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Re:Zero-Click Spyware Delivered via Targeted Ads: AdFection on Thursday October 15, 2026 @03:12PM (#50108770)
I would like to give a real world example of this too.

If you want to do something artistic or start a business based around Art, Montreal is perfect for it, for the very same reason above.

Initially the govt invested in the arts to preserve French culture, which resulted in a lot of art infrastructure being made, cheap ateliers, fabric suppliers, paint suppliers, &c. Which attracted a lot of artists, which then increases the demand for the art infrastructure, which makes the city easy to make art in.

It makes it stupid easy to make stuff and find the skilled artisans you need to make it. Much easier than any other Canadian city I've lived in.

Re:Burning Man Death Rates – A Short Lesson in Statistics on Wednesday September 30, 2026 @03:22PM (#49913156)
put any large group of people in a spot, and statistically you will have deaths.

I was at a 35k~ officially (though it was realistically 50k) people. And there was three deaths. 1 public suicide, 1 heart attack, and one that the details never got published.

Re:Burning Man Death Rates – A Short Lesson in Statistics on Wednesday September 30, 2026 @03:20PM (#49913125)
> I would describe it as literally sodom on earth.

1. You should go to Ozora festival in hungary. Then you will experience true hedonism. 2. Most of what you describe can be broken into normal human group behaviour, and american legal warfare at work.

Burn style festival are really cool and fun. But it really is about what you bring to it. Some people want a place where they can be the worst versions of themselves around strangers where it won't follow them home. Others truely want to create something cool.

It really sounds like you don't have the right attitude for these kind of festivals, and should stick to commercial "edm" festivals.

Re:Creatine uptake enhances antitumor immunity on Thursday September 24, 2026 @02:52PM (#49835226)
Generally no, it's expensively studied and has had daily consumption to be safe for upto 5 years at least (studies haven't generally gone longer).

That being said some people do have adverse effects to supplementation, e.g. excessive water retention, bloating, stomach discomfort, &c.

So try it, if you have a bad reaction stop.

> It is a smart strategy on their part.

No, it's a high risk gamble.

If the market grows enough they will win the bet, but if the market doesn't or we get a recession that dries up capital they will be holding the bag.

No.

Cannabis is a multi purpose drug, cocaine is party drug and/or a "I haven't slept, don't want the 8 hour+ commitment of speed, but need to stay awake" drug.

The overlap of pot users and cocaine users is rather small in my anecdotal experience.

1. Valve is a private company with a money printer (steam) 2. the point of these initiatives is to build an ecosystem with steam at the centre.

A better way to look at this is valve is trying to hedge it's self against microsoft. By creating an ecosystem of devices and software that's full open so they're not reliant on Microsoft. The goal of Valve hardware ISN'T to make money. It's to encourage others to build devices free of Microsoft that Steam can be installed on.

They have nothing to gain by being closed, and everything to gain by being open.

Re:Steam Machine on Tuesday June 23, 2026 @02:31PM (#48649299)
Burning Man is unique in that it's a bottom up festival. Where it's the attendees that build the stages and festival. Vs a normal festival where it's the organizers who do the stages and programming. There are local "burns" in Europe but they're very small.

I only know Fusion festival from the psytrance community so I didn't realize it was a multi genre festival, but that makes sense!

Re:Steam Machine on Tuesday June 23, 2026 @10:36AM (#48645654)
> aka European Burning Man

Fusion festival is a Psytrance festival. It's nothing like Burning Man (a DIY community driven festival).

For the American's it would be closer to Electric Forest or Lost Lands (but with good music).

Re:Apple introduces the new MacBook Air with M5 on Tuesday March 03, 2026 @12:59PM (#47236183)
Ever since the T450 the trackpoint has been awful.

Can't replace the nob anymore either, as the convex knob was arguably the best

Re:Apple introduces the new MacBook Air with M5 on Tuesday March 03, 2026 @12:56PM (#47236163)
I have an X1 Carbon 2023. It's pretty solid, the only complaint I have is once the CPU usage is over 10% the fan starts running full blast.
Re:RAM now represents 35 percent of bill of materials for HP PCs on Thursday February 26, 2026 @10:50AM (#47167697)
That's honestly a good thing. Computers aren't really getting faster for end users doing mundane tasks the past couple of years.

Will help reduce E-Waste, and to the end user there won't be a different. A machine from 5 years ago feels just as fast as a brand new machine.

> This is actually a textbook example of markets functioning in response to a demand shock where supply cannot be increased rapidly.

The problem is that demand is being propped up by speculative capital. The AI companies are a bubble that is suffocating productive parts of the market with the hording of capital which they're now using to also hoard hardware. All this without making money for data centres that aren't build yet, for a handwavy promise that an AGI will magically solve all the worlds problems.

This is not normal, and it is not good for the broader economy.

Re:Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries on Thursday January 22, 2026 @10:35AM (#46720627)
because productivity is the important metric, GDP per hours worked measures this, and better demonstrates the quality of life given to citizens.

European productivity is beating American productivity. American GDP is heavily warped by money borrowing and previously foreign investment.

Re:Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries on Tuesday January 20, 2026 @04:47PM (#46698176)
Adjust GDP per hours worked, you will find Europe has eclipsed the US in terms of productivity.

The US has the benefit of the government borrowing insane amounts of money to juice it's economy, by being the world hegemony. That advantage has evaporated and you see the current capital going to unproductive industries.

Re:Danish pension fund divesting US Treasuries on Tuesday January 20, 2026 @01:29PM (#46695815)
> The truth is though that Europe is dead weight. Their economy is anemic, their still too fragmented militarily

What an incredibly ignorant statement. Europe's economy in real terms is doing fine, their productivity is growing. The US's economy only looks good on paper, but outside of the AI bubble, companies aren't growing wages are stagnant with inflation.

