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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • I’ve lived in multiple places, so I’ll talk about all of them.

    Brazil

    I lived in two places there, essentially you can choose between public or private systems.

    Under the private system you would book an appointment with whatever doctor you wanted, usually one or two weeks in advance, pay them (which is relatively expensive depending on the doctor), have the consultation, they might ask for some exams (some of which are paid, others included), possibly get a prescription (that you would have to pay for yourself), possibly go back for a follow up appointment (included in the price you already paid).

    On the public system you book an appointment, wait some time (months in some places, days in others), have your consultation (if the doctor is in that day), possibly get a prescription (that you would likely get for free), possibly go back for a follow up appointment.

    Ireland

    There’s a public system, but you have to be below a certain income level to use it, otherwise you have to go through the private system. You have to register with your GP (most of which don’t have available spots), for anything you first need to contact your GP (which usually takes a week), and pay €60, explain your problem and if they choose to forward you to and specialist (even if you go and say I need to see a cardiologist they might say “no, you do not”, although that’s unlikely), then they send an email to the specialist who only then accepts that you book with them (usually for a week or so later), then you have to pay the specialist (which is usually >€300), they might ask for some exams (which you have to book and pay on your own, some blood work I did was €700), they might give you a prescription (which is paid but there’s a €80 cap on medicine per house per month, which is the only nice part of the whole system), and if you need a follow up it’s usually €150. If you have health insurance (or at least mine was like this) they give you back 50% of all your expenses up to a certain limit.

    Spain

    I’m not too familiar with the options here because I have private insurance through my work and as you’ll see I’ve had no reason to look elsewhere, but I’ve been told the public system is fairly similar. Whenever I need an appointment I open my insurance app or call a doctor office and ask if they take my insurance, book an appointment (usually for a week or two in advance), go there, show my id and insurance card, go to the appointment, if they ask for some exams I do them, if they give me a prescription I take it to a pharmacy and pay it out of pocket (this is the only part I know public system exists and is somewhat better because you get the drugs for free, but since I don’t take any recurring prescriptions I haven’t bothered to check), if I need a follow up I book it and go back. Never had to pay one cent for anything other than medicine. I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop and getting billed for all of the Dr appointments, but so far it hasn’t happened hahaha



  • My point is that of those 120 probably 110 have never been compromised nor forced you to change the password due to expiration policies. The remaining 10 are the ones that require some mental gymnastics, so while the problem exists it’s not as serious as it sounds. I probably have more than 120 identities using this method since I’ve been using it for years, and I don’t think I ever had to use the counter, it’s a matter of being consistent in how you think about websites, for example if you know how you refer to a site slugify it and use that for the field, so you would use spotify, netflix, amazon-prime.


  • Nope, just extra dimensional cause for creation, no higher purpose required, for all we know whenever two rocks collide in that scenario they create a universe.

    Also no, you’re completely missing the point, if God is omnipotent he could have made humans to never suffer and still be free, in theory most Christians believe that Heaven is free of suffering, do you cease being yourself when you go to heaven then? Just because you or I can’t imagine a world where humans are free but can’t hurt one another doesn’t mean that’s beyond the realm of possibilities, and if your counter argument will be that then we wouldn’t really be free, I tell you that humans can’t explode someone by looking at them, so he already imposed some limitations on the amount of harm we could cause to each other, yet you don’t see this as less freedom because you just accepted that’s the natural state, I propose there could be a natural state where humans can’t cause harm to each other and are still free.


  • Yup, eventually believers reach the same stopping point but instead of saying “I don’t know” they go “God did it”, until science explains how that happened, so believers go to the next thing and say “well I don’t know how this happened, therefore God”. That is called “the God of the gaps” and it’s a terrible argument, it’s okay to admit we don’t know something.

