LibsEatPoop [any]

Well, I got into them when I was younger. My school required a MacBook and when I started using one, I found it way cooler than my clunky Windows laptop. Part of that was probably the price, but it was also the OS. It was really smooth - and I freaking fell in love with the touchpad gestures. Then I got an iPhone, an iPad etc.

Overtime, I moved away from an Apple only ecosystem. Now I use Linux on an XPS. I also use a Galaxy Tab instead - iPad, while powerful, is really hampered by its OS. Galaxy Tab is far more powerful and capable of being an actual laptop replacement, at least for me.

But I still use an iPhone. I find it a lot easier to deal with than Android. I tried the latter in the past, btw. But I don’t need customization on my phone, unlike with my laptop or tablet. So, for my headphones, I got the AirPods. The connection between the iPhone and AirPods is really good.

Will my next phone be an iPhone. I dunno. There are some really interesting Android phones out there, and the platform seems more mature now with many companies offering a simple UI that doesn’t do too much - I still keep up with it all. I liked the OnePlus Fold that came out recently, for example.

I’ll admit, I’m not your average Apple user. I made a very deliberate choice to not be tied down to Apple. I’ve taken conscious actions to have different OSes and software on different devices and not be locked down by any one company. I use FOSS wherever I can, and moved away from all the default apps pushed by Apple, Samsung etc. long ago. It’s also why I won’t get a Galaxy phone - I already have the tablet. The only concession I allowed was the AirPods.

But I can tell you another example. Over the years, my father has needed new products. And every time I’ve gotten him Apple products. Now, he has an all Apple setup. MacBook, iPad, iPhone, AirPods. Why? Because I’ve seen him use Windows laptops and Android phones in the past. I know just how many problems he’s had with them - and how much I had to help him with them. Now that he has an all Apple set up, everything is dead simple for him. People underestimate this.

Hope this helps answer your questions.

Here is the direct UN report - https://news.un.org/en/sites/news.un.org.en/files/atoms/files/Mission_report_of_SRSG_SVC_to_Israel-oWB_29Jan_14_feb_2024.pdf

Here’s it’s conclusion (edited for clarity):

October 7 and Hostages: Conflict-related sexual violence (genital mutilation, sexualized torture, or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment) occurred at several locations across the Gaza periphery, including in the form of rape and gang rape, during the 7 October 2023 attacks. Clear and convincing information that some hostages taken to Gaza subjected to various forms of conflict-related sexual violence (as described above) and reasonable grounds to believe that such violence is ongoing, including against women and children. Unable to establish the prevalence of sexual violence and concludes that the overall magnitude, scope, and specific attribution of these violations would require a fully-fledged investigation.

Occupied Palestinian Territory (i.e., conducted by Israel and settlers): They did not visit Gaza. Cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, including various forms of sexual violence towards detainees (39% of whom are held without trial). Invasive body searches including unwanted touching of intimate areas, including genitial areas, and forced unveiling of women wearing Hijab; beatings; threats of rape against women and threats of rape against female family members (wives, sisters, daughters) in the case of men; and inappropriate strip search and prolonged forced nudity of detainees, including during interrogation and during transfer to other detention facilities. Taking and circulating pictures of women detainees on personal phones of soldiers and investigators and depriving women of menstruation products. Sexual harassment and threats of rape, during house raids – including at night – and at checkpoints. Intimidation, including threats of rape, if conditions of detention were reported or publicly disclosed after liberation.

cap

Three carriages of the passenger train…derailed when a second incoming train rammed into it from behind… “Both the loco-pilot and co-pilot were distracted by the cricket match,” Mr Vaishnaw said…Both of them lost their lives in the incident…A preliminary investigation by the railway authorities immediately after the incident found that the train had overshot a signal.

“Yeah, bro the two drivers who died were totes just 100% at fault and it had nothing to do at all with a larger systemic issue that might put me, the minister or the Indian govt. at fault for not improving the railway system. Nah, it’s just those poor drivers who were too busy watching cricket.”

Railways minister Vaishnaw said new safety systems would be installed following the incident to “detect any such distraction and make sure that the pilots and the assistant pilots are fully focussed on running the train”.

