheists on forums proposing the idea that if we could only just get rid of religion, the world would be a harmonious and rational place. As if human beings wouldn't still be perfectly able to come up with new and interesting ways to rationalize conflict and division amongst themselves.

aleph , 11 hours ago

Also see 2:49 of the Bhagavad Gita:

Seek refuge in the attitude of detachment and you will amass a wealth of awareness. Those who are motivated only by desire for the fruits of action are miserable, for they are constantly anxious about the results of what they do.

aleph , 14 hours ago

Both you and the other commenter are right: local news often features better journalism than national news outlets, however the US is currently undergoing a mass extinction of local news organizations. "News deserts" are quickly becoming a thing.

https://www.medill.northwestern.edu/news/2023/more-than-half-of-us-counties-have-no-access-or-very-limited-access-to-local-news.html

aleph , 17 hours ago

The US is a functioning democracy?

aleph , 2 days ago (edited 2 days ago)

Yeah, it's an interesting dichotomy and one that is quite typical of Thai culture, which many people don't realize is actually conservative in a quiet kind of way.

For years, LGBT+ people have been tolerated but still not fully accepted by mainstream society. So while LBGT+ people can be out in public and not get harassed like they do in other cultures, they still haven't had the same legal rights as CIS/straight people. This is why this new legislation is a great move forward in the right direction.

aleph , 3 days ago (edited 3 days ago)

This isn't a new phenomenon. Netanyahu was already deeply unpopular before October 7th and large scale protests have happened before.

However, it's important to note that these are not anti-war protests. Most Israelis still support the military action in Gaza; They're just protesting the fact that Netanyahu hasn't done a good enough job of bringing the hostages home.

aleph , 3 days ago (edited 3 days ago)

On the assumption that you weren't being sarcastic, no, don't be just like USA please.

The US economy is buoyed by a >$20 trillion dollar debt, which accounts for just over 30% of all global debt. For the past decade, that debt has even outgrown the US' GDP.

And that's not even getting into a discussion of how the US actually spends all that money.

aleph , 4 days ago (edited 4 days ago)

Hi-resolution audio, especially for streaming. The general idea is that listening to digital audio files that have a greater bit depth and sample rate than CD (24-bit/192Khz vs 16-bit/44.1 KHz) translates to better-sounding audio, but in practice that isn't the case.

For a detailed breakdown as to why, there's a great explanation here. But in summary, the format for CDs was so chosen because it covers enough depth and range to cover the full spectrum of human hearing.

So while "hi-res" audio does contain a lot more information (which, incidentally, means it uses up significantly more data/storage space and costs more money), our ears aren't capable of hearing it in the first place. Certain people may try to argue otherwise based on their own subjective experience, but to that I say "the placebo effect is a helluva drug."

aleph , 4 days ago

This is true, especially if you are storing files locally. However, even compared to "CD quality" FLAC, a 24/192 album is still going to be around three times larger (around 1GB per album) to download. If everyone switched over to streaming hi-res audio tomorrow, there would be a noticeable jump in worldwide Internet traffic.

I'm personally not ok with the idea of bandwidth usage jumping up over 3x (and even more compared to lossy streaming) for no discernable benefit.

aleph , 4 days ago

Up to a certain point, yes. >192k AAC / OGG / Opus sounds just as good as FLAC in a blind test, though. Even with good equipment.

aleph , 4 days ago (edited 4 days ago)

Oh yeah. 128k rips from back then were rough. MP3 has gotten somewhat better since then, to be fair. V0/V1 VBR is still perfectly fine to listen to; it's just not as efficient as the newer codecs.

aleph , 4 days ago

Yeah they do, although CBR performs noticeably worse than VBR with Lame MP3. As I mentioned elsewhere, MP3 @ V0 or V1 VBR sounds just as good as the above. I just personally haven't used MP3 for years because the newer codecs are more efficient.

aleph , 4 days ago (edited 4 days ago)

It's a fair question. Human hearing ability is a spectrum like anything else, however when it comes to discerning the difference in audio quality, the vast, vast majority of people cannot reliably tell the difference between high-bitrate lossy and lossless when they do a double blinded test. And that includes audiophiles with equipment worth thousands of dollars.

