danielquinn

danielquinn , 1 day ago

Can we really call it a "spill" if they dump it deliberately?

danielquinn , 27 days ago

Don't these dipshits have anything better to do?

danielquinn , 27 days ago

Could he now sue the people that beat him (or even Sainsbury's)?

danielquinn , 27 days ago

The minute you automate someone's job, you do necessarily admit that society doesn't need that person's work to get by. The only reason they shouldn't get to put their feet up and take it easy is political. And politically, we have decided instead what happens is they die.

I have been trying for years to put this into words when discussing capitalism & technology, but I've never come across something so succinct. Thank you.

danielquinn , 1 month ago

This line of reasoning is broadly underrated. Sure batteries are a thing, but if a liveable world means regular brown outs, I'm cool with it. The alternative after all is so much worse.

danielquinn , 1 month ago

This is the path to enshitification.

danielquinn , 1 month ago

Fuck yeah.

danielquinn , 1 month ago

It says it'll hit "overnight", but surely in 2024 we can be more accurate than that?

danielquinn , 1 month ago

Awesome, thanks!

danielquinn , 1 month ago

I don't understand. Surely if you've got a limited amount of water in the lake, drawing that water from a shallow well reduces the available water by the same amount as it would from the lake itself?

danielquinn , 1 month ago

"Deeply frightening" can you name even one thing Corbyn said or did that was antisemitic other than be openly antizionist? Given that it's Israel's Zionist regime that's currently committing genocide, I would think Corbyn would have been vindicated by now.

danielquinn , 1 month ago

Public services aren't meant to be profitable. They're meant to provide a service that serves the community.

danielquinn , 29 days ago

That was just what I needed today. Thank you for sharing. ❤️

danielquinn , 1 month ago

That was lovely, thank you!

danielquinn , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

• Kubernetes Cluster
  • pi-left
  • pi-right
  • pi-centre
• Other Servers
  • pi-katamari (file server & database)
  • pi-athens (DHCP, DNS, pi-hole)
  • Alexandria (Synology)
• Desktops
  • Berlin
• Laptops
  • London
  • Brighton
  • Brussels
  • Cambridge
  • Toronto
• Phones
  • Laconia
  • Vulcan
  • Bajor

danielquinn , 2 months ago

Mozilla's VPN is just reselling Mullvad, so you can support Mozilla and use Mullvad at the same time if you like.

danielquinn , 2 months ago

You might want to consider just Dockerising everything. That way, the underlying OS really doesn't matter to the applications running.

I've got a few Raspberry Pi's running Debian, and on top of that, they're running a kubernetes cluster with K3s. I host a bunch of different services, all in their own containers (effectively their own OS) and I don't have to care. If I want to change the underlying OS, the containers don't know either. It's pretty great.

danielquinn , 2 months ago

It's the tight coupling between the government and arms manufacturers. I used to work at UKTrade and nearly every decision there was rooted in how we can give more money to arms companies.

danielquinn , 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

Is there a comprehensive list of the signatories somewhere? I want to know if I need to praise or harass my MP.

Edit:

It was posted to X here (Nitter link for the privacy conscious). My cowardly MP, Daniel Zeichner (Labour), isn't listed among the signatories.

danielquinn , 2 months ago

For what value of "self sufficient" does this apply? Most people simply don't have the land required to obtain anything in that column. Even acquiring enough water to drink is quite impossible for many. The idea that everyone not living on a farm would be self sufficient enough to provide tomatoes, fruit, water, energy, etc for themselves is rather unreasonable, no? This is after all one of the big benefits of specialisation.

danielquinn , 2 months ago

What about blog spam though? Surely this would relinquish controls like moderation for your site?

danielquinn , 2 months ago

I think Emudeck is available as a Flatpak, so you should be able to install it on your desktop too.

danielquinn , 3 months ago

Excluding the obvious choice of Jeffrey Combs as... well anyone really, I'm rather fond of Andreas Katsulas, though I may be partial to him for his phenomenal role as G'Kar on Babylon 5.

danielquinn , 3 months ago

There have been some great answers on this so far, but I want to highlight my favourite part of Docker: the disposability.

