azertyfun

joined 2 years ago
MODERATOR OF
[–] azertyfun@sh.itjust.works 1 points 17 hours ago

As a European software developer I would love to see that.

Unfortunately I'm afraid those most likely to cry foul aren't Americans, but the majority of European tech businesses who are either reselling MSFT bullshit or completely locked in AWS/Azure/GCP. Open-source/sovereign software services are the exception, not the rule.

[–] azertyfun@sh.itjust.works 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You know, maybe my grandparents had it right.

It is weird that computers give so little sensory feedback for what they're doing. Flashlights go click. Cassette decks go clack-vrrrr. Whiteboards go squeek-squeek. Screen sharing goes... nothing, just a small mostly white rectangle on top of my much bigger rectangle until a disembodied, 4 kHz-wide simulacrum of someone's voice from halfway around the world says "yeah we see your screen". Unnatural is what it is.

[–] azertyfun@sh.itjust.works 10 points 2 days ago

The damn dean could have invited Kanye to do a standup routine that is just roman salutes and this would still have been an extremely gross violation of every democratic principle that would have gotten any other president impeached.

However in Trump's America it's just a Thursday and the so-called opposition is just nodding along and dutifully complying with every unconstitutional order. At this point Trump could sign an executive order for every registered democrat to literally dig their own grave and I think a majority would actually do it.

[–] azertyfun@sh.itjust.works 6 points 3 days ago

High-five the group of Belgian, Chadian, and Romanian vexillologists who were also sweating profusely throughout.

[–] azertyfun@sh.itjust.works 5 points 4 days ago (1 children)

"Econ 101" is just that and if you think it's representative of "economists" you're dunning-krugering.

There are a lot of very competent interdisciplinary socio-economic scientists. The problem is that no-one listens to them because everyone still has the hots for the ghost of fucking Milton Friedman and trickle-down raeganomics.

Populist ideologues will always promote simple economic models, that's not the economists' fault. Sociologists can tell you why bad economic policy is self-sustaining under democratic capitalism but they can't really do anything about it because no one asks for their opinion.

Hell, right now the US is ruled by a moron whose understanding of economics is so bad that even the most hard-line libertarian economists are saying "you wot m8".

[–] azertyfun@sh.itjust.works 11 points 5 days ago

I've wrapped plenty of sensitive electronics that I'd be comfortable throwing at a wall. Get a larger box than you think you need, some foam wrapping/bubble wrap from another package and use that to form a protective core. Fill the rest of the box with lightly crumpled scrap paper, or packing peanuts if you have them. It ain't rocket science.

You just have to assume in the first truck the package will sit underneath seven other heavy packages, while the second truck will be completely empty as your package rattles around and bangs against the walls. Anything else is foolishness, you know damn well those trucks aren't individually fastening every box for a couple euros of gross revenue per delivery.

[–] azertyfun@sh.itjust.works 5 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Those are special cases, but the majority of Trump voters voted out of fear, not hate.

[citation needed]

Here's one: As of April 30th 14 % of Americans think Trump hasn't gone far enough with the unconstitutional deportation and rendition of immigrants to El Salvador's concentration camps. Another 33 % of Americans think it's "been about right". 52 % oppose it.
I do not see how it is possible to interpret that any other way than Americans are voting and supporting this administration out of hate. This isn't about the price of eggs. This isn't about voting "out of habit". When asked, specifically, about the horrific and hateful practices that are most emblematic of Trump's discourse of wanton hatred, half of American people actively support it.

Think whatever the hell you want about how to deal with that, but I draw the line at giving these people the benefit of the doubt. They don't deserve it, and they would not do the same for you.

[–] azertyfun@sh.itjust.works 6 points 6 days ago

What?

The house I'm sitting in right now is made out of bricks, with the roof being a untreated wood frame covered in ceramic shingles. No hydrocarbons involved (except for the insulation but that came a good sixty years after initial construction). There are other construction methods besides the American "just wrap it all in vinyl" approach that aren't necessarily more expensive, such as covering the outside insulation layer with clay/mortar.

The problem isn't air moisture, at 60 % air RH wood is like 10 % humid and won't rot. What causes wood to rot is pooling water, something that's easily avoided by decent house building.

[–] azertyfun@sh.itjust.works 17 points 6 days ago (3 children)

How far do things have to go before "humble empathy" towards those actively supporting the US regime becomes inappropriate? Gas chambers? War against Canada? Nuclear war?

