No Stupid Questions

In Russia, they have only 1 party left, so the party clearly doesn't matter. In Usa, it is not an official dictator yet. In other countries with a dictatorship, I don't know about their parties. So do you know any examples where the parties still matter?

I get the stupid basic excuse about big tech purchasing loads of silicon. That reasoning seems deeply flawed and idiotic to me. If Deepseek R1 democratizes training more for less, then that means customers with mid to small size data centers like universities now have access to train and research models in this space. Nvidia does not have a real competitor, so they get the sale. Their potential customer base just grew exponentially right? OpenAI should be devalued massively by this change, but I don't see why anything impacts Nvidia negatively in this instance. Am I missing something or is the market this level of stupid? (I have no skin in this game)

It's possible to have a procedural Gaussian noise texture using shaders?

So, if the president dies, the procedure is that the vice president would then become president for the remainder of the term.

But what would happen if some extremist group somehow kidnapped the president (any sitting president, so this isn't targeted towards trump specifically, although I guess for the next 4 years it would be).

Like, lets say every Monday at noon, this extremist group did a live stream somehow, showing that the president is still alive, still coherent, but ballgagged so they can't just blurt out where they are.

And lets say that nobody is able to figure out where they're broadcasting from. For years.

Would that president remain president? Or would they treat them as dead, even though they're shown to be alive, and vice president becomes president for the remainder of the term?

I don't know if I'm opening a can of worms here, and I'm still trying to backtrack a lot of history where I was tuning everything out. I keep seeing random swipes at Signal (or the representatives (?)), and I was wondering whether they are founded or just lies.Is it another situation like Lemmy where we just "take the technology and move on"? Thanks!

Obviously, with a state adversary, you'd be fucked.

But how about, if I want to prevent a douchbag sibling or roommate from replacing the bootloader of an encrypted laptop, with a malicious version they got from some dark web site as a "prank"? Assuming you can't just lock the device in a safe.

With phones, they all have verified boot.

But with Windows + Veracrypt, an attacker can just replace the Veracrypt Bootloader.

Is there an alternative? Or do I just have to use Bitlocker? (again, non-state adversaries)

I live in a country where smoking has generally been on the decline for a while now but even still I see thousands of cigarette butts in just about any public place. They litter the sides of the road, bus shelters, alleyways, outside clubs, bars and pubs, public toilets, park benches and just about everywhere else. Its even extending to disposable vapes now as well.

For the most part, where I live doesn't have that much of other kinds of litter about and is generally clean. And most public bins and all smoking areas have ashtrays and dedicated cigarette bins so it wouldn't be hard to dispose of them properly like any other piece of rubbish and even then there's often cigarette butts within sight of the bins and ashtrays.

Why then do people have a completely different approach for cigarettes?

I read the section two definition of "chemical and surgical mutilation" and it mentions altering sex organs to remove their biological functions. One of the biological functions of a penis is to produce sperm. So could this mean no more federal coverage for vasectomies as well as stuff like tubal litigation or hysterectomies? And yes, I know that people under 19 don't usually get permanent sterilization procedures anyways, but I still wonder about this interpretation.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/protecting-children-from-chemical-and-surgical-mutilation/

The phrase “chemical and surgical mutilation” means the use of puberty blockers, including GnRH agonists and other interventions, to delay the onset or progression of normally timed puberty in an individual who does not identify as his or her sex; the use of sex hormones, such as androgen blockers, estrogen, progesterone, or testosterone, to align an individual’s physical appearance with an identity that differs from his or her sex; and surgical procedures that attempt to transform an individual’s physical appearance to align with an identity that differs from his or her sex or that attempt to alter or remove an individual’s sexual organs to minimize or destroy their natural biological functions. This phrase sometimes is referred to as “gender affirming care.”

Every time a film, animated series has non-white characters as protagonists, there are always rights complaining and saying that it is woke or when they can't say that it is woke, then they invent some defect to give hate to the stories?

