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Grimpen @lemmy.ca
Posts 11
Comments 401
Beyond technical features: why we need to talk about the values of the Fediverse (part 1)
  • The Cathedral and the Bazaar is considered a classic, but it's been 20+ years since I read it. I'm curious how well it holds up.

    I was trying to recall some points from C&B and I realized I was muddling much of it up with The Hacker Ethic by Pekka Himanen from the same era, so apparently that made an impression as well.

  • Beyond technical features: why we need to talk about the values of the Fediverse (part 1)
  • I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting by "Values of the Fediverse", but I was pleasantly surprised! It focuses on what over the decades seem to be the core values of Open Source software movements, such as openness, independence, and freedom to use the software how you choose to use it. Just applied to the concept of social media. Which makes sense.

    My main home account is on Lemmy.ca not Lemmy.ml ( or another Lemmy instance) because that is how I've chosen to associate, and I can. And I could spin up my own instance, and federate or de-federate with whomever I choose.

    This isn't a novel concept, OpenSource.com has a page on "The Open Source Way" which espouses transparency, collaboration, "Release early and often", inclusive meritocracy, and community. I remember reading "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" back in the day, and Eric Raymond seemed to extrapolate several values or principle from the open source model.

    The free software movement does implicitly have positions on "political" topics. Right to repair, DRM, and privacy come to mind immediately. These shouldn't be seen as being "Left" or "Right",

  • I got SWAT'ed and handcuffed live while Linux development streaming!
  • The police also knocked and only entered after he answered it sounded like. While certainly armed and probably prepared for something wild, they didn't force entry with guns at the ready.

    Once again, mostly comparing to videos of US police interactions, which is kind of weird as a non-USian commenting on a German police interrogation. Would be curious to see an "audit the audit" type review of this.

  • There's a reason we aren't as harsh on the Steam Deck. Actually, a couple.
  • Thanks to KDE on the SD, I've switched my main DE on my desktop. Still have a soft spot for XFCE, but KDE Plasma on the SD was polished and was very "coherent".

    One thing the SD is missing for being a complete "serious" computer is printing support. I'm sure I could it installed, the SD is eminently hackable, but a Flatpak solution or a Steam default solution would really justify using a SD in Desktop mode for school and work.

  • Former Langley MP candidate's YouTube channel linked to Russian operation
  • Yeah, it being Lauren Southern is more notable than a former candidate as a Langley MP.

    I'm assuming this is related to those two Russians with RTv recently indicted funneling something like 9.7 million USD through presumably Tenet Media, where Lauren is a… media personality? Influencer? Pundit? Host? Streamer? Cam girl?

  • Question about proportional voting
  • First, the largest electoral district in 2021 was Edmonton-Wetaskawin, with 209, 431. The smallest was Labrador with 26,655. Elections Canada does try and even out the sizes of the ridings in population, but that is only one of several considerations, but still a smaller gap than 1,000,000 and 100. But your point does still stand, in that this could be seen as a problem with our pure FPTP system. Labrador voters have around 8 times the say Edmonton voters do. To be fair, the extremes narrow pretty fast and do converge fairly solidly around the 70-110k range.

    So as to how that would change in some sort of PR system... it depends.

    First, do you keep 338 seats in Parliament? Are they all going to be tied to ridings or will you be using some sort of list-based PR system? I'll use two examples, STV and MMP, since they are more well know.

    Single Transferable Vote (STV) would group several smaller ridings together to form larger multicandidate ridings. Voters rank the candidates numerically. The least popular candidates are dropped sequentially until Depending on how you want to divide up and group the ridings and how big you want them is pretty much open. Typically, I don't think you want more than 7 candidates or it gets confusing, and in much of Canada you already have big ridings. Plus population centres can skew things. Do you make all of Vancouver Island a bigger 7 seat district, or do you break Victoria out into it's own 4 seater and the rest of Vancouver Island a 3 seater? The Territories each have one riding that is pretty darn big, and already much smaller than average (all three would make a single average sized riding). You could just have single seaters, so basically exactly what we have now but with IRV (Instant Runoff Voting). Better than FPTP, but not very proportional

    Mixed Member Proportional would keep the single seat ridings and add "top-up" seats assigned from party lists, or have fewer bigger ridings to free up seats to be assigned from party seats. Voters would vote for their local candidate as currently, and local candidates are assigned as under FPTP. The voters might also mark a party preference which would be used to assign the makeup seats, or the vote for the local candidate would be also used to indicate party preference. Or there could also be an open list.