And that would solve the issues, trust. It’s the drivers, not the system.

India has one of the world’s largest railway networks, which transports millions of passengers daily. But it has seen several disasters over the years… There have been several major accidents in the last 12 months, including a three-train collision which killed as many as 300 people in the eastern state of Odisha in June. Just last month, another incident on the railway saw a freight train travelled more than 70km (43.4 miles) without a driver. Footage on social media showed the 53-wagon train from Jammu and Kashmir zooming past several stations at high speed of nearly 100km/h, before arriving in Punjab. Officials told the PTI news agency: “The train was stopped after a railway official placed wood blocks on the tracks to stop the train.”

Like… come the fuck on. Something clearly major fucked up is going on at a systemic fucking level here. I’m betting corruption. No doubt the drivers were not 100% innocent. But they’re dead so they’re being turned into the scapegoats, so people don’t look into all these other incidents. Many countries have very large and extensively used railway systems that don’t experience deadly crashes on the daily. Indians need to hold their politicians accountable.

Yuzu’s statement on Twitter.

The Pine Island glacier formed a 6.5-mile-long crack at 80 mph, proving to scientists that some glaciers can shatter like glass.

some glaciers can shatter like glass.

That sentence has no right to be so scary. What the fuck.

Also, I see the speedrun to Doomsday continues. Won’t expect anything else.

Several users note that Hianime is only a typo away from Hanime, which is an adult-themed site focusing on Hentai content.

LMAO.

You raise very valid points. Those are absolutely concerns I might have too if I actually believed in a god - am I following all the rules, am I good enough to get the good ending etc etc. It’s good to not have illusions that a higher authority will take care of the problems of this world and actually work to fix it ourselves.

And in moments of hope, when things are improving, it seems we as humans are succeeding in that. But looking at the world now, those moments seem fewer and fewer. It gets harder to keep working on improving, or even thinking that we can improve.

But I don’t want to just say injustice is natural and bad things will always happen and cannot be stopped. Individually, yeah - there will always be people who do things that are not good. But on a societal scale? A better world is possible. In this aspect, having a belief in a higher authority, one you believe will be “good” and “just” can help centre you and give you hope. I guess, spiritual rather than actually religious. But I can’t even believe in that.

When I was younger, I became a “rational” and “atheist” type - I have to thank my parents for that. They were the scientific but spiritual type and allowed me to come to my own conclusions, rather than forcing religion down my throat. I’m glad, too. Because when I met religious people later on, I was able to look at the absurdity of it all and brush it off.

But now I’m older, and I sometimes wish this weren’t the case. I truly wish I could believe in a soul or a heaven/hell or reincarnation or any other form of higher being than us. I get it. I get why people do. The world is ruled by evil people who do terrible, evil things and this belief in a higher authority where they will one day be judged, and all the innocents who suffer will finally have peace… it’s the only way to cope with it.

I don’t believe in a soul, but I wish I did.

100-hour battery life in full Smart Mode

Hoo boy that’s a big battery.

AAA is just indie shit now and speaks to the lack of drive of the developers. They should aim for AAAA like this game deserves. We want, no, we demand, a $80 always-on Crazy Taxi reboot with a $150 Deluxe bundle that comes with one custom taxi skin, and a $300 Ultra Premium bundle that comes with a toy matchbox taxi. We need Day One crashes and bug fixes, a dozen different paid DLCs to be released over three years, and the inevitable server shut down three years from release making the game unplayable.

Yeah, thankfully.

In a memo sent to employees Mozilla says it wants to bring “trustworthy AI into Firefox”. To help it do this sooner it’s merging its Pocket, content, and AI/Ml teams.

Eww.

I’ll need to switch browsers soon. I do not want AI crap.

Edit - There is also the reduction in their privacy services (VPN, Relay etc.). This could be the start of a trend in that direction too. Only time will tell.

Yeah, of what I could follow, that was the most interesting part. In addition to the history lesson of the beef between scientists!