You may not like their posts but that doesn’t automatically make them a troll. If they’re trying to get a reaction, then yes, but sometimes, these “trolls” aren’t even trolls

After the Proton CEO twitter scandal, I'm thinking of getting a domain that I own. But problem is, all my email address would be @mydomainname.com instead of @protonmail which millions of people use. Isn't that just linking all your account together. Even if you create a separate email address for every account, they all still identify to your domain and the surveillance corporations can link your accounts together to your identity. So I'm not sure about having own domain name...

🤔

And its hard to even pick a name that sound good when you say it like Pro-ton-mail is easy to pronounce, I can't think of some good domain name like that to choose.

I'm sure I know the answer, but I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt and asking you guys. I honestly thought airpods and headphones were more popular than this.

I've had Gmail for years, since it was still invite only even, and never had any problems with spam.

Except for the last month I've been getting so much spam, anyone else experiencing the same?

Did they switch their spam filter over to Gemini or something?

Btw I'm trying to degoogle and am mostly off Gmail, but have to use it for some stuff, since someone would definitely tell me.

Like, how are you, not just as a greeting.

Growing up, my dad would point at any boat he saw and said "Yadja boat!" As we grew older, it finally occurred to us to ask what that meant, and he said that "Yadja" meant "there goes", so we all had a good laugh that he was just saying "there goes the boat" for years.

Time passes and the Internet becomes commonplace. I cannot get a translation of "there goes" that looks anything like "Yadja" even accounting for not really speaking the language. Asking Dad, he doesn't know how it is spelled and, being born and raised in America, doesn't really speak/read Polish.

So, my questions: is there a word in Polish that sounds kinda like "yadja"? Does it mean "there goes"? Is it some sort of slang or is it completely made up by dear old dad?

Edit: thanks, all, jedzie it is! It might not be the word that he should have used, but at least we have the answer to what he was trying to say, lol.

Sometimes we use the other bathroom, same deal. I never find the lid down, she never finds it up.

I feel like this is some magic that should never be talked about openly, like we agreed without speech and discussing it would break something. Lived with many women, this has never happened.

I'm just being weird, aren't I? I love her for it in any case.

EDIT: I wasn't clear. I'm talking about the seat. We're gross and don't put the lid down when we flush. Yes, I'm aware that tosses bacteria around, don't care. Unless one of us ends up with a compromised immune system, it's not a big deal. And we pretty much never fall ill.

Many EU countries have a "VAT" and like feel like this is kinda targeting poor people. Like, for the rich, this is insignificant, for poorer people, a (example) 20% tax would be a huge burden. Why do they do this?

🤔

Okay, posting this here because it is literally called No Stupid Questions, but I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on this.

I got a message today on Reddit saying I was permabanned . . . I had really good karma there, never received any notification that I had done anything wrong, and never had a post deleted. The message said to check my inbox for more details . . . but there were no details in my inbox. I tried to appeal, and it was just denied in a couple of hours. No explanation.

Anyone else experience this or know what other avenues I can take? I'm going to be honest here, I had made a lot of friends there. I suppose I could make a throwaway account to let them know where else they can find me, but I'm pretty bummed out.

For context: I kind of prided myself as being a "Ted Lasso of Reddit." I mostly just got on to give people pep talks in the beginner fitness and /toastme subreddits. I'm going to miss that a lot, and I kind of needed a community right now, even if it was an online one. But, hey, maybe that's just my sign to check out this place instead. I'll try to look at the bright side.

Someone I know shows stuff such as:

• constantly needing a scapegoat
• shifting blame/cannot take accountability
• exaggerated mindset, often where other people are useless and they are the greatest
• has to maintain a very positive public image, such as being the absolute best
• does not have empathy unless it involves them or impacts their image in some way, if their image is supposed to be empathetic they will act so because of their image
• lacks empathy for people in pain/bad mental health/etc. but their image might be very upset about that
• will often be very nice to people in any sort of power

I’m asking because I’m genuinely curious if I should help, and maybe that even if they exhibit negative behaviors, they’re not a completely TERRIBLE person despite how they treat me.