Ernest

ah okay, I think sharing that entire article is kinda endorsing all the weird stuff in it, but thanks for specifying.

I know those are large numbers, but like, Wikipedia is one of the most visited sites on the internet? “$97.6 million in assets” is peanuts to that (compare it to any other website in a similar range!). The fact that they don’t have that much operating costs is a good thing, right? It means they’re efficient, which is what people love to complain about with non-profits.

Anyway, it’s not like they ask for much–I think the last fundraiser I saw they were asking for $2.75 a year, if you felt like they provided you that much value over the year. I certainly do, and I donate $10/year to them. If you don’t feel like Wikipedia is worth that cost to you that’s fair–but I think telling other people that they shouldn’t donate because it objectively(?) isn’t worth it is a strange thing to do.

… idk, if Wikipedia is pissing off Deepak Chopra, I’m pretty sure that’s a good thing…

edit: I think my downvote probably warrants a less flippant explanation. In the past decade, Wikipedia has started explicitly labeling pseudoscience and “alternative medicine” as such, as opposed to their original policy of being so “neutral” they would say things like “some people think this is bogus, but some people think not”. This has, understandably, pissed those people off, and I suppose in some sense they are right? But in this era of widespread and accelerated sanewashing, I think saying these (true!) things does matter, and the people getting pissed off are really just telling on themselves. I would invite you to read the Wikipedia articles on the quoted public figures for yourself, and verify that they really were slandered the way they describe.

tangentially-related Hank Green video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zi0ogvPfCA

well in general it’s just not really a helpful thing to say… imagine your car won’t start and a bunch of other people say “I have zero issues with mine”

technically TMR, but yeah

I’m interpreting it as two Es blurred together (like horizontal motion blur), if that makes sense? idk it makes sense to my brain

given the “E” is stylized it’s not really that much of a stretch to interpret it as two Es mashed together; it seems clear to me and the “typo” criticism comes off as unnecessarily pedantic

(e: I didn’t downvote the comment, but it did leave a bad taste in my mouth)

NOAA is run by the US government, yes.

I’m preaching to the choir here, but Philip Labes has some very poignant protest songs. This recent one is about this headline: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Xj0A2PTolCc

I’m not exactly qualified to speak on the issue, but I think it’s also important to focus on where the money gets spent. Anecdotally it seems like a lot is spent on classroom tech (“smart boards”, Chromebooks, iPads), which while nice, has abysmal value in terms of returns on cost.

Personally, I think the most important things are basic supplies, school lunches, and teacher salaries.

(six, the other three are doing God’s work. giving district judges terms like “Calvinball” they can cite)

I get that the reference wouldn’t have parsed without saying “the nine” though, haha

404 media, Taylor Lorenz

that’s what I thought

is there anything preventing the usual cracking/packing tactics from being used? Create enormous completely red districts consisting of large swaths of rural areas, and then split the urban areas amongst their surrounding rural areas just enough to have a relatively safe win. Yes, the districts would be ugly as hell (and vary hugely in size), but assuming we’re okay with gerrymandering that was probably to be expected already

I think your starting point (allowing bot user agents to crawl the web has overlooked benefits) is a good one, but things aren’t black and white–there are clear drawbacks, too. Bots obviously have an orders of magnitude higher potential for abuse; to the point where bot traffic–as it currently stands in the real world–is qualitatively different from human traffic.

we should expand these protections from intentional/unintentional ddos irrelevant of user agent.

Sure, but targeted regulation based on heuristics (in this case, user agent) is also a widely accepted practice. DUI laws exist, even though the goals (fewer murders and safer roads) are already separately regulated.

Would it be nice if we didn’t have to do this? Or there were some other solution? Sure, but I have no idea where to even start, unfortunately.

but that sounds like “sewer”

(you’re probably looking for “plaintiff”)

iirc, gitea was forked from gogs, and forgejo is forked from gitea

unfortunately, it’s a disturbingly common belief that if you split your ticket like that it means you’re being “reasonable”/“moderate”/“centrist”.

wait until you hear about the number of people who don’t turn over their ballot in elections where the choices don’t fit on one side…

Or why not just use (big) mirrors?

I mean, this is a thing with solar concentrators already, haha

and for those the heat is a feature :p

You can shape them that no matter how the light falls on it, it will align to the center. Kind of like how satellite dishes work but in reverse.

how do you do this, actually? I’m curious about the details because I just watched a video on compound parabolic reflectors, haha

a regular (ideal) convex lens with a single focal point will have the image move around as the light source moves across the sky. AFAIK satellite dishes tend to be paraboloids, which focus parallel rays onto the focal point, and if you change the angle of the light source, you’ll start losing focus. Stuff like the DSN and radio telescopes absolutely do have to aim and track their targets (or are forced to follow the rotation of the earth).

satellite dishes that are aimed towards geostationary satellites don’t have to move (because their targets are stationary in the sky), while stuff like starlink tracks targets with a phased array.