koopa's recent activity
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Comment on Housing market predictions in ~finance
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Comment on The lunacy of Artemis in ~space
koopa LinkEverything that doesn't make sense about Artemis is entirely driven by politics. As mentioned in the article Gateway exists for the political purpose of making sure we don't end up with the Apollo...Everything that doesn't make sense about Artemis is entirely driven by politics.
As mentioned in the article Gateway exists for the political purpose of making sure we don't end up with the Apollo situation of "we went to the moon a couple of times, everyone is bored now, we've proven our point and the Soviets can't keep up, so let's cancel the program and not return for 50+ years".
There are some powerful people in Congress with lots of SLS jobs in their district/state that demanded it be created and now demand that it be used. The head of NASA did for less than a day propose using Starship or some other commercial rocket instead of SLS for Artemis to keep the timeline on track and immediately reversed course after those Congresspeople heard about it.
But ultimately playing politics is what needs to be done if NASA ever wants to do anything without the threat of Cold War giving them a blank check. Artemis is far from the ideal way to do things, but if your ideal way can't get votes for funding in Congress it doesn't matter.
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Comment on Donald Trump - Joe Biden US Presidential debates to take place on June 27th and September 10th in ~misc
koopa Link ParentIt’s a good tradition of democracy. They’re not necessarily for you, most people don’t pay attention to politics at all until it becomes an event. And as astounding as it sounds to more highly...It’s a good tradition of democracy. They’re not necessarily for you, most people don’t pay attention to politics at all until it becomes an event. And as astounding as it sounds to more highly informed people, there are undecided voters out there. Refusing to debate is an easy way to give a win to your opponent. So even if a debate will probably hurt you, it will probably be less than the price you pay in being the one refusing to debate.
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Comment on For proponents of "vote for the lesser of two evils", what is your endgame? in ~talk
koopa Link ParentThe United States has also never had a coup attempt by a president that lost the election but refused to accept the results. And that very person is the Republican nominee. This isn’t Mitt Romney,...I think what I mean is the fact that America flips between blue and red and hasn't self-destructed kinda proves the "democracy will die if the other side wins" argument wrong.
The United States has also never had a coup attempt by a president that lost the election but refused to accept the results. And that very person is the Republican nominee. This isn’t Mitt Romney, Trump is an authoritarian who’s first term pushed American institutions to their limits. Another would be a disaster.
Trump is no normal politician and electing him would not give you “normal” results. Especially because this time he knows exactly the institutions and people who stopped his authoritarian demands last time and he’ll make sure there are yes men there this time.
The choice is simple, vote for democracy or potentially never have a fair election again.
The only way to bring back a reasonable Republican Party that is at the very minimum accepting of liberal democracy is to make them lose elections until they figure out they cannot nominate authoritarians if they want to win.
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Comment on What is a value or belief you have that is extremely outside the norm? in ~talk
koopa LinkI don’t think smoking in public should be acceptable. I don’t care if it’s weed, tobacco, or whatever it’s incredibly unpleasant and my family members with asthma get physically sick when they...I don’t think smoking in public should be acceptable.
I don’t care if it’s weed, tobacco, or whatever it’s incredibly unpleasant and my family members with asthma get physically sick when they have to breathe it in. It’s to the point they still walk around with masks at the ready in case they have to deal with it.
I don’t think we should be throwing people in prison for it but a strong social norm and providing specific places to smoke like hookah bars or whatever is plenty acceptable to me. I don’t care that you smoke or what you smoke, I just don’t want to breathe it.
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Comment on Many widely used reproductive health apps fail to protect highly sensitive data, study finds in ~health
koopa (edited )LinkIf you use an iPhone, end to end encrypted cycle tracking is available in the health app I would use that over any 3rd party app.If you use an iPhone, end to end encrypted cycle tracking is available in the health app
I would use that over any 3rd party app.
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Comment on I'm curious how people on here stay politically engaged and aware while maintaining mental health? in ~life
koopa LinkPolitics will eat you alive if you let it, especially if you engage with politics on any platform with an algorithmic feed (Twitter, TikTok, etc.) which you are rightly avoiding. You’re not going...Politics will eat you alive if you let it, especially if you engage with politics on any platform with an algorithmic feed (Twitter, TikTok, etc.) which you are rightly avoiding.
