nikt

I’m a socialist, generally vote for socialist or at least left-leaning candidates, support socialist policies and agree with the premise that record profits are basically unpaid wages.

But, seeing the hammer and sickle pop up in my Lemmy feed makes me really uncomfortable. I grew up under communism, and a good chunk of my family was killed and oppressed by people in uniforms with that symbol. To me it represents all that can go horribly wrong when socialism is stripped of empathy and compassion and married with violence and intolerance.

For me, it’s a bit like seeing a swastika. Really hard to get behind it, even though I know the symbol predates the NSDAP.

Is there really no better alternative for symbolising modern socialism?

The thing about forests around cities is they tend to get cut down and paved over. That’s much harder to do with mountains.

The other day I used Apple Maps in my car for the first time in a few years. I gotta say something about it felt nice.

Maybe it’s the aesthetic? The names of towns and geographic features are in big letters and flow across the map nicely — the name of the peninsula I was driving across was stretched along the length of the peninsula itself — and it felt a bit like I was traversing an old timey map, maybe like in an old Indiana Jones movie.

If I need to find some obscure business, I’ll still use Google Maps, and if I’m on a well known commute I’ll still use Waze, but for just general ambient map display, I think Apple Maps might be it now.

Alkaline batteries lose voltage as they drain, so 1.5V is at full charge but it drops down to about 1.2V very quickly and then stays at 1.0V - 1.2V for most of the alkaline battery’s operating life.

NiMH batteries tend to consistently stay at their nominal voltage (1.2V) through their entire charge.

So in other words, if you have devices that really expect exactly 1.5V per battery, they would only work with alkalines at the very top of their charge. Nowadays most non-garbage circuits should be designed to work just fine with anything above 1V per battery.

Def the other way around.

Writing a privacy policy generally forces a company to make commitments about what they will and won’t do with data they collect about you.

No privacy policy means anything goes — they didn’t say what they will or won’t do, so you can’t sue them if they do something sketchy.

But many jurisdictions require companies to publish a privacy policy, so just about any company these days will have one. The devil is in the details though, as this article points out.

Because Apple’s core business is selling their stuff to you. Google’s core business is selling you to other companies.

Google’s consumer software and products literally serve no other business purpose than surveillance to figure out how to turn you into a more lucrative advertising target.

Apple has realized they can capitalize on this by making privacy a core selling feature for their stuff — one that Google cannot challenge them on as privacy is directly at odds with the core premise of their entire business.

Well no, a lease is literally a lease. People do lease houses too you know. When people “buy” a condo, that’s not a lease.

The point I’m making here is that the housing analogy doesn’t work (“Imagine buying a house and not being allowed to X”) because people literally “buy” houses and are not allowed to do basic things that you’d assume come with house ownership.

I’m not defending that this is ok. For me buying a condo would be as ridiculous as buying a DRMed Tesla.

Those clouds…

It’s also higher in just about every developed country other than the United States.

I do appreciate that he went out of his way to correctly use oxford commas though.

Imagine buying a house but you have not get access to certain rooms.

A bit off topic but that’s kind of how condos work btw. You don’t actually own the apartment or townhouse, you just own shares in a corporation that gives you the right to live in that space, with some severe restrictions.

Often you don’t have the right to mow your own lawn, you can’t keep certain things on your balcony, you can’t have a dog over a certain size, etc. It’s kind of nuts tbh. They give you the illusion of owning the space, but it’s a very restrictive form of ownership.

There have been a number of attempts in Canada to sue credit agencies for libel. None have succeeded so far, largely because the cases have been a bit murky.

This one seems really clear cut though. I really wish this person would try to sue for libel. A successful precedent could end up drastically changing the way credit scores work in Canada. The credit agencies might suddenly find themselves having to be accountable for their sketchy practices. Imagine that!