Musician, mechanic, writer, dreamer, techy, green thumb, emigrant, BP2, ADHD, Father, weirdo

https://www.battleforlibraries.com/

#DigitalRightsForLibraries

  • 16 Posts
  • 156 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • I think there’s a misconception about elected officials. Many people believe they work to improve the lives of American citizens, but they don’t.

    This. They want votes. They do what they think will get them votes. And yet, often – and in the last election – the democrats that help the people (like by walking a union picket line, supporting LGBTQ+ and basic human rights, legalizing cannabis, reducing penalties petty crimes, etc.) don’t get the votes that are part of the bargain.

    They vote for and enact legislation that helps the people, and the people don’t re-elect them. The incentive shifts to satisfying wealthy donors.





  • A band is not the same as a luxury fashion brand.

    One is exploited by massive corporations, gets a single digit percentage of the profits they generate, gets known by word of mouth (or T-shirt) among fans, and creates a piece of culture.

    The other is a (usually massive) corporation, exploits low paid workers, is a status symbol for the rich and the people who want to appear as rich, and sometimes they make an item that could technically be considered a piece of culture.

    Advertising for and/or showing your support for them are very different things that imply different things, for different reasons.

    Wearing band merch implies support for their musical stylings, a connection with the creative output of the band, and possibly their world view.

    Wearing a logo-festooned piece of couture clothing implies wealth and status, and (often) complicity with sweat shops.

    While the two previous paragraphs seem to be similar, because of the first two paragraphs, they are quite different.



  • I used to participate in (what was then) the largest and most active automotive enthusiast forum for a specific brand. They had forums for each major model run, and classifieds, etc. I’d go there for how-to’s, detailed info, reviews, tips and tricks, and of course, to tall with like-minded people. Meet ups even spawned from these groups, and friendships were forged.

    As it really picked up steam, though, the forum creators decided to monetize, as every large website grapples with how to sustain their growth. Unfortunately, they decided to implement ads, subscription/pay wall, and within a month, there were five competing websites. The majority of us left in the first two weeks.

    Now that forum still exists, but the content is gone, deleted by users who didn’t appreciate their content being monetized (sound familiar, June 2023?). The replacements? Some struggle on, and one or two are vibrant, but mostly, it imploded. There was one glorious pair of years though, when I (and thousands of others) spent hours every day on the forum, and every topic was covered.

    In hindsight, the downfall was more than just the advertisements and pay walling. It was a few non-admins that were treated as defacto mods, and they had bad attitudes. Flaming anyone who asked questions that were asked before (this was before Google made searching easier), and also holding their own practices as the only way to maintain their cars.

    The reddit versions of the forums were not remotely the same, with people coming and going and not really sticking around. The best place for the info is still forums, though I think they struggle with server upkeep and costs. It’s sad to me, but all things change. I’m glad for archive.org.










  • Kodi on my 2015 Nvidia Shield doesn’t stutter for me playing back 30GB+ 4k files on a 1Gb network from an ancient (2012) AMD Athlon TrueNAS box. It could be network related, but you can test this from another machine (laptop, desktop, etc) or by using local playback on the pi. I have cheap network hardware, and have never needed better. All this is to say Kodi mounting NFS shouldn’t need much bandwidth or high end gear. Perhaps the issue is on the playback side. Good luck!

    Edit: and an




  • I’ve been reluctant to use Timeshift (in rsync mode) because I’ve twice ended up hosed by it (quite possibly because of a fundamental misunderstanding).

    Doesn’t Timeshift create snapshot files that your system ends up living in, much like VMware?

    Case in point, I misconfigured the Timeshift backup location and wanted to correct it. I deleted snapshot files and went about pointing to the new location. But on reboot, all failed because the snapshot files were apparently live, and could no longer be found. I was dead in the water and had to reinstall. A few weeks later I tried again and ended up in the same situation where a snapshot location was removed and the system failed.

    Now I’m afraid to use it.

    I frequently read posts and other info like this that lead me to believe I just did something wrong and can benefit from using Timeshift, but I also don’t want to rely on running from snapshot files, and prefer my backup to live in snapshots, rather than my live system.

    I’m used to snapshots in TrueNAS and virtualization, so this should be an easy transition, but experience has taught me fear.


  • tl;dr I really don’t get it either.

    I really don’t understand how people can do it. I moved to a developing nation in the Caribbean. Everyone’s livelihood is connected to nature here. Reefs, especially. Yet every local I have met will casually toss their garbage. I went to a festival on the beach and most of the locals were burying their trash in the sand just enough to keep it from blowing away in the moment. Some don’t even bother with that pretense. There were trash cans in easy strolling distance, every 50 feet.

    The roads and waterways are stuffed with garbage here. I live on a canal that connects to the sea, and have watched tour guides and fishing expeditions tossing plastic bottles, polystyrene food containers and plastic bags overboard daily for two years. These are the same people protesting dredging their flats and cayes near the reef, but inexplicably and deliberately ignorant of their own impact.

    Also interesting to observe is the speed at which the nation transitioned from class and aluminum drink containers to plastics. Mt first visit here was just three years ago, and most drinks were in bottles that were clearly recycled. Laser etch marks, rubbing from other bottles, etc. Now its all plastic. There’s a national ban on single use plastics, but it isn’t enforced, and it all ends up in the water and in the ground.

    When I first witnessed the ghastly indifference of everyone here regarding proper disposal of garbage, I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was like watching a bunch of five year-old kids, the way they shamelessly toss their trash to the wind.