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Joined 7 months ago
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Cake day: January 26th, 2025

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  • I don’t know, but even if they were I can’t imagine it’d be easy to prove that the labels are wrong. After all, I’m not aware of any data collection on degradation or failures of batteries at the required scale and precision. And I don’t think the ratings constitute a warranty, i.e. I don’t think you’re entitled to anything if your particular phone falls short of the after the 2-year warranty expires.

    But I sure would like there to be some standard that allows collecting these kinds of metrics in a way that’s privacy-preserving and can’t be fudged by manufactureres.





  • You’re right. It’s still stupid though.

    Companies should be at least as concerned with privacy and autonomy as individuals. Running everything on Microsoft Clouds, with Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office makes you massively vulnerable to the whims of Microsoft. And many of the potential customers are actually Microsoft’s competitors on some level.

    Thin clients may be a good model for some businesses, but this device particularly seems to be tailored to use only Microsoft’s Azure cloud as opposed to self-hosting. Moving the computation to Microsoft’s cloud doesn’t make it inherently safer.





  • Actually, I think it should be possible to protect the fediverse: Each instance must simply not qualify as a social network. For example, the EU has many regulations which only apply for commercial providers with some minimum revenue or user count. As I understand it, none of these actually apply to small self-hosted servers (e.g. a by a local hackerspace or small friend group) even if they allow for federation.

    To make this really viable, the Fediverse apps need to become better at discovery among many small instances. Currently, my self-hosted instance barely shows me any posts because it only gets updates for the communities I (or a user of my instance) explicitly subscribed to. This splits up the already small userbase so much that I instead use tchncs.de, one of the larger instances in Germany, where many communities are already subscribed by other users.



  • It alienated me.

    Most queer people identify with the label “weird”.

    That’s fair actually. When I first heard it without context, I also felt kind of alienated by it.

    I think you can be weird in good and bad ways, context matters in this case. I think it’s fair to call out fascists for being “weird” in the sense that they are evil, crooked and - crucially - not relatable for the vast majority of voters. The “weird” thing is about the fascists not being “like us” - and thus very instinctively not trustworthy.

    At the same time it’s also possible to be “weird” in an individualistic, relatable and validating way. Most people have insecurities or fears on some level and accepting this “weirdness” can be validating and actually show likeness. I think it’s very clear that Tim Walz didn’t mean it like this.

    He didn’t call them weird out of the blue, but rather to sum up his other points about their unrelatable, evil behaviors. The message was something like: “The fascists are not real, believable people. They don’t seem driven by everyday worries like us. They don’t seem to have the same kind of feelings like us.”

    And I think that is actually exactly the message that wins elections in this political climate. Debating the issues is getting you nowhere if your opponent has no actual beliefs to debate against. Calling them out for being fake people with no actual beliefs is a better strategy.






  • There is no inherent goal or point in life. You get to decide. You get to give your life meaning.

    It can be hard. Sometimes, material conditions like poverty, working conditions or social pressure make it hard to find meaning. Sometimes, you can loose the meaning, like when you loose a loved one. A good society should help empower all people to give themselves meaning. Sadly this is not the direction many countries are taking nowadays.

    But despite everything: You are ultimately empowered to create meaning for yourself. Nobody can truly take that away from you.