yetanother12345

There's a thin line between trusting and gullible, and the difference may be hard to perceive for outsiders.

Trusting and gullible alike also means easily exploitable, especially when coupled with hospitality which (believe it or not!) is, or at least was, a core value in DK. This whole line of reasoning has been very visible for the average Dane throughout the past 3-4 decades, as non-Danes have aquired larger shares of the general residency.

The general rule of "When in Rome, do as the Romans do" has not really been observed at all by a significant fraction of those visiting or relocating to the country. And the Danes do notice that, although a fraction of the populace choose to wear the rosy-coloured glasses at all costs because principle, culture, tradition (culture matters a lot in DK, the culture is fairly conservative even though most Danes will deny that they themselves are).

The "trust" that non-Danish media likes to herald now is just a shadow of what it was, and it is steadily albeit slowly on the decline - especially in Dane-foreigner relationships IMHO.

If you dislike the facts, feel free to dismiss this as anecdata.

a country whose name literally just translates into “country of $ethnic_group.”

FYI, this is the case with Denmark as well (as long as you permit Dane to be an ethnic group)

Added: Here is the ruleset I use for Hacker News specifically

    * {
        font-size: 23px;
        line-height: 1.5em
    }
    a {
        text-decoration: underline;
    }

In your browser of choice, install the "Stylus" plugin. This is a plugin that will let you write custom CSS styles for any and all page(s). If your browser of choice does not have the exact "Stylus" plugin it will have a plugin of another (similar) name that will do the identical task.

As it seems from your post that you may not be extremely familiar with CSS, here is a ruleset that will do something close to what you wish. Font is set to 26px, not 14. You can easily change that.

Make it valid for "Everything" and it will be valid for everything but those sites that are extremely convoluted.

    *, html, body, section, article, div, span, p, i, b, strong {
        font-family: "Libre Sans" arial, helvetica, sans, sans-serif !important;
        font-size: 26px !important;
        font-weight: bold;
        line-height: 1.5em !important;
        background-color: white;
        color: black;
    }
    pre, code {
        font-family: "Libre Mono", Courier, monotype !important;
    }
   a {
        text-decoration: underline;
   }

is good for ...

... creating a massive pressure for sideloading and alternative/non-official app-stores. Don't for a minute think that those millions of people who currently enjoy that platform will suddently want to stop. Necessity is the mother of invention.

(No, personally I don't use TikTok, YouTube or any other cat video sites. I'm not in that demographic)

I think a better question is: Why do you insist on using Google?

There are several search engines on the WWW. Google is just one, and I hear people complaining about that one a lot. I don't use it personally, and I haven't done so for more than a decade. Life goes on perfectly fine without it.

(no, I don't use Kagi or Marginalia either, it's not one of those posts.)

I don't know if you were around when the US internet was inside AOL? And the French inside Minitel?

All the rest of us didn't really care what you all did in there. Platforms and Walled Gardens alike come and go.

claim better targeted content

Any such claim is irrelevant. The personal opinion of the receiver of the content is not relevant, only that the content delivered somehow makes money for the sender.

That has driven people away from these platforms.

Platforms? These entities do not derive profits only from visits to their own domains. Please inspect the source code of any random site you read next. On the majority of web sites in the Western hemisphere you will find either a Facebook script or a Google script, or both. Often more than these two.

participating online with other humans

There is a more significant case of "the end of anonymity", that of doing any kind of sale or purchase. The more sophisticated the possibilities for fraud become, the harder the authorities that be will (need to) push for public non-falsifiable identification (e.g. linked to your biometrics somehow, as I don't suppose a transplant ("chip") is politically feasible). If you need to trade, that is.

Consider that the past few years the use of cash is increasingly being phased out, or even outlawed (for amounts over a certain size) in various Western countries. With digital money comes digital fraud.

As a spooky aside, the Christian horror story "Mark of The Beast" is remarkably accurate in that respect, even if perhaps a bit too specific in the details (on hand or forehead) - but then magic glasses and -watches are here already.

As for "glimpse" ...

One or two general elections ago[0] the Danish Peoples Party (which at the time was often declared far right and compared to the likes of Geert Wilders et al) got a 25% vote.

In the media it was described as a "protest vote". It was a landslide and IIRC they became the second largest party in terms of votes.

So, what happened next? First off the party leadership at the time declared that they did not want to join government, which was kind of weird given their extreme share of votes.

Second, a very normal government coalition formed, having the DPP as support but not as members. In local terms this was a "right wing" government (in US terms probably not right wing enough /s).

Third, parties across the full political spectrum began being verbose on immigration (ie "asylum seekers" because, well, IDK... that's the term they prefer I supose, while immigration is seen as beneficial, or... well, it's complicated) at the very least creating an image of concern, and in some notable cases even calling for action. The new government IIRC even crafted a few new media-friendly laws in this area - notably a law on "ghetto demolition" which got a lot of media attention even internationally

Time went by, and the traditional government did more or less what it would have done in any case, with a bend towards being tough on "foreigners-and-Danes-with-certain-foreign-ancestry-but-only-those-related-to-select-geographical-areas-and-mostly-criminal-ones-unemployed-ones-or-asylum-seekers" (sorry, I find it hard to find a single descriptive word here).