You’re not going to save the world by ruining your mental health or consuming more awful news. Your brain’s bias for negativity is being hijacked and you need to protect yourself. Life is far more than politics.
2 hours a day spent on consuming political news is a ton of time that doesn’t meaningfully help anyone. If you spent half or even a quarter of that time volunteering locally or engaging in your community you would have far more meaningful impact for good rather than feeling depressed hearing about things half a world away that you have basically no impact or control over.
There are billions of people in the world, everyday someone, somewhere will be doing something horrific to someone else that will fill the headlines. But there will also be millions and millions of good people just going about their lives that are invisible to the world of politics and news. “Guy went to work, came home and had a lovely evening with his family” isn’t a news story, but it’s a far more common occurrence than the horrors of the news.
I get a couple of email newsletters a day and that’s more than enough to stay an informed citizen. Appreciate that you’re just one person in a massive world that you cannot control and you don’t need to hold the weight of every awful thing on your shoulders.
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Comment on ‘TunnelVision’ attack leaves nearly all VPNs vulnerable to spying in ~tech
koopa Link ParentAssuming you have a Pixel that actually gets security updates. Maybe things have gotten better in the last few years, but my experience with Android was always heavily delayed updates from the...My co-workers at Android always said they believed Android to be the most secure operating system.
Assuming you have a Pixel that actually gets security updates. Maybe things have gotten better in the last few years, but my experience with Android was always heavily delayed updates from the phone maker if they came at all.
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Comment on Is Nebula worth it? in ~tech
koopa LinkI'm a big Jet Lag: The Game enjoyer so getting the episodes a week early to me is worth the $30 a year I pay (I think I signed up through some creator's code that dropped the annual price down) I...I'm a big Jet Lag: The Game enjoyer so getting the episodes a week early to me is worth the $30 a year I pay (I think I signed up through some creator's code that dropped the annual price down)
I don't think I would pay $50 a year but $30 seems about right for what's on there. Lindsay Ellis has been putting up all her new content exclusively on there as well which I've found enjoyable. But you'll pretty quickly run out of exclusive content.
To me it's more a "nice to have" than a must have and if they raised my subscription price I'd probably cancel.
The app and UX are fine in my experience. It's nothing special but I've never felt it get in the way of anything. It works fine and does the job.
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Comment on How the US is destroying young people’s future | Scott Galloway in ~life
koopa Link ParentVoting is definitely the answer but it is not the presidential general election that moves the parties in the US (which will always be a lesser of two evils choice in a two party system), it’s the...Voting is definitely the answer but it is not the presidential general election that moves the parties in the US (which will always be a lesser of two evils choice in a two party system), it’s the primaries.
Unless you’re in a swing state your vote for president largely isn’t that meaningful (though your vote for everything else on the ballot including referendums absolutely does matter) but in the primary your vote has some actual weight (and in the case of Democratic primaries, proportional allocation of delegates).
Compare the party platforms of the democrats of 2000 to 2020 and you will see an incredibly stark leftward jump due in large part to the success of the Bernie Sanders movement. Even though he didn’t end up being the nominee, his primary successes gave him a lot of influence in the party to push it towards his ideology.
Even though the US has a two party system they are not static entities just because the names are the same.
I think a parliamentary system has a lot of advantages in making this kind of stuff more clear as different factions are different parties rather than being factions fighting for power internal to the two parties in the US, but there are still similar dynamics at play. I’ve heard a political science professor describe the US system as coalitions are built before the election, whereas in a parliamentary system, the coalitions are built after.
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Comment on Are most political talks performative? in ~talk
koopa LinkMost people engage in politics as a consumption activity in the ways that make them feel good rather than ways that are actually effective at achieving stated goals. Political scientist Eitan...Most people engage in politics as a consumption activity in the ways that make them feel good rather than ways that are actually effective at achieving stated goals.
Political scientist Eitan Hersh calls this “political hobbyism” in his book Politics is For Power which you might find an interesting read.
