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rlue

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+1. I come online to discover new things because there's less friction online than anywhere else. What's more, digging through a mountain of content to find something that resonates with you is a form of work in its own right.

Micropayments are friction, and if you put friction on top of the work of discovery, I will do something else with my time.

Like all the other commenters here, I also devised my own solution—but AFAICT, it's the only other solution that's automated!

Requirements:

  * macOS
  * Zoom
  * Home Assistant
  * A signal light/sign on a smart switch (like [0])
The Procedure:

First, create a script that checks whether you're currently on a Zoom call, and then turns your signal light on or off accordingly. Remember to chmod +x!

  #!/bin/sh

  if [ $(lsof -i 4UDP | grep zoom 2>/dev/null | wc -l) -gt 1 ]; then
    curl \
      -H "Authorization: Bearer ${HOME_ASSISTANT_ACCESS_TOKEN}" \
      -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
      -d '{"entity_id": "${ENTITY_ID}"}' \
      https://${HOME_ASSISTANT_DOMAIN}/api/services/switch/turn_on
  else
    curl \
      -H "Authorization: Bearer ${HOME_ASSISTANT_ACCESS_TOKEN}" \
      -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
      -d '{"entity_id": "${ENTITY_ID}"}' \
      https://${HOME_ASSISTANT_DOMAIN}/api/services/switch/turn_off
  fi
Then, create a LaunchAgent that monitors your Zoom Application Support directory for filesystem changes at ~/Library/LaunchAgents/local.${USER}.on-air.plist:
  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
  <plist version="1.0">
  <dict>
      <key>Label</key>
      <string>local.${USER}.on-air</string>
      <key>ProgramArguments</key>
      <array>
          <string>${PATH_TO_SCRIPT}</string>
      </array>
      <key>WatchPaths</key>
      <array>
          <string>/Users/${USER}/Library/Application Support/zoom.us/data</string>
      </array>
  </dict>
  </plist>
Finally, load 'er up:
  $ launchctl load ../Library/LaunchAgents/local.${USER}.on-air.plist
[0]: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09NJ8ZCHF

I use koreader, including its OPDS server support! While I'm always grateful for all FOSS (and especially for well-written FOSS), koreader's OPDS UI still has a long way to go to approximate what I'm imagining. It's basically a file browser in List view, whereas a good digital book storefront would include gallery views with cover art, synopses and other metadata when clicking into any individual publication, search functionality, recommendation carousels, and more.

My dream for an open e-book reader is to have some kind of graphical OPDS browser as a substitute for the commercial storefronts offered by Amazon/Rakuten/etc. If you could host and publish your own ebook library (using BookLore or something similar), then explore and fetch content off of it with the same UI polish as you can get from a corporate vendor (complete with cover art galleries, carousels for recent releases and recommendations and the like), I think that'd make e-readers so much more appealing and usable for diehard FOSS folks.

Can you elaborate on or cite a source as to why this practice is incorrect? The Nitecore D4 battery charger supports recharging of this and other sizes of Li-ion batteries (in addition to NiMH), so I am skeptical that it is inherently dangerous.

I'm skeptical that new materials like this will meaningfully drive down the demand for virgin plastic packaging. The problem is not just the absence of good alternatives; it's the fact that plastic is the fossil fuel industry's backup plan for the global transition to cleaner energy sources.

That is: in preparation for a decrease in global demand for energy from fossil fuels, the industry is ramping up production of plastic to compensate so that it can maintain profitability (instead of, you know, just slowing down the extractive capitalism). Plastic production is set to triple over the next few decades as new facilities are built to support this transition.

(Source: Paraphrasing from my vague recollection of A Poison Like No Other by Matt Simon, and also articles like this one https://www.ecowatch.com/plastic-production-pollution-foreca...)

Google is watching 11 months ago

Selective access to a set of user-specified photos is a native feature of iOS. Any time an app prompts you to choose some photos from your photo reel, you are first given the option to explicitly choose which photos the app even has access to.

Your prediction is about a hardware product, and your examples are both software products (one is a browser and another is a mobile OS, both of which are platforms for running other software, and thus extremely well-suited to the task of reporting user data back to Google).

I'm not an expert, but baking telemetry into the hardware (or at least the kind of telemetry that I assume Google is interested in) seems like skipping a few levels of abstraction, and thus more trouble than it's worth.

Great concept. But author, if you're reading this: a piece like this could be so much better with a quick summary of what it does somewhere in the first two paragraphs. Something like:

"I've leveraged my home automation system to limit my access to social media to 15 minutes at a time, no more than once an hour. Using the built-in adblock feature, my router black-holes DNS queries to social media by default—which I can now disable temporarily by pushing the button on any one of several smart outlets around my house."

How is the latency? All mainstream chat apps have low-enough latency that a live conversation feels fluid and natural, whereas I frequently encounter situations where I have to wait up to five or ten seconds for an email to come through. That kind of latency would kill the experience IMO.

The one time I ever rode in a waymo (in Los Angeles), I had a contradictory experience. My Waymo was attempting to make a right turn at a red light. We were stopped behind a human driver who was waiting for pedestrians to finish crossing before proceeding to make the turn. This was a college campus (UCLA), so there were lots of pedestrians. After a few seconds of waiting, the Waymo decided that the driver ahead of us was an immobile obstacle, and cut left around this car to complete the right turn in front of it. There was only one lane to turn into.