As the next general election came the vote of the DPP plummeted to near nothing. Next government was once again a very normal coalition in that region doing what they otherwise would have done, only with a slight bend towards being tough on "x, y, but not z unless a, b ,c ...". Since then the DPP has been split up, and the most of the "right wing" has gone though some hardships, so it's not really the same political landscape now.

I'm not sure this tale is comparable to Dutch politics. In Denmark it was more of "a glimpse" than anything else, and the media and political establishment right now is entirely focused on something else than "those people" (US interests/"Foreign Policy" mostly, domestic not much).

[0] I don't recall if it was the election where the PM accepted an offer of a well paid NATO job while on duty, or the one where the former PM accepted an offer of a well paid Facebook job immediately afterwards... (as for our current PM, she alleges publicly that she "is not interested if an offer should come" confirming the trend by denying it... )

These anecdotes have as much credibility as alien abductions, remote viewing, out of body experiences or other self-reported paranormal experiences...

Those types of experiences are not the type of behaviour that is on topic here. Also, depending on perspective what you wrote may well be perceived as derogatory.

People suffering[0] from some degree of savant syndrome generally can display "non-normal" behaviour which is

1) observable, and

2) repeatable

[0] Yes, suffering. To quote the article

      Injury, disease, or disability essentially “unlocks” the brain, leading a particular region to explode in functioning and flourishing.

This could instead be explained by having a IQ

I respectfully disagree. Reasoning and memory is not the same.

If you happen to actually become aquaintaned to more than one of this type of people during your lifetime you will (maybe) note that their abilities in memory do not need to be correlated to their abilities in reasoning. I have personally met more than a handful with extraordinary memory skills, and while some would probably be able to achieve a "high IQ" score others would certainly not. The latest I've met did not even pass public school reading tests [0].

As an aside, obtaining a high IQ score is done using a standardized procedure and as such it is only a measure of one very specific class of reasoning skills, not "general intelligence" per se

[0] First hand, he told me

----

Edit to add this: Here I specifically relate to the memory-equilibrists due to the parent comment emhasizing one such specimen. Others in the savant spectrum (it is a spectrum) do have abilities that would correlate better with the measure known as "IQ".

they flew him over a city and he drew all buildings with there windows etc on a large sheet of paper

Steephen Wiltshire, Autistic Savant and Artist [0,1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Wiltshire

[1] https://www.stephenwiltshire.co.uk/gallery/originals

I bought the cheapest one at the store, as I always do. It was even on sale. IIRC it was less than $200.

This was in 2022. My former "daily driver" Linux laptop was from 2009, and it gave up in 2023 (keyboard hardware failure, no problem running Linux). As for brand, both are ASUS. It's not that I prefer ASUS particularly, it just happened so that these were the cheapest on the days I frequented the store. A laptop is a generic thing for me, I can use any of them.

(I dont' get the Nvidia graphics cards trouble you are referring to, don't you run Debian?)

"wipe my data"

You may be referring to "hiding your data from your own view" ...

For SoMe and other organizations that have very large databases it is a very common procedure (if not outright "best practice") to NOT delete anything, but in stead "mark as deleted". The data is still there, it is just no longer visible.

Of course such a practice means that your data (even if you think you have deleted it) is still vulnerable to all the standard (and non-standard) issues, from internal data mining over data breaches to governmental requests, etc.

The only surefire way to avoid exposing yourself is to avoid interacting with these services at all.

I can't imagine a successful platform not getting beleaguered by the SEO

May I suggest inclusion of the following snippet in the <head> section of every page on such a site:

   <meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow">

The keywords that you would want to enter into your preferred search engine are:

   Digital Picture Frame

Thanks all below, I was not aware. I'm (a little) wiser now.

Try styling it (CSS). I've been there. One more reason not to use it.

Please, McCarthy is old hat.

Here's a Survey of WorldWide Censorship, specifically the chapter on internet[0] to get you up-to-date. There's also the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) [1] which deals more with infrastructure blocks.

There's also the more subtle kind, called "fact-checking" which on the surface does a very good job shielding us from the conspiracy theorists[2]. Don't misunderstand, on the surface this is a noble task, but it is still a filter of information that you did not employ yourself, and one that you have no means of controlling or influencing. You will only see what they left out: If you are not accepted by these gate-keepers you are silently excluded by most big media outlets. Here are eg. the organizations that Facebook trust to fact-check[3]

There's a really large machinery operating worldwide these days. Or, specifically, a whole lot of different machines. I'm not saying this to spead FUD, just FYI.