When you have a running Docker container, you can hop in, fuck about with files, break stuff as you try to figure something out, and then kill the container and all of the mess you've created is gone. Now tweak your config and spin up a fresh one exactly the way you need it.

You've been running a service for 6 months and there's a new upgrade. Delete your instance and just start up the new one. Worried that there might be some cruft left over from before? Don't be! Every new instance is a clean slate. Regular, reproducible deployments are the norm now.

As a developer it's even better: the thing you develop locally is identical to the thing that's built, tested, and deployed in CI.

I <3 Docker!

danielquinn , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

TL;DR: your assessment is correct. It's just a complicated (and energy intensive!) way of keeping track of things.

They've got this little commune thing going on and they want a way to keep track of people's contributions to community. Because they're blockchain nerds, they reached for their favourite tool and gave it a hippie name: "carrot".

The idea is that every time you do something that's good for community, you get a carrot, and then you can later use those carrots to get stuff. Basically they invented a currency that's only valid in their community, and rather than just issuing coins, they're doing everything digitally.

Now a brief bit about the technology

This digital system uses something called the "blockchain", which is just a MASSIVE file living on hundreds (thousands?) of computers around the world. This file is like a bank ledger: a record of things that happened. Think of it like a text file:

Bob gave Sarah €1.50
Sarah gave Alex €2.00
...

Now imagine that it's hundreds of millions of lines long, and every time anyone in the world gives anyone money, that list gets a little bit longer.

"But how do you make sure that people don't start tinkering with the ledger?" you might say? "I could say "Alex gives me €1000000". Well the files are kept in sync by this protocol where all participating computers do complex math to prove that they haven't edited anything. Everyone else does the same math, and so everyone's results should be the same. If your math is different, you're ignored. This is why transactions can take as much as a few hours or even days to go through and gobble a shittone of electricity. Awesome.

This is basically where Bitcoin came from.

After that was a thing, a bunch of other nerds got together and built Ethereum (same tech, different computers doing the work, so it's a different ledger), which uses the same technology. Ethereum however introduced this thing called "smart contracts" though, which are tiny programs that are baked into the chain (ie. they codified into this Great Big File That Everyone Has so they can't be changed). Smart contracts are simple instructions:

If Bob gives Sarah €1.50, Sarah then owns this: 1234567890

That 1234567890 relates to something in the real world, most famously a URL, which is where you get those NFTs that everyone was crazy about for a few months. Bob can give Sarah $1,000,000 and this would enshrine that Sarah owns https://somwhere.ca/picture-of-cat.jpg and then she can go around and say "I 'own' this picture". Then one day that website takes the picture down and Sarah realises that she paid a million dollars for a record in a text file.

Each transaction on a blockchain (Ethereum, Bitcoin, whatever) costs money, which you pay in that chain's currency, and that's where this all starts to make sense. If I can get you to buy my "magic internet money", then I'm selling you that currency for actual money.

So, back to your question about this commune project.

Putting on my "trust the person first, but only once" hat, it might not be a scam. The website certainly makes it look like they want to build a Solarpunk enclave. Maybe they've opted for a convoluted financial system 'cause they've been drinking the same kool-aid as all those crypto-bros out there trying to sell me their latest fake internet money. Maybe this made sense to them rather than issuing metal coins or even just maintaining a PostgreSQL database publicly. Either way, it's a dumb idea and totally unnecessary. If you do decide to participate, watch for the moment they try to force you to buy their tokens with real money.

Also, you probably haven't seen the definitive take-down of blockchain technology yet. It's long but solidly the best piece of criticism of the tech I've seen.

