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Salamander

@ Sal @mander.xyz

Posts
7
Comments
178
Joined
4 yr. ago

  • Do you use a dishwasher or wash dishes by hand?

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  • By hand. We are only two people, and we usually clean after we cook/eat. When one is cleaning only 2 plates + a pot/pan at a time, it is easy to use little water. Spray of soap, metal scrub, sponge scrub, and then turn the tap on to rinse for a few seconds. Utensils get individually scrubbed and then all rinsed together for a few seconds.

    Maybe when we have kids a dish washer will make sense.

  • What are some common things people buy that you would never buy?

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  • I have been happy with my Garmin. It is functional without having to connect to anything, and data can be easily exported to a computer for more advanced processing. It is a handy GPS receiver that lets me monitor heart rate and log running metrics.

  • 2nd page, etc. loading slowly

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  • For mander.xyz it has been bot scrapers. That time that you are mentioning it was scraping via the onion front end that I am hosting for easier access over Tor. Yesterday an army of bots scraping via Alibaba cloud servers made the server unusable for a few minutes. The instance would receive a bunch of requests from the same IP range (47.79.0.0/16), and denying that full IP range fixed the problem.

    Some instances implement anti-bot measures. For example, https://sopuli.xyz/ makes use of Anubis. I think that instances behind Cloudfare get some protection too. I am considering using Anubis for mander.xyz, but for now I have just been dealing with this manually as it does not happen too often.

  • What technology would you give to ancient people just to fuck with them?

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  • Hopefully the English language is developed and Rick Astley gets to make his song before anyone figures it out!

  • What technology would you give to ancient people just to fuck with them?

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  • I would take a portable CD player, place a CD with Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up on it playing backwards, hook up solar panels, remove the ability to shut it on/off, and set it up a circuit that will:

    • As the device solar charges, keep it off until some voltage threshold is exceeded
    • Once the voltage is high enough, start a random timer (8 - 100 hours), so that it is not immediately obvious that the sun activated the device
    • When the timer ends, turn the music on on repeat mode
    • Sometimes turn the music off at random, and then turn it on again at random after a long delay, so that in some cases you can have turn 'ON' events without the device being exposed to the sun
    • When the voltage drops below a low threshold, turn the device off until it is charged again

  • What’s a big mistake you made in another language?

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  • I speak spanish natively and at during uni I would hang out with a group of Brazillian friends. I would speak a mixture of portuguese and spanish with them.

    The mom of one of these friends made a Brazilian dish for us (Feijoada) and asked me how it was as it was the first time I tried it. I answered that the dish as 'exquisito', which in Spanish means delicious (similar 'exquisite'). She seemed somewhat disappointed and upset by my response so I probed a little and found out that 'esquisito' in Portuguese actually means 'weird'. She thought I was calling her dish weird tasting. I found quickly enough to clarify, but I did feel bad about making her fell that way... She was very excited about sharing her cooking and she thought I called it weird.

  • (EU) Cheap Prepaid SIM with little to no top up requirement?

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  • No worries! If you need me to test something with it I can this week, just let me know

  • (EU) Cheap Prepaid SIM with little to no top up requirement?

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  • I am currently near Cologne in Germany. I placed one of these LycaMobile SIM cards from NL and it activated automatically. It does recognize that it is connected to the German network and roaming, and still activates data and assigns a phone number.

    So, it seems to work fine

  • Would you buy a Smart Glass in the foreseeable future?

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  • The use-cases that I see advertised are not things that I do in my day-to-day. I usually place my phone on a drawer or leave it in my backpack - I definitely don't want it on my face.

    So, to me, smart glasses feel like an uncomfortable gimmick at this point. Maybe there is something amazing about them that has not yet clicked with me, but for the time being I don't see me buying one of these for the foreseeable future.

  • Removed

    Did anyone else not even know who Charlie Kirk was!?

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  • I also did not know of him at all. I did know who Ben Shapiro is. This week has been an educational one: I have learned about Nick Fuentes and 'groypers', Candace Owens, and that the change my mind meme guy is called Steven Crowder (I first thought it was this guy when I saw the video of Kirk).

    The US political commentator that I do watch some times is Hasan, but not too often. The US lore goes too deep and moves too quickly, hard to keep up.

  • What is the most obscure fact you know?

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  • Yeah, I'm still looking. This is the closest I found so far

  • What is the most obscure fact you know?

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  • Ha, maybe! I don't remember if I ever saw a 180 flip. This is the closest I could find from a quick search: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZpIglVnYuY

    If you have a video with the 180 degree flip I would really like to see it. This context seems like a plausible place to see such a move in modern days. I would imagine that in some martial arts this effect would be well known.

  • What is the most obscure fact you know?

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  • Some of these 'games' do trigger real physiological mechanisms. A well-documented example is the Valsalva maneuver, where forcefully exhaling against a closed mouth and nose affects heart rate and blood pressure.

    In some games, this maneuver (or similar) is combined with a second action that normally increases blood flow demand to the brain. The mismatch between reduced blood pressure and sudden demand can cause dizziness or brief loss of consciousness due to insufficient oxygen reaching the brain.

    Actually, there is a similar effect sometimes seen during heavy deadlifts, suddenly releasing can sometimes make people pass out. There are many “deadlift passing out” videos online.

    So, those 'games' can work. I have known of kids breaking their teeth after face-planting against the floor while playing those games. Not a very smart thing to do.

  • What is the most obscure fact you know?

