Agree. One place to start would be that the company that sells ads (Google Ads) should not be the same as the ones that buy ads (Search, YouTube, etc.). It creates a situation where one company has both a monopoly and monopsony, which is just far too much market power.
Zagorath
joined 1 year ago
Gimp is still useful for quick and simple edits
See, the problem with that is that that's precisely not how I use Photoshop. I don't use it often (certainly not often enough to actually pay for it), but when I do, I tend to go fairly deep.
I should try out Darktable though. I used to use Aperture until it was discontinued, and these days I frequently use Lightroom, though I don't really love it.
There definitely exist paid players out there (or at least used to...dunno if they still exist), but there are also "free" (as in beer) non-free (as in speech) options, like the ones included out of the box in a Windows or macOS installation.
So, there are a few different categories of TLDs. com, net, and org are among the original generic TLDs, which had the ideas of being for specific types of site, but in practice have always been available for pretty much any purpose.
Then there are country-code TLDs, your au, ca, and tv domains. In these, the registrar of that particular country sets the rules. au domains require some specific connection to Australia, while Tuvalu has seen it as a good source of income for the country to sell .tv domains to sites that want to have a domain that recognises their primary purpose as relating to video.
In 2012, ICANN opened up the ability to buy new TLDs with almost no restrictions beyond the minimum 3 character length. Though technically com, net, org, etc. are considered generic TLDs, when you see people say gTLD they almost always mean those created under this new scheme. Examples include zone (which my instance runs on), new (owned by Google and restricted to people who use it to perform "new" actions, like Google's own docs.new which creates a new Google Doc), and tokyo (intended for use by things related to Tokyo, but not restricted to such. Other city gTLDs also exist, like melbourne which restricts to businesses and citizens of Victoria). gTLDs are very expensive to create, but whoever owns the gTLD can choose what rules it applies to domains registered under it.
So if you want a domain name that calls to a particular thing, you can find a gTLD that matches that thing and is open for registration for your purpose, or you can spend big to register a gTLD for yourself, or find a ccTLD that's open to those outside the actual country and which fits your purpose.
Mali's a weird one because the reports were that .ml domains not related to Mali were being restricted last year, and fmhy.ml lost their domain over that. So it's weird that lemmy.ml did not.
Except it does stand for that in this context. It's like saying "the TV in twitch.tv doesn't stand for television, it's Tuvalu", like, yes the ccTLD tv is Tuvalu's, but twitch wouldn't have chosen that TLD if it weren't for the "coincidence".
They referred to ML as "centre-left", so their perception is obviously very skewed.
Sometimes slightly worse. Like LibreOffice.
Sometimes actually better, like VLC.
Sometimes about the same, like the latest version of MuseScore (older versions were, in fact, quite a bit worse).
But sometimes, like with older versions of GIMP (I'll admit, I've not tried its latest major version release candidate) it's significantly worse.
Yup, America also bad. I suppose you could say the difference is that America pretends to be good, while China is openly totalitarian.
You'll note that at no time did I try to make an argument that America is good. That's...the whole point of this post
And btw Hawai'i would have been a much stronger example to pick to highlight American imperialism.
Even if you buy into all the best Chinese propaganda (oh, so it's "terrorism" when Uyghurs fight against the state, but you're ok with Palestinian freedom fighting? Where's the consistency, tankies??), there's no denying that China is imperialist by virtue of the fact that they rule over the Uyghur and Tibetan peoples despite enormous cultural differences to the ruling imperial core and a demonstrated desire for independence.
No, I'm not going to spend effort engaging in good faith with an argument clearly made in bad faith.
I'm making this post directly in response to the extremist moderation in this thread, though I came very close a little while ago to a similar post because of moderation here
Comments that have been removed on the grounds of "No bigotry" include:
There are no good guys in that conflict. Only innocent civilians.
Maybe provide examples? I see nothing that would prevent me from saying that with a straight face.
Gee, I don't know, I vaguely recall a (perhaps minor) news item happening on the 7th, something about a music festival? I may be misremembering though, since this very impartial news site has no mention of it whatsoever.
It's a terrorist organization vs terrorist state. The only good guys are the civilians dying on both sides.
Everyone who opposes genocide, colonialism, and terrorism are the good guys, so neither Israel or Hamas. But Hamas is not Palestine/Palestinians, the same way that Israel/Zionism is not Jewish/Judaism; no matter how much Israel, Hamas, the media, or military industrial complex tries to conflate them all. IMO Israel is more to blame than Hamas as they should know better given a) their history of persecution b) their significantly greater wealth and education, and c) their demographics — more than half of all Palestinians are technically children, below 18.
I don't know what could possibly be less "bigotry" than that last statement. Now, I side pretty much 100% with Palestine in the Palestinian genocide being committed by Israel, but it's not even remotely bigoted to suggest that maybe the killing of civilians, even if done in the name of a good cause, does not make the killers "the good guys" (even if they are "the better guys of the two bad guys").
