smorrebrod

> so alien to my European brain

Voter registration is mandatory in France.

Pornhub has banned many videos already. It forbids and deletes any amateur video not posted by the original author (to prevent revenge porn, non-consensual porn, repost of videos since deleted by the author, etc.) and also forbids certain keywords related to non-consensual porn like rape, sleep.

Mindgeek (company owning Pornhub and many other porn websites) are by no mean a company respecting sex workers as good as they should but they are putting an effort to stop nasty shit from their websites if only not to be banned.

So I would agree that Mindgeek websites are better than others. Not good enough but better.

I had an anti-corruption mandatory course in a previous job in the naval industry. They talked about drugs hidden in refrigerated containers: they swapped the insulation material of the containers with cocaine. Apparently the goods in the containers did not spoil so thermal conductivity of cocaine is pretty low.

I'm baffled by how good minetest is now. Don't get me wrong they don't have feature parity with minecraft and likely never will. But the fact that they built the game as a voxel engine where people can add mods on top of it to make a full game is such a good idea! (eg. the default "minetest game" is a mod on top of the default engine, you can play other games)

Big plus for me: mod installation is seamless and when you want to join a server with other mods you don't have to install them locally.

Of course it still needs a lot of polish but it is really fun to play.

I don't know the spread of this movement but it does exist. For example, the national electric company deployed a new generation of electric meter (Linky) which can communicate data to your supplier using PLC. This communication of course emits EM waves so some people objected to the installation of this meter.

Not to dismiss your point but sometimes finding in rats do not apply to humans.

You are right I was comparing buying over the internet and talking to someone, but if I have the choice to talk to someone in person versus over the phone, I would prefer in person 100%.

For the video the other person posted, the DELL experience seems particularly shady since they are the only manufacturer which pushed heavily for insurance and financing. They did this experience twice (in 2018 and 2020) and this issue happened both times. So the website part of the product seems fine, however if you talk to a DELL salesperson then you may have to expect shady behaviour since it looks like they are encouraged to sell things you don't need.

But yeah, don't spend thousands of dollars over the phone, I agree.

I think it is fair to test the ability of a large manufacturer to sell computer through the phone. Many people do not know what they need to accomplish their work so asking the seller to sell them an appropriate product is not outlandish.

For example I wanted to buy a sewing machine but didn't know anything about them though I knew what I wanted to do with it. So I went to a nearby shop and asked the seller what they recommended and actually ended up with an appropriate product. Maybe for computer related stuff this is not the good way to do it anymore idk.

> But they really don't. They might have familiarized at one point of time, but that snapshot is not where the world is at now. They cannot really expect that the world around them will stop developing, so their know-how and hacks stay current.

Maybe we have different experiences. I am not working in a computer related industry so the people I know who use Linux are the only one following tech news, self hosting services, etc. So in my experience they are more familiar with their software. But my point of view is necessarily incomplete.

What I wanted to say was that people who do not know enough to be able to not run in circle, do it because they feel attached to them after becoming familiar with them after so many hours learning their paradigms, their inner workings, etc.

Again, it may be my incomplete POV but I have never seen any Windows user look at source code to try to understand a particular function to adapt the software to their workflow. I've seen numerous Linux users do this.

I think it is because Linux users tend to be more familiar with their software than users of other OSes. They chose it and they configured them, sometimes for hours.

Also they may have bent software to their liking and when you change something so important as the way images are rendered, then their particular workflow can go haywire.

I was in the community for less change (wayland, systemd, etc.) however now I tend to agree with you, I don't really care if I can still send emails, watch my DVDs and play some games.

I think your theory is correct. Back when messages where not checksummed, the French Navy used to do exactly this and sent abbreviations three times in a row. I'm quite certain that the French Navy was not the only one to do this since our communications techniques were heavily influenced by foreign nations like the US.

Wouldn't `cal -m 1` show the year 0001 ?