Of that tiny minority who can consistently distinguish between the two, they generally can only tell by listening very closely for the very particular characteristics of the encoder format, which takes a highly trained ear and a lot of practice.

The blind aspect is important because side-by-side comparisons (be they different audio formats, or 60fps vs 120fps video) are highly unreliable because people will generally subconsciously prefer the one they know is supposed to be better.

aleph , 4 days ago

True. There's something to be said for pleasuring any passing bats who might be in the vicinity.

aleph , 5 days ago

Seriously. Can't we just ignore this cherub-faced oik? His personal views on anything are utterly irrelevant.

aleph , 5 days ago

Aye, there's the rub. If you can't prove it was discriminatory then you're SOL.

aleph , 5 days ago

There's a good chance that the 2003 Iraq war wouldn't have happened, though. That was very much a Neo-Con project of the Bush administration.

aleph , 5 days ago

I thought this whole thought exercise was based on the assumption that Gore became president in 2000 instead of Bush?

aleph , 5 days ago

With the most bigups going to Haaretz, quite honestly. It's hard for non-Israeli outlets to do this kind of extensive investigative reporting from outside Israel. That much of the information used to debunk various bits of Israeli propaganda being parroted by Western media comes from original Haaretz reporting should not be ignored.

aleph , 5 days ago (edited 5 days ago)

This is exactly it for me, too. Despite having significantly more users than Lemmy, Mastodon still feels much less social.

Case in point: I went looking for journalists to follow, because that's one of the main uses I had for Twitter, but found almost none. Of the few I did find, almost no one was interacting with their posts at all. I even saw one journalist post a plea to her followers to boost, like, or just do something because she was on the point of giving up due to the lack of response she was getting. It was sad, quite honestly.

There needs to be a way to help users find content to engage with that doesn't require an algorithm to force feed it down people's throats.

aleph , 5 days ago

I still find it quite baffling that for a distro that pitches itself as an everyday Linux distro for newer and intermediate users, Fedora doesn't come with snapshots preconfigured out of the box or any obvious way to handling system restore.

aleph , 6 days ago

Twitter was always toxic but lately it's become a real cesspool. I created a new account the other day just so I can keep tabs on how recent news plays out over there, and before I had really even followed anyone there were racist dogwhistles and alt-right content right there on the timeline.

Also, the account you're arguing with has a fairly high chance of being a bot.

aleph , 6 days ago

Especially since it's already hard enough to find the specific content you're looking for on Mastodon.

aleph , 6 days ago (edited 6 days ago)

I think it's cute and not to be taken so seriously, but to be fair to the artist, the styles are pretty accurate. Obviously each country has its own rich history of different architectural styles, but each of the designs shown is fairly typical of that country.

It's also not AI; this image has been around for some years.

aleph , 7 days ago

Agreed. Expecting politicians (especially in the US) to get a hold on corporate power and control it through legislative reform is a complete fallacy at this point. The only way out of the private capital hellscape is through direct, collective action.

aleph , 7 days ago

For Android phones at least (especially in the US), there aren't many great alternatives. Regardless of what you think of Samsung and their bloatware, Galaxy phones have fewer glitches and far better customization options than Google Pixels.

aleph , 7 days ago (edited 7 days ago)

They exist. They're just not well known.

Really? Which others support US 5G network frequencies apart from Samsung, Google, and maybe Motorola? LG have been dead in the water for some time and their software support is atrocious.

aleph , 7 days ago

The problem with Uniherz is the lack of 5G network support. I'm on T-Mobile and only 1 of the 4 bands are supported by Uniherz phones, so that means limited connectivity and no mmwave support.

aleph , 7 days ago

It only supports sub6 5G frequencies. That means no mmwave.

