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Joined
2 yr. ago

  • Dynamic ad length wouldn't be an issue for chapter markers, or "tone delimited" podcasts (the first two categories). It would only be a problem for the third category, which is already the more difficult of the three.

  • There seem to be three categories for how podcasts deal with ad spots.

    Some podcasts mark their ads inline by using Chapter Markers. For example, ATP marks its ads by putting them in a new chapter with a name like "Ad: X". In theory, you could have a player that skips any chapter who's name begins with "Ad: ", though I don't know of any existing apps that do that. Unfortunately, the number of podcasts using chapter markers seems to be a small portion of the podcasts I listen to, so this wouldn't be very useful.

    Another method that could work on some podcasts that don't use chapter markers is identifying a delineating tone. Using ATP as an example again, every ad spot starts with the same jingle, and ends with the same jingle. In theory, an app could skip the delineated sections. Mind you, this would require work from the user to set up (or it could be crowdsourced): you would have to tell the app what specific sound snippet delineates the ad read. Luckily, many podcasts seem to be structured in this way, with a clear audio cue to delineate ad spots.

    Then, you have really free-form podcasts where the hosts may just say, in everyday speech, something like "time for ads", and the ads will insert. Sometimes it's always the same phrase (e.g., the use of the phrase "the money zone" on MBMBAM), but that's not always the case (e.g., there is seemingly no consistent verbiage in the Aunty Donna Podcast). This category is the most difficult to deal with.

    In summary, I don't know of any existing apps that enable skipping ads for any of these three categories. Of the three categories, one is very easy to implement, one less easy, and one quite difficult. All potential solutions would require a shared/crowd-sourced database of which category each podcast falls into, at the least.

  • Pi hole does not work for YouTube (or Twitch or many others). It doesn't work for services who distribute ads from their own servers.

    If you had Android instead of iOS you may have been able to use an ad-free youtube client and cast to TV, but if you're streaming on the TV, or from iOS, I don't know how you'd go about blocking ads.

  • I suspect that the way they came to that conclusion was: any post mentioning one of those groups, that also had a negative sentiment rating, meant that sentiment was directed at that group. Which is horribly dishonest. What's more likely is someone to be angry (which registers as negative sentiment) about those groups being mistreated or what have you. By the naive approach they seem to have taken, that's indistinguishable from being mad at that group.

    Also, the methodology they describe, and the conclusions they come to don't align. They don't describe any methodology by which they could determine that the identities are being attacked. It would be like if they concluded some cause-and-effect relationship but their methodology had absolutely no way of establishing a causal relationship in the data.

  • I don't follow. When you say magnetic cover, do you mean some of the newer models? Also, what does pressing the button to unlock it do? Does that turn on wifi or something? I have to press a button to turn my Kindle 4 "on" (aka remove the screensaver and show my book) but that doesn't cause an issue.

  • I have a Kindle paperwhite without ads, worth paying extra imo.

    Pro tip: if you leave off wifi for long enough, the ads seem to expire and they're permanently replaced by some generic pencils image or something. And, since having wifi on can cause the kindle to overwrite your cover images, I sync with calibre over USB anyway. I have the ad-supported Kindle 4 from 2011 and haven't had ads on it since 2012.

  • So in order to discourage crossing at non-official crossings, the only answer is passive barriers.

    Completely visible barriers would do the trick.

    You've somehow, again, managed to miss the point: the purpose was not just deterrence, the purpose was to hide them and cause unexpected harm. I'm not using booby trap to evoke any legality relating to the word; I'm using the word to evoke the horrendously inhumane use of hidden weapons meant to cause harm to those who accidentally stumble upon them.

    You're defending a horrific practice in the guise of it being a necessary evil, when in all actuality, it's just one horrific out of many not-horrific implementations of something that you're overtly in favor of.

  • For $500k USD, you can get the low quality ArXiv article; for free, you can have this high quality teardown of said article.

    Thank you for the amount of effort this took to put together. I've done only a quick skim but I'm going to give it a full read. Some stuff that definitely stood out to me is: the horseshoe theory nonsense; and the "rude words mean evil person" nonsense. Use of charged words or negative sentiment don't make you bad or wrong; arguably, negative sentiment is the only rational response to a lot of the topics at hand.

  • There is no legal distinction.