    So I guess the final answer is it depends. And balancing people vs. area is already a problem, and although a new voting system might solve some of those problems, you are going to have disagreements on what the problem even is. Arguably using some flavour of MMP the most "fair" (for some definitions of fair) since even if Labrador's 26,000 people have way more say than Edmonton-Wetaskawin's 209,000, it will pretty much all come out in the wash since their votes will be evened out in the make-up seats assigned by party list.

    Also, this is not exhaustive. There are other systems and tweaks to systems (q.v. RUP, Rural-Urban Proportional ) that could work even better for Canada federally.

  • Burger King Bacon Burger $5 Meal - Sauce For Scale
  • Rarely drink bottled water, because the tap water is great where I grew up. I absolutely thought it was weird how much some people drank bottled water. Then I tried Edmonton (Canada) water.

    Heck Nestle bottles the tap water from Hope, BC. They claim they filter it, and I'm sure they do, but the municipal water in Hope is great, and I'm sure their purification equipment don't have to do much. Hope isn't even the best municipal water in BC.

    Good to hear that if I ever get around to visiting Utrecht I can try some competitive municipal water.

  • Founder and CEO of Telegram messaging service arrested in France
  • The standard I recall being established back in the nineties as to whether strong encryption was even legal in the US was "substantial non-infringing use" or similar. It's been awhile.

    The problem with key-escrow or anything similar is that any proscribed circumvention is also available to the "bad guys".

    I think Telegram's stance would be that they can't moderate because of strong end-to-end encryption. Back in the day the parallel would have been made to the phone system or mail.

    Of course this is all happening in France, so I have no idea what the combination of French and EU laws will have on this, but I would still broadly expect that if a parallel can be made to mail or phone, Telegram would be in the clear. The phone company and mail service have no expectation of content moderation.

    I guess we'll see.

  • The Best way to switch to Linux is to NOT
  • Pretty much exactly what happened to me. Mostly open source apps on Windows. Set up dual boot with Windows default. One day I noticed I was switching to Linux more often than not, so changed to Linux default.

  • Canadian b-boy Phil Wizard takes gold in Olympic breaking final
  • I watched the final, it was impressive, but I have no technical knowledge about what was happening.

    I remember in the 3rd round, Dany Dan made a mistake, the announcers commented on it, and I had no idea what the mistake was.

  • Portable music player
  • If you can get one of those cassette adapters, you can test the tape deck of interest first.

    Technology Connections on YouTube had an episode on those tape adapters, but I can't remember the reason why she some tape decks don't work with those cassette adapters.

    So far I've only had that one tape deck not work.

  • Portable music player
  • Yes… in the cassette players that work with those adapters. Annoyingly, the old stereo we have set up at work in one shop doesn't work with those casette adapters or the Mixxtape.

    Also, if you use it in a tape deck, it doesn't use the spools as inputs. You just set it playing and pop it in. Similar to my old Digisette Duo Aria.

    I will admit, I have rarely used the tape deck function, but it has been useful on occasion.

  • My Son is Enjoying His New (to Him) 3DS

    No eShop? No problem! We've had a bit of luck with used games not at "collectable" prices, but we've discovered hShop and CFW.

    Still have a R4 card as well, and it's great that he is able to experience some classic games on the original hardware.

    With all the news around Yuzu (and Citra) recently, it just reminds me about the importance of "Piracy" in game preservation.

    Thanks to this community for existing, and the extensive FAQs!

    5

    Planet/Euclid: Looks Like A Junimo Hut (SDV)

    cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/12911649

    > When I first found it, it did also give an entered building message, but I haven't managed to test it in a storm. I'm currently distracted in my Permadeath run looking for more of these ... structures?

    3

    Planet/Euclid: Looks Like A Junimo Hut (SDV)

    When I first found it, it did also give an entered building message, but I haven't managed to test it in a storm. I'm currently distracted in my Permadeath run looking for more of these ... structures?