Europe is also on the verge of federalization. But you have to understand getting over two dozen countries with vastly different cultures, histories and languages to cooperate is a gargantuan task. One the EU has been incredibly successful at.

Similar story in Canada. Violent crime and serious crime is on a clear downward trend. Yet in most majour cities you a less safe, and the public transit system is more dangerous than ever.

Not sure about the UK, at least in Canada it's poverty/people being broke. More homeless people and the general harassment they inflict on people in their surrounding area, more petty crime that the police don't bother investigating so people don't bother reporting it. More theft from grocery stores, more petty scams for <$1000 &c.

Re:Toll roads are spreading in America on Saturday December 27, 2025 @08:50PM (#46407616)
> its not very walk-able, it gets hot and humid in the summer.

You Americans are so funny. Japan is hotter and more humid yet public transit and walking are not an issue. Taipei similar story, rapidly building out rail in a hotter place.

You build the rail, then upzome the areas around stations and over time those giant ashfault lots go away and become urban centres.

The big scam is some terminals are configured with 17% forex fees (looking at your shady restaurants in Budapest), really funny when it's paired with tips in an EU country.

But this is why Revolut and WISE cards are a god send when travelling, just load them up with the local currency and these issues disappear.

1. Just because a few commercial American events masquerade as raves or fedtivals, doesn't mean all events are like this. You just don't hear about the good events. We have to calculate generator loads because we're running 500-1000 person festivals with permits &c, but it's still an underground party operating by rave rules. No high vis security or police around. Also we're not doing this in the US, please don't project your shitty culture onto the whole world. 2. Aerial circus it's extremely important to inspect the rigging points and the hardware being used due to the sheer amount of force being generated by drops. You absolutely need to know the load of carabiniers, regular rock climbing ones are often not sufficient. 3. Blender could be a fun idea but you often are limited by the room and where the rigging points are, than what you can dream up.
Re:What happens when even college students can't do math anymore? on Wednesday November 19, 2025 @10:30AM (#45980804)
1. A lot of math crops up in unexpected ways in everyday life. Trig in construction & wood working, calculus & integration when doing finance, &c.

2. It's not about teaching how to crunch numbers, it's also teaching general problem solving, and using tools to break down complex problems using your various tools to solve it. This translates directly to everyday life.

As a programmer we use calculus and integration all the time in performance testing and stats when we aggregate the data and pull insights. I have started getting into making canopies for events and I have todo a lot of trig to calculate the dimensions of the shapes before I send them to the printer. Hell I even use lots of my high school physics when I go to calculate the load to choose to right type of rope or metal wire and to determine if anchoring points are safe or not. We also use a lot math when calculating generator loads and building power grids for raves & festivals. I also do aerial circus and we use lots of physics when setting up rigging points and determining safety margins. Hell just having a basic physics understanding is really important to figure out if the carabiner you're using is going to kill you or not.

So yea math is really fucking important, and you do use it everyday even if it's just the problem solving it teaches.

The murder bot books are a bit silly from the get go, so the show leaned into the campy vibe to sell the comedic aspect.

As someone who loves the book, I think the show is a 10/10 for capturing the feeling. Though if you where expecting as more serious scifi I can see why you think it's of inferior quality.

The French love their flowers. One of the most amazing things about Paris was how every patch of earth was bursting with flowers.
> MacOS has it's rough-edges, but it has become a pleasure to code on

Except when Apple deprecates APIs but the replacement doesn't have close to the same functionality (looking at you screen capture kit).

Or when the documentation just doesn't explain anything and you have to reverse engineer the API to figure out what it does.

or how there's a bunch of hidden APIs only certain vendors are told about so you can't even compete on an even playing field.

And don't get me started on the C, C++, ObjectiveC and now Swift monstrosities. Having fun with your legacy project when the new APIs require swift, so you have to use the objectiveC bridge and the weird bugs that comes with it.

Re:A Typology of Canadianisms on Thursday July 10, 2025 @01:20PM (#44523258)
Hydro is just for QC, ON and BC where the electrical companies have "hydro" in their name.

Other parts of the country just call it power/electrical. But in NS my grand parents would also call it a "light bill".

Re:A Typology of Canadianisms on Thursday July 10, 2025 @01:17PM (#44523223)
Which is funny because that translates to "fully garnished" not "all dressed". Tabarnac
There's also labour participation and underemployment to look at.

In your case underemployment would go up.

You need to look at all metrics together to get a bigger picture. Example is unemployment is down, but so is labour participation. That doesn't mean there was job growth, it means people stopped looking.

Or if unemployment is down, but underemployment is up. Similar picture emerges.

Re:A senior Apple exec could be jailed in Epic case on Thursday May 01, 2025 @03:01PM (#43861968)
With their market share they are by definition of monopoly. Monopoly doesn't mean "only store front", it just means majourity market share to the point they control the market.

People forget there's nothing inherently wrong with monopolies. It's only when they abuse their monopoly position that there's issues.

Re:A senior Apple exec could be jailed in Epic case on Thursday May 01, 2025 @01:31PM (#43860752)
Agreed.

Steam is also a monopoly but it doesn't abuse it's monopoly. E.g. impose terms like games can't release on other stores for a lower price &c.

Nothing stopping a competitor from coming in with a superior game store.

Re:Ontario to Slap Export Tax on Electricity to U.S. on Tuesday March 04, 2025 @11:15AM (#43256633)
Good.

I hope provinces extend this to all critical exports, including potash, nickle, uranium and oil.

The US deserves to suffer for this trade war. You guys elected this dictator from Temu, you should bleed as much as he's going to make Canada bleed.

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