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dunco

Re:Who makes the most reliable new cars? on Thursday November 30, 2023 @05:37AM (#38471923)
They're (were?) a popular choice in very poor countries due to their reliability. They did used to be built to a higher standard. The story I heard which I have no idea about the truth of, is that competition from lexus coming along in the 2000s made merc more price conscious, and reliability suffered as a result.
Re:Who makes the most reliable new cars? on Wednesday November 29, 2023 @07:27PM (#38467516)
Tell that to the all the ~80s w118's etc. around the world still working as taxis and running off vegetable oil
I don't have a problem with how its written now, their statements on privacy seem to conflict with other statements they make about the future of the product. They seem very ambitious in way that a simple note taking app will not satisfy.
Thanks! I'll start using this for sure. Shame that it may not be integrated any time soon, but this separation looks basically good enough.
Multiple profiles is a great addition, but obviously would be even better if the app did not need to close and re-open. The risk for me is that a thought disappears in the time it takes me to swap profiles, but I think the keyboard shortcut should help with that on desktop :) the switching itself seems to be fast enough.

By sharing I mean the notebook sharing feature that is available on desktop but not yet mobile. https://discourse.joplinapp.org/t/share-notebooks-and-collab...

My use case is sharing lists etc (e.g a shopping list, task lists) with my wife who barely ever goes on a desktop computer, and have her be able to share lists with me, update them etc.

Thanks again!

just jumping on this to say I'm a Joplin user and I love it, thank you for building an awesome app. I currently also use notion because of Joplin's lack of note sharing on mobile; if good note sharing came to the Joplin mobile app I wouldn't need anything else. The only other feature I'd want that I think is missing from Joplin is the ability to define different storage locations / encryption keys per notebook to allow good separation of work and personal data. Overall though, wonderful app and I am so happy that something like it exists. I really feel like the intentions of the app developers align with my values, and that it will continue to go in the right direction for years to come.
I looked at logseq as an alternative to joplin but there were too many little flags that suggested to me that privacy and being free might not be forever. I don't have a problem with paying for software, but I don't like getting embedded in it when I don't know what the cost will be. Privacy wise, statements like "The aim of Logseq is to establish a better environment for both learning and collaboration, enabling us to form a network that connects our ideas and enhances the collective knowledge of humanity." worry me. I don't want my ideas connected with humanity and I certainly don't want my notes used to train someones LLM. Maybe this is an unfair reading, as they do claim to be privacy focused, but I am worried that they will discover far to many interesting and fun things to do with user data and I just don't really like where that sounds like its headed. If Joplin could do better sharing (with eg a colleague or spouse) on mobile and better separation of work/private notes (like different storage locations) it would be just about perfect for me for a note taking app, but then my needs are pretty simple.
Re:Beware of Bargin Bin Tools on Thursday December 22, 2022 @06:16AM (#34092241)
there are many knipex pliers which is why the other poster is confused. I presume the ones you refer to are the "pliers wrench" that someone had linked to above:

https://www.knipex.com/products/pipe-wrenches-and-water-pump...

I see this argument all the time, and while it is not wrong, for most people I think it is bad advice in the context of carbs because people don't understand it properly and even if they do, it is basically impossible to get truly wholegrain carb foods from standard markets/supermarkets in the west. Most people think pasta is healthy when its clearly highly refined white flour and not much else. Then there's bread; If you go looking for wholemeal bread, almost all of it will claim "wholemeal" on the packaging, but then if you read the ingredients, they only use a token amount of wholemeal flour, making up the rest with standard white flour. Some researchers even think that modern grinding techniques grind too finely and raise the GL of the flour, so even if you choose wholemeal flour, the way that it is processed can cause it to be not much better than pain white flour. To be clear about what I am arguing here, these things are "bad" when they cause large spikes in BGL and therefore insulin and I consider this a reasonable proxy for the "badness" of carbs. especially when they make up a large part of a meal portion. I also recognise that you're talking about whole foods in general, not just carbs, but I'm in 100% agreement with you for whole foods in general.
Re:Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier on Tuesday June 21, 2022 @02:44AM (#31820722)
totally agree. In fact the consumer advocacy is probably more of why I stay subscribed than the reviews :)
Re:Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier on Monday June 20, 2022 @09:51PM (#31818864)
The sites I've found to be at least making an honest evaluation are:

choice.com.au (Australian context, Aus version of consumer reports) Their reviews just seem to miss the mark sometimes, but at least you can count on the fact its an honest take so you can kind of pick specific facts from the reviews and take them as true, maybe don't rely on their overall recommendations though. funded through magazine/web subscritoions

rtings.com - tech stuff, detailed and with a good table tool for comparison. funded through subscriptions

notebookcheck.com - funded by ads, but does a very good job of highly detailed and consistent reviews. same as choice where you don't necessarily follow their recommendation, but they give you lots of information that you can compare. Their model is a red flag, but my impression is of general trustworthiness.

