You are being willfully obtuse. Atheists didn’t choose the definition of the word. Magic is a catch all for things that are not explained by a scientific process. Computing is not one of those things. You don’t understand computers because they are a black box. Therefore it is tempting to call the result magic. But you had better sure as hell hope that the effect of computers are reproducible, every single time, because if they are not, the world as we know it ceases to function.

No they aren’t. Not all protests are good. It is essential that political disagreements don’t capsize the society we live in. Any protests that can’t be ignored is essentially mob rule

Correct on both counts.

It’s so weird, do they think handicapped people can bike and walk everywhere or don’t exist?

As a handicapped person myself, it really baffles me how people think car oriented infrastructure is so much better for us. I am a wheelchair user, and I live in a 15 minute neighborhood. Getting around in my wheelchair is a million times simpler there than in my old car-centric suburb, because the same disabilities that make me wheelchair bound also prevent me from driving. Which mean that in a car-centric environment I do one of the following:

a) Rely on the generosity of friends and family to cart me around at their convenience, or b) Utilize shared access rides, which are door to door, but take longer than using public transit, or c) Roll myself to underserved suburban bus stops over badly maintained sidewalk, and pray I make it on time.

None of which are appealing.

Meanwhile, in my 15 minute city:

• The buses often run at 10 to 15 minute intervals (vs 30 to 60 minutes in the suburb),
• Sidewalks are larger
• I have less distance to travel in the first place

I say this as somebody who cannot drive. And I say it with all the love in the world for public transit. Public transit absolutely cannot get you everywhere, at least not if you expect to be there in a timely manner. The vast majority of America is suburbanized, the worst possible environment for buses.

There’s a big difference between identifying yourself to a neutral ISP versus identifying yourself to the government. In general, I’m not that skeptical of government, but this is one issue where I worry about the right wing loonies getting their way. God help us if it’s ever criminalized

Unfortunately, I say this as a train lover. They require a lot more infrastructure than planes and will always be at a disadvantage because of that. You can set up an airport pretty much anywhere and make it reachable by pretty much anyone. Whereas with the train, you need a dedicated line from point to point that you will commit to maintaining through hell and high water.

There’s also the problem that in many countries, we are deliberately neglecting our train infrastructure and not investing in high speed alternatives that could compete with an airline over shorter distances.

All of these factors combine to make individual trips less efficient over train. I had to cross the United States this week. To do so by train would have taken me 4 days. Doing so by plane took me 6 hours. Nobody would choose a 4-day trip over a 6-hour one unless their goal is to look out the window a lot. Which is perfectly valid. But most people don’t look at traveling itself as the experience. And in this case, I had a particular event that I had to attend.

To be fair, I think it is reasonable to rate things you have no complaints about as high as possible. If I see a rating with three stars, I assume that it was okay with a few rough spots. I like the idea that all products start out as five stars unless there is something really wrong, and you start knocking points for problems.

To be clear on this, I AM an urban core dweller, and I LOVE it. I am never more than 15 minutes walk from a grocery store, and significant cultural events are right on my doorstep. But there are downsides, and I understand why it is not everyone’s cup of tea.

Hate people? sucks for you, your only refuge will be your apartment. Clean freak? get used to some grunge, because there is oderous shit everywhere. Need to get to more sparsely populated areas? Expect to spend double the time on the road using transit, or pay through the nose to keep a garage with a car you barely use otherwise.

S/He is not. Even one blocked sidewalk means that I need to double back on the block if I am using my wheelchair. One scooter is all it takes, and depending on the length of the block, it can easily add 20 minutes to a commute.

As much as I like this article, he glorifies cities too much. They have always been seen as places to get away from. Charles Dickens Victorian England portrayed in books like a Christmas story, and Oliver twist was absolutely a living hell. It’s only in the last 50 or so years that cities have actually become pleasant places to live again, and even then, the city dweller makes sacrifices.

Have you ever tried living in the urban core? Be prepared to deal with cockroaches, inconsiderate out of towners who will leave everything from broken glass to s*** in the streets, and graffiti "artists"who believe it is their god-given right to scrawl whatever they want wherever they want it.

When the suburbanite says he wants to get away from the city, there are legitimate things he is trying to get away from. I personally think these things are worth the cost, but will never sell the vision of the city on a lie.

EDIT: to be clear to the downvoters I say this as somebody who currently lives in a near-ideal cityscape. In America at least, you need to be prepared to make sacrifices if this is the life you want to lead.

Have you tried conduit? I am joined to rooms with several thousand users each, and I’m not really suffering any slowdowns except during initial sync. Conduit seems to be running happily at half a gig of RAM, and CPU usage is minimal

I am surprised so few people are mentioned conduit here. Last I checked, it was running at only 500 MB of RAM. I don’t have any app services installed though, and I’m the only user on my instance.

Funny, I do remember thinking yesterday that having teams installed by default is basically Internet explorer all over again. On the other hand, from what I’ve seen I don’t think most companies really care and that they would install teams anyway. The integration with the rest of Microsoft is really convenient from a business perspective. My work uses it, and teams is scary efficient at scheduling meetings. Far better than zoom.

I picked up Portal 2 during a $2 sale of it. Still one of the best games I’ve ever played. And it has multiplayer, so it’s infinitely replayable

You won’t have a choice if it’s a bank or your job. This is the truly insidious thing, if enough important websites start demanding the standard, you might just end up forcing yourself off of the internet with that attitude

I can’t comment to that specific place, but buses have the advantage that they are easy to redeploy along different routes if necessary. Accomplishing the same feat with the train is extraordinarily difficult. Trains make sense along heavily populated corridors with a pre-existing need for the business.

Yes. Matrix uses an integrated jitsi widget for voice and video. It is unfortunately not quite as polished as discord for voice and video, but it does work.

It integrates with jitsi, which is a fairly good tried and proven solution. Meanwhile, The matrix developers are working on their own implementation of voice and video that plays a bit nicer with their room permission system. For one to one conversations, there is a turn-based solution for voice and video.

First, it’s federated, meaning that different instances of discord can talk to each other, much like Lemmy.

Second, it allows for encryption. Matrix uses the same double ratchet algorithm present in signal.

Third, joining groups is optional. This is perhaps the biggest user interface difference between discord and matrix. Each conversation exists in a independent channel, or room as they are called. Rooms can be grouped together the way you would see in discord, but they usually exist independently of the groupings. Incidentally, matrix groups are called spaces. There are edge cases where rooms are not independent from spaces, but by and large it is not something most users will have to worry about.