Thanks for the link, the nightmare that is unexploded ordinance is a real issue land or sea. I have seen some random videos from people that do magnet fishing or similar small salvage cleanups share about finding some scary shit. Not sure of the channel, but one guy found a lot of ordinance in a park of a big USA city from WW2. Apparently fell in the lake/river (can’t remember which) while in route to be sent to Europe. Also seems common for magnet fishers in Europe to find old grenades and stuff. Which would be true of any places war takes place.

True, and I am sure that the issue is low enough depending on locations (if they lay them far outside of normal shipping lanes). But the same holds true for locating wrecks even when looking for them and having vague ideas as to general areas ships sank. At least if looking in areas that don’t already have history for being where a lot of ships went down. Which I imagine the companies laying the cables tend to avoid for the headache of both causing issues for the cables, and dealing with underwater archeologists trying to preserve sites.

That does sound like a nice watch regardless of my question. Always nice to get recommendations for docs!

Thanks for the link! A little surprised that the article didn’t show up when I was searching.

That seems to track with basically all the other comments that agree with turning a blind eye to finding things that would mess with the job. They would obviously want to make sure the geology/environment won’t mess with the cables. But not really want noteworthy impacts from laying the cables to get plastered everywhere.

Thanks for the long-form answer! I am aware of how much developers on land tend to not be about as frustrated as the archeology folks are excited. It would make sense that folks with high pressure jobs at sea would turn a blind eye if they find anything (I’m sure their bosses/clients also lean on them to only be detail oriented with the cables). I dislike history being treated so poorly for money, but I do understand the dilemma. Betting that they try to keep any of the more honest workers on tasks that make sure eyes stay closed.

Not a bad stance. But they are a major provider of media that regular users might use. They also tend to be the people that would rather not bother with FF if they see it as “not as capable” and never leave Chrome. Which further feeds the goals of Google to be the default just like MS did with IE (but much more cleaver by providing the base for endless forks).

MS fucked up by caring that IE was the “only” option and didn’t push creating such a good base to have forks to keep their versions of “standards.” Google did an amazing job at pouring money into getting Chrome past the early years of lack of mature features (and while they still had good will of helping to get people away from IE).

Not a coder, so my opinion is just opinion. The frustrations presented are valid especially with the open push that AI keeps making to remove all parts of the human element to basically everything. Even beyond his points, we have been seeing such massive levels of tech literacy (and even general literacy) even before the massive LLM bubble. AI isn’t “evil” or “bad” but the rush for profits over uses that actually help humanity (plenty of very real accessibility things that could be game changing if profits weren’t the real reason).

Stuff like Vibe Coding and the lack of understanding old systems and why they were done certain ways means we are beyond fucked if anything happens at different levels. The capitalist profits of companies (especially large and mega corps) come from exploitation of their workers and from the communities of OSS.

The following is personal ranting.

Even just working on PCs for regular people is maddening when my younger co-workers that interact with customers we get have basically zero clue as to things many customers are asking help with. Not like any of them or myself should know everything (especially at a retail PC repair level of pay and zero training outside of “make sales”), but even things from PCs a decade ago is over their heads. One easy example off the top of my head, is just knowing that the normal SATA to USB-A adapters don’t work with 3.5" HDDs due to power and they just assume the drive is dead. Hell even just knowing the general file structure of Windows has become a huge issue for both my younger peers and for the customers knowing where their shit is saved. Went from having some knowledge/understanding, to basically thinking shit is “magic” with zero concern for knowing the trick.

No one “easy tip they don’t want you to know” fixes the person in the post’s problems, or for regaining general tech literacy. But capitalism must go to remove the death spiral of making everything profits over people. And education can’t keep being de-funded which leads to students just being “passed” in order to keep the little bits of funding. The students that would be failing should also not be treated like losers, and not make repeating classes such a big deal (or a social shame). It is better to repeat something and learn, than it is to get into “the real world” and have it much much worse (shit was/is already bad enough with people getting promotions into leadership roles that literally don’t know what the shit is about/how things work).

I have heard about how much more aggressive Windows has became since 10 with how it likes to fuck with partitions for certain updates. If using a desktop (or laptop that has two drive bays/slots) it might be safer to just have a small drive (or large if it is games) for Windows and a large main drive for Linux. Then you can just pick which one to boot at startup via the motherboard’s hot-key. A VM makes more sense for most things, but if a dual boot is needed then two drives is safer.

My main browsers are FF or Zen (a fork of FF), but I think a lot of sites aren’t able to work with just a plug-in due to how deeply they are coded for Chromium. Some of them being Amazon sites like Luna, Amazon Music, and Audible (pretty sure their other media sites/services also refuse to work if any hint of non-Chromium browsers are detected. I have run into non-Amazon sites with media or similar tell me to “update your browser” or “use a supported browser” (which is at least more honest than telling me that my FF is “out of date”).

While there are likely elements in some sites that actually can work with FF (I have had really random moments where I got part of a song to play on Amazon Music but then gives the “browser is out of date” message). The Chromium focused coding is IE all over again. Just a self-fulfilling cycle of making it look like FF is not as capable. And I hate that in the instances where changing the User Agent to be Chrome works, that it just keeps stats looking like Chrome and forks are what people are using (and might lead to seeming like FF is used less than it actually is).

I am guessing that (aside from getting rights to oil) the plan originally was for right-wing leaders, groups, and citizens to rise up and overthrow “the oppressive dictatorship.” Then to “work with the new legitimate government” and send him back to Venezuela to be tried for “treason.” Which I am sure would be execution, or have a big show about the lead-up before finding him have “killed himself to escape justice.”