I rolled my eyes until I saw where this was published. Huh, that’s interesting. I’m way too uneducated to know what this means, but maybe the science peeps I follow will post some vids in the coming weeks.

Umm. I’m not gonna be paranoid here. But cmon Jack. Don’t do shit like this.

First Philippines now Italy…

This is freaking hilarious. I might buy this book just to read more of this:

“Imagine you’re stranded on the Red Planet with three crewmembers,” Seedhouse, a professor at Daytona Beach’s Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University wrote. “You have plenty of life-support consumables but only sufficient food to last one person until the rescue party arrives. What do you do?.. One day, while brewing coffee for breakfast, you realize there are three chunks of protein-packed meat living right next to you.”

… the biggest of the Mars explorers should sacrifice themselves first because they “both consume and provide the most food.” He went on to provide a “weirdly detailed look” at how to cut up one’s fellow humans if necessary.

“We don’t know where Seedhouse would fall in the buffet line because we couldn’t find his height and weight online,” the authors wrote, “and honestly we’re scared to ask.”

In “Survival and Sacrifice”… readers will also find… a photo of ten astronauts smiling in space alongside the caption: “In the wrong circumstances, a spacecraft is a platform full of hungry people surrounded by temptation. Is it wrong to waste such a neatly packaged meal?”

Great marketing.

98 people - cut from its Canadian business administrative services and IT departments, along with the Montreal-based VFX studio Hybride. The numbers represent around 2% of its total Canadian team.

Hybride is predominantly focused on providing visual effects for TV shows and movies, with credits on multiple Star Wars shows and films - including The Mandalorian, Ahsoka and Andor - Disney’s live-action Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast remakes, and sci-fi movie Arrival. The studio’s video game credits include prehistoric FPS spin-off Far Cry Primal.

The latest layoffs follow 60 job losses at Ubisoft’s UK and US customer service teams in May, as well as the planned closure of its London mobile studio - made up of over 50 devs - reported in September.

There has been continued unrest at the publisher this year, which kicked off with their first staff strike in January in response to employees’ unhappiness over pay and working conditions. That’s accompanied the controversial unveiling of plans to use an AI dialogue-writing tool and Ubisoft’s ongoing dabbling in NFTs, which have been met with widely negative responses by both developers and players.

So TLDR: Workers strike for better pay/conditions, Board responds with lay offs and AI. As a result, a lot of employees get laid off and replaced with AI, and the remaining have to work harder. Gamers get worse games too (AI, NFTs) and customer service, but its Ubisoft, so that was expected. As long as short-term profits go up, the Shareholders are happy and the Board gets bonuses.

That is disappointing to hear, but good to know. I think I’ve heard about Joplin’s sync being not-very-good earlier too. On the other hand, I’ve heard similar things (and you mentioned it too) with regards to Obsidian, but I personally haven’t encountered any yet.

On organization, is there a limit to sorting files into folders (is that what is meant by notebooks)? I prefer that over tags in any case. On features, if the options were between Notesnook and Obsidian, it does have upsides. Obsidian has the community plugins, but I only use a handful and it seems a few of them are built-in already in Notesnook. And it is cheaper, of course. The downside is it is a much smaller company (with two main devs as far as I can see?) which means if something happens, future updates would depend on the community.

And Cryptee also offers a lot of features for a lower price (its github is very scarce tbh). Notesnook still looks like a good choice, though.

I’m currently on Obsidian, but looking to change to an open-source alternative. I am a heavy note-taker but have no need for Obsidian’s “knowledge base” like features.

Glad to see you recommend Notesnook! The free tier looks very good by itself. Sync, unlimited notes, offline, rich text. Do you mind answering what “limited organisation” means? What are the other downsides of the free tier? The paid plan is definitely cheaper than Obsidian, but there are cheaper open-source alternatives I’m also looking at (each with downsides of course).

One I know is Joplin which, similar to Obsidian, requires payment of Syncing. It’s Basic plan (all I would need) is a third cheaper than Notesnook, while the Pro is more expensive. Then there is Cryptee which I could also use for free for a long time, or pay similar to Joplin. Notesnook is cheaper than Standard Notes though!