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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • They (the investment/owner class) make their money work for them by investing and by playing the banks. Generally, they want to invest the vast majority of their money, and never cash out of their portfolio. When they need “cash” to buy something, they do it with loans and there’s lots of tricks (that I’m not super familiar with) to make loans as cheap as possible, and potentially even profitable if their investments are doing better than the cost of the loan.

    Now, why would they spend money pushing propaganda when instead they could be investing that money? Well, when you are that rich, you don’t actually have to spend that much to push propaganda. People are already clamoring for your opinion, because they see you as successful and think, if I copy you then I too can be successful. And when you do need to buy an article, it’s pocket change compared to your vast wealth. And if instead you need to buy a TV news network, a newspaper, or a website, that itself can be an investment. As long as you don’t run it into the ground, it may make you money at the same time as allowing you to push propaganda.

    And why do they want to push propaganda in the first place? Because if the working class (those that live off paychecks instead of investments) has the time, energy, and knowledge to do something about wealth inequality, then the investment class will start to have to pay their fair share and lose a bit of their wealth. The investment class doesn’t want that to happen so they need to rob the working class of those 3 things. Manufacturing a culture war is one way to steal time and energy from the working class, because they now have to spend that time and energy on defending personal rights. Busting unions is another way to rob time and energy, as the fewer rights workers have, and the less they are paid, the more time and energy they have to spend to stay out of poverty.

    It’s all a ploy to get people to pay less attention to how the investment class gets their money so that they can keep racking up the score without interference.

    That said, some of the investment class actually truly holds hateful views, as does some of the working class, but the working class has nothing to gain by acting on that hatred except a sense of personal fulfillment. The investment class benefits financially, so they may act out the hatred even if they don’t feel it.



  • I’ve ordered the ring because I have the watch, but I don’t like wearing the watch at home. Sometimes I put it on at home, but instinctively I find myself taking it off within a few hours. I especially don’t like wearing the watch while I sleep. However I have no problem wearing a ring all day. The form factor itself is more advantageous for me, because it’s the difference between wearing it or not. When I leave the house, I have no problem putting my watch on and keeping it on. Same way I don’t have a problem putting on shoes and keeping them on. But like the watch, I don’t like wearing shoes at home.




  • New drones being sold in the USA are equipped with something called remote ID. In theory, it enables law enforcement to wirelessly identity the drone, who it’s registered with, and where the pilot is standing. This is very new though, and very few, if any, police departments have the tools needed to make use of it. It’s also possible to read remote ID from phones, but without the database, it only gives you so much info. Owners of older drones are supposed to attach a remote ID module to them in order to maintain legal flying, but someone being voyeuristic with their older drone probably isn’t following the rules.


  • Not in the US. You can report it to the police and the FAA, but it’s a federal felony offense to shoot down any aircraft, regardless of whether it’s a $100 drone or multi-million dollar full on airplane. But like the other poster said, voyeurism and harassment laws still apply. And also, if the pilot is out of sight of the drone, that’s a hefty FAA violation (assuming they don’t have a specific FAA waiver that’s hard to get) and something you can report.


  • FAA Certified drone pilot in the USA here. That’s wild. In the US it’s illegal to shoot down an aircraft of any sort no matter the type or who is flying it. And also, the Federal Aviation Administration is the only authority in the US when it comes to airspace, and as long as you have authorization from the FAA or are in uncontrolled space, you can fly over anyone’s property. However, that doesn’t give you the right to voyeurism or harassment. If you are intentionally spying on things that are normally considered private (peeking in a window, for instance) or repeatedly or specifically bugging a specific individual or family, then you can still be charged with those crimes. Also, unless you have a specific waiver that’s rather hard to get, you have to be within line of sight of your drone. If the drone pilot is not following the rules, they can be hit with hefty fines. Even though drones can be bought easily, there’s still strict rules that the FAA has for both recreational and professional flying, and anyone operating a drone outside those can and should be reported.





  • The cards that full frame cameras use to hit 800mbps are CF not SD. Functionally very similar, but you can’t just pop it in your laptop. You need an external reader. The nice thing about SD catching up to the CF spec is backwards compatibility. You can take your 800mbps SD Express and throw it in your laptop’s SD card slot and use it, even if it’s only at 100mbps because the laptop still uses an old SD version. No such luck with CF Express unless they can convince people to build CF ports into laptops and phones (though SD is just about dead in phones).




  • For much of the country in terms of land maybe, but not in terms of people. Most people live in or near high population areas where using an EV is fine. The person in question saying that fear mongering needs to stop was the governor of Connecticut. Connecticut is not Oklahoma. There is zero reason to fear monger range anxiety in Connecticut.

    But even for people in places like Oklahoma, there’s a couple things you should consider. First is, don’t rush out and buy an EV just because you feel like you’re being told to. Only buy an EV once your existing vehicle is no longer viable. Buying a new car when your old one still works is not very green. But definitely consider an EV when the time comes, even if you have range anxiety. Why? For one, the money you will save on gas can allow you to rent a gas car for those long trips you need to make and then you don’t have to put those extra miles on your own car. Remember, tires are expensive and wear down with miles driven. Or, with the money saved from gas, you could take a bus, a train, or possibly even an airplane. Or if you really don’t want to do any of that, you could probably find a buddy who still has a gas car and trade for the week. Just because you buy an electric vehicle, doesn’t mean you are now locked out of ever using a different kind of transportation. But number 2? Over the coming years, EV infrastructure will be constantly increasing. Yeah, some states are being regressive at the moment, but they will turn around. So even in places were range anxiety is legitimate, it won’t be a problem for much longer, except in those edge cases where even a gas car currently has issues, but since even a gas car has issues, it doesn’t make a difference. And third? There are so many companies working on battery tech right now, it’s crazy. Some are working on higher energy density so we can get longer range, others are working on better materials so we can stop using unethically acquired minerals, some are working on making batteries that function better in the cold. None of this helps the car you buy today, but it will help the car you buy in 5 years.


  • For most people it will be things like tax documents, medical receipts (assuming you are in a country where that’s important), photos of kids’ life milestones, photos of family members who have passed away, copies of leases, receipts for large purchases for insurance purposes if your house burns down. Things like that. Also, if you do freelance work like web design, photography, video editing, writing, music production, game design, research, etc, you want to make sure that stuff is backed up.


  • For any really important data, you should always have at least 3 copies. 1) Your working copy on your computer. 2) A local backup which could be an external hard drive, a NAS, another computer, or whatever. 3) An off-site backup. That could be a cloud service, a computer at a friend’s or family member’s house, an external hard drive in a safety deposit box, etc. The off-site backup is in case your house burns down or is robbed.

    If it’s REALLY important, you may have even more than that. There’s also the issue of how often do you update the backups. A hard drive in a safety deposit box is hard to update compared to uploading to Google Drive which can be automatic, but the hard drive in the safety deposit box is more secure. So you have to weigh your pros and cons.




  • Another topic I see a bunch is whenever there’s an article about Samsung folding phones, it inevitably mentions Samsung killing off the Note line. The Note line isn’t dead. S Ultra is the Note. They just renamed it. It’s the same damn phone. Compare a Note 10 to an S 20 Ultra and tell me that’s not the same series. I’ve been using the Note/Ultra since the Note 2. This really highlights that they don’t care to look beyond the surface level and instead they just regurgitate press releases.