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Comment on Faulty valve scuttles Starliner’s first crew launch in ~space
koopa LinkIt never ceases to amaze me that Boeing managed to get almost twice the amount of $ compared to SpaceX for their commercial crew contract because they were considered the “safe” option. And yet...It never ceases to amaze me that Boeing managed to get almost twice the amount of $ compared to SpaceX for their commercial crew contract because they were considered the “safe” option. And yet here we are a decade later where SpaceX’s crew dragon has had to be flying double duty for years because Boeing can’t build anything that works reliably anymore.
At least the contract isn’t cost plus, so Boeing is on the hook for the billion+ dollars in delays here but there needs to be a serious shake up in Boeing’s culture. Being slow and expensive with excellent results can be fine if everyone knows that going in but slow, expensive, and subpar is just disaster.
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Comment on Unity appoints former EA and Zynga executive Matthew Bromberg as its new CEO in ~games
koopa Link ParentI bounced off both UE and Unity back in the day but have made lots of progress in Godot very quickly when I started working with it in January this year. It definitely has the best on-ramp of any...I bounced off both UE and Unity back in the day but have made lots of progress in Godot very quickly when I started working with it in January this year.
It definitely has the best on-ramp of any of the game engines. 3D is surpassingly competent at this point, you’ll eventually run into things you have to do yourself that are included in other engines but because it doesn’t have every conceivable feature built in it’s really easy to understand everything that is there. (And don’t have to download 100GBs of features you don’t need)
They’re on a 4ish month release cycle so new stuff is coming in at a steady pace and being an open source project you can see everything that is going on and even contribute yourself or just join in on the discussions of where the engine should go next.
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Comment on React, Electron, and LLMs have a common purpose: the labour arbitrage theory of dev tool popularity in ~comp
koopa LinkThe implication here seems to be that the tech stack developers work in is decided in a top down decree from management. This might be the case in some companies but has never been my experience,...The implication here seems to be that the tech stack developers work in is decided in a top down decree from management.
This might be the case in some companies but has never been my experience, every team I’ve worked on has had complete control over their choice of tech stack at least at the start of a project. One of the big selling points for the microservice craze was always pitched as different teams could work in different languages.
Maybe I’ve just been lucky and others can pitch in their experience but I’m not seeing this as the real mechanism behind certain tech/framework’s popularity.
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Comment on US Congress approves bill banning TikTok unless Chinese owner ByteDance sells platform in ~tech
koopa Link ParentIf you truly believe that self interest is the only motivation that exists in geopolitics I don't know what to tell you, it's never in anyone's self interest to have a world war but we've already...If you truly believe that self interest is the only motivation that exists in geopolitics I don't know what to tell you, it's never in anyone's self interest to have a world war but we've already had two of those. Russia and it's people would be far better served trading their oil with the world and using that money to develop the country and economy rather than being cut off from world trade and sending hundreds of thousands of people to die because Putin wants to rebuild the Russian empire. China would be better served to continue it's economic rise by being the world's manufacturing powerhouse rather than throwing it all away to take over Taiwan.
The EU has sent almost as much aid to Ukraine at this point as the US, is the EU also engaged in a self interested proxy war for geopolitical influence? Or do you think maybe they have legitimate concern that they are the next target of an authoritarian on a warpath of conquest? Is it possible that things that are in your self interest are also morally right?
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Comment on US Congress approves bill banning TikTok unless Chinese owner ByteDance sells platform in ~tech
koopa (edited )Link ParentIt is Whataboutism to the letter. The United States is a democracy that depending on it's leadership has acted both in principle and self interest at different times in history. That the US...That's not what Whataboutism is.
It is Whataboutism to the letter.
The US can't have it both ways. It's either driven by principle or acting in self interest.
The United States is a democracy that depending on it's leadership has acted both in principle and self interest at different times in history. That the US engaged in a stupid, pointless war in Iraq does not change the facts of today that authoritarians are seeking to conquer their neighbors and pushing the world dangerously close to another world war. Opposing that horrific cause is in fact a very good and right thing to do regardless of bad actions of the past.