    0

    Voyagers, How's it Going?

    Down to my last task ("Hot Blooded"). Even though there wasn't much plot in Voyagers, this was one of my favourite Expeditions the first time around. I remember the first time around, I got stuck on finding a suitably hostile world, but I think in this Redux, the "Eternal Garden" (paradise world), "Unwelcome" (hostile > 84%), "Corrosive Blood" (creature with low blood pH), and lots of others were completed in the starting system.

    I figure I just need to go back to the hotter worlds and start scanning critters I missed the first pass, and I'll be done.

    One thing I liked about the first run of Voyagers is that there was almost two months to do it the first time around. It was billed as "relaxing" and it was. I nearly took the full two months, but I swapped back and forth between my main save and Voyagers, until I finished with a week to go (trouble with "Unwelcome" as I recall). This Redux is 10 days, which is longer than the other Redux ones, and they seem to have strategically placed the Rendezvous to help complete, but a little bit longer would have been a little bit nicer. Or at least more relaxed.

    2

    Cartographers, How's It Going?

    I started my save within an hour of the expedition going live. And spawned in a storm, with multiple hostile critters. I died twice in two minutes, deleted the cursed save, and tried again. Did better, but fell into a cave system killing critters (with a mining laser), and got lost… before I could build the Terrain Manipulator. After 20 minutes, I deleted the cursed save, and started again. Third time's the charm! Much better start, even grabbed some Storm Crystals for later right at the start.

    Needed to get some work done, but I've gotten a couple of hours in since yesterday, steady progress, having fun stumbling around, but I can see I'm going to get stuck looking for Crystal Sulphide. I don't think I'm anywhere near the ocean, although I see 3 underwater creatures on this world so there must be some somewhere. I've got the Minotaur built, but that doesn't seem the best way to search for ocean, it's a little slow. If only I had a spaceship… oh wait, that's what the Crystal Sulphide's for.

    Also, got killed again, by one of those evil teddy bears that jumped me while I was killing a couple of the crystal spider dudes. Was close to my base, but still! Embarrassing.

    10

    Police investigating shots fired overnight at 2 Jewish schools in Montreal

    Montreal police are investigating after shots were fired at two Jewish schools.

    4

    Loosing Standing, Are My Starter Freighter Crew Pirates At Heart?

    Just started the new community expedition, so first real taste of the Echoes update. I think my starter freighter crew are engaging in some light piracy on the side. My standing with the main system race keeps ticking down every so often, and I gain rep with the Outlaws faction. At least if they are going to go rogue and loot merchants, they can cut me in for a piece of the action!

    Didn't see anything in the patch notes.

    ---

    From @[email protected] :

    > @Kaymorak @Grimpen It’s a bug. Whenever another player engages civilian freighters, they gain standing with outlaws, and lose it with the local race running the system… And the bug makes ANY player in that system gain and lose. :P > > It’ll hopefully be fixed in the upcoming patch, which is in test.

    I've stopped this happening so much by parking my freighter in quieter systems. Without a steady supply of salvaged frigate modules I haven't upgraded my freighter much anyways. If your freighter isn't somewhere where other players and you are at the same time, it should hoist the Jolly Roger.

    7

    Got an emergency alert on my phone earlier, here's some more details.

    If course I quickly acknowledged it, so my phone would stop wailing, so missed the details.

    42
    thenarwhal.ca Life in a northern B.C. boomtown | The Narwhal

    Settled in the 1950s to support an aluminum smelter, Kitimat is no stranger to industrial development. As the town adapts to life with LNG Canada and other projects, its community faces new challenges and new opportunities

    Life in a northern B.C. boomtown | The Narwhal

    My old stomping grounds. Recognize some people from the article.

    0

    I've Joined The Ducknana Cult

    Just got this guy for Father's Day.

    Fellow Reddit refugees might remember…

    7

    Highway 4 Between Port Alberni and Parksville

    Highway 4 is still closed near Cameron Lake. This is cutting off Port Alberni, Uclulet and Tofino from the rest of the island, unless you want to use back roads.

    0