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Joined 7 months ago
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Cake day: March 14th, 2025

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  • Thanks, right, that makes sense!

    I don’t know that it’s not a coincidence that this wasn’t hotly debated btw. There’s other debates that I don’t hear from elsewhere, like nitrogen emissions. I barely know the words in english but de ‘stikstofcrisis’ has been a thing for about as long as I’m allowed to vote. Someone figured out that it harms nature and so a cap was put in place, then someone else did the math and figured out we’re way over that limit (mainly due to insane cattle numbers for the country’s size, iirc), and now any sector emitting nitrogen has permit issues, such as building living space for the growing population. Why is it growing despite low birth rates? “The foreigners!” See, we can blame everything on immigration :) (sadly I feel the need to clarify that this last sentence is not serious)

    Sorry that I’m not responding to basically anything else you said. I don’t have much of an idea about things like representation scales but what you said all sounds sensible. Perhaps I could add that the EU, until this year’s “think of the children” fad (first ubiquitous age verification, then chatcontrol), has made mostly sensible proposals so far as I heard of them, but then it’s not really acting in the same way as the US federal government so it may not be a good comparison. Maybe they were doing alright because they didn’t think of themselves as the parent who’s calling the shots, but rather a collaboration system of sovereign countries? Who knows


  • Does unrestricted immigration work?

    I’m not aware that any country (that anyone would want to go to, not like a war zone) has completely free immigration. I’d be opposed to having no more borders from one day to the next for the simple reason that it’s a big change. One that’s worth trialing and working towards, of course, but not something we can yet know will work afaik. Especially if we’re the first country doing this and 2 billion people decide the Netherlands would be a fine place to live in (it is!). I’d not be surprised if it turns out we need a lottery kind of system, or maybe an announcement system, at least for those not in mortal danger, so that we can build living spaces ahead of time. Supply and demand is currently such that the only way to afford a house (even for top, idk, ~2% of world incomes) is to have a house so you can sell it at the inflated price, and while immigration is afaik a net positive to a country’s wealth and welfare, this effect is offset in time. The housing crisis will pass again, as it always has, but in general the solution should be sustainable and I’m not aware that it’s as simple as “be in favor of unrestricted immigration or else you’re a racist”



  • Why does the netherlands do so many things well

    I’m really curious about this also! What makes some nations be, ehm, in a “sensible” state (in my eyes) and others not, given similar situations and options? We’re by no means as cool as Iceland or Finland for example, eyeing metrics like happiness index and development index, but why not?

    Being a small population and/or region seems to be a part of the success mix (my theory is that this makes the government be closer to the people as well as forcing trade since you’re clearly better off working together than trying to navigate international politics alone), but there’s plenty of counter-examples so it’s clearly either not the only requirement or flat-out wrong. I tried reading a book on the topic but then the book doesn’t adequately explain it either ^^ It seems to be an unsolved problem as of yet

    Either way, despite the current government I guess I’m proud of the place I’m from. You get to decide your own life (factors including: people are multilingual, relatively low inequality, euthanasia available (not that I’d currently want to, but self-determination just seems like a good principle that a crazy number of countries don’t yet have)), though iirc the rich are getting richer and both rich and poor citizens are currently voting to widen that gap (as well as other short- and long-term issues, strawman problems… the usual). We’ll see where we stand in 100 years. Maybe I shouldn’t be proud, since all that I’m proud of was built by my forebears (particularly before privatisation, which has its pros but maybe not for every aspect of society) and it’s my generation that has yet to stand the test of time 😅

    aanyway, I didn’t get this part:

    and seem completly bored talking about lol

    Could you elaborate or rephrase?







  • Now I’m imagining a shell that looks iteratively through arguments to find where quotes would make total sense

    $ ls
    my victims.ods
    $ wipe -f my victims.ods --thorough
    

    So the shell would go like

    1. wipe → command name found, ok
    2. -f → no file in the current directory starts with that, skip
    3. my → matches a file, keep in memory…
    4. my victims.ods → full match, but missing quotes!
    5. Prompt user:
    Filename "my victims.ods" found without quotes. Choose:
    [a]dd quotes this time
    [A]lways add quotes (dangerous)
    [n]o quotes today please
    [N]ever offer adding quotes again
    [t]ell me what could possibly go wrong when I choose to always add quotes
    [P]unch the person who proposed this feature
    




  • Every TWO years, as a best-case scenario?! What parallel universe do you live in

    I don’t think I’ve owned a phone for fewer than three years. That was an Apple device at work and it had dead touchscreen pixels for half the time, a bad battery from day one, and software bugs galore (couldn’t reset an app, for example. It kept b0rked data between reinstalls and it’s not like there’s a way to go into the filesystem and actually delete it yourself, so I just couldn’t use the app at all and only had the work calendar on my laptop. Very convenient at events. “It just works” they say, but if it ever doesn’t, you’re screwed)




  • Like ten years back, in a Finnish abandoned soap factory turned into hackerspace, I jokingly asked if I can pay by card for something silly. My jaw almost dropped as this private individual whips out a legit card reader and says yes. The devices are somewhat common now but that was my first interaction with it

    Idk what hoops they’d require you to jump through, maybe you need to be incorporated depending on the country or so, but I’d not be too surprised if they start supporting this sooner or later

    Think I’ve also heard about proposals or trials to transfer from phone to phone. What will be hard to not sound like a lie is that I don’t have any sort of banking app on my phone… The future is bright ^^


  • Looking at other comments, clearly I’m in the minority that I simply feel watched when there’s a camera that I know is aimed at me right now. I can’t know if someone’s watching, or watching it back later. I’m not doing anything nefarious, not more than picking my nose perhaps, but it’s not like everyone’s given a feed of all cameras that exist either. Clearly people don’t want to just be watched insofar as it is avoidable

    Most of the time I don’t know that a camera is filming me and ignorance is bliss. And obviously facial recognition and license plate scanning, as mentioned in other comments, goes even further. But I’m also simply not super happy with the ubiquity of cameras on every street and every publicly accessible place and vehicle you use, even if I see their benefits as well