The United States has led the global coalition of support against Russia working with worldwide allies to impose sanctions, providing massive amounts of military aid and intelligence to Ukraine. That the US did bad things in it's past does not take away from doing good right now TODAY when it matters most.
"You can't be doing a good thing now because you did a bad thing before" is a ridiculous argument, it's like saying the US can never have done any wrong because it did good in joining the cause to defeat the axis in World War 2. It's nonsensical false equivalence.
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Comment on US Congress approves bill banning TikTok unless Chinese owner ByteDance sells platform in ~tech
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Comment on The cycling revolution in Paris continues: Bicycle use now exceeds car use in ~transport
koopa Link ParentExactly this. My city has a couple of unprotected bike lanes on 40 mph stroads that end up completely covered in a pile of snow because the plows are only concerned with clearing the road for...Exactly this.
My city has a couple of unprotected bike lanes on 40 mph stroads that end up completely covered in a pile of snow because the plows are only concerned with clearing the road for automobiles.
The city then says they can’t put in protected bike lanes because nobody is using the snow gutters we already have (while also bragging that we have the highest bike commuting numbers in the state).
So many people would happily use bikes to get around if they had proper, safe infrastructure but too many US cities paint some lines on the gutters and then say they’re out of ideas.
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Comment on US Congress approves bill banning TikTok unless Chinese owner ByteDance sells platform in ~tech
koopa Link ParentI don’t know why you think data gathering is the primary concern when at every point I have articulated that the problem is TikTok’s use as a propaganda tool directly controlled by the CCP. I...I don’t know why you think data gathering is the primary concern when at every point I have articulated that the problem is TikTok’s use as a propaganda tool directly controlled by the CCP.
I don’t know why you are quoting “force for good” when I never stated that America is somehow always righteous and good in any of my posts.
I feel like you are arguing with an idea of America and Americans that you have in your mind and not what I am saying. Vague statements about how America isn’t always good is not engaging with the issue at hand, given the active threat of authoritarian countries to peace.
Is your solution that America should sit and watch China conquer Taiwan and Russia subjugate Eastern Europe because America did things you didn’t like in the past? I’m not sure what you really want here other than pretending that the United States is the only country with agency.
If China were still acting as friendly as it did under rulers previous to Xi Jinping this wouldn’t even be on the table, regardless of the fact that American social media has been banned in China for over a decade.
You don’t see the the United States forcing the sale of Spotify because they’re owned by Europeans or shouting about how they are going to invade Canada because they both come from English heritage.
The 90’s are over, the United States is no longer the superpower that can basically single handily determine the outcome of international events. That is why I have said over and over and over that America must work with democracies around the world against authoritarian states.
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Comment on US Congress approves bill banning TikTok unless Chinese owner ByteDance sells platform in ~tech
koopa Link ParentI do not support this move because of “nationalism” or some desire for America alone to dominate the world. America needs to work closely with the democracies of the world to prevent and deter the...I do not support this move because of “nationalism” or some desire for America alone to dominate the world. America needs to work closely with the democracies of the world to prevent and deter the authoritarian countries of Russia, China etc. from dominating their neighbors through their nationalistic desires for conquest.
I want all nations to live in cooperative peace but as the Ukrainians know better than anyone, your strong desire for peace doesn’t mean anything when an authoritarian drives tanks across your border. At that point you either fight or die.
We should be doing everything we possibly can to make sure the people of Taiwan, South Korea, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, etc are not the next ones to be forced to fight or die. And you don’t do that by allowing authoritarians a direct propaganda tool.
The YIMBY movement has been scoring lots of wins across America in both red and blue states because the only solution is to build, build, build. Density and increased supply of housing are the only answers.
America has let local NIMBYs stop almost all development to push their housing values up for decades. This is a difficult fight to win politically at the local level but there has been a lot of success at attacking this at the state level where NIMBYs can’t just overwhelm a city council meeting.
But in the end we need to stop using housing as the vehicle for building middle class wealth. There’s no inherent reason that housing needs to grow in price over time. Look at a place like Tokyo where prices have been flat for a decade because they actually build housing and treat it as a use good, not a quasi investment.