[–] 2 points 3 hours ago

Sorry, I don't understand, could you clarify the c. f. part?

I mean it as an observation. When Pat Robertson died it was not a murder, so the moral problems with encouraging violence are not involved. His death objectively made the world less hateful. His propaganda stopped and other people with less skill and less of a following stepped in to replace him, but it was an overall reduction. I think it is fair to say that in that situation his death was good for society. That doesn't mean we should not fund gerontology and research how to keep older people healthy, we should be trying to prevent harm wherever we can. He died of natural causes at 93 so nobody shortened his life, it is morally empty.

When Kirk died the same change in the world occurred. His death meant the removal of the propaganda he was spewing. In the same way as with Pat Robertson we should not cause more of this type of death, in fact we should avoid and prevent as many as we reasonably can. That said, his death reduced harm and that reduction of harm can be celebrated.

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  • [–] 5 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

    His death already happened. They were not saying someone should go and kill him, they were celebrating the lack of Kirk going forward, the reduction in harm. It is not morally right to plan and execute a murder, but objectively speaking there will be less harm now that he is dead and that is a relief.

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  • [–] 6 points 10 hours ago

    To be clear, I can't talk for all people, so this is just my opinion. Charlie Kirk definitely caused violence that killed people. He was an agitator and escalated violence against vulnerable people. He lied about all sorts of things including gun violence and worked for his whole career to undermine the safety of people he disliked.

    When he died the overall hatred against trans people was reduced. The opposition to gun control was reduced. The trolling and doxing was reduced. His entire ecosystem was disrupted when he died.

    If an individual does something wrong by killing someone that has a certain moral valence to it. If they do the same to a group of people I don't see any difference, they are still acting towards people with violence, it is just diluted and obscured. The fact that one violent right wing person used a gun to kill another right wing person is ironic and has a certain symmetry, but the part that makes me feel no sympathy for Kirk is that his actions were causing harm up to and including death to people and when he was killed the overall level of death was reduced, not increased.

    No state should have the power to kill citizens. This is not justice or a good thing to have in your society. But in a society where murder happens there definitely are worse and better instances, and this particular instance was a net reduction in deaths. All of the people who would have been killed by Kirk's rhetoric are alive because he died. It wasn't right, but it was less wrong.

    So no, he was not the state acting on others, but he was a person acting to kill others just as his assassin. He caused deaths just as surely as the shooter and there was irony in it being by a white right winger with a gun. The reduction in deaths was worth celebrating just as commuting the sentences of those on death row is. It is morally right to want less death and torment, and while it would be morally wrong to cause a death, from a utilitarian perspective I would not quibble over the results here.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago

    To be fair, I have had similarly draconian apps run just fine on custom ROMs in the past, however at this point I couldn't say if that is still accurate and I have no experience with those specific apps. Maybe you could back your phone up and test it? Alternatively this may be a good time to have a separation between your work phone and personal phone? I have two phones with me and that helps separate everything personal from the professional quite neatly. It also means I can, if I want to, put my work phone away when I am not working.

    Also, if they are going to finance a phone they are going to own that phone. You won't. If they want to track where their phone is the likely can. If they want to install monitoring software on their phone they likely can. I would be very uncomfortable with my work phone being owned by them and with me at home. If I had a work provided phone I would have a charging station in a drawer and would pit the phone there when I get home and pick it up on the way to work.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 days ago

    I will definitely put AudiobookShelf at the top of my most impactful self hosted app list. I listen to audio books all the time and I used to use Voice, a foss app, but switching to AudiobookShelf has improved the experience significantly. I spend a little time importing books and then they just look so neat and tidy, I love it.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 days ago (2 children)

    Have you considered a custom ROM, like LineageOS? Custom ROMs can revive older devices by updating to a much more recent version of Android including much more modern security patches and can solve some of the problems you have listed. I have not found a phone as small as what used to be available and ended up upgrading to a Pixel 6 Pro which is obviously much larger.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 days ago

    Tbh, I prefer the acronyms. I would much rather have acronyms than have to remember or say the full name of something like that. Sometimes they are overused but I think if you want clarity acronyms are a useful tool.

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  • [–] 7 points 4 days ago (3 children)

    When I lived in the UK I never saw the express or extra, but I did hear some people calling them "Tescos", as in pluralising them like some people do with Lego. I guess it was foreshadowing of the different breeds.

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  • [–] 28 points 4 days ago

    Medical equipment. The software for medical equipment is super arcane stuff, locked behind patents and licensing that only serves to drive the price up. For someone in a less economically powerful country the cost is increased and the quality of care is reduced massively by this licensing. If an open source version of the software for things like an MRI, CAT scanner, ultrasound, and so on could be made it would enable the updating of old hardware to keep it running longer and also make repairs much more affordable. I also think that internal defribulators would benefit enormously from being open source as under the current system they are hackable and can be exploited to wirelessly trigger a shock which can be fatal.

    Also consider continuous glucose monitoring and insulin pumps. By combining those two technologies you can essentially make an artificial pancreas and make diabetes much more manageable. The hurdle here is not technological, it is legal. The thing that has slowed down the production of an artificial pancreas is software licensing and legal risk management, nothing technical. Consider this applied to the possibility of a continuous allergy monitoring device which could detect anaphylaxis and administer adrenaline, or maybe markers of a seizure approaching to trigger a much smaller dose of an anti epileptic medication. All unavailable because the development of that technology would not be feasible under the current licensing and liability system we have.

    To be clear, I am not saying any of these cure the underlying condition, just that if medical software (and ideally hardware) was required to be open source more of these tools could be developed to help people live better lives independently and safely, and at a lower cost.

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    I have had a bunch of little issues which ultimately come down to a knowledge gap, me just not knowing enough about Home Assistant to know where to even look. I've solved most of my problems with persistence and searching for other people's issues, but some issues are just not going anywhere.

    It used to be that a project like this would have an IRC chatroom and tonnes of handy experts would be there chatting and helping to point you in the right direction. Now that IRC has largely gone by the wayside where do you all go to have that quick back and forth chatting to get a vague idea of where to go with next steps?

    To be clear, I'm not so much asking about where on the system to find logs or the like, I more mean the community of people chatting and helping each other troubleshoot issues.

     

    Most people don't really budget for things that are large on a yearly or even monthly scale, but you can and probably should.

    For example, I know that I use my headphones a lot and being without them would be really annoying. Budgeting based on buying them asap because I need them is a really painful way of managing that cost because I can't do anything else at the same time and it is expensive. If instead I set aside a smaller amount while I still have working headphones it is much easier.

    My formula for working out the cost is fairly simple. How much does it cost for an item to fill the need? How long do I expect that item to last in the worst case? How much would I therefore need to save per week for that cost to be saved before the current item needs replacement.

    My headphones cost around $100. I expect to need replacement not sooner than about 16 months. So I should save $75 per year which works out to less than $2 per week. If I just save $2 per week I will hit my goal of $100 within the year and of something goes wrong earlier I can make the difference up the normal way. If I end up not needing a replacement by the time I hit my goal I can keep saving for a higher cost option or move that saving to another goal to boost that.

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