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Play Store Requirement
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Yeah, the Google tie in has made Matter a non-option for me too. I have ZigBee and WiFi devices, but nothing Matter for this very reason.
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Play Store Requirement
Reply in thread
Yeah, the Google tie in has made Matter a non-option for me too. I have ZigBee and WiFi devices, but nothing Matter for this very reason.
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Nintendo wipes out 400 more Switch emulator repositories on GitHub as it continues its fight on piracy
I have to say the argument here is nutty.
They are saying that because the games are distributed with encryption and the emulators play decrypted games they are therefore primarily used to bypass the encryption. If that process was moved out of the emulator into a separate app then their argument would fall apart.
So it isn't that the emulator can play the game at all. It isn't that it can play decrypted games. It isn't even that a pirated game can be played on the emulator without checking the licence. It is specifically that the emulator can take the prod.keys file and use that to decrypt the game.
By that logic if someone takes Suyu and moves the decryption logic to a separate app and makes a Suyu which only plays decrypted games then there would be no case for the DMCA takedowns on the emulator.
Is my understanding flawed here? If that is accurate, why have developers not done so? You could even have Suyu call the decryption program which is installed separately and presumably not fall afoul of this legal issue? I mean, the logic seems really limited to actually facilitating the piracy, not to emulating the operation of the console.
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ADHD Tax Vent
I think wallets are a bad system we are all taught to use. Trying to use the system harder doesn't fix the problem, it just increases the stress. Instead I recommend trying what I have done.
I have a belt with some bags attached. They are Molle bags because they are useful, but anything would do. My car/house keys have a clip and my wallet, first aid kit, power bank, and other everyday items have pouches they live in. In order to leave the house I must, by definition, have my belt with all my stuff.
I think of it like a safety interlock. If you literally cannot run the blender with the lid off you cannot put your hand in while it is running. It is a type of passive safety and allows you to spend no mental energy trying to remember things, the reminder is built in to the system not your mind.
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Camera working (ish) on the Fairphone 6 running Linux. Wide and telephoto
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Thanks for that, someone else already informed me of the handy libredirect extension and posted the link as you did, but yes, helpful, I appreciate it.
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ADHD drugs don’t work the way we thought
This annoys me. Many articles about ADHD refer only to children with ADHD, not adults. I'm nearly fourty and I still have ADHD now, if I make it to 80 I will still have ADHD, why is it always about kids? It is lifelong not just a childhood thing.
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What's some amazing technology they have in Japan that's very normal to them but would blow our minds here in the US and western world?
They have a device which progressively shines a light on a piece of paper while moving across the page and converts the brightness of the reflected light into an audio signal. Once it reaches the edge the paper is incremented and the process repeats. Each of these segments of sound are sent via a standard telephone connection to a similar device on the other end which uses the sounds to reproduce the image on the original paper on a new sheet of paper. This can be used to send forms, letters, black and white pictures, and even chain letters. It also forms the basic underpinning of a significant fraction of formal communications with landlords, employers, medical systems, government offices, and so on.
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Richard Dawkins quits atheism foundation for backing transgender ‘religion’
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"It's basic biology, XX or XY, man or woman!"
"OK, but have you ever looked into intermediate or advanced biology?"
Dawkins is such a disappointing person. He has all the knowledge required to not only understand but also advocate for trans people but instead is defending the Anglican church, "light pedophelia", and gender essentialism. He wrote a couple of books with some good parts but honestly, he is a sad old man and should be forgotten. Science moves forward one funeral at a time.
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let 'er rip
Actual direct conspiracy is usually not necessary to achieve the outcomes of most nefarious things people worry about. Two rich people which both want to protect their own wealth can look at each other and their respective actions and then take next steps working to protect their wealth without ever talking to each other and get basically the same outcomes as if they had coordinated. Shared interests and a reasonable understanding of the likely outcomes of choices can be almost as good as direct conspiracy.
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Technology is kind of shit now
Come on over to the open source free software world. Things are exciting and shiny and new while also working better every day. My most recent install of EndeavourOS took about 20 minutes with all drivers and boot stuff working correctly first try, as opposed to the multiple hour installs of 15 years ago. CalyxOS is awesome and has some really cool isolation between apps, not to mention ad blocking. And free hardware is becoming a real option with the newer RISCV stuff coming to market, allowing many more SOC designs to flourish.
