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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • Interesting article but it’s a little scant on the facts for the cities themselves. Like how much have their economies grown? What are there tax bases like?

    The stuff it highlights about the asymmetric commute make sense, and the income tax going to Copenhagen. But what of the benefits to Malmö such as its own growth, and money coming in from workers spending in shops, paying local property tax? Or is it a net drain due to providing services with a smaller income tax base?

    It feels like the article scratches the surface of a potentially very interesting topic that could be looked at in much more depth. Cross border cities is a big global topic and particularly in Europe where people have freedom of movement yet with their income tax benefiting employing countries while resident countries have to supply services.


  • So to summarise the challenges the industry is facing:

    • Tariffs on Aluminium - Trump
    • Tariffs on Solar imports - Trump
    • Sudden loss of federal grants that covered 30% of the cost for installation (was due to run til 2030 now slashed) - Trump
    • Slashing of the fees owners get for selling money to the grid by 75% - Oil industry lobbying / Trump
    • Removal of investment credits which have specifically been stripped from solar but not other energy investments - Trump

    To call this “macro economic” issues is bizarre. All of this is due to government policy and actions. It’s also notable that the rest of the world’s solar industry is not collapsing. Trump.and the republicans are selling out US consumers to prop up the oil industry and tax cuts for the rich.




  • BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.worldtoGames@lemmy.worldThe Switch 2: Is it worth buying?
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    27 days ago

    I’m not hyped by the Switch 2: its expensive, its games are expensive and the launch titles are paltry. It also has competition in the form of the Steam Deck and a range of SteamOS and Windows handheld devices with a huge volume of games available including many at significantly lower prices.

    Switch 2 needs exclusives to justify its price and its existence. Switch 1 games with slightly improved graphics (which you have to pay for) and a small handful of launch titles make the Switch 2 a bad proposition for anyone except diehard fans at this point.

    At the moment there are no compelling 1st party games in the pipeline. 3D Mariocart and Donkey Kong Bananza seems to be it for now. No new Mario platformer, no Zelda, no pokemon at launch. Everything is old games with better graphics, and much of it available on other platforms like PC with better graphics already anyway (e.g. Cyberpunk 2077 - a 5 year old game which most people have played and is still better on PC or PS5/Xbox; why is that a compelling launch title?).

    Nintendo has a lot of work to do - I think there is a real risk the Switch 2 will be a flop if they dont get 1st party exclusives out before the holiday season.



  • Except the big danger with fully self driving cars is that drivers are not paying attention at all as they have nothing to do most of the time. They’ll be on their phones regardless of what theyre supposed to do and that will cause deaths. So such a glaring safety flaw will have numerous opportunities to happen in real life - humans do not make good safety features in cars; thats what the self drive stuff was for.

    Teslas self drive technology is not fit for the roads regardless of this. Musk had sensors stripped out pf the cars design to save money because apparently he knows better than all the worlds self drive engineers. The guy is a just an investment bro woth a huge ego - he can’t let the people hes investing in get onwith it, because he sees himself as a “genius”. The guys a moron.



  • I work in healthcare in a specialist field, and the best are not the ones who get recognised. The ones who get recognised chase respect and fame - in healthcare that is going to conferences and speaking, and writing as many papers as possible.

    But the best people in my field are the ones who do the actual job each day at an extremely high level. They go unrecognised except by those of us who understand what it takes to be good. They’re humble and focused. Some of them for sure go and speak at conferences and publish papers etc but its not those things that make them the best, although those are the only those things that make them “visible” outside their place of work.

    The same goes for music and actors. The most famous are not necessarily the best. They are the ones who people like or are the most commercial etc. The best singers are not necessairly world famous - they may be working professionally in less popular sectors such as opera or classical music or choirs, or they may be totally amateur. Similarly the best actors may be strutting a stage somewhere and never seen in a movie or tv show by the majority of the world. And even then they may be the “star”.

    Fame and notoriety has get little to do with talent - some famous people are undoubtedly near the top of their field but it is far from required.