And in the other thread, they removed comments like:
That's pathetic. That's a pathetic misunderstanding of geopolitics and the nature of modern intelligence infrastructure. You're still in the mindset of "Having SIGINT = bad guys". As if places like Russia, and North Korea would just be magical kingdoms of freedom and accountability if they just didn't have signals intelligence! That's stupid. What differentiates the west (much like what differentiates good media sources from bad) - is accountability, and oversight. Anyways I'll let you get back to your petty fears and misunderstanding the basic lay of the informational and geopolitical landscapes. Maybe if Trump magically wins the election Glenn Greenwald will spend Trump's time in office attacking the Democrats and defending Trump and Russia again. I'm sure you'd enjoy that. The crypto-rightwing are just like that. Aren't you. Semi-pro-authoritarians who don't understand what causes freedom, and think it's something about being a soldier of fortune for a foreign state, or something that comes from "the barrel of a gun". Idiots believing they're freedom fighters popping some imaginary info-bubble. You don't know how lucky you are, or how good you have it, or why... That's your problem, and your weakness.
which were critical of authoritarian states in a mildly impolite way for being violations of their "Be respectful" rule. Meanwhile they failed to remove (and in fact, the comments came directly from an admin) comments that are far more directly disrespectful to their interlocutor, like:
This is wrong on so many levels 😂 If you’re this propagandized, then I’m sure you don’t know what actually happened in and around Tiananmen Square, which by the way is not even censored in China like we’re always told.
Followed by a gish gallop of links.
And
Okay, stay confidently incorrect in the Five Eyes corporate media bubble then 👍
“I’m in this photo and I don’t like it.”
and the especially pathetic disrespectful comment consisting of nothing but:
The admins of that instance are pretty blatantly disregarding their own rules in order to push their agenda. If that shouldn't be grounds for defederation, I don't know what should.
cross-posted from: https://aussie.zone/post/14914389
(Please follow that link to keep any discussion on the subject within one place.)
Transcription
Preference count57.0% (14,915) Labor Party Barbara O'Shea
43.0% (11,254) Greens Amy MacMahor (MP)
- While the Labor Party is well ahead on the two-candidate preferred count for South Brisbane, there remains a possibility that the LNP will pass Labor on postal votes and the flow of One Nation preferences. Were Labor to slip to third, Labor preferences would re-elect Greens MLA Amy MacMahon. Monday's counting of Absent votes narrowed the primary vote percentage gap between Labor and the LNP from 2.7% to 2.3%.
- Barbara O'Shea leads by 3,661 votes.
- Previously held by GRN with margin of 5.3%.
First preference Vote Swing Greens Amy MacMahon 35.1% (10,119) -2.8% Labor Party Barbara O'Shea 31.9% (9,221) -2.5% Liberal National Marita Parkinson 29.7% (8,560) +6.8% One Nation Richard Henderson 3.3% (946) +1.6% Others - 0.0% (0) -3.1% Informal Votes 2.3% (689)
Total Votes 29,535
Results taken from the Qld 2024 Election results for South Brisbane on the ABC 29/10/2024.
I need to preface this by saying that while I prefer proportional systems, if you're going to have a single-winner system I have never seen one I prefer over IRV.
Some context for those not familiar with Australian politics: by coincidence, the parties here are ranked by first preference in order from left to right. As a general rule Greens voters will prefer Labor over anyone else, and most Labor voters will vote 2 Greens. One Nation voters mostly vote 2 for Liberal National (LNP). And most LNP voters will vote Labor before Greens. But some voters are weird: you will see people who vote 1 One Nation, 2 Greens or Labor; etc.
Obviously as advocates of IRV, we usually talk about how it lets you vote honestly without worrying about strategic voting or the fear that your honest vote may increase the chance of your least-favourite candidate winning. I think this is a result that shows the interesting, rare corner case where that isn't entirely true. It's not an argument for going back to FPTP, because it's still much rarer and less destructive than it is there.
In this case, One Nation will obviously be eliminated first and their votes distributed in a way that could prove kingmaker, but doesn't directly affect this discussion.
What actually matters is where the LNP finishes, once all votes have been counted and One Nation votes redistributed. If the LNP stays where they are in third, the LNP will be eliminated and most likely their votes will be redistributed to help Labor win. If the LNP can squeeze just a few more votes out (very possible, given many of the uncounted votes are probably early and postal votes—and the fact that the LNP was doing much better in the polls up until a few days before the election) and finish in 2nd, Labor will be eliminated, and their preferences will likely result in the Greens being elected.
Since most LNP votes would prefer to see Labor win than the Greens, an LNP voter would actually prefer that their candidate finish in third than in 2nd. They would have been better of voting dishonestly for Labor 1st.
A quick aside: One Nation voters could prove kingmaker because if all of them fit the mould of the modal One Nation voter, the LNP would easily fit in 2nd, resulting in a Greens win. Thus, a strategic One Nation voter with full prior knowledge should vote 2 Labor instead of 2 LNP, 3 Labor.
Of course, this should not be construed as an argument against IRV. It requires prior knowledge of how the electorate will vote to take advantage of it, which is a far cry from how easy and even inevitable strategic voting is under FPTP. Look at the seat of Maiwar just across the river, where the Greens are likely to win but the LNP is very, very close and could possibly still get over the line based on postal votes.
If LNP voters were to vote strategically here in the same way I am suggesting South Brisbane voters should, it would remove that chance that the LNP could end up actually winning.
And then there's also the fact that in South Brisbane, the LNP was never going to win either way, and they don't care too much whether it's Labor or Greens. They probably care more about the funding that parties get based on how many first preference votes they receive.
TL;DR right-wing LNP voters could have voted strategically to increase the chance the centrist Labor will win rather than the left-wing Greens.
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Please elaborate.