Luckily, no one was hurt, and I generally trust a waymo not to plow into a pedestrian when it makes a maneuver like that. I also understand the argument that autonomous vehicles are easily safer on average than human drivers, and that’s what matters when making policy decisions.

But they are not perfect, and when they make mistakes, they tend to be particularly egregious.

Am I the only one who thought the lead photo should have included Gen 1 iMac vs. latest lineup? Even the 2021 anodized aluminum version is comparatively muted!

Coup 1 year ago

This sounds uncharacteristically earnest for anything coming out of the Trump administration, but don't let that distract you from the irony here.

Trump attempted a coup of his own four years ago. He may have legitimately won the election this time, he owes that victory in part to the partnership he courted with the man here accused of the same.

Such was the price of his victory: Donald Trump sold this country to Elon Musk for a second term. It might turn out to be a short one.

On the contrary, I think it could make perfect sense: What's written in the law is one thing, and how it's enforced is another; I would argue that the former should be done with consideration to the latter.

Based on my own experience, I'd estimate that well over 99% of traffic infractions go entirely ignored by the law: minor speed violations, unsignaled lane changes, rolling stops at stop signs, expired tags, cell phone usage, and yes, running red lights.

When the letter of the law is broader in scope or errs on the side of caution, that enables the police to exercise their judgment in enforcing it (with the obvious caveat that some police will abuse any power you give them). You could imagine a scenario where someone technically runs a red light but it's totally justifiable and safe (heavy load + moderate speed + short yellow + no other traffic) and another where someone technically makes it into the intersection on a yellow light but senselessly severely endangers public safety (busy intersection + rapid acceleration + traffic backed up on the other side of the light).

I would be okay with someone evading a ticket in the first case and getting one in the latter.

You’re right; what I should have said was “everyone who disagrees with me is operating from a morally inferior value system!” but that’s not as pithy.

In case you’d prefer something more prosaic: there is a difference between stating a contrary position and implying that other people’s positions indicate a defective worldview from which they should seek to free themselves. Or, more simply, there’s a difference between attacking a point and attacking a person.

I would also add that your last point is a bit of a straw man. I can scarcely clarify except by restating my point: spamming a thread with kneejerk retorts instead of taking the time to reflect on someone’s criticism is a dialectical red flag.

“Everyone who disagrees with me is wrong. But if you take this irreversible life choice that lots of people actually regret, I sincerely feel that you are likely to see the light.”

People shouldn’t have kids to soothe their existential malaise; they should have kids because they actually want to devote their lives to nurturing another living thing. They are not a prop for your personal growth. This is really, really harmful advice.

FWIW given the rigidity of your thinking, I would really hate to be your kid by the time I started having opinions of my own.

P.S. You being out here responding to every single comment without hesitation and not reconsidering your position in the slightest is a sign of bad thinking.

+300, it’s kind of tragic that the general public’s concern around GMOs seems centered on the perceived dangers of ingesting them, rather than Monsanto’s relentless track record of predatory litigation and their apparent mission to monopolize global agriculture.

I’d be interested to hear examples of large-scale industry players voluntarily accepting the costs of their externalities to any meaningful degree (i.e. more than just-enough-to-make-a-good-PR-campaign). My belief is that in the absence of regulation, the survival advantages conferred by socializing costs and privatizing losses are sufficient to eliminate larger conscientious (or so-called “socially responsible”) organizations.

So-called niche media hype is the reason gp thinks cat women are the product of toxoplasmosis. A general explanation for cat women themselves (along with all your other examples) is culture.

No, that is not the kind of equality this discussion is about.

In this case, we are asking whether two hypothetical people who are completely identical in every way except for their genitals will receive the same opportunities, rewards, and treatment from their employers and their peers.

It is not for public policy to speculate on which parent will produce more value for the baby or the household by staying at home. The point you were responding to originally was this: If you mandate more parental leave for women than for men, you end up creating an incentive for employers to hire men instead of women (or choose to let women go when layoffs come around), because their benefits cost less.

That is the type of gender inequality we are talking about, and I hope you will agree that fixing it is not a "false goal".

I am a staunch supporter of bicycle infrastructure and a daily bicycle commuter, but I remain unconvinced by percentage-growth figures like this. In many large cities (especially LA, where I live), bicycles represent a vanishing minority of road traffic; an extra 155% of almost nothing is still almost nothing.

I don’t have data on hand, but just a casual glance on an average day suggests that fewer than 1% of road users in my neighborhood are on bicycles—and that’s in Downtown Culver City, a mixed-use/pedestrian-friendly urbanist oasis. I’m sad to say that Culver City recently decided to dismantle its dedicated bike lanes, despite reported figures of >50% increases in bicycle traffic.[0]

I want more bicycle infrastructure, but I do not feel well-equipped to argue my case when even with the bike lanes in place, I’ve never seen two bicycles waiting at the same red light—all while car traffic is piled up as far as the eye can see.

[0] https://ktla.com/news/local-news/culver-city-bike-lane-proje...