[0] https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-irtf-pearg-censorship-...

[1] https://explorer.ooni.org/findings

[2] The European Fact-Checking Standards Network (just one example): https://efcsn.com/

[3] https://www.facebook.com/formedia/mjp/programs/third-party-f...

Please note: Ireland

   This is the national internet regulator proposing that it would require that everyone, adult and children alike, would upload their state ID and live selfies, to porn sites to have biometric processing of their facial images performed. Resulting, amongst other things, in an effective register of porn preferences for adults and a collection of selfies of children kept by the porn sites for six years[0]

Anyone see something slightly worrying here? Anyone? Just asking rhetorically.

[0] TFA

[1] Not only porn sites, but any site which allows you to post a video (TFA)

I see something that worries me in this article.

It seems that any private enterprise can just launch any type of item(s) to the moon without any rules or oversight what so ever?!! How TF did we even get there? And how can we get rules and policing in place really really fast?

The article mentions advertising as one example - it would have to be a very large sign to be visible down here, but there are people that stupid, and there are corporations that rich. The thought alone is beyond disgusting to me, and I don't think I'm overly sensitive in that specific regard.

As an European it did not escape my attention that these enterprises are American. These private enterprises from one specific country are allowed by that one specific country to desecrate (and that is the proper word) something of immense importance to almost all the world. I guess there's a word for that, and I guess it's Hubris. But then there are many more words, none positive in any way.

This should never have started. It has to stop. Immediately. But how?

---

Also, after reading the comments, it seems that the concept "sacred" is not really something that my fellow commenters here, uhm... internalize (let alone, understand). Let's just say that if a spokesperson for an Indigenous Nation mentions that something is "sacred" to them, it means that that something is far more important to them than your morning coffee, or the distictions between Vi/Emacs, SPA/MPA, PHP/Rust. Which is something like "extremely important" times infinity.

Also, if a spokesperson for an Indigenous Nation says something like that, it will be beyond rude to suggest that he does not state the facts (or that he is somehow lying or pretending something).

This is regardless if you are religious, atheist, or whatever. Just FYI.

And no, I'm not Navajo.

nobody I know uses SMS these days

Pro tip: Everyone can still receive your SMS, and respond to it. Which app they'll use for that is unknown to me as I've never[0] used a smartphone.

[0] Qualification seems to be needed: I've used several, and even developed apps and tested for a multitude of models. So that was misleading. Sorry. What this should have read was: "I've never used a smartphone as my own personal "daily driver" phone (only for work)"

In other news

    Bitcoin and crypto stocks came under pressure early Wednesday as the market continues to wait for spot bitcoin ETF approvals by federal regulators, which are expected to come around Jan. 10.

Here you go:

   <script>
      document.write('<b>Screen: </b>'+screen.width+' x '+screen.height);
   </script>

" ... is bringing to the table is the idea ..."

Wikipedia states that

    "Keep it simple, stupid!", is a design principle first noted by the U.S. Navy in 1960 [0]

If this is brought to the table now it is only seemingly so, caused by the fact that those at the table must have forgot it, or never learned it. Of course, there are also commercial interests in keeping things as complicated as possible - it could just be that these have had too much influence for too long.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle

Possibly OT, or tangential. But then this is HN, so

Various Package Managers

Quite a long list at the right side, but... no Debian?

I'd think that the user base of Debian would be larger than of some of the other distros listed (edit: changed wording here) there, so ...what up? why?

This is not the first time I've witnessed this exact situation during the past half a year or so. Is this some weird conspiracy among Rust devs (joke!), or is it the Rust tooling that makes integrating into the apt ecosystem a challenge, or what?

I mean, if I really insisted on getting that tool installed I see there's a binary, and if there was not, I'd find a way, but I'm genuinely curious. This seems counterintuitive, so there must be a reason? no?

What? Miniature is colonial?

Please let me introduce you to the concept "Persian Miniature", it even has a Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_miniature

There is also the equally (if not more) well-known concept of "Chinese Miniature Painting". Example: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/36047

Both of these traditions are very established in Art History and any hypothetical tie to Western colonialism is, well, fully absent. That said, do a search using your favorite search engine. Miniature is not exactly a niche concept, so you will find lots and lots of great (small) stuff.

will get negative feedback

I strongly disagree. The most likely feedback will be zero, zilch, none. So, you should clearly write for your own sake only.

Also: I'd bet that 95% to 99.9999% of your visitors the first three to five years will be bots only.

Do it for your own sake, if you feel like it. Otherwise don't. Blogging is not anything to be afraid of, and you should really not think that your blogging matters to anyone but yourself until you have proof of that.

Agree 100%

Also, worrying about negative comments is counterproductive. If you get even one single comment in the first year or two, negative or positive you should be glad. I have blogs that have ran for 10 and 15 years with a comment field but without a single comment*

* except the spam of course, which made me write a spam filter. That was a nice little project.