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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: August 16th, 2023

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  • I don’t mind much paying for streaming (although that’s increasingly more and more annoying and I still tend to just download whatever I actually care about) but until and unless I can pay to “own” a movie and they just provide me with a DRM free video file of some sort, I will never “purchase” digital content like this.

    If you tried this kind of bullshit in just about any other context, even normal people would think you’re crazy.

    Normal Person: “hi there, one blender please. I’ll take this one for $25.”
    Sales person: “Cool here’s your receipt.”
    NP:: “It says here at the bottom of the receipt that you can just come in my house and take this blender back whenever you want or maybe never?”
    SP: “yep.”
    NP:: “And you don’t tell people that ahead of time?”
    SP: “no when you buy it you agree to that by opening the box and it is on the receipt you get after you bought it.”
    NP: “you fuckin with me rn?”
    SP: “afraid not, and would you look at that corp says I need that blender back, thanks.”
    SP: “oh, shoot. I see here you also bought a toaster from EvilCorp sold in one of our EvilMart locations a couple years ago, we’ve decided to license that brand instead to our new partners FukUMart, so we’ll be taking that toaster but if you want you can head to your local FukUMart and buy that toaster again for more than you paid the first time.”
    NP: spontaneously combusts


  • whofearsthenight@lemm.eetoMemes@lemmy.mlHonestly
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    6 months ago

    Just for clarities sake, there is one big sticking point here that I want to make clear. Pay, hours, etc cannot incentivize a fix to this system because it’s not about attracting good people or bad people or dumb people or smart people, it’s about the system. If cops made $120k starting with 5 weeks of vacation and only had to work 32 hour weeks, we would not see significantly different outcomes because it is simply the institution and systems and culture that are the problem. Honestly, that would probably only increase the problem since it just further removes police from the normal humans they’re policing. Probably also instead of attracting people that are mission driven, it attracts mercenaries, basically. This is how we get billionaires; they’re mostly not evil, just so far removed reality and doing one of the most human things possible – rationalizing our own behavior for our benefit.

    The idea that there are purely good or purely bad people is mostly a myth. There are people that we could objectively define as purely good or purely evil, but they’re the outlier. Nazis for example. The truth is even scarier than the myth. In most of our depictions, nazis are homogenous blob of pure evil. While nazi’s certainly had some purely evil people, the truth is the vast majority were just average people exposed to a system that creates an evil outcome. Of course, there were also purely good people in that as well, but the system often led those people their graves, or they had to be the right combination of good/smart to resist and stay alive. But most people just participated or closed their eyes and went about their day.

    The problem is not the people, it is the system and pay and benefits aren’t going to fix it.

    Now all that said, the Uvalde cops clearly over-index on little tiny dick bitch ass cowards and kinda blow a hole in my thesis. I wouldn’t call them evil, but just speaking statistically you would think even one of them out of the scores of cops there would have had even an underdeveloped backbone. The cowardice shown here should be something that lives into myth and legend and the way people say “Benedict Arnold” to mean “traitor” they should say “Uvalde cop” to mean “coward.”


  • whofearsthenight@lemm.eetoMemes@lemmy.mlHonestly
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    6 months ago

    Indeed is reporting that the average starting salary is like $50k, and the average in the US is $60k. Policing also isn’t even in the top 25 most dangerous jobs. That link is also talking base salary, but even in the situation you’re describing, you’re talking overtime in the $20k+ range.

    The problem with bad cops comes down to two main things:

    • they’re not here for public safety or here to protect and serve, they’re here to protect capital.
    • well, it’s really just the first one, but keeping that in mind, the system is setup in a way that the only outcome can be a corrupt police force. Legal civil forfeiture, qualified immunity, overly powered police unions (the only time I’ll complain about unions), deliberately low standards in hiring, deliberately not require the police to even know the law they’re supposed to enforce and probably a dozen things I’m forgetting. Police aren’t there for us, they’re there for capital.

    Finally, police funding and increasing the number of cops has almost nothing to do with crime rates which is what calls to defund the police actually mean. Police are basically systematized violence where pretty much the only tools in their literal and metaphorical toolbelt are increasing levels of violence. The call to defund the police is more about funding the things that actually reduce crime – better education, economic outcomes, and people trained to deal with the types of issues that police are probably less qualified to deal with than the average retail worker like mental health crises. Advocates for defunding the police are instead advocating for spending to be allocated to people who are qualified to actually deal with these problems.

    Anyway, tl;dr – if we offer cops better pay and better hours, we’re just going to be getting more expensive cops stealing our shit, incarcerating us at one of the highest rates in the world, and murdering people with less consequence than the cashier at Target gets for not upselling credit cards enough because while plenty of good people* become cops, policing as an institution in the US is corrupt.

    * “Good” people and “bad” people are mostly a result of the systems and culture they exist in and very few are truly “good” or “bad.”