I subscribe to choice and rtings to support them because honest brokers are so rare in this space.

I was a TPG refugee who switched to Aussie. TPG had the same setup and it always showed me that I was getting the full speed I payed for, but whenever my traffic went overseas, measured some other way, it would be shockingly slow (like sub 2mbps and with a noticeably bad experience) Every call to TPG was painful and they would just refer me back to their own speedtest.net site and tell me nothing was wrong. switched to Aussie and everything was golden, fast everywhere.

You're right that Aussie are uncommonly trustworthy, and the publishing of cvc use publicly is kind of their market prop. Their CEO seems like a legend; like he got the shits with badly behaved ISPs and just made his own or something.

I'm told there is a lot that is good about teams for collaboration, but our company does not use exchange, so despite paying for teams I am unable to schedule meetings. Do they really not care about the entire market for people who do not use exchange?
I think you're taking a definition of 'worked on' that I did not intend. I meant it in a general sense intending to include large or disruptive changes where necessary.
Re:Reuters Data Scientist: The post that led to my termination on Thursday January 06, 2022 @07:25PM (#29832828)
the craziest thing about this whole saga is that a skilled politician might have been able to nip this in the bud and improve america by guiding people on both sides to a solution that works for both.

The cops are not systematically murdering blacks, BUT this does not mean that there are not significant problems with the policing system that can be worked on. I think both sides would be able to accept that huge benefits could be reaped from police reform such as better training, better support for non-police based interventins etc. stuff that has been shown to work elsewhere. some of it might work in the USA and some might not, but BLM should appreciate that something would be being done and the cops should appreciate that they are getting extra support and aren't getting blamed for something they aren't doing.

maybe I am naive. I am not an expert here; in fact I am Australian so I don't even have first hand knowledge, but the solution looks worth a try from the outside, just needs the right leadership and commitment.

Re:Ask HN: Are new ThinkPads still worthy? on Thursday December 09, 2021 @04:19PM (#29503090)
They are worse than they used to be, but the bar is so low in the market that they are still among the best. My gripes are entirely with reliability.

I have had many issues with mine (Carbon X1 G6, then G7), all due to bad firmware, which lenovo swapped out the mainboard 5 times trying to fix. They also keep making the keyboard shittier on the X1, but then don't let you choose a good display on a larger model (at least in Aus when I was looking, but I know there is some variability in what is available where and when)

Have a look at frame.work laptops to see if that might suit you. I have never used them, but they look great. The major manufacturers seem to be on a treadmill, pumping out half-finished unreliable garbage to keep up with industry trends.

From the limited surveys etc I could find online, all windows laptops have roughly twice the failure rate of macs. As best I could determine, It seems you have about 1 in 5 chance of major failure from lenovo/dell etc. and about 1/10 chance from apple (from memory, could be 1/10 vs 1/20). Major failure being something that requires the device to be serviced or sent back, not necessarily a show stopping issue.

Get on-site servicing when its offered because it doesn't cost much and there is a good chance you will need to use it.

I'm curious: what was the previous workplace?
Re:Update on Omicron on Sunday November 28, 2021 @06:59PM (#29374621)
Define "work". Countries that pursued zero covid largely avoided hospital overcrowding and massive amounts of preventable death. It might never have been possible to actually zero covid out to extinction, but it was possible to be close to zero for long enough to get everyone vaccinated. Millions of lives have likely been saved because of these strategies.

"zero covid" is still the right strategy for a disease for which the population is unvaccinated; even if it doesn't achieve full elimination.

Re:Dick Smith (Entrepreneur) on Wednesday November 24, 2021 @10:45PM (#29338043)
Japan is a net importer of food and probably could not feed its population if it had to. We can't all be net importers of food. Australia's problem is water. Our rivers are already environmental disasters because agriculture belligerently takes too much water.

The earth is finite. And it becomes undesirable and polluted long before we hit a hard population ceiling. I just do not understand people who would happily see the entire earth destroyed just so we can have a few more billion humans. we have too many already.

almost all high density places in the world are shitholes. Japan is an exception, but I don't have faith that Australia could be. Sydney is already seeing net loss of residents (excluding new migrants) because it is becoming overcrowded.

Re:Dick Smith (Entrepreneur) on Monday November 22, 2021 @05:20AM (#29304857)
land mass =/= habitable land mass.

Help me understand your view because I simply cannot fathom how you must think to want 500M people in Australia.

Have you traveled? Do you want to live the way people live in overcrowded countries? Do you think there will be some trickle down economic effect for you? Do you place any value on the environment?

Maybe my position can be clarified a bit better: We both want to minimize this problem and stop it from happening. My argument is not that we should ignore the problem, my argument is that banning these things is not the most effective solution.

