Spyke

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So how long until the Fediverse is monetized?

Besides all the discussion of nonprofits and donations, fedi server hosts have way less overhead. They're not generally trying to profit, so they only need to break even (or run a deficit small enough to deal with out of pocket). A corporation is trying to give 6 or 7 digit salaries to CEOs and/or shareholders. So they need to extract more than the cost of hosting.

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Why do people hate TV shows like The Biggest Loser and My 600-lb Life?

The correlation between weight and health is a lot murkier than media in general, and these shows in particular, represent. It's much more reliable to measure blood and vitals, such as cholesterol and blood pressure, to establish wellbeing and risk.

Rapid changes in weight tho, in either direction, are well established for having permanent harmful effects. It also tends to make it more difficult to maintain weight loss, and more likely someone actually increases in weight over time.

These shows make it seem like losing weight at any cost is desirable, and don't put focus on the actually accurate metrics of wellbeing, while ignoring the negative long term impacts of rapid weight loss. It's a very warped view of health that focuses on an aesthetic feature.

I strongly recommend giving this podcast a try if you want more analysis: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-biggest-loser/id1535408667?i=1000505824482

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*Permanently Deleted*

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Tangential fun fact:

Snake oil is a real thing, that actually helps with the some very specific problems. But it has to be made a specific way from a specific snake. We associate the term with scams because of the large number of scammers that advertised fake snake oils, or advertised it being useful for tons if things it wasn't.

My point is, many of the most effective scams rely on something that has a kernel of truth.

linux

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New Linux user here. Is this really how I'm supposed to install apps on Linux?

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Also, no, this is not an ideal way to do this. Ideally every package you want is in your distro's repos so you'd just need to do "apt install [package]".

The reason this one isn't is because mullvad wants to make sure you use their tested, secure, and updated version and they don't want to maintain that for every distro. So they have you configure your package manager to use their repos.

This is relatively uncommon to come across in Debian. You'll normally only find it in security applications or very niche ones. The Debian repos aren't the most comprehensive but they'll contain the vast majority of common softwares.

piracy

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How much does it cost to run a site that deals with pirated content?

One thing to consider is that it's not just hosting a site, it's all the work they do to do the DRM removal and the repack. That takes time, which might be time they could be using to earn money. So getting some money from their work can help incentivize it.

Hard to say what that actually boils down to for each person, if they're not releasing any expenses info (site costs, time spent per project, etc). If you're thinking about donating, I'd think of it more as a "thank you" gift for their work than anything else, and give an amount you wouldn't miss.

privacy

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Any good email service except tutamail and proton ?

I use mailbox.org personally. Disroot is probably fine. Do they have 2FA? That would be the most essential thing you want here if you're worried about being hacked by an outside party. 2FA would even mitigate a password leak in most cases, since they'd only have 1 of the authentication factors.

If you're worried about hacking, you can do some things to mitigate the damage that would cause. Download important old emails and delete them from the server, this is pretty easy to do in a desktop client (like thunderbird or outlook) where you'd just move them to a local folder. That way if someone gains access, or they sell to someone that processes the data, they won't have the old emails (unless they for some reason retained a separate copy, which seems doubtful).

Sign your email up for https://haveibeenpwned.com/. Then you'll get notifications if there's any data leaks, including of your email provider. Obviously this is only useful if nobody has stolen your account before the leak is reported, but that's more likely than not (unless you're a particularly valuable target for some reason).

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Survey reveals depth of abuse women experience while biking

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I understand where you're coming from. It's true the survey doesn't have any male polling group to compare to, so it's difficult to quantify the difference.

But I still think it's valuable for a couple reasons. For one, I think improving biking conditions for women and improving them for everyone is largely the same thing, so for the most part the solutions are the same no matter how you frame it.

For two, there is good data showing that women bike less than men when there's less infrastructure, but that gap closes as the infrastructure improves. There might be a lot of reasons for that. I tend to believe, from comparing my experiences with the women I know, that it's a mix of women receiving more (and scarier) abuse while biking, and young men just being more risk-tolerant in general. So why I agree this article doesn't really prove that thesis, I'm personally inclined to think there's truth to it.

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Do people get partners because as we get older we have less friends?

I think some people do this. However, I'm 30, live with my long term partner, and have a bigger friend group than I've ever had before, with weekly events. My partner isn't a stand-in for socialization.

I'll fully admit I have some advantages because I have no kids, and a job that pays decently and isn't too demanding. I've met people through:

  • dating apps. This is how I met my partner and also a very good platonic friend

  • activist/interest groups. Got involved with a local urbanism group, now I know many of the people there

  • house parties. I got lucky here, I met someone that throws monthly house parties, went to those regularly, and made some very good friends that way

  • reconnecting with childhood friends. Again, lucky, but a few of my HS and college friends live in the same city as me and we reconnected and hang out.

The one bit of concrete wisdom I think I have here is that if you go to the same social place regularly you'll see the same people and if you put yourself out there you'll get to know some of those people. Activist groups or meetup groups are great because you probably already have some things in common.