I need you to define the word “authority” in that case. I’ve given my definition, so what is yours and how does it differ, please? Because I already addressed the fact that an imbalance doesn’t create a hierarchy, and your description of imbalance does not fit my definition of authority.

Power imbalance doesn’t automatically create the conditions for domination. For that you would need both expertise and monopoly.

And the solution to a misunderstanding isn’t to concede the definition of the word “state” but to educate. The state is any entity that has a monopoly of the legitimate use of violence in a region. That applies regardless of the system of government that rules it.

Your definition isn’t a definition, it’s just a collection of categories that gives no useful information.

We don’t need to be dominated in order to clean up our garbage. And the state is often really bad at collecting garbage, so just teach people that.

I honestly hate the concept of “bootmaker authority”, because it’s exactly the same wrong conflation that Engels makes. Not every inequality is a form of authority. Expertise is not authority, it is expertise.

Authority is the socially-recognised power to dominate. Getting a bootmaker to advise on or perform bootmaking tasks is not domination. The bootmaker can’t hold you at gunpoint and command you to wear a certain kind of boot, nobody would allow that. There aren’t bootmaking cops.

Like what exactly does the bootmaker’s “authority” entail in this theory? Giving consent does not confer authority. Authority operates regardless of consent, that’s what makes it bad.

You’re probably right.

What the fuck is that stock image? They really said “contemplating suicide but make it corporate”.

I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re refering to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.

Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called Linux, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.

There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called Linux distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux!

My gender is a null-pointer.

Only if it’s performance sensitive. Otherwise you’re wasting programmer time both writing and reading the code, and you’ve made it less maintainable with more complexities where bugs can creep in.

The vast majority of the time you can afford a few wasted bits.

Honestly though I don’t quite understand why a compiler couldn’t optimise this process. Like it knows what a boolean is, surely it could reduce them down to bits.

Mine has special patterns on the walls to distribute the waves so there’s no need for a turntable. It’s nice because there’s extra space inside, plus no mechanism so it’s super easy to clean.

For like a full year after getting it, my brain would perceive a phantom rotation of whatever was in there, just because it had never seen a microwave without it.

Okay, I see. I’d say they might be obligated to behave that way to maintain plausible deniability. Like, if they admit they were selling a piracy service and users are entitled to a refund when the piracy gets stopped, then they become more culpable. It was always based on a thinly veiled deniability. They had to comply with occasional takedown requests for this reason.

I don’t know what the laws are like in France but they may have been worried about jail time or extra fines, and the state would want them to not issue refunds because that would punish the pirates.

Plus if you tried to sue them for it… what are the courts going to say? “You’re all pirates, get lost” is the best outcome you could hope for. I hate to say it but the de jure reality is that you were purchasing a grey-market product and the law won’t protect you in that case, and you quite literally were not purchasing a piracy service. You were purchasing hosting of torrents of an unspecified nature. That’s the risk you take on when you engage in what you have admitted is piracy. It’s very naive to expect you’re getting any kind of consumer guarantee in that case.

I say that as someone who uses these services. I’m not saying this is right, I think copyright should be abolished, but we need to understand the reality of the system we’re under.

What’s the story with Real Debrid?

Always turn off motion blur and DoF if you can.

That’s a beautiful name.

I probably said it too dramatically, the kinds of people that need to hear it will just knee-jerk dismiss me, but seriously think about the phrase “normal names are required for the functioning of society”. What a wild-ass thing to say. Required why? Is society really that fragile? Sounds like maybe it should be replaced by something that can handle the occasional mildly spicy letter. Mine isn’t even that spicy, it’s like whole-egg-mayo levels of spice.

No they’re not. They’re required for us to be catalogued and managed by a state, to our detriment and the enrichment of the ruling class.

“Normality” is a fucking scam that keeps your imagination in check, so you never look outside your assigned box and realise you don’t have to belong to anyone.

You have no idea how much genocidal violence has been done to condition our society to accept a dystopic phrase like “normal names are required for the functioning of society”.

Your mind has been caged.

This is the one.

As someone with a very mildly unusual name, I can tell you that it doesn’t matter whether a system could or could not meaningfully represent the name. Often the people or systems just refuse to acknowledge any deviation from what’s expected. Sometimes databases are written to enforce arbitrary grammatical rules that make my name impossible to write, or the people using the systems will just “correct” the “error” without telling me. I don’t mind that much but our normative systems just love to homogenise us.

Ah, that’s why it’s a bunch of symbols that make no sense, thanks for the clarification.

Wait did you edit this image? That’s some effort you’ve put in.

The phrase “synthesised expert knowledge” is the problem here, because apparently you don’t understand that this machine has no meaningful ability to synthesise anything. It has zero fidelity.

You’re not exposing people to expert knowledge, you’re exposing them to expert-sounding words that cannot be made accurate. Sometimes they’re right by accident, but that is not the same thing as accuracy.

You confused what the LLM is doing for synthesis, which is something loads of people will do, and this will just lend more undue credibility to its bullshit.

On lemmy I’ve been accused so many times of reverse-racism and reverse-sexism, where advocating for minorities brings out the trolls who want to muddy the waters and claim that noticing bigotry is the real bigotry actually, and they had big vote pile-ons to go with those comments.

This is largely from big instances with open sign-up. I assume lemmy attracts the right wing trolls who tend to get banned from other places, which is one downside of being a viable alternative that isn’t yet mainstream. Also I’m sure they target this place because it is generally left-leaning.