    Using legality as a gauge for morality is not always the best thing to do, especially when these are law enforcement agencies operating entirely within the law.

    no where are barbwire or “razorwire” considered a “booby trap.”

    So you're being wilfully obtuse. Nowhere was anyone implying the use of barbed wire is what makes it a booby trap. Every single time it was mentioned, it was clear: it is a booby trap because it is a purposefully hidden device meant to cause harm to those who stumble upon it by accident.

    It also does matter the distinction between razor wire and barbed wire. Barbed wire you can hold in your hand. You can grip it, move your hand along it, and indeed are unlikely to be very harmed by encountering it; it is designed as an unpleasant deterrant, not a dangerous one. Razorwire, on the other hand, is designed to cause harm: every part of it is dangerous, and an encounter with it would result in deep lacerations.

    But again, it could be barbed wire and my point would stand: the concealment of it is what makes it a booby trap, and what makes it a problem.

  • "Booby trap" is a description of its concealedness. These are concealed, on purpose. That's the issue.

    Moreover, they're not barbed wire, they're razor wire. There's a massive difference between barbed wire and razor wire.

  • but I wonder whether some form of dehumidification specifically, rather than just cooling, could also aid survival?

    The issue is that in general, dehumidification is energy intensive, just as cooling is. In fact, one of the best ways to dehumidify air is to cool it down. Other non-mechanical solutions, like chemical solutions (e.g., dry hygroscopic material with large surface area) don't have an energy cost during their use, but they have an energy cost in their production and renewal. For example, to dry the hygroscopic material back out to recycle it and re-use it, you must supply a lot of heat energy.

    I would be interested in an energy consumption comparison though, between: cooling air to keep it under the red area of the curve; dehumidifying air to keep it under the red area of the curve; and some combination of the two (as most air conditioning units do). It may be the case that dehumidifying is less energy intensive.

  • The stated goal is killing the Ukrainian identity, a.k.a. genocide.

    Is it? Can you point me to anywhere that that's the stated goal?

    Never has the stated goal included wanting to genocide Ukrainians. To say that's the case is to pretend your imagination is reality.

  • Yeah, in case of Ukrainians they know that if they surrender it still won’t be over, the next thing will be killing them

    The constant refrain of "Russia wants to kill every Ukrainian". It's never made sense. There has never been any reason to believe that the goal is to kill Ukrainians.

    Can you lay out exactly why you think that Russia will kill Ukrainians once the war is over? Can you lay out why you think the goal is to kill Ukrainians?

  • ArXiv doesn't filter anything afaik (or maybe they have policy against really egregious stuff). If you take a peek at their mathematics section, any nutjob who think he's solved the collatz conjecture can export their microsoft word ramblings to PDF and publish it on ArXiv.

    ArXiv does have value because journals overcharge authors for publishing, overcharge other researches for access to journals, hold strict opinions on what they will or will not publish or censor, among other complains. ArXiv levels the playing field a bit by being basically fancy PDF file hosting. Not every valuable piece of thought comes from a "prestigous university", and restricting access to knowledge is overall a bad thing.

  • Me too. The exact same app. I rarely open the play store with other app stores existing but good lord this is bad.

  • "Democracy" in China is significantly more democratic than in places like the USA. In the USA, you're presented with a false dichotomy in the two-party system, where both parties are parties for wealthy interests. Neither party is a party of the people. In China, for example, elections are "non-politicized". Paraphrasing Richard Boer,

    'Non-politicized' elections means that elections are not a manifestation of class conflict in antagonistic political parties, but are based on qualifications, expertise, and merit for positions.

    When your vote is between candidates based on their qualifications and is not some charade of us-v-them where neither choice actually benefits the people, that is a more democratic system.

    The USA is democratic in name only. People in the USA have little to no real political agency, but have been lead to believe their superficial interactions with the political system are real agency.

  • Common but disturbing behavior: investigating whether calling out fascism is a problem, but not invesgating whether fascism is a problem.

    Punishing people for saying what they see.

  • Because it’s entirely possible that they’re processing the base grain into more refined products before it heads to it’s final destination.

    And, as with any speculation, just because something is possible does not guarantee it is happening. As with any speculation, it helps to try to back up your claims.

  • The plural of Linux is Linus.