The stakes have never been higher, and personally I'm not willing to humbly give the benefit of the doubt to someone who literally voted for Hitler. They are either dumb as a fucking brick or more likely (according to Trump's polling) they are actively seeking harm against their own neighbors and relishing on the fact that the regime is gleefully committing as many human rights violations as it can get away with.

We've done the "just forget about it and move on" strategy, and it led to Trump being reelected even harder. Maybe when this is over (whenever that is) we go back to the tried-and-true strategy of fucking shaving everyone of these wastes of breath down to the bone to expose their crimes.

[–] azertyfun@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Dry wood will last centuries without any oiling. Which is good news for timber frames because those are left untreated. As long as your house is water-tight, the frame will be fine because wood rot simlly can't metabolize in typical indoors humidity evels.

What we typically protect wood from is water, mechanical wear, UV, and stains. But even a furniture piece will not always get treated on internal parts where wear and wood expansion are no concerns.

[–] azertyfun@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

With what money? NPPs only get built on public funds, private equity cannot make the economics viable due to the multi-decade amortization. It's fine on public debt but breaks down if you have to pay shareholders for billions of euros of loans over 20 years which amounts to so much money the cost is uncompetitive with fossil fuels + renewables. Private equity has been trying to make private nuclear power for 20 years now, mostly with SMRs, with little success and nothing to show for it up to now.

If Belgium ever builds a new NPP, it will be because the government voted on a multi-decade funding plan, which is not guaranteed to happen when the left wants no nuclear and the right wants fiscal austerity. Until then there's nothing that Engie can do but wait.

[–] azertyfun@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago

That's routine as well. Plenty of Russian oligarchs are personally sanctioned in that way. Not that I'm saying ICC prosecutor and Russian oligarch are remotely comparable targets, but the method isn't new. The shocking thing is who the US is now targeting.

 

Hi!

Kagi had a rough couple months on the PR side, and a comment from another Lemmy user arguing that they aren't using Google's index set me off... because I had just read a couple weeks ago on their own websites that they primarily use Google's search index.

Lo and behold, that user was "right": No mention of Google whatsoever on Kagi's Search Sources page. If that's all you had to go off of, you'd be excused for thinking they are only using their internal index to power their web search since that's what they now strongly imply. The only "reference" to external indexes is this nebulous sentence:

Our search results also include anonymized API calls to all major search result providers worldwide, specialized search engines like Marginalia, and sources of vertical information [...]

... Unless one goes to check that pesky Wayback Machine. Here is the same page from March 2024, which I will copy/paste here for posterity:

Search Sources

You can think of Kagi as a "search client," working like an email client that connects to various indexes and sources, including ours, to find relevant results and package them into a superior, secure, and privacy-respecting search experience, all happening automatically and in a split-second for you.

External

Our data includes anonymized API calls to traditional search indexes like Google, Yandex, Mojeek and Brave, specialized search engines like Marginalia, and sources of vertical information like Wolfram Alpha, Apple, Wikipedia, Open Meteo, Yelp, TripAdvisor and other APIs. Typically every search query on Kagi will call a number of different sources at the same time, all with the purpose of bringing the best possible search results to the user.

For example, when you search for images in Kagi, we use 7 different sources of information (including non-typical sources such as Flickr and Wikipedia Commons), trying to surface the very best image results for your query. The same is also the case for Kagi's Video/News/Podcasts results.

Internal

But most importantly, we are known for our unique results, coming from our web index (internal name - Teclis) and news index (internal name - TinyGem). Kagi's indexes provide unique results that help you discover non-commercial websites and "small web" discussions surrounding a particular topic. Kagi's Teclis and TinyGem indexes are both available as an API.

We do not stop there and we are always trying new things to surface relevant, high-quality results. For example, we recently launched the Kagi Small Web initiative which platforms content from personal blogs and discussions around the web. Discovering high quality content written without the motive of financial gain, gives Kagi's search results a unique flavor and makes it feel more humane to use.


Of course, running an index is crazy expensive. By their own admission, Teclis is narrowly focused on "non-commercial websites and 'small web' discussions". Mojeek indexes nowhere near enough things to meaningfully compete with Google, and Yandex specializes in the Russosphere. Bing (Google's only meaningful direct indexing competitor) is not named so I assume they don't use it. So it's not a leap to say that Google powers most of English-speaking web searches, just like Bing powers almost all search alternatives such as DDG.

I don't personally mind that they use Google as an index (it makes the most sense and it's still the highest-quality one out there IMO, and Kagi can't compete with Google's sheer capital on the indexing front). But I do mind a lot that they aren't being transparent about it anymore. This is very shady and misleading, which is a shame because Kagi otherwise provides a valuable and higher quality service than Google's free search does.

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