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  • If you catch a frog in between your hands and quickly flip it around, you can get the frog into a kind of paralyzed state called 'tonic immobility'.

    Here is a photo from Wikipedia:

    OK, well, many years ago I was very interested in this phenomenon and decided to look into the literature.

    I found a paper from 1928 titled "On The Mechanism of Tonic Immobility in Vertebrates" written by Hudson Hoagland (PDF link).

    In this paper, the author describes contraptions he used to analyze the small movement (or lack of movement) in animals while in this state. They look kind of like torture devices:

    OK, but, that's still not it.... The obscure fact is found in the first footnote of that paper, on page #2:

    Apparently this or a similar effect can be observed in humans too?! In this paper, the author himself claims to have done this and that it works! I tried to locate more recent resources describing this phenomenon in humans but I could not find them... Is this actually possible? If so, why is this not better documented? Or, maybe it is better documented but understood as a different type of reflex today? Not sure.

  • SIM card VS e-SIM

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  • That's a very interesting resource!

    Actually, the countries where I have been able to purchase anonymous SIM cards are in the list "As of 2021, the following countries do not have mandatory SIM card registration laws". So, it appears like I just happen to have been lucky and I should not make this as such a general recommendation...

    Funny, about Mexico it says:

    Countries expected to implement mandatory SIM registration in 2022: Philippines, Mexico.

    I can at least confirm that I was not asked for ID when buying SIM cards last year in Mexico.

    I just looked it up and found the proposed law for Mexico on Wikipedia. It was struck down in 2022 as unconstitutional.

    So, then, I really have no anecdotes to say that it is easy in places where it is formally illegal.

  • SIM card VS e-SIM

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  • I am not sure about France. When I search online, I often find resources stating "Yes, ID is required", even for the countries where I know that I have bought SIM cards with cash. Well, the SIM is usually free and what I pay for is the top-up code.

    I would imagine (but I'm not sure) that if you try to buy a SIM card at an airport or at an official store from a large telephony provider you are more likely to get asked for an ID. I find them in shops that have signs with the names of smaller MVNOs. Something like what is shown in this image that I found online, where you can see signs of 'Lyca Mobile' and 'Lebara':

    But, your mileage may vary. Probably some locations are more strict than others.

  • SIM card VS e-SIM

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  • Depending on where you are travelling to and from, you can often get an anonymous prepaid SIM card. That is what I do: buy one with cash, put it into a MiFi router, and only switch it on when I need internet. That way I stay off the records of whoever else is with me and I am not relying on their identity as a shield. I have not found an eSIM provider that gives me the same level of anonymity, so I have avoided those.

    If you really have to register a SIM with your identity, it depends on the situation. For example, if you buy a SIM in the EU, activate roaming, and then use it in Mexico, the Mexican authorities can’t instantly demand your subscriber info from the EU. On the other hand, if you or your family buy local SIMs while showing ID, then travel together and check in to hotels together, it makes little difference whose SIM is whose. For Mexico specifically, you can walk into an OXXO store, pay cash, and get a prepaid SIM with a data package, no ID required. Many countries have similar cash options so you check ahead of time.

    About whether the worry is justified. The type of surveillance you mention, such as stingrays, requires both strong capability and strong motivation. If a government wanted to, they could stop your entire family at the border before you ever left. But from what you describe, you are just a foreigner who might pass by a protest. That is unlikely to trigger the level of targeting you are thinking of.

    Still, I would not call it “in vain.” Building habits that protect privacy and understanding how information flows is always useful. But if you can get a prepaid SIM anonymously with cash, it is usually a cleaner option than tethering from family.

  • Lemmy community feedback: Should we fetch and combine comments from cross-posts on the post screen? · Issue #3415 · LemmyNet/lemmy-ui

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  • Thanks!

  • Looking for Compact Camera recommendation

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  • Yeah, I get that. I think that this camera + lens combination would meet your criteria while giving you pretty decent quality and the ability to upgrade. It is what I have recommended in the past to people asking this same question and they have been very happy with it. You can pass the idea through Grok, I think it will agree ;)

  • Looking for Compact Camera recommendation

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  • Instead of a "compact camera", I'd recommend getting a used Lumix DMC-GX80 + the 20 mm pancake prime lens. If you don't like primes and prefer to zoom, you can get a compact zoom lens instead.

    Some people really don't like buying used camera equipment... but I have had only positive experiences so far.

  • Privacy @lemmy.ml
    Salamander @mander.xyz

    The Pager

  • Open Source @lemmy.ml
    Salamander @mander.xyz

    Rethinking open source generative AI: open washing and the EU AI Act

    dl.acm.org /doi/fullHtml/10.1145/3630106.3659005
  • Generative AI @mander.xyz
    Salamander @mander.xyz

    Generative AI’s environmental costs are soaring — and mostly secret

    www.nature.com /articles/d41586-024-00478-x
  • Myrmecology @mander.xyz
    Salamander @mander.xyz

    A new experimental setup for studying ants and similar-sized insects - Insectes Sociaux

    link.springer.com /article/10.1007/s00040-023-00915-6
  • Asklemmy @lemmy.ml
    Salamander @mander.xyz

    Is it in bad taste to take content directly from Reddit/Stack exchange?

  • Self Hosted - Self-hosting your services. @lemmy.ml
    Salamander @mander.xyz

    Using a VPN provider vs self-hosting a VPN

  • Self Hosted - Self-hosting your services. @lemmy.ml
    Salamander @mander.xyz

    How have you optimized your Pi-hole?