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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • Yeah, I think most people, myself included at one time, are more fascinated by RO than we understand the practical considerations.

    Use RO locally at a single tap in the house, if the water quality warrants it. Perhaps add a desalination unit before the water heater, or centrally if you have some very hard water. But a central RO? Sounds expensive.

    I’ve considered a central RO for prepping purposes, but even then a gravel/sand/active charcoal filter, followed by a UV-C mercury lamp, would probably be more cost effective, and easier to maintain without access to replacement membranes.



  • Sorry for letting you hang, I’ve been swamped.

    I believe he was going to LATAM and he couldn’t continue while transiting through russia.

    That’s what I recall, too. That he was going to Latin America from Hong Kong through Sheremetyevo. But then on the Wikipedia page it said that Russian authorities have claimed that Snowden applied for asylum before departing Hong Kong. But again, probably propaganda.

    Why is his collaborating with the russians not a fair circumstance to take in account? If he is being forced to work with them, then shouldn’t we disregard what he says as being suspect? Aren’t there better spokespersons for the FOSS/digital privacy movement that can be promoted instead?

    Disregarding any statements that originates within Russia’s sphere of influence should be default. But on account of what Snowden did more than 10 years ago, he’s still given a voice in tech media.

    He is almost certainly trying to leverage his fame and influence to promote russian security services goals; i.e. try to sow discord in the US.

    I agree that Snowden’s fame is being leveraged, but I don’t think that it’s necessarily done on Snowden’s initiative. As you said it yourself, Snowden is a tool in the Russian propaganda toolkit.

    for example in europe they were involved with green organizations in order to counteract the possibility of a rise in shale gas production in Europe.

    Yeah, a Russian woman, who had received 45k EUR from the SVR run Pravfond, was just arrested in Denmark. She had run a legal counseling service for Russians in Denmark and ran for municipal elections for the socialist communists. I wonder how many people Russia has planted to run these low intensity operations around the world.

    I would even speculate that he has internalized a lot of their goals (he is a russian citizen after all).

    He definitely could have internalized the Russian state’s goals. But I don’t think that him being a Russian citizen should be an indication. That’s probably more of a middle finger from Putin in the direction of the US. Sorta like “Congratulations, that application for citizenship you didn’t fill out, has been approved. Go say your lines little puppet”


  • In 2013 we all still believed that Putin wasn’t the madman that he has turned out to be. I remember thinking that our biggest threats were right wing terrorists, Iranian nukes, and maybe North Korea. Sure we had seen what happened to Abkhazia and South Ossetia in 2008, but I don’t think anybody in the NATO countries saw that as the test it turned out to be. My point being that when Snowden flew to Russia in 2013, intent on seeking asylum, it may not have been his first choice, but it was as crazy an idea as it would be today…

    With that said, I’d like to relate to some your post:

    What I am saying is it is legitimate to criticize him and highlight his collaboration with the russians.

    Sure, it’s legitimate to criticize anything. But without taking all the circumstances into account, the critique loses relevance. At least for me it does, and that’s what I’m arguing.

    Well let me tell you as someone living in Ukraine (and was born in Donbas with my hometown being occupied in 2014 and relatives having to leave everything because of the russian occupation);

    This is on a completely unrelated note. I’d like to apologize to you and every other Ukrainian, for the incompetence of my country’s politicians. We promised you +100 leopard 1 tanks, but due to the ineptitude of our politicians, their investments, and the resulting organization, we haven’t been able to deliver a single working tank. Whenever our politicians “donate” equipment it is blown out of proportions by our media. But when it comes to delivering useful kit, it fails over and over again. Rest assured that our present government is not going to be reelected. Their replacement will not be competent either though. Anyway, I wish we would do more than ship you our outdated equipment like it was some sort of humanitarian mission. It’s not a humanitarian mission, it’s fucking war and half assing war is stupid… Slava Ukraini! And death to Russian orks.

    You full well know that there are real consequences from Snowden’s collaboration with the russians.

    And we’re back in the discussion at hand :) the only consequences I can think of, that comes from Snowden collaboration is the propaganda tool he is now, and the intelligence he had to offer 11 years ago. Disregard him to mitigate the propaganda consequences.

    I hope that whatever intel Snowden gave the Russians, it was limited. I think that a person with Snowden’s background would be able to encrypt the information he traveled with properly.

    I’d like to know if I’ve missed something here. I really don’t mean to troll you. If you believe that I’m misinformed, please inform me.