My view is that we are likely to have a greater impact on stopping this problem by using tactics other than banning them.

I'm sorry to hear about your aquantances phishing attacks. There are parallels to be sure, but Phishing attacks are a clear deception, and everyone upon being phished will agree that they have been done wrong by, so it is easy to make these illegal; you don't create a black market for people who want to go out and get phished anyway. Unfortunately the same is not true of people who purchase quack therapy. Most will continue to think that their money was well spent.

They might be voting you down because it looks like you may not have read my entire reply. I specifically noted the caveat of endangered species and a Dr. Title being used by people who should not use it as situations that probably justify a ban.

I think we likely agree on these points, but perhaps not on the surrounding ones which don't have significant harm outside of parting foolish people from their money.

yes this is true and a good point. It is hard to account for active disinformation campaigns. I think it is generally safe to assume they won't be as extreme as those for ivermectin in most cases.

One counterpoint is that not banning things could increase general public trust in the regulator which could make disinformation less effective.

I used to have a similar outlook, but I have moderated it in recent years. These things should be regulated, but not banned.

You should have hardcore warnings on them (like on aus cigarrettes for example) that state clearly that studies have shown these ingredients or procedures have been shown to be no different from placebo for whatever, or have low quality/few studies. I think you should even have QR codes that link to a page that summarizes the evidence for them and links to the primary source. vitamins etc should also be clearly separated from actual medicine in pharmacies. In the case of cigarretts in Australia, this strategy has been proven to be more effective than the comparable strategy of banning marijuana (more kids in aus have tried marijuana than cigarettes now)

Banning these things can have several negative effects that probably harm the project of getting society to move away from this type of quackery.

Firstly you cannot stop people from wanting these things by banning them, so you will create a black market for them which is less safe, and also opens up a funding stream for nefarious actors.

Secondly, we should not close our minds to the fact that at some time in the future, it is a virtual guarantee that there will be some useful compound in, for example, some chinese medicine herb. if we snuff out all these practices, we deny ourselves one avenue for finding out about these compounds that we might otherwise simply not come across.

Third, banning stuff gives ammo to conspiracy theorists: "they are banning it because they don't want you to have it because they know it works and doctors will be out of business"

Go ahead and ban stuff that endangers near extinct animals, or maybe something that genuinely causes serious acute harm to a user, but generally I think its better to inform and regulate, rather than ban. You think you would be helping people but they don't want your help and they think you're trying to hurt them. Give them the info to work it out instead. Also, if some small girl wants to play an imaginary witch game with crystals, but all they crystals are banned, thats pretty sad to me.

Chiropractors should not be able to call themselves Drs. though. should straight up be a crime.

Re:MacBook Pro 14-inch and MacBook Pro 16-inch on Monday October 18, 2021 @08:38PM (#28913637)
I'll admit up front I haven't done the math on this MBP, but are the prices really so bad on a laptop$$/year basis?

If you look at a feature comparison, sure, macs have always looked like a bad deal, but that evaporates when you bring a time calculation into it. The surveys I have seen all seem to place macs at about half the failure rate of other devices, and they seem to last twice as long. everyone seems to have a shocking story from Lenovo/Dell et. al. about shoddy hardware and incompetent support for anyone without a $10mil+ PO. If you pay more up front, you can make it back by using the same device for longer.

haha. we'll need a new Ingress Protection (IPee) rating to cover new fluids.
I don't but you can buy breath or urine analysis devices/kits that will tell you if you are producing high levels of ketones so you could see for yourself.
Re: on Monday October 04, 2021 @08:54PM (#28754294)
I'm in agreement that facebook is partly what you make it and experiences vary. My own experience has been generally positive; However I was a member of a niche interest group that used to be run on an old-school forum at its own domain. Over the years more and more content moved to the facebook group and there was roughly an even split when an accident by the web host lead to the total loss of the forum which could not be restored which meant all users now moved to the facebook group. The quality of material and the standard of discourse is shockingly worse on facebook than it was on the forums to the point where many interactions degrade into mudslinging. There shouldn't be too much difference between the forum/fb groups, but the only explanation I have come up with is that facebook's algorithm selects and displays content to people who would never have seen it on the forum, and some of them feel compelled to comment with either nasty or unhelpful input. On the forum I think the discovery of this content is self-directed and so only those with a genuine interest come across the post and interact with it, most others will just ignore the post title and scroll on, whereas facebook will show them the whole post with images and this makes them more likely to interact when they shouldn't. The other explanation is just that the mudslinging was always on the forum, but I did not come across it because it was not selected for me, but this goes both ways in that perhaps facebook is selecting "high-engagement" posts (with LOTS of argument) to display to me as well, thinking these will be of more interest. Whatever the cause, the difference is stark for this particular online community.

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