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Cake day: May 19th, 2021

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  • Phones are generally seen as more secure because they’re less likely to have malware and the apps should be running in their own sandbox, meaning it’s more difficult to see what each app is doing and so theoretically it’s more secure.

    Most desktop operating systems do not have sandboxing in place, have known malware that could be installed much easier than on a phone, and harder to verify that the system is secure. This is doubly so taking into account that basically the only way to use the banking information is through a web browser, which could have any number of junky web extensions installed.

    While things are incrementally changing on the desktop front (mostly on Linux with Atomic distros, Flatpak/Snap, and Firefox container tabs), most banks are only familiar with Windows and macos, and since those two have the most security risks, they’d rather play it safe with the relatively more standardized, theoretically more secure phone OS.



  • Ehhhhh, I don’t know if I agree with this.

    American “culture” has had a whole bunch of definitions, usually changing with the decades. For most of the 20th century, you could point to something and say “That’s American”; things like milkshake bars and greasers, anything surrounding the hippie movement (that we actually probably stole from somewhere else), and… Whatever that strange design of random shapes the 90s had.

    After 2000, there hasn’t been really anything that stands out, in part due to the rise of the internet, and in another, the dangerous build environment. In order to have culture, people need to congregate in a place and create something meaningful. Because Americans go to work and then go home, often with little-to-no time in between from long commutes, they have no time to create the next “culture moment”.





  • With the enshittification of streaming platforms, a Kodi or Jellyfin server would be a great starting point. In my case, I have both, and the Kodi machine gets the files from the Jellyfin machine through NFS.

    Or Home Assistant to help keep IOT devices that tend to be more IoS. Or a Nextcloud server to try to degoogle at least a little bit.

    Maybe a personal Friendica instance for your LAN so your family can get their Facebook addiction without giving their data to Meta?






  • To quote one of the commenters in the HN discussion:

    You will have to solve the epidemic of homelessness and crime in high-density areas of the United States before people will accept using mass transit. I fully support doing so - I would for example support a national project to build cheap concrete housing for all who need it - but that’s the barrier.

    I’ve straight up had people tell me that even if Public Transportation were convenient and consistent, they still wouldn’t take it because Public Transportation is famous for being pretty dirty and having large potential for crime.

    I’d like to have some sort of quick, easy solution, but I think changing that perception is going to take time, and the time the US is taking to revitalize Public Transportation isn’t making that happen any faster.



  • Strong Towns and Not Just Bikes both go over the math more in other articles/videos, but I’ll try to provide a decent summary.

    Basically, the cost to maintain the roads and infrastructure in a city are paid for by everyone in the area, and because cities are usually smaller and mixed-use, you have several homes and businesses chipping in to pay the same mile of asphalt and water/sewer.

    When you get to the suburbs, even though they pay more in taxes because they’re larger and newer, they’re also more spread out, often with a large highway out to them. They require this dedicated infrastructure line, and still require fire/police/garbage services, which requires more staffing, more buildings, and more trucks.

    Imagine you’re playing two games of Cities Skylines.

    In the first game, you have small, 2-lane roads, your houses and apartment buildings are small, one-four block sizes, you have a corner store every other street, and because everything is within 5 blocks, people walk to their destination. You really only need one fire station, one police station, and a dump.

    In the second game, you have a highway to a residential-only area. All your residences are 6 blocks big and in cul-de-sacs. You’d likely have to have one police/fire stations on one side of the suburb and one on the other in order to get full coverage. They’d require their own garbage dump in order to get the best service, and you’d have to run sewer/water lines out to them.

    Which of these cities do you think would do better financially?

    If you’d like more supplementary reading/watching here are the other videos that go into this more in-depth:

    That last video is actually part of a whole playlist, which starts here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6OGLN69ehUTVa





  • If they are 12 hour shifts, so that the people can head home at 5 with everyone else. If they are 8 hour shifts, usually for the later shifts to have an okay life balance: 5-2 for day shift, 2-11 for second shift, and a third shift option that overlaps.

    Even though I’m a night person, 5 is a common time to wake up for enough people who presumably want to be productive, and the benefit of getting off work before the school day ends has to be enticing. And on the second shift side of things, they get to have lunch with loved ones before going to work, and 11 is early enough that they could potentially go out for drinks or other fun before bed.

    It’s also nice that for either shift, the person has time to run errands at a time when most stores are open and activity levels are low.