[-] swordgeek@lemmy.ca 1 points 9 hours ago

I'm nearly three times your age and so will likely have a very different perspective, but...

I remember watching the news (from Canada) when Reagan was first elected. it felt HORRIBLE, and turned out to be just that - Reagan, Thatcher, and their psychophant hanger-on Mulroney ushered in a new era of "get fucked by the rich, fuck the poor" also known as trickle-down economics.

And yet, there was always a sense of decorum among them. Even Harper and Bush jr. at least pretended to be civil in the world of politics, no matter how corrupt and evil they were.

Trump changed everything. He was loud, abrasive, offensive, and off the rails. And he won! Suddenly the doors were open. Here in Canada, O'Toole did outhouse attack ads against Trudeau. Jingoistic, vapid, fear-mongering populism took root throughout Europe. And it just kept getting worse.

Now this election in the US was unhinged beyond description. Trump said things and did things that should have gotten him locked up. Musk should be facing either life in jail or the electric chair for his interference. There are no limits in American elections anymore - I would genuinely say including shooting someone onstage.

Here in Canada, Poilievre has been carefully fanning the same embers - stoking fear, instilling rage, creating groups to hate; and at the same time, throwing out meaningless attacks on his opponents. Unlike when O'Toole awkwardly attempted it, it is working very effectively. Having an entire room or stadium chanting "AXE THE TAX" without even offering an alternative shows that he's winning by being the same empty bully as Trump.

(And meanwhile, Harper is chortling quietly from behind the curtain as he pulls the puppet strings.)

So yeah, this is crazy - and it's the new normal, until we start showing politicians that it doesn't work, and can get them arrested.

[-] swordgeek@lemmy.ca 5 points 12 hours ago

Not listed here, but California voted against outlawing slavery for prisoners.

[-] swordgeek@lemmy.ca 6 points 15 hours ago

Nope.

This is going to shift Canadian politics to the right, and embolden the fascists. This just significantly increased Poilievre's chances of winning.

[-] swordgeek@lemmy.ca 10 points 15 hours ago

In a word...

FUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!

[-] swordgeek@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago

This happens in the US, Canada, and many other western democracies.

The difference this time is that it's not just the GOP being shitty, it's an unhinged Nazi who just got elected, and has spent four years purging the party of unfaithful.

[-] swordgeek@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 day ago

I don't think you actually did get my point.

The fascists are the majority. The majority will do nothing because they chose this, and you - the people fighting fascism - are in the minority.

I'm not saying I disagree with you, but it is important to understand that your revolution is actually going against the will of the American people.

[-] swordgeek@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 day ago

Unless you make voting mandatory, that will always be the case. Regardless, the split amongst non-voters is statistically likely to be the same as the people who actually voted. Consider the election to be an information poll, with a sample size of ~65% of the entire eligible population.

So with updated numbers, Trump got 72.5M out of ~240M eligible voters, so yeah you could say that 70% of the population didn't vote for him. But then to be clear, you should also look at Harris's 68M votes, and say that 72% of the population didn't vote for her.

The people who mark and deposit their ballots are the only measure we have of the nation's opinion, and in that contest a majority of the votes went to Trump.

[-] swordgeek@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 day ago

No, that's a misleading number.

27% of the entire eligible population voted for him. Less than that voted for Harris. About 45% of eligible voters didn't bother.

So Trump got more than 50% of the popular vote, as well as the majority of seats. First past the poll is a terrible system, but it's not the system that's at fault here, it's the voters.

[-] swordgeek@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 day ago

Because people have no fucking clue about the economy?

[-] swordgeek@lemmy.ca 104 points 1 day ago

I'm not an American, but I can't help but notice something:

A clear majority elected Trump. Over 71 million Americans went out of their way to vote for him, saying "I am proud to be a Nazi."

If you are going to fight (either figuratively or physically), then understand that a majority of the USA supports a fascist state.

[-] swordgeek@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 days ago
[-] swordgeek@lemmy.ca 6 points 3 days ago

Honestly, a person's actual post history should be more relevant and indicative to whether they'renworth engaging with tham a single number.

Furthermore, aside from deliberate trolls, most comments or posts should be assessed on their own merits, irrespective of the poster's history.

People are complex, and it's possible that raving political idiots might have thoughtful opinions on their favourite video game or the aspects that make a perfect butt.

1
submitted 1 month ago by swordgeek@lemmy.ca to c/homelab@lemmy.ml

Anyone an expert in Synology here?

Synology's Hybrid Raid (SHR) is a funky little system, especially since it's built on standard Linux tools.

What I'm wondering though, is how data is distributed when you change the disks in the system.

Imagine I have 2x1TB drives and 2x4TB drives in a system.