Full disclosure: I bought into Bitcoin way back when it was cheap 'cause I was fascinated by the techology. Then I learnt how it actually worked, and how it absolutely cannot scale to be anything useful, so I just held onto the coins I had. I cashed out to the tune of about €40k. I absolutely would not recommend "investing" this this stuff. The domain is ripe with scammers and the project has no legs. It's long past the point of experimentation and is now at the stage of trying to drag more suckers in. Don't be that sucker.

danielquinn , 3 months ago

I just answered a similar question to this in another thread, so I'll copy/paste it here with some more info about "web3" specifically:

---

TL;DR: It's just a complicated (and energy intensive!) way of keeping track of things.

Web3, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and any "coin" you hear about on the web uses something called the "blockchain", which is just a MASSIVE file living on hundreds (thousands?) of computers around the world. This file is like a bank ledger: a record of things that happened. Think of it like a text file:

Bob gave Sarah €1.50
Sarah gave Alex €2.00
...

Now imagine that it's hundreds of millions of lines long, and every time anyone in the world gives anyone money, that list gets a little bit longer.

"But how do you make sure that people don't start tinkering with the ledger?" you might say? "I could say "Alex gives me €1000000". Well the files are kept in sync by this protocol where all participating computers do complex math to prove that they haven't edited anything. Everyone else does the same math, and so everyone's results should be the same. If your math is different, you're ignored. This is why transactions can take as much as a few hours or even days to go through and gobble a shittone of electricity. Awesome.

This is basically where Bitcoin came from.

After that was a thing, a bunch of other nerds got together and built Ethereum (same tech, different computers doing the work, so it's a different ledger), which uses the same technology. Ethereum however introduced this thing called "smart contracts" though, which are tiny programs that are baked into the chain (ie. they codified into this Great Big File That Everyone Has so they can't be changed). Smart contracts are simple instructions:

If Bob gives Sarah €1.50, Sarah then owns this: 1234567890

That 1234567890 relates to something in the real world, most famously a URL, which is where you get those NFTs that everyone was crazy about for a few months. Bob can give Sarah $1,000,000 and this would enshrine that Sarah owns https://somwhere.ca/picture-of-cat.jpg and then she can go around and say "I 'own' this picture". Then one day that website takes the picture down and Sarah realises that she paid a million dollars for a record in a text file.

Each transaction on a blockchain (Ethereum, Bitcoin, whatever) costs money, which you pay in that chain's currency, and that's where this all starts to make sense. If I can get you to buy my "magic internet money", then I'm selling you that currency for actual money.

Web3 is another abstraction on top of this, but most of it is nonsense. If you can use a contract to allocate ownership of something to someone, why not bake that into your website? The claim is that you can "take back the web" from centralised giants like Google & Facebook by "putting your data on the blockchain" and then you can choose to change who owns that data rather than these big companies.

It's a noble idea but tooooootal bullshit. First of all, the web is already open. I host my own website on a Raspberry Pi from my house. The idea that it's technology centralising the web and not capitalism is laughable.

Secondly, by design, everything on the blockchain is open. You get around this with encryption, but if I grant Facebook the rights to my data, they have it. If I change my mind tomorrow, then they still have it. They won't get any new data I append to my records, but I'm not "in control". It's actually much worse. The web3 nerds want us to store everything on the blockchain: browsing habits, mortgages, medical records, and all it takes is one unpatched update, your laptop gets hacked and now I own your house. Fuck That.

You probably haven't seen the definitive take-down of blockchain technology yet. It's long but solidly the best piece of criticism of the tech I've seen. Do watch it. It's far more authoritative than I can ever be.

Full disclosure: I bought into Bitcoin way back when it was cheap 'cause I was fascinated by the techology. Then I learnt how it actually worked, and how it absolutely cannot scale to be anything useful, so I just held onto the coins I had. I cashed out to the tune of about €40k. I absolutely would not recommend "investing" this this stuff. The domain is ripe with scammers and the project has no legs. It's long past the point of experimentation and is now at the stage of trying to drag more suckers in. Don't be that sucker.

danielquinn , 3 months ago

You can do this in about 20min with an actual database.

