What you’re saying reminds me of things that vegans say: “If everybody knew the full story, they’d change their behaviour”. I think this is only partially true since change is hard.

I lurk in some vegan forums for the recipes but the majority of posts seem intended to invoke outrage, probably to help promote behaviour change.

Now, what if there were books and movies and forums about the horrors of automated factories? Would people change?

Mostly true, but a few months ago there was some reports of an automatic firmware update that blocked 3rd party ink or toner. It was probably my fault since I just bought a Brother and this sort of thing always seems to happen to me.

This reminds me, I need to learn how to partition my network to keep thebprinter from reaching the internet.

Cory doctrow frequently writes about how voting with your dollars is somewhat ineffective because then the richest people have the most votes.

I still boycott places, though.

I don’t know the building code for your area or if it would even work with the other stuff in the area, but the idea is to lay at least 2x2’s every 16", put Styrofoam between the 2x2’s, lay plastic or tyvek or some vapor barrier over it all then lay down plywood and carpet on top of that. It’s a lot of work to retrofit this into an existing space, but if you’re starting over, it may be worthwhile.

I had a townhouse on a concrete slab and in the winter, the cold would transfer through the concrete to the point that when it was below 0F, the water lines running through the concrete would freeze up.

Probably true, but there were still some useful bots that I enjoyed on a regular basis like the metric conversion bot, the invidious link switcher and the remindme bot.

I think that Lemmy will allow you to use bots only if you declare them as such which should allow users to block or allow to customize their own experiences.

In addition to the other advice, if it is reasonable to do so, you would benefit from raising the floor up a bit to add insulation and a vapor barrier. The concrete will draw in the cold and humidity.

I’d take those last 5 bullets. I’ve worked hard to gain salary only to find that it didn’t matter. Every review I’ve ever had was a lie. If I was given a good raise, I was told that it was my hard work. If it was a bad raise, they found one item to give me ‘satisfactory’. A bunch of us shared our salaries over drinks one evening and we all were about the same. That was a big surprise to me.

Back to the point of the original article, employees talking is bad for employers. Unionization is one way to solve the collective agreement problem, but there are others. When employees (or any group for that matter) organize, they can make things happen.

I hear this argument against unionization all the time:

During those days the only thing a tech union would do would make your life balance better, but at the cost of your salary.

It feels like fear mongering when there are no data to back it up (this is not a knock against your post, it’s a complaint against the argument against unionization). I only know one person in a union and they have limited anecdotal data that shows that the cost of being in a union is offset by salary gains.

Ditto. I started my linux journey with Slackware 1.0 that I got in a book. I quickly got tired of dual booting so I picked up a used 486dx66 on Craigslist. It even came with a green on black 12" CRT! I took a class and started hacking on the kernel to learn the innards. I fixed a semaphore issue, improved the task scheduler for performance and constantly rebuilt the kernel for performance (before modularized drivers were a thing). I learned not to panic from a kernel panic.

Slackware’s “package manager” was a notepad next to the computer. I switched to debian later and loved the whole idea of a package manager. Mostly because it was a trove of free software, but also because it would handle all the dependencies for me and cleanly uninstall (at a time when disk space was valuable).

Those were the days! Long live apt & apt-get!

For those too lazy to click through to the article and don’t know what an Ai Pin is;

The Humane Ai Pin is a wearable, internet-connected AI device designed to offer a phone-free way to interact with an AI assistant from anywhere.

I’ve installed much tile and tend to notice these things. Uneven grout lines, one tile set higher than its neighbours, uncaulked gaps visible between the tile and wall or tub. I also notice, bad kerning (SFW).

I have the same policy with public toilets. If you flush at the start to verify that it’s working and flush at the end then it’s double the flushes. That’s why I only flush at the start. All my coworkers complain, but they’re not concerned with the environment like me! So wasteful!

I laughed way too hard at this.

They touch on it in the article. What if the goal is to trade globally in cryptocurrency?

While this has been historically true, it’s not working this time.

But the dollar not only failed to strengthen this time, it fell, puzzling economists and hurting consumers. The dollar lost more than 5% against the euro and pound, and 6% against the yen since early April.

As with most things happening under this US administration, he pushes things to the breaking point to see how it reacts. He’s stress testing the global economy. From there, I would guess that he’d back off just before the breaking point and move on to something else.

It’s the only reason I keep a windows VM around. Windows is getting so naggy though. Every time I boot it up, it wants me to update it, install virus scanner and ser up my user on microsoft vs local.

I’ve had the same thought. It’s defeatism. I was told that protests help bring like minded people together to organize, share ideas and implement plans to change things. A person can’t change things but many people can.

What if just being there helps you feel hope again?

While texting is asynchronous, it’s also not guaranteed delivery. I live in an unreliable part of town and work in a Faraday cage (not literally, just surrounded by concrete & rebar). This has made for some epic arguments as to why I didn’t pick up eggs on my way home or whatever. At least a voice mail will eventually come through (since it’s stored on some server).

What does this mean? I had a friend who disappeared and was told by my parents that he was committed. When I asked for more, the details were vague and left me with more questions. What happens? My only perspective is from movies and I’m sure that’s completely wrong.

When filing paperwork, like in those hanging file folders, the papers should be placed into the folder with the paper’s left margin up. This way, any stapled pages can be flipped through as a bunch rather than individual pages. Also, the most important text tends to be left justified, such as the return address. Apparently this goes counter to every accountant’s training, but I’m sticking to it.