    Trying to survive is fair. But putting him on the pedestal and labelling him as “untouchable saviour who can do wrong” is not normal.

    I don’t think that I’m putting Snowden on a pedestal. All I’m saying is that, like everyone else in Russia, who have a public profile, Snowden knows that he can either toe the party line, or plunge to his death from a basement window. What we really need to do, is to realize that anything coming from the mouths of anybody in Russia, is the result of a proverbial gun to their heads and should be treated thusly.


  • He could have chosen to not collaborate with the russians

    Yes, he could indeed. He could be the metaphorical guy with the bags standing in front of a line tanks. But why should he?

    This might not a big deal for you, but on a purely theoretical level, you don’t see how this hypocrisy could be important for others?

    If you insist on applying a purely theoretical analysis, on the actions of a very real person with very real concerns for his safety, then I think I’ve found the problem with this discussion. You can’t lift this problem to this level of abstract theoretical morality.

    But to answer your question more clearly: no, I don’t see how this perceived hypocrisy could be important for others.

    Do you sincerely believe, that Snowden should have stayed put and faced a firing squad for whistle blowing? Snowden is trying to survive, and if daddy Putin says “go on TV and say these lines”, then the sentence doesn’t have to end with “or else”. Snowden did what he had to do for his country, by telling the public about the surveillance, now he’s paying for it. Why should Snowden be fighting for the Russian people as well?





  • Can you though? Explorer.exe on windows 11 is already a steaming pile. Why the fuck can’t I disable grouping? If I need to find a specific kind of files in my download directory, it’s way easier for me to sort by size. What isn’t easy is that now it’s grouped by fucking date as well. IDK when I grabbed the last windows iso on my.visualstudio.com, I just know that I have <10 files that are >3GB in my download directory. But noooo now after sorting by size I’ve got to either search though 4 or 5 groups or turn grouping off.

    The IT dept at work has decided that we all will run windows 11, and it’s locked down tighter than I’ve experienced in a long time. Guess who has a VM called “Windows 10 Daily driver” running. Fuck windows 11 and the iso it rode in on.










  • Edit: I tried updating this, when I submitted sh.itjust.works was down and I lost it… the edit that is. Anyway I have now updated some grammar and put in some more context AND a tl;dr at the bottom. All for the low low price of my hyper focus.

    Alright, it’s math time.

    A quick google comes up with this blog post, which I haven’t vetted or even read at all, it just has a table with some stats https://dodonut.com/blog/does-dark-mode-save-battery/. I should probably also mention that I am going to use the most impressive savings in the following. Actual savings may be as little as a 4th.

    Apparently going to dark mode with 100% brightness provide a net saving of 40% on a pixel 2. Let’s assume this is universally true for all OLED and AMOLED displays, LCD users won’t see a difference, neither will CRTs but (that was false, I’m an idiot) … I don’t think that I’ve heard of a CRT display on a phone.

    40%? That sounds like a lot, doesn’t it?

    Well yes and no, in relative terms it’s impressive, but it really depends on absolute terms. So how much does a phone use? The pixel 2 from before comes with a 10.39Wh battery, let’s assume an average use of 80% per day, then that comes out to 8.32Wh per day per phone. That means that the 40% reduction is 3.33Wh daily.

    Is that a lot? Depends, if your only power source is a potato with a bit of copper and a galvanized nail, then yes, otherwise no.

    Over the course of a year 3.33Wh a day comes to 1.215kWh.

    Let’s put that into some context. The largest Vestas offshore wind turbine is the 15MW V236 https://www.vestas.com/en/products/offshore/V236-15MW. It can produce 80GWh annually. With the saving of 1.215kWh per phone, then for every approx 66 million OLED phones, we can skip erecting one offshore wind turbine.

    But let’s look at a global impact. As of yesterday there were 8.05 billion people breathing on the planet. Let’s say they all achieve the maximum saving of 1.215kWh annually. That’s 9.78TWh. Presently there’s a handful of projects planned with the V236, https://www.offshorewind.biz/2023/04/03/vestas-15-mw-prototype-now-at-full-throttle/, totalling 7.3 GW, 486.6 units (I’ve got the figures for each project and added them up, so the number of units is an approximation) or 38.9TWh annually. So get everyone to achieve maximum saving, with technology most doesn’t have, and we can save a quarter of the planned pre-order of a turbine model that isn’t even done with testing.

    tl;dr: dark mode does save power, but at best its effect is miniscule, and realistically utterly insignificant.