I'm on the go a lot and my area has good >6GHz coverage. I prioritize connectivity above pretty much all other factors, so I'm not really interested in devices that don't support all the frequency bands used by my carrier.

aleph , 7 days ago (edited 7 days ago)

I don't think that anyway, but if you'd like to offer some suggestions that support 5G bands 41, 71, and 260/261 then I'm all ears.

aleph , 7 days ago

I hear you. My personal limit is 155mm x 74mm and even I were willing to overlook the lack of connectivity, so many of the Google/Samsung alternative Android phones are just too goddamn big these days.

aleph , 7 days ago (edited 6 days ago)

Yep, Samsung's customization runs rings around Google's. Don't like the AOSP gestures? Samsung offer an alternative set that are arranged along the bottom of the display which frees up the sides for the user to add and configure their own with One Handed Operation+. Don't like the stupid recents screen that was brought in with Android 10 that only lets you see one app at a time? No problem - you can use Good Lock to turn it into a stack, a grid, or a vertical list. Good Lock can also be used to customize the stock launcher, quick settings, edge lighting, the navigation bar, amongst other things.

In terms of glitches, Google phones have been frequently dogged by hardware and software issues. With the Tensor chips, for example, many users have reported random drops in connectivity and WiFi disconnecting. This was a common issue with the Pixel 6 and is still apparently a common problem for 7 and 8 series owners. Then you also had the infamous fingerprint sensor troubles, which I hear have been largely fixed but are still not as good as Samsung's optical and ultrasonic sensors. Many of these issues do get patches further down the road, but it seems with every new Pixel generation, there's something else that crops up.

aleph , 8 days ago (edited 8 days ago)

Just the United States acknowledging its debt to General LaFayette.

aleph , 9 days ago

I've never seen Republicans so eager to convict someone for lying on a federal firearms application.

aleph , 10 days ago

This is what you get when politicians and the TV news media aggressively push the Anti-Zionism = Antisemitism narrative.

aleph , 10 days ago

He was (and still is to a certain extent) fairly progressive for a US politician. A look at his campaign issues page shows that he is pro LGBTQ rights, pro worker's rights, pro gun control, pro Medicare, and so on.

It's really his outspoken and unequivocal support for Israel that has soured a lot of people on the Left.

aleph , 14 days ago

On what basis do you think it will be overturned?

aleph , 15 days ago

I've defended lemmy.ml in the past when people have blamed the entire instance for the actions of a solitary, overzealous moderator, but this genuinely concerns me:

https://feddit.nl/pictrs/image/9c52e470-645f-46ba-ac1d-0b7d8be17af3.png

This must have been action taken at the instance admin level, considering all those communities have different moderators.

Is there any way to probe the modlog to see which account it was?

aleph , 15 days ago (edited 15 days ago)

I think you have a very different definition of "perfectly reasonable" than most people.

aleph , 15 days ago

It's not exactly the same complaint at all. You got a single comment removed from a single thread by a single moderator.

The equivalent would be if the admin of lemmy.world stepped in and not only banned you from World News but also every single other LW community you posted in, out of spite.

aleph , 15 days ago (edited 15 days ago)

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks for the heads up.

aleph , 15 days ago

Bless Jon Stewart. It's so refreshing to see someone accurately describe how things actually are in the US' utterly batshit political/media landscape.

aleph , 15 days ago

42 Dems voted for this nonsense.

aleph , 16 days ago

https://i.giphy.com/7khTD5qvP0aDm.webp

aleph , 17 days ago (edited 16 days ago)

It has been a common belief in philosophical circles for centuries, but not among physicists. Both Newton and Einstein thought of time as being one of the fundamental properties of the physical universe.

However, in the past decade or two, some theoretical physicists have now come back around to the idea that space and time could instead be emergent properties of a deeper, underlying reality.

If you really want to go cross-eyed, read up on the holographic principle.

aleph , 17 days ago

Because they are traditional gentlesirs who think that feminism has ruined western women and therefore yearn for a cute, child-like, and submissive female partner who does not threaten their fragile sense of masculinity?

I dunno, just guessing.

aleph , 17 days ago

Yup.

aleph , 17 days ago (edited 16 days ago)

It's not so much of a problem for brand new models but there are still many older ones that suffer from battery failure and degradation outside of warranty.