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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • Yes, those count as technical skills and there are many, many people for whom it’s too big a hurdle.

    picking out a decent micro PC that actually works is hard.

    Getting a pc install (presumably windows) configured in a way that will display in the TV legibly from the couch is hard.

    Requiring a keyboard and mouse to use your TV from the couch is weird and off-putting. Most people won’t want to and some people will have difficulty understanding what they’re supposed to do with these objects

    The technical competence bar for getting a TV plugged in and working is just ridiculously, ridiculously low, and that’s for a reason


  • It does not — dumb people have the same access to the better drugs as smart people.

    A eugenics-driven society where dumb people are left to die and smart people get extra health care likely would be effective at breeding children who are better at passing the “smart people” test, but I would not like to live in a society like that.

    If you’re about to argue that having enough money to pay for health care correlates with intelligence… I would welcome some evidence. I used to think that was obvious but, having grown up and experienced the world some, the only thing I see that correlates with intelligence is depression.




  • Installing packages, and software updates also require sudo permissions. Which means to keep a password nearby or easy to remember which is hard when Windows never required it for the longest time.

    Macs also require a password now and then. I’m pretty sure windows does too, unless they somehow changed that in recent years.

    I guess you can configure Macs to use a fingerprint reader instead of a password but that’s mostly a trap — it just means you don’t have to use your password often enough to remember where you wrote it down. Also fingerprint readers don’t work well for old people with papery dry thin skin (certainly not for my mother anyhow)

    Not really much point comparing modern Linux to Windows XP on security inconvenience








  • How well does clipping the antenna actually work?

    If my FM radio antenna rusts and falls off, my FM radio still works. Reception will be shitty but it’s absolutely still usable for nearby or powerful stations.

    When the GPS antenna inside my much-abused phone came loose, GPS got very unreliable but still often worked in a glitchy way.

    If I clipped the external antenna on a car’s cell modem, would it not be the same way? Based on my experience with those other kinds of antennas I’d expect maybe the manufacturer would lose the ability to track me while driving in remote or mountainous areas, but generally in cities or highways it would still connect. Is it not so?




  • Reddit went absolutely bonkers overboard every year with dumb April Fools posts to the point where it crowded out every real topic and made the site unusable for the day, even back in the early days when it was otherwise very usable.

    I personally never saw that level of bullshit overload anywhere else.

    One of the things I like about Lemmy is that it avoids (somewhat) the everybody-piles-on-same-joke plagues that swept through Reddit. I’m hoping we as a community can keep avoiding them (somewhat)

    Sorry for all you beans and Stör enjoyers. This place is big enough for the both of us but sometimes it does get uncomfortable.



  • Man that video at the end of the view of the axle from underneath while driving — two separate fan enclosures with small sheet-metal straps and fiddly little electronics-case screws, all facing down toward the road and right behind the wheels?

    This is not a place where you put fans, or big openings into the kind of electronics you need fans to cool, if you want them to keep functioning while driving through salty slush and mud.

    Seems perfect for Southern California