I have been in to tech for about 25 years and it has never been cooler than right now with Valve bringing immutable Arch as a base for their OS and making proton work so well that I don't even check before trying things.
Also, man, some of the stuff coming out of the 3D printing works is just amazing. There is a guy who I follow who is working on solid state propulsion, another is working on 3D printed rocket engines, and another working on prosthetics. Cool things are still happening, just not on Windows or Mac.
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What is the technical hill you are willing to die on in your industry?
I work in disability support. People in my industry fail to understand the distinction between duty of care and dignity of risk. When I go home after work I can choose to drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes. My clients who are disabled are able to make decisions including smoking and drinking, not to mention smoking pot or watching porn. It is disgusting to intrude on someone else's life and shit your own values all over them.
I don't drink or smoke but that is me. My clients can drink or smoke or whatever based on their own choices and my job is not to force them to do things I want them to do so they meet my moral standards.
My job is to support them in deciding what matters to them and then help them figure out how to achieve those goals and to support them in enacting that plan.
The moment I start deciding what is best for them is the moment I have dehumanised them and made them lesser. I see it all the time but my responsibility is to treat my clients as human beings first and foremost. If a support worker treated me the way some of my clients have been treated there would have been a stabbing.
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If you paid attention in History Class you would understand the reference
Hey Mickey7,
Stonetoss is a Nazi propagandist. The fact that a single comic does not contain a clear Nazi propaganda idea does not mean it is reasonable to share it. Anything from that source is suspect and the source itself should be considered dodgy. If storm front had a great breakdown of a current event it would still be a Nazi website and should not be shared.
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XXX
UBI will cycle in the bottom of the economy.
When you give a rich person more money they buy assets and increase their wealth, it does not impact their spending activity and has no measurable impact on economic activity.
When you give a middle income person more money they buy something new or pay down debts. Buying something new stimulates economic activity, but paying down debts is really just another wealth transfer to the banks which are owned by rich people.
When you give money to low income people they spend it. They have unmet needs and always have something they can spend that money on. That money then generates economic activity.
Increasing economic activity is what all of the interest rate and inflation talk is about. If you get people spending money that generates activity which increases wages, increases income, and decreases wealth inequality.
A good example is during the GFC the Australian government gave low income people $750AUD, about $350USD. The prime minister asked people to spend this money rather than save it. People bought a bunch of things, in the people I knew it was mostly TVs and new clothes, things you can put off for ages but benefit from whenever you buy them. All of this purchasing stimulated the economy, leading to Australia being less impacted than almost any other G7 nation. We recovered very quickly and boomed from there.
If you want a more long term example look at any welfare. If you have extremely poor people they just die. They are underfed, have weak immune systems, and they face imminent death. They can't access housing so they end up on the street. They have tonnes of inteactions with police and end up in the criminal justice system. They end up having their lives ruined and being purely a drain economically. They suffer.
If you give them enough money to have housing and food they are not going to be as costly to manage. They won't require policing, they won't get sick as often, and they will suffer less. Will this increase the competition for the lowest cost housing? Yes, but the answer to that is to build more housing. Even with the impact to housing cost this will not result in 100% of that payment going to landlords. People don't pay their whole income for rent, they will buy food and other needs first, so if they are faced with too high a rent cost they will remain unhoused but at least tbey will eat.
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Plastic Discovered In More Than 50% of Plaques From Clogged Arteries
So to clarify for those who don't want to read the article and a few supporting pieces, this is talking about the presence of plastic micro particles in plaques removed from patients.
Removing the plaque can reduce the risk of stroke so it is done fairly frequently. When they took out the plaque they checked for polyethylene, common plastic for bottles, plastic containers, and similar uses, and for PVC, famous for pipes and incredibly sweaty pants.
In both cases microplastics were found in the plaque. Both of these plastics have been shown to cause inflammation in other experiments where the plastic is introduced into the body.
What they seem to be suggesting is that some amount of the inflammation around a plaque could be caused or enhanced by these microplastics.
This study shows that in some plaques, about half of those examined, these two plastics were present. Previous studies have shown plastics can cause or enhance inflammation.
This study does not show that plastics are the primary cause of heart disease. It also does not show how much of an impact microplastics have on the formation of plaques, how dangerous they are, or whether they grow.