If anything positive might come out of such a fucked-up level of open terrorism. I hope that it not only leads to the resolve of the people of Venezuelan people standing firm. And all of Central and South American nations to unite in mutual defense. Might not lead to a wave of jumping all-in on socialism/communism, but they all have suffered under the boot of the USA. Any nation that keeps placing USA interests above their own sovereignty only keeps things like this happening.

The right-wing news outlets are already pushing for Cuba to be next. Literally nations that their talking points about “suffering under communist dictatorships” only happen because the USA is allowed to control how other nations can/can’t trade with them. And any USA citizen and politician that can’t wake the fuck up continue to have the blood of all other nations on our hands. This isn’t just about Venezuela, it is also a massive push to further keep attention away from the active genocide that never stopped in Palestine.

Thanks for the link, I just voted for it! I am mostly on Windows for my main PC, but good to know for my Steam Deck and Pi.

“What happened to Maduro can happen to them,” he said.

I hope that he and all the other politicians in the USA understand that this now gives the “okay” for the same to happen to them too. The USA loves to start shit everywhere else and we are groomed into thinking everything only happens in other nations across the world. 9-11 and even Pearl Harbor have shown that such false feelings of “no one would possibly attack USA homeland” are hubris. NATO is a thing, but if a NATO nation is the aggressor, the that Article 5 shit doesn’t apply (to my limited understanding). And the other NATO states really need to stop placing themselves in the same agreements that lead to the first World War.

Even Reddit wasn’t “popular” on the levels that it has been for over a decade. It is more about time and people finding it like they did with early Reddit (and Digg before that). New people will come as long as they see active instances and as more helpful (or even funny) posts/comments show up in search results. Kind of like how a lot of questions in search engines will show basically the same questions being asked on Reddit. Also Lemmy is a little bit confusing to new people that aren’t used to how Fediverse/Lemmyverse sites work. Not very hard, but does feel a bit overwhelming since stuff they are used to are super centralized.

For now most instances kind of feel like BBS/forums back in the 90s/00s, but with a Reddit (or similar sites) kind of layout/interaction style. Which I like since I had a lot of great times on old forums. The subs are still small enough to actually see familiar users show up and have better vibes on them. Though it does mean that new/niche subs have the chance of not getting enough people to get going, and have more people join and post new things.

The extent that pigs will go to in order to put literally anyone away should cause everyone to want to revolt/hunt all the fucking pigs. Too many people are completely fine with giving up all privacy if it “stops even one guilty person.” No one is ever innocent 100% of the time. They just haven’t been caught for things (especially super low level shit) and only think about big level crimes as being what pigs/prosecutors/feds are going after. By their own logic, they better know every single law at every second of the day. They truly can’t conceive of being forced to confess just so a case can be closed to keep arrest stats looking good.

The recent-ish story about that one guy that was broken down so badly that he confessed to murdering his own father after so many hours of interrogation and threats made by the pigs to kill his fucking dog. AND they kept going towards that confession even though his father was found to be completely alive by the same pigs. That shit scared the shit out of me, and that is just ONE example out of the ones you mention and so fucking many others.

The fact that there are functioning mods that do bring back the feature shows how much MS is just making up excuses. Also kind of funny that MS knows it can be useful since they made a big deal about vertical tabs on Edge. Not like previous versions of Windows weren’t wonky about how things worked with the vertical position anyway. Sure far fewer folks bother moving it to the top or sides, but those folks tend to be really vocal about it. I am sure that if MS does “find a solution” and bring it back.

They will treat it like it is some “innovation” or otherwise “new” thing. At this point I think that 11 is never getting it, and that 12 (or whatever) will reintroduce it to make more people “want” to upgrade faster than they have with 11 so far. Though I am sure that it will be only able to be used if a MS account is used. Maybe even make it something that the ARM/Copilot+ devices get first to try and push those harder.

That being said, I am kind of shocked we haven’t seen a new wave of third-party docks like we saw with XP/Vista. I remember Dell and HP going hard with adding their mods of Stardock back then.

There’s a stereotype of Chinese brands being “low quality”

That used to be how things marked “made in Japan” were stereotyped. Basically all the major industrialized nations carried that stereotype until they were able to develop. So China will eventually get to the point of the stereotype flipping at the rate they have been moving. They will still have plenty of truly cheap crap due to being so large in volume of factories and being super willing to make really really niche things. Always fun (and cool) to see the wild motherboards/PCs out of e-waste old parts.

The only thing I hope to see is a push to stop outright ripoff stuff like the “2TB USB drives” that are really 32GB (or lower) with firmware that deletes data that is larger than the flash storage. I am fine with knock-off stuff as long as it is able to do the core thing. A knockoff bag that is able to still hold the same amount of things is fine and allows folks that want the look to be close enough. Even if the flash storage on a knockoff USB drive is super slow, it should be the real capacity.

I have only really started getting into Freecell, but I do play it in the “Solitaire” app. Found that having Mullvad ad-blocking DNS or a VPN with similar actually causes the ads between games not load.

Solitaire and Minesweeper. Literally the best games for when I just want to play something that doesn’t require a lot of attention (no story lines, long load times, or remembering what I was doing the last time I played). Just enough to focus my attention while waiting around, but able to close out when whatever I was waiting on is ready. Just really calming for the most part.