  • First it creates a 4x1TB "chunk" which is essentially RAID5. (3TB available)
  • Next it creates a 2x3TB chunk which acts like RAID1 (although internally may be calculated like a RAID5 parity.) (3TB available from this)

Now let's say I replace those two 1TB drives with 4TBs (safely, preserving data, etc.), and tell SHR to expand to use the new drives. I can see a number of scenarios from this point:

  • It mirrors the two new blocks into another 3TB chunk, giving me 9TB total. (3 from RAID5, 3 from first mirror pair, 3 from second mirror pair)
  • It expands the 3TB mirror into a second RAID5 group, giving 12TB total. (3 initial plus 9 in the second group)
  • It does the same thing and also rewrites the data on the (former) 3TB mirror pair to be striped across all four disks
  • It expands the 3TB mirror to RAID5, *and merges it with the original 3TB RAID group, giving a single 12TB RAID5.
  • Again it does the same thing but with rewriting of the data that was formerly just mirrored.

This isn't likely to be a huge deal, but I'd like to know how it works under the covers.

33

OK, I had a hard time coming up with a single sentence title, so please bear with me.

Let's assume I have a computer with a perfect random number generator. I want to draw from a (electronic) deck of cards that have been shuffled. I can see two distinct algorithms to accomplish this:

  1. Fill a list with the 52 cards in random order, and then pull cards from the list in sequence. That is, defining the (random) sequence of cards before getting them. This is analogous to flipping over cards from a the top of a well-shuffled deck.

  2. Generate a random card from the set that hasn't been selected yet. In other words, you don't keep track of what card is going to come up next, you do a random select each time.

Programattically I can see advantages to both systems, but I'm wondering if there's any mathematical or statistical difference between them.

106
submitted 1 month ago by swordgeek@lemmy.ca to c/games@lemmy.world

This game...

I love it. I love how true it is to the (Bethesda, et al) spirit of the Fallout series. I love the humour, the clever touches, the obvious love with which it was crafted.

But holy fuck, the bugs. The bugs, the bugs, the fucking quest-breaking BUGS!!!

Also, the "FO4 too easy? We're going to make this incomprehensible" attitude.

Let's consider companions. First companion was Churchill, followed shortly by Archie then Arthur. I was travelling with Arthur when I finished Archie's questline, and then shortly after, I finished Arthur's as well. Then Arthur swapped his massive gun for melee, so I dumped him.

Unfortunately, I couldn't re-join with Archie. After every interaction, he goes into an unclickable merchant menu, and you can't get him to join you no matter what.

Back to Arthur then. I sent him to Biggs Airport, and...he's not there! FUCK!

Kiera? As soon as I didn't sign on, she went to a location I can't yet reach!

Fine, I'll solo it. Except that the Roundels are stuck in the basement of the bar, which breaks THREE SEPARATE QUESTS!

We'll see if 1.02 fixes any of this shit, but I honestly can't play anymore. Everything - EVERYTHING - in the game is broken for me now.

19
submitted 4 months ago by swordgeek@lemmy.ca to c/newzealand@lemmy.nz

Hey all.

Canadian here. A number of years ago my family visited New Zealand, and while falling in love with the country and the culture, I also discovered the Hei Matau - the Maori fish hook.

This has haunted me ever since, and I want to carve one for myself. However, we've spent the last decade starting to understand the relationship between European settlers and the North American Indigenous people.

So what I do in my basement with carving tools is my own business, but I ask honestly if wearing a Hei Matau in public is considered respectful or appropriation. And also if the material matters in this context. (It would likely be from a tagua nut - "vegetable ivory" - although it's possible I could get some whale bone from my coastal friends.)

1
submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by swordgeek@lemmy.ca to c/macos@lemmy.world

This is killing me.

We have a snippet of code on a web page. Users copy the code to a text editor, make a small change, then copy the modified version and paste it into a terminal window.

And it fails to run.

I've confirmed this happens with both Textedit and Notes, and also that copying from the web page and pasting directly into a terminal works fine (although without the necessary code changes).

It's something in the text editor copy; and there's no way to either "copy as plaintext" or "paste without formatting" into a terminal.

Does anyone know how I can work around this?

EDIT Apparently some (but not all) spaces (octal 040) are being converted to octal "302 240". I can't figure out how to stop it!

28
submitted 10 months ago by swordgeek@lemmy.ca to c/support@lemmy.world

I created this post on my local server, calling for what I thought was reasonable action against a self-proclaimed threat to Canada.

Someone in the community disagreed (fine), and reported the post on their hosting instance (lemmy.world), which led to an immediate deletion of the post (on that single instance only).

Think is, I really don't feel that it was warranted - and neither do most of the community members over on lemmy.ca.

I realize that instances are autonomous, but is there an appeal process to potentially have this reinstated?

14
submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by swordgeek@lemmy.ca to c/lemmy_support@lemmy.ml

Yesterday I created a post on a regional community on lemmy.ca.

Fairly quickly thereafter, I got a DM saying that the post had been removed because someone who disagreed with me complained. Oddly though, the DM came from a @Automod@lemmy.world - not the server hosting the community.

Furthermore, I still see the post when I go looking - and there has been a bit of discussion about it.

So my questions:

(a) Can a post be removed from a specific federated instance without being removed from the original instance? (b) Is there an appeal process for removed posts? I'm sorry that the guy got all butthurt, but my post was sincere, measured, and (I think) reasonable. If it offended someone, they should discuss it.

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swordgeek

joined 11 months ago