  • Stack Overflow, like Reddit, derives its value entirely from its users—it’s just a host. Now that users (and their knowledge) are moving elsewhere, the platform’s importance is fading.

    It’s odd when people worry about Stack Overflow’s decline. Online communities have always shifted: from BBSs and newsgroups to forums, chat, Yahoo Groups, Reddit, and Stack Overflow. Each had its time.

    The next gathering spot for tech-savvy users might be the fediverse, but who knows at this point. AI isn’t solely to blame for the shift—people moved to Stack Overflow because it was better than what came before. Now, as it declines in quality thanks to general enshittification of services as companies try to monetise uaers, they’re moving on again.


  • Maybe I’m cynical but I feel like this is suspicious timing to release this information a day after videos of his memory issues in 2023 surfaced. Feels like a cynical attempt by his PR team to change the narrative.

    In all honesty, an 82 year old man having prostate cancer is not very surprising. It is a personal issue and I have sympathy but it’s frankly not important to the world. A US president with memory issues concealed from voters and his own party in 2023 when it could have seriously changed decisions about the Democratic party nominations is surprising. That is an issue for everyone and very important to the world.


  • It doesn’t need any organisation; there are plenty of right wing apologists and zealots who are motivated enough to vote. People can’t really vote “against” Israel so it’d be very easy to distort the vote if even a minority of people are focused enough to vote for one country. Israel’s song wasn’t terrible but it was pretty bland ballad and the televote result was patently ludicrous. But also none of the other songs were that great this year which would make it even easier for a concerted effort to win the televote.

    Extreme example in the other direction is when Ukraine won in 2022. The song wasn’t particularly good but Europe coalesced around voting for Ukraine. Even the Jury voting that year was distorted in Ukraine’s favour. It didn’t need any organisation.





  • I’m not sure this true - PDF is an open standard. The issue isn’t generally with layout and reproducibility - a good PDF maker and a good reader will give you an accurate representation of how it looks on all devices once the PDF is created.

    Certainly there isn’t a dedicated FOSS tool for make PDFs; Libre Office and Inkscape do a decent job but not perfect which may be what you’re referring to. And they’re not dedicated PDF makers plus the real problem is building fillable forms and signature tools.

    But there is a proprietary alternative called Master PDF that is a dedicated and supports all the PDF standard features I believe; one perpetual license is $80 compared to Adobe subscription based charging. I’m not aware of other options myself but they may exist. But it’s a viable alternative to the “adobe tax”.

    Also of course if you have Office 365 from Microsoft, you can use Word to export docs to PDF reliably (in my experience). Obviously as far as you can get from FOSS, but it is an option on Linux via web browser if you have it from work for example; at least you don’t have to pay Adobe but it’s scraping the bottom of the barrel for this threat I know!


  • Firefox can do basic annotating, adding text and adding pictures but it can’t make a new PDF from scratch.

    You may be confusing Adobe Acrobat Reader with Adobe Acrobat? Full Acrobat is the proprietary tool to make a PDF file from scratch including some of the more complex functions.

    PDF is an open standard and has been for a while, so there are now plenty of alternatives for most of the functions. LibreOffice Draw and Inkscape can do a lot of PDF creation functions but not all. There are also “print to PDF” options to create basic PDF documents too.

    However some of the more niche functions are not widely supported or well supported; and there isn’t really any opensource dedicated PDF maker that I’m aware of. Layout tools are abundant but I think it’s things like building forms and document signing that is less easily replicated. There is Master PDF - a fully functional PDF maker which is proprietary and available for Linux; it $80 for a perpetual license. I’m not aware of any other alternatives myself.




  • This 100%. Tesla remains massively overvalued, and it’s on the basis that in the future the company will dominate with self drive cars. It’s vaporware on a scale never before seen.

    Tesla has fundamentally flawed self-drive technology because someone stripped out essential tech to save money. Lidar is essential to self driving cars but some genius decided they knew better than their own engineers and the self drive industry as a whole and instead made their vehicles and tech camera only. That genius? Elon fucking Musk.

    The guy’s an idiot. The company is an overpriced joke.