Blockchains aren't capable of storing any significant amount of data, so at best you'd still have a normal database and an overengineered verification layer. Even then, you still haven't solved the actual problem: availability of the data.

The reason it takes a long time to retrieve the information you want is that it's not already in a searchable database, so someone has to be paid to look it up by hand and create a report for you. If the people with the data were to simply publish a CSV, you'd get everything you need without having to waste time, money, and energy on a blockchain.

danielquinn , 3 months ago

Um, no.

1. Blockchains aren't databases because they can't store any useful amount of data. It's just a publicly-verifiable, append-only list of very small data points. To do something as simple as "look up who owned vehicle X on Y date" you still need a relational database engine like PostgreSQL, MariaDB, MSSQL, etc. Unless of course your application involves people downloading the entire chain locally and running your software on their machine to look up vehicle history. That'd work I suppose, but good luck deploying it, and it's a lot more work than an actual database.
2. Even if all you needed was a blockchain (you don't) the suggestion that they're easier to setup and publish on the web for public access than an actual database is laughable. You can get Wordpress up & running in about 10 minutes complete with a database, webserver and human-friendly UI to access basic tools. The idea that you can setup anything blockchain-based to be accessible to non-technical people in less than 10 minutes is just nuts.

A blockchain provides zero value to solving this problem. It's more complicated, doesn't lend itself well to web-based deployments, can't store the data we need, and requires the consumption of more energy than necessary while slowing down the process of adding records and making them more expensive.

danielquinn , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

Upon a cursory read, it sounds like you host a server and then relay all of your data through their centrally controlled system all while also pushing your account data to them.

I'm not sure they understand what "federated" means. Or rather, they know, but they're hoping we don't care.

danielquinn , 3 months ago

It's funny, before this, I was just going to buy a legit copy and play it on my Deck (I have a Switch, but prefer the Deck)

Now, fuck those guys. If I play at all, it'll be on a pirated copy.

danielquinn , 3 months ago

"Do it out of spite". I love it. Thanks for sharing.

danielquinn , 3 months ago

I think people were laughing less at the sentiment, and more at the "send tweet" at the end.

danielquinn , 3 months ago

Ha! I wrote it! Well the original anyway. It's been forked a few times since I stepped away.

So yeah, I think it's pretty cool 😆

danielquinn , 3 months ago

Actually, I stepped away from the project 'cause I stopped using it altogether. I started the project to satisfy the British government with their ridiculous requirements for proof of my relationship with my wife so I could live here. Once I was settled though and didn't need to be able to bring up flight itineraries from 5 years ago, it stopped being something I needed.

Well that, and lemme tell you, maintaining a popular Free software project is HARD. Everyone has an idea of where stuff should go, but most of the contributions come in piecemeal, so you're left mostly acting as the one trying to wrangle different styles and architectures into something cohesive... while you're also holding down a day job. It was stressful to say the least, and with a kid on the way, something had to give.

But every once in a while I consider installing paperless-ngx just to see how it's come along, and how much has changed. I'm absolutely delighted that it's been running and growing in my absence, and from the screenshots alone, I see that a lot of the ideas people had when I was helming made it in in the end.

danielquinn , 3 months ago

Thanks! The crazy thing is that it's really not that complicated. I'd say the hardest work was in writing the docs :-). It's awesome to hear that people still use it and love it though.

danielquinn , 3 months ago

Aww! Thank you! It was fun ❤️

danielquinn , 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

Let's see, an honest question posted about voting Green nets you a current score of -8. Yeah I'd say you're justified in feeling attacked.

I'm Canadian and don't know much about the US Greens, but I can tell you that any party that would run Joe Biden twice is not a party I'd ever vote for, especially now given his miserable response to literal genocide.