Because of the lack of information on how impactful microplastics are and the difficulty of reducing exposure the best evidence currently suggests focussing on removing the big known risks for heart disease. Those are smoking, alcohol, excessive sugar, burned or oxidised fats and oils, and a lack of physical activity. It would be wise to focus on those factors which we know cause heart disease rather than worrying about this small to nonexistent factor.
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Would you say my conservative dad has at least revatively gotten the point?
This is heavily medicalised but yes, this is better than basically anyone from a conservative background could hope for. There is a lot of misinformation out there and it is easy to find an echo chamber that would support rejecting you, so keeping in line with his current sources is a good idea.
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Biden uses feisty State of the Union to contrast with Trump, sell voters on a second term
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I'm not an American so I'm not invested in the same way, but if you don't want Biden because of his actions with respect to the Gaza genocide can I ask about your thought process regarding what happens if he does not get in? If he loses the only possible winner is Trump because he is the Republican nominie, so is a vote not for Biden basically a vote for Trump? Or do you see it some other way?
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Moderation conflict involving c/vegan
I'm reminded of an article talking about an outage at Yahoo! back when they were huge. It turned out the whole outage came down to one person messing up. The manager was asked how they let the person go and they said "Whatever the cost of that outage we just spent it on training, that person will never make that mistake again, nor will they allow someone else to make it".
If you have mods trying to manage things and they make a mistake you don't axe them, you discuss the situation and work in good policy for going forward. This one case is costly to the community, but nowhere near as costly as losing someone with this experience.
As for the vegan diet for cats issue, in general people who do vegan diets for kids and animals run a high risk of causing harm. Is it possible to do correctly? Maybe. Is it likely that an individual who is not trained in that field will manage it? No. But should it be investigated? Sure, but o my with experiments that actually do teach us something, no wasted studies of 3 weeks on a diet and checking blood tests, or comparing vegan kibble to omnivore kibble. Still, the same issues plague human dietetics and we don't have the answers there either, so yeah, maybe we should all chill a little and work together rather than identifying with one side of the argument and vilifying the other.
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What's your favorite movie that is in a language which you do not speak?
Spirited Away or Run Lola Run
Spirited Away is so good in Japanese and does lose something being dubbed. Run Lola Run is so good in German, I don't know if there is a dub because there is no reason to seek it, the dialogue was perfect for subtitling and the story is based on slightly different loops in time so you pick up what is happening each loop through. Very cool.
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imsd 112 emergency calling end to end tested successfully! (Linux phone VoLTE)
The pace with which you are knocking out issues is fantastic! Well done, makes me want a Fairphone 6.
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SNAP recipients told to buy shelf-stable food or go to food banks as funding deadline looms
This system is fundamentally broken. In Australia there is no path by which people on Centrelink would not have their payments processed for more than a few days. I remember a bank issue which caused a bunch of people to not get their payments on time and it was a major issue, people were absolutely livid. That was only a couple of days late and was resolved promptly with hardship temporary support available for those who really needed it.
For the system to be able to fail like this means those who designed the system want it to fail this way. They could change the funding mechanism to make sure SNAP is immune to government shutdowns if they wanted to. They have chosen not to so that they can use hurting poor people as a political weapon. Removing this weapon should be the goal of any reasonable party and it should be urgent. There are many similar funding holes that can be closed with reasonable legislation and would take away the impact of political dysfunction from the poorest and most vulnerable of society. Choosing to do otherwise is choosing that harm.
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The network can see your imei and triangulate your location as long as your radio is on
Put simply the radio broadcasts a sort of hello message to the tower so the tower knows where to listen (this is about signal direction or beam shaping, but imagine the eye of Sauron swiveling to see Frodo). This includes the identifier of the handset, the IMEI number, so that the tower can keep track of who is who. The second step of getting connected to the network is done with the details inside the SIM card, specifically the IMSI number.
If your phone has no SIM card you can still make an emergency call. You can also have an eSIM which is a software version of the SIM card. In both cases you can bypass the SIM and get connected.
If you turn airplane mode on the radio is powered off in theory, but this is not absolutely guaranteed. It should be off, the system will report it is off, but there are fringe cases where it may still be very slightly active, usually from malware or similar things.
So no SIM means no IMSI, but the radio itself has the IMEI and that handset is hard coded to that identifier. If the radio powers on it will broadcast the IMEI to negotiate connection with or without the SIM and IMSI.