  • Sort of. If you’re receiving a notification from a remote server on iOS or standard android, they go through Apple or googles servers. That said, some apps rather than sending your device the actual notification (where this vulnerability comes from) will instead send a type of invisible notification that basically tells the app to check for a new message or whatever and then will display a local notification so the actual message stays on device and inside of the hosting services servers (like a self host.)





  • I mean, it’s splitting hairs. While the proximity probably didn’t help, I doubt the companies deciding to pull ads weren’t like “sure, we don’t mind hanging out in a nazi bar, just make sure not to seat us next to any nazis.” I mean, some probably were, but there has been increasingly large amounts of pressure on these people and within like 24 hours of each other Elon endorses replacement theory and the MM story drops that Elon is running ads for nazis. There are only so many times you can make a dumb excuse. For lots of us, that was a long time ago. Even the capitalists are realizing now at least that he’s bad for business.


  • I, for one, will turn to Scalzi on this one:

    This is the “So few people find a festering rat’s anus in their can of SpaghettiOs that finding one shouldn’t be considered an actual problem” argument, eliding the fact that the number of rat anuses in ANY SpaghettiOs can should be “zero”

    source

    Like, really looking forward to court case when Elon or Yacco have to explain “yes your honor, the thing they said is true, but to get it to happen they had to use our platform!!!” If I had to guess, Elon has to know he’s going to lose, but the point isn’t necessarily a win, it’s to tie up Media Matters in a legal battle that Elon can keep going effectively forever. This is one of his favorite tactics – doing whatever the fuck he wants because he knows the only thing you can do is sue, and he can pay lawyers forever so you’re going to have to blink first.





  • If you have money, I would recommend AppleTV, especially if you have an iPhone. It’s by far the best platform in terms of not being solely an advertising vessel and sucking up your data, and integration with the iPhone even just out of the box is pretty great. That said, they’re the most expensive by 2-3x.

    Runner up is def Roku, which is much worse, but still pretty good.

    And then there’s me with a Fire TV, mostly because I buy them when they’re $25 for the max fire stick config, and you can automate through the android debug mode. So when I want to use the device, I rarely use the main interface, which is extremely garbage.



  • My entire setup is a bit of a Frankenstein as I originally started with more wifi stuff before moving to zigbee. Anyway, what I’m running now:

    • Dell Wyze thin client from eBay. Was about $30, and I put a $20 ssd in it.
    • Sonoff zigbee controller, think that was $30-35. YMMV, but generally as long as you watch out and buy zigbee stuff, you can avoid buying hubs for all of the different manufacturers.
    • Various zigbee stuff. I have a bunch of Ikea remotes, motion sensors, and bulbs. I also have a few Lutron Caseta switches (they were the only reasonable option at the time that didn’t require a neutral wire.) I also found some Lutron Aurora dimmer switches on clearance for like $10 at home depot, so I bought the last 4 they had. Ditto for 3-4 Phillips Hue bulb. There are also a few aqara and sonoff pieces besides (buttons, bulbs, etc.)
    • and I still have a handful of wifi only stuff. I couldn’t find a good fan controller for my ceiling fan that was zigbee, but I was already bought into the Tuya system, so I bought a compatible device there. There are also a small number of bulbs that I still have in use (like my porch lights, which are just off at dawn, on at dusk.)

    The whole thing runs on Home Assistant, which tbh does take a good amount of time to understand and get setup, but it allows you to do some pretty powerful stuff. For one, I only have this as my hub, and everything works through that. I can also use this to control all of the equipment without a bunch of intermediaries like ifttt and all that. It also allows me to do things like connect my ikea remote (zigbee) to my wifi bedside lamp. All of the major smart home platforms (google, Alexa, HomeKit, aqara, etc) are also massively more limited in what you can automate. Just that simple little entry automation I posted above isn’t really a thing because most of the basic smart home things don’t allow simple stuff like conditionals (turn on only if it’s dark) and certainly not stacked conditionals (turn on only if it’s dark, and I’ve just arrived, and the door actually opened.) You can also hook it up pretty easily to smart tv’s or plex, so you can do things like “if I pause the movie, bring the lights up.” Or I have a dumb automation that I can tap one button for and it plays a random ep of TNG for when I can’t sleep on a Fire TV, which is just not even close to doable on the pleb platforms.

    Anyway, hope that helps.


  • This is the way. Though this isn’t exactly cheap to start, I have a $50 eBay thin client (including the price of throwing an ssd in there), a $30 sonoff zigbee controller, install Home Assistant, and boom you’re off to the races. Ikea’s stuff (as well as Phillips hue, which I was able to snag some deals on clearance for) and Lutron Caseta are all zigbee so I have complete local control over most things in my house, minus a few wifi pieces that I’ve been replacing over time. We do similar with the 5 button remotes, and I also have a few different button controllers from sonoff. Ikea’s motion sensors have also been rock solid for me.

    And yeah, heating is currently my white whale. My home has electric radiant heating which leaves my only option for thermostats down to one or two units that are $120 or so, and I have like 7-8 in total in the home so that’s just going to have to stay manual for now. Space heater isn’t a bad idea, though.