    And no, I’m not talking about Abraham, I’m talking about Jesus, the whole reason why Jesus is crucified is so that his blood can clean the sin of mankind. The basics of Christianism are the following tenets:

    1. God can’t (or doesn’t want to) coexist with Sin
    2. God requires blood sacrifices, usually animals, to purify Sin
    3. God offered a loophole, by sacrificing an innocent person anyone can point at that sacrifice and say “I’m using this sacrifice to purify my sins”.
    4. Because there are no Sinless humans he had to come down in human form to sacrifice himself so that he could charge the innocent blood price for the Sins of mankind

    Otherwise why would God need to offer himself as sacrifice to purify sins? Couldn’t he just say “all sins are gone”? However you look at it he asks for a blood sacrifice, however he allows you to cash in his own blood sacrifice in its place, and if you don’t he sends you to Hell, very loving fellow.






  • Honestly, I’m absolutely happy with my Steam Deck, I think it ticks most of your boxes (it even runs Linux, so it’s essentially a portable Linux computer designed for gaming), so I think it’s the better option that you’re looking gor. To your points specifically:

    it’s really geared towards family/party gaming

    There are plenty of party games on Steam.

    it’s Nintendo, so you get the whole usual games (Mario Kart, Zelda, etc.)

    This is the only reason to get a switch, if you want a Nintendo console and Nintendo games this is the way. Everyone who gets a switch understand this is the reason they’re getting it. If this is as strong a point to you that it makes you overlook everything else, then get the switch.

    like most consoles, it’s plug and play and can be enjoyed in the living room (I kind of gave up trying to set up a proper gaming experience with my Linux PCs, given that I don’t have the hardware for it)

    Steam Deck also has a Dock that you can plug to your TV, you’ll need controllers but even so it should be much cheaper in the long run since games are extremely affordable compared to Nintendo.

    the battery life is not great to say the least (2.5 hours takes me back of the Game Gear in early 90s!)

    Haven’t seen many benchmarks of the switch to be honest, but that does sound bad, the Deck only gets that bad battery life if you’re playing Cyberpunk or something, for more casual games it can get upwards of 6h. Plus you can get power banks that fast large it while playing, which I assume is also possible on the switch although the switch 1 used to have some issues with power banks.

    the screen seems to be pretty bad too (at least it’s a step back from the OLED one of the Switch)

    All but the cheapest Deck models now use a 90Hz OLED panel

    the joycons are still not using a Hall effect sensor, meaning they might still be prone to drifting

    While the Deck’s default sticks are not hall effect, they are easily replaceable and Valve sells hall effect replacements on ifixit, so if you ever get drift in your sticks it’s fixable.

    most of the games will not be sold as proper cartridges but as download codes

    If you’re going down this rote Steam sells download codes for much cheaper

    the whole thing (console, additional gamepads, games) is quite pricey

    The Deck is about the same price, but like I said you’ll end up saving in games since you start with your whole Steam Library and can get more games much cheaper.

    it’s Nintendo, famous for their anti-everything (anti-homebrew, anti-emulation, anti-piracy)

    The Deck is by far the most open console you can get, you can even replace the entire OS if you want to, but StramOS is great and you shouldn’t need to.


  • I rarely get into these sorts of debaters because they’re almost always pointless, however a few of the things you said made me want to answer this.

    You’re completely missing the point for the first argument, people can’t choose to fly or kill each other by staring, so if humans were created by God then any flaws in humanity, including but not limited to ability to suffer and cause suffering, is part of God’s design that he could have removed. In other words, if God gave people the option to cause harm knowing they would (omniscience, remember) then he’s directly responsible for everything bad that happens, it’s like a father that gives a sharp knife to a kid and tells him to go run and play with his friends. God could have prevented suffering to begin with, therefore the fact that it exists proves that suffering is part of his plan. If that’s the case then yes, you being bullied and your bully being in an abusive home is all done by design, which is very twisted if you think about it.

