PorkrollPosadist

joined 4 years ago
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[–] PorkrollPosadist@hexbear.net 7 points 2 years ago

None.

X-Plane comes close to FlightGear. It has far-superior visuals. fully functional glass cockpits like the Garmin G1000, and simulated ATC, but the vast array of community-made planes available in FlightGear still kinda seals it for me, despite the jank.

FreeCAD has its pain points. Software like Creo Parametric is much more robust in a lot of ways, but I literally cannot run it on Linux (no mouse-wheel zoom in WINE, slide show in QEMU). Fundamentally, they are similar enough, and my work primarily takes place on a component level so I can live without the streamlined assembly workflow. Also, FreeCAD doesn't cost >$2000, and can still do FEM analysis and computational fluid dynamics. Maybe I could find a crack for SolidWorks and try that out, but it takes a long ass time to learn a CAD system proficiently.

Everyone who learned on Photoshop says the GIMP interface is weird, but I learned on GIMP and can say the same for Photoshop.

Games are the only exception, but games aren't fungible. Minecraft is not a substitute for Dwarf Fortress. CS:GO is not a substitute for Unreal Tournament.

[–] PorkrollPosadist@hexbear.net 18 points 2 years ago

Well, they asked. shrug-outta-hecks

[–] PorkrollPosadist@hexbear.net 4 points 2 years ago

The Red Menace episode covering On Contradiction did a lot for me.

[–] PorkrollPosadist@hexbear.net 19 points 2 years ago (1 children)

We got banned for "breaking rules." They never specified which ones in their announcement.

[–] PorkrollPosadist@hexbear.net 69 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

If you want to take the issue of social media manipulation seriously, you need to take a moment to consider who is best positioned and best motivated to carry out these operations. The vast majority of the English-speaking social media platforms are headquartered in Silicon Valley, domiciled in the US. This includes TikTok. Despite all the hippie California Ideology bullshit, the Valley has been closely linked with the Pentagon since its inception (See Palo Alto by Malcom Harris, or Surveillance Valley by Yasha Levine as two examples of this history.) Today, these giant tech firms still live off the teat of military contracts. From Microsoft to Google to Amazon.

The social media platforms enjoy a regime of immense power and nil regulations. There are a lot of ways the state could cause these companies pain if it were interested, from rescinding contracts to imposing regulation, to engaging in some bona fide anti-trust litigation, but this doesn't happen because they have an understanding. These companies collaborate with the state in surveillance, they install figures like Jessica Ashooh at Reddit - straight out of the Atlantic Council - to run moderation policy. They facilitate counterinsurgency by sweeping up disclosures like the Blue Leaks and shutting down dissident communities in the midst of large scale civil unrest. They flood these platforms with war propaganda when it is convenient, lay the seeds of doubt whenever US interests are challenged abroad. They allow floods of fake users to post positively about US-aligned coups like the one in Bolivia, or the SOSCuba nonsense. We literally have military formations who's sole task is to manipulate opinion on social media.

These are the people manipulating public opinion on social media. They are the ones holding the keys to the platforms. The ones who DECIDE what the algorithm is going to show you day after day after day. The ones who let shitholes like r/The_Donald to run roughshod for years, then ban communities like r/ChapoTrapHouse in the middle of the biggest domestic protest movement in US history. The ones who remove moderators from places like r/PresidentialRaceMemes and replace them with ideologues from r/Neoliberal to ensure the website closes ranks against the most underwhelming candidate and political vision conceivable for the moment.

Seriously consider the power held by the people operating these platforms. What they believe. What their material interests are. Who they network with. Who they do business with. What constraints exist to severely punish them if they undermine the interests of state. Consider that, and balance that against the overblown panic about foreign influence bots. Which one do you think has a bigger impact?

States are massive, chaotic social systems. I'm not going to say that foreign influence ops don't occur, because within each state there are competing factions with different interests. But consider China is much more concerned with domestic conditions within their country than they are about what a bunch of Redditors, who they have blocked, think about them anyway. Consider the same about Russia. Consider the disparity in power these countries have to manipulate infrastructure owned and operated in the United States compared to the people who actually own it, and the state agencies which have the jurisdiction to destroy these firms if they step out of line.

5
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by PorkrollPosadist@hexbear.net to c/videos@hexbear.net
 

Larry Hamm is a legendary New Jersey activist. In this video, he gives a speech about Black history in America.

He comes across a bit Obama-pilled at times in the video, but this was 10 years ago, and he is generally very good at speaking to an audience. I met him once at a DSA meeting and he was talking to us about Mao Zedong lmfao.

[–] PorkrollPosadist@hexbear.net 39 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (7 children)

The average non-Marxist has heard of the Communist Manifesto and thinks that is the extent of the philosophical canon. The average Liberal has not even read any Liberal philosophy, like Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Paine, etc.

[–] PorkrollPosadist@hexbear.net 2 points 2 years ago

Can you add a CW to this, per the site rules (photos of animal products)?

[–] PorkrollPosadist@hexbear.net 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Basically, on Fedora you are a guinea pig for whatever new tech Red Hat (now IBM) is considering rolling out. It is a well polished distro and I have set it up on several people's computers, but they will be among the first to just foist a whole new replacement subsystem on their users. Can be interesting if you like experimental shit (and what comes to Fedora tends to stick around [i.e. PulseAudio, systemd], unlike a lot of the shit Canonical has tried to introduce [i.e. Upstart, Mir]). Can be a major headache if you are trying to use something which requires iptables and they have jumped into nftables with both feet (for instance).

[–] PorkrollPosadist@hexbear.net 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

You can pry gentoo from my cold dead hands. The ability to do things like mix LTS and git HEAD packages at will is yuuge, as well as the dynamic dependency graph based on enabled features. Some newer distros like Nix and Guix come close, and even offer the ability to skip compilation via their package caches, but they have a number of pain points in my personal experience.

[–] PorkrollPosadist@hexbear.net 44 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I'm going to lock this thread at some point tonight, so that other threads may be born.

 

Gamers owned.

 

One of my coworkers asked if it would be possible for me to 3D print some hydroponic gardening supplies, and I was like hell yeah, so I looked into it. I showed him a couple designs and we settled on building this thing. I'm definitely going to make one for myself as well. (I think an NFT design would be better, but I don't have the space for one and he preferred the tower design).

The whole point of 3D printing the thing is to reduce costs (apparently you can buy shit like this, but it's hella expensive). However, net pots are dirt cheap and it would be really cool to buy them instead of 3D printing them. The catch is, this design uses rather deep pots, and even Lord Bezos is not making them easy to find.

I haven't started printing anything yet (waiting for larger diameter nozzles in the mail) so I have some time to modify the parts, but I was wondering if anybody knows about garden suppliers which carry stuff like this. Specifically, I'm looking for rather deep net pots which are about 53mm / 2" in diameter (easy to find) but 93mm / 4" deep (not so easy to find).

I can print them if I need to, but it will literally take days.

Also, if any more experienced gardeners have any thoughts / concerns / recommendations about this design, I'd be delighted to hear them.

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