For science? Metric is fantastic. For literally everything else - us customary is faster, easier, more understandable, and actually more approachable in terms of trying to actually build something.

Americans keep saying this shit as if the vast majority of the world doesn’t use grams for baking, celcius for temps, and cm for height daily - nobody is imposing anything on you guys, but you are going to continue to be ridiculed for using the dumbest measurement system. Yes, some systems absolutely make more sense than others - having even division of all orders of magnitude is a good example of that.

One could easily spend more time trying to measure 1.905 cm vs very quickly dividing 1 into 3/4". This is purely a skill issue. You’re also clearly being biased by picking a rounded imperial fraction as the basis of comparison, and complaining the metric equivalent is unwieldy. (50mm is 1.968504 inches - oh wow! oh no! how will anybody figure it out?) Of course they don’t neatly line up, they’re not meant to - it doesn’t make working in metric harder because I’m not using both systems? If I need hardware, I have M3 through to M8 for normal screws, bolts, washers, etc. - trying to use imperial is a clusterfuck - they don’t even use the same fucking denominator, thread pitch is not standardised, nothing makes sense, it’s a garbage system.

How many inches in a foot? thats easy - how many feet in a yard?..uh okay a little weirder, yards to a furlong? the fuck - furlongs to fathoms to miles to -… its inconsistent unpredictable garbage because it’s not in any way related to the units above or below it. That’s all WITHIN DISTANCE - good fucking luck if you want to convert that to volume or energy or anything else. mm > cm > m > km - all base 10. Predictable, consistently divisible.

There is no persecution here - you can use fucking apples to measure distance if you like - but please stop portraying SI units as this scientific conundrum which is incompatible with daily life or professional ease. Imperial isn’t actually any easier, americans are just familiar with it All but 2 countries in the entire world have switched over because the benefits self-evidently outweigh the costs…america acts like using dumb dumb units is a patriotic holdout but it is such an ongoing own-goal.

dont know why youre being downvoted, this is completely true. The majority of people favour the convenience that streaming has represented, and TVs have been designed to turn on showing a shiny netflix icon instead of “Composite II” for like a decade now.

Yes, while consumers have been sold a double-edged sword/lie - the streaming companies were obviously never going to market their platforms by saying “one downside of streaming is we can take away content whenever we like”.

The average person with a bluray collection is going to be much more aware of the pros and cons of the formats - I’d be willing to guess most peoples family “collections” are still on DVD.

The issue is WhatsApp from a few years ago versus WhatsApp today - meta/favebook is probably the worst possible company to have bought it, their record on security, privacy, and features is horrible.

The app today is full of enshitification (meta ai being shoved down my throat by the communication monopoly) and nobody can ever fully trust their security or privacy because its not open source.

Signal sadly doesn’t yet have the ubiquity of whatsapp - but for everyone that has it (now I’m finding even non tech-savvy family are switching over) use signal, and where you have to, use WhatsApp.

imessage is no better in that case - and outside America barely anybody still uses either SMS or RCS, apple is a smaller share of the market meaning the ubiquity of imessage isn’t there.

If you want anything beyond SMS which is a universal standard, you both have to be using the same service - I’m just saying that signal is available for anyone who wants to use it.

I was also upset at the removal of texting from signal, but in hindsight its for the best - if its a secure message service that youre not charged per message to use, the support of a dying platform which is difficult to distinguish when in use is an issue - now its extremely clear whether youre reaching someone through signal or text, cause signal only sends signal messages.

Signal is better than any other common alternative, and its on both android and ios

The confusion about how the protocol works for new users is real, and suggestions that ‘any instance is fine’, although true in a technical sense - is a little misleading, firstly when you’re not used to how fediverse stuff works, but also when bizarre rules about no swearing or NSFW content are applied at an admin level. I first started on .ml, but moved here after some deliberation because people can tailor their feed and content through joining communities, not having their instance hyper-politicised by ban-happy tankies. (I’m very progressive myself, before it’s claimed otherwise)

I think the blurring of the lines between developers of the Lemmy open source project, and admins of the lemmy.ml instance is a self-sabotaging and tone-deaf reflection on the site, and hurts chances of wider adoption. Of course admins are entitled to their own opinions, but the entire purpose of communities like this is to try and decentralise the problematic censorship which has ruined reddit (among other issues). Having faith in the users and mods to consider content and conduct with as impartial as possible development and administration is vital to the site having any chance of being transparent and worth-contributing to.

I don’t want to see the whole concept of Lemmy written off by outsiders because their first experiences of the site are of the rabid circlejerk messageboards instead of a new and exciting format for online content with greater interoperability and user control. To this effect, I’m still on the fence about defederating with those communities at a user level, but I think that I’m going to make a more concerted effort to make content and foster the communities I want here, so that .ml fades into insignificance - I don’t want to feed into their narratives of persecution.

I wanna call on @dessalines, and @Nutomic, among others, with the greatest respect for their views and contributions to the project, to put the future of the platform ahead of turning it into an echo chamber - either by relinquishing themselves from one or the other (admin/dev), or by the admins collectively creating a clear policy about politicised banning to acknowledge people’s concerns about this behaviour.

I think PC gamers tend to overestimate their importance in OS distribution these days - gaming on Linux is just as passable these days as on Mac, and there’s much more to PC use than only gaming for 90% of users.

I feel that PC use is more complicated than gamers/productivity - but having switched over full time this year, Linux clearly has some work to do so the average user doesn’t need to touch the terminal - but even compared to 10 years ago its infinitely more capable and user friendly.

Customers of paid software need to start either voting with their feet meaningfully, or lobbying to get software support on Linux if they want it - complaining that titles aren’t available for Linux and then continuing to suffer through windows instead of making that known to the devs is seen exactly the same way - a sale.

I certainly miss some windows only software - but I’m not going to be held captive anymore for programmes I paid for, that refuse to consider my needs, when they are a part of my wider usage and expectations.

Only Melbourne was previously the official capital of the federated colonies which became the Commonwealth of Australia. Sydney was, and still is, the capital of NSW - but was never the capital of the country.

Not everybody who approaches the machine or walks past it is really consenting to their appearance being logged and analysed though - not to mention that “we don’t store data” is only true if the security is effective and no exploits manage to weaponise the camera now staring back at you as you try to make a purchase.

Ultimately vending machines are completely passive sales anyway, the collection of demographic data about who is buying from the machine are a little useless because it’s not like the machine can work on its closing techniques for coin based candy sales.