    As for the second argument you admit that things exist outside our universe that can affect it, if that’s the case you don’t need God to create the Universe, we could be the result of a collision between two extra dimensional rocks. And that’s sort of the point of that argument, i.e. that you don’t need God to explain the beginning of the Universe because whatever question you have about the origin of the Universe can also be directed at God (e.g. and what caused that) and whatever answer you give using God can also be used for a non-God answer (e.g. extra dimensional causes)


  • Those two arguments are very biased. The first one is only a problem in Christianity, and like you said it’s a silly argument, God can be malicious and that solves that issue.

    The second one is a bit trickier, because you’re making the same mistake you accuse others of making. There are two possibilities, either something can come from nothing, or it can’t. If stuff can come from nothing God is not needed to create the Universe (and while physics have been able to prove this, let’s look at the other possibility just in case). On the other hand if stuff can’t come from nothing then stuff must have always existed, otherwise you will get the problem of where the stuff that did that came from, and that applies to God too, so of you can ask “where did the Big Bang came from if there was nothing” you can also ask “where did God came from if there was nothing”, so in this scenario you also don’t need God, because if it can come from nothing then other stuff can also come from nothing so we’re in the other scenario.

    Also those are two of the weakest arguments against God, and they specifically go after the Christian God of the gaps. Better arguments against the existence of God are usually about pointing at contradictions in the definition, similarly to how you said nothing can come from nothing but made an exception for God, another example is omniscience vs free will (if someone knows what you will do then you’re not free to do different), or omnipotence in itself (can God microwave a burrito so hot that even he can’t eat it?), and if we’re talking about the specific Christian deity the fact that he needs an innocent blood sacrifice to forgive people should be a clear indicator of the type of being you’re dealing with, and it’s not an all loving entity.


  • It’s strange how I never see this mentioned anywhere, but there’s a way to get unique secure passwords for every site/app without needing to store them anywhere. It’s called LessPass, and essentially generates passwords based on 3 fields (site, username, master password) and works relatively well, because the advantages are quite obvious I’ll list the potential downsides:

    • If one password is compromised or needs changing for whatever reason you need to increase a counter and need to remember which counter for which site (this is less problematic than it sounds, except in places that have a password policy that forces you to change your password periodically)
    • Android can store the master password and use fingerprint to input it, but in PC you always have to type your master password which can get annoying.
    • You need to change your passwords to this new format, which can take a while, and years down the line you’re trying to login somewhere and don’t remember if you’ve already migrated it or not.



  • As a general rule yeah you can, however the price for stuff if you’re not insured is very expensive, but it will likely still be much cheaper than the USA, and also if it’s not an emergency you might have trouble being able to get to a doctor. Let me give you an example, we were visiting Spain when my wife fell and twisted her ankle, we had to call an ambulance, she had an emergency consultation with an X-RAY (luckily she didn’t broke anything), and because we had forgotten our sanitary card we had to pay foreign prices, i.e. €200. That looks expensive to us because if we had brought that card it would have been free, but that same thing in the US could cost us $5000 so overall lot cheaper.

    That being said, in Ireland for my wife to go to an Endocrinologist we had to:

    • Register with a GP
    • Book an appointment for that GP
    • Pay that appointment
    • Convince the GP you need to see an Endocrinologist. If he disagrees you won’t get to an Endocrinologist.
    • The GP books the Endocrinologist appointment for you, or sends an email to the endocrinologist allowing you to book it
    • You pay for the Endocrinologist appointment
    • You go there and explain your symptoms, he’ll likely order blood exam and ask you to return on another day
    • You book and pay the blood exams
    • Do the blood exam
    • Book and pay the return consultation to the endocrinologist

    Overall cost was around €1000 and took us over a month to go through all of that. And again this might feel cheap for you, but to us feels expensive. And because of the initial requirement to register with the GP tourists can’t do it. Not sure how other countries work, in Spain we book stuff through our insurance and just show the insurance card and haven’t paid anything in over a year.