The Democrats can do this because they think they have your vote by default. It's not like you're going to vote Republican, right?

But here's the thing: you don't get progress that way. The Democrats are never going to run someone who doesn't support Israel unequivocally or isn't fixated on helping capitalism destroy the planet so long as they think they can count on you voting "not Republican" every time. Yes, the Republicans are worse, but contrary to appearances, they're on the same team, presenting the illusion of choice so long as that choice favours as little actual change for the rich as possible.

So yeah, fuck the Democrats, and definitely fuck Joe Biden and any other "let the world burn" candidate. Vote green if you want, or stay home if you like. Just make it clear to Democrats (and their apologists in this thread) that your vote isn't a given. That's how you drag them kicking and screaming toward progress.

danielquinn , 4 months ago

Can anyone else confirm this? As a long time user and champion of Gitlab, this is a deal-breaker for me.

danielquinn , 4 months ago

Enshittification, also known as platform decay, is the pattern of decreasing quality of online platforms that act as two-sided markets. - Wikipedia

danielquinn , 4 months ago

Personally I install it with pacman and generally avoid Flatpaks due to annoying problems I've had with it limiting filesystem access in the past. My biggest problem is that it seems to "forget" that I'm logged in if I don't use it regularly, meaning I have to regularly re-auth it on my desktop since I use it infrequently there.

danielquinn , 4 months ago

That's an understandable goal, but as a user, breaking the user experience when I go to send a file to someone only to find that I can't even see it in some apps is a deal breaker. If the app can't be trusted to do that, I won't use it.

danielquinn , 4 months ago

I wasn't talking about Slack. Actually, my worst Flatpak experience was with PyCharm. The fs limitations mean it couldn't see files like ${HOME}/.config/git/ignore or load up my shell environment inside the IDE. It's basically a neutered version of the app because someone decided to draw the security/usability line too far in the one direction.

It's fine if you think that's a good idea, but as a user, the choice of packaging means it's not useful to me, so I won't use it.

danielquinn , 4 months ago

No, I haven't tried to poke a hole in a sandbox. Generally speaking, if I have a choice between pacman -S <app> or "install with Flatpak and then fiddle with sandbox settings" I opt for the former. I get that you think this is important, and Flatpak is a nifty idea, but in terms of usability, it has failed me repeatedly to the point where I don't want to use it, so I don't.

You seem to becoming from a position of "Flatpak good, so everyone must use it", which is nice, but it's naïve. Flatpak is ok, but it has usability problems, and since you want people to use it, usability is kind of important. It also introduces a frustrating divide from a user perspective. The idea that "desktop apps" should be installed via Flatpak, and everything else with a proper package manager is madness from a user's perspective. I don't understand how you can't see that, but you're going to have to accept it 'cause newsflash: not everyone thinks like you.

Finally, packaging for Flatpack is a Pain In The Ass. I say this as someone who's tried it. The build system is clearly biased toward particular use cases and particular languages, which is great if you're in that camp, but for everyone else it comes across as impractical for the intended purpose.

So yeah, it's great that this is important to you. Go ahead and develop the shit out of Flatpak, and maybe even work on the user experience some more. I'll keep having a look from time to time, but for now, it's not happening, and this attitude of yours, that the rest of us will just "need to adapt" to your preferred way of working... if I wanted that I'd use a Mac. GTFO.

danielquinn , 4 months ago

Dude, you're the one being rude. I was done with this conversation yesterday and you just keep coming back like it's an argument you can "win" by insisting that I think like you and change my behaviour to be like you.

You started the whole thread looking for input and when you didn't get the response you wanted you just berated the respondents trekking then how wrong they were.

I'm done here. You've forced me to go digging around Lemmy to see if there's a block function.

danielquinn , 4 months ago

Have you seen what they feed kids at school?

danielquinn , 4 months ago

This would be great advice if boomers hadn't turned outside into a car-dominated hellscape.