All told Trump is up about 2m votes and Harris down 7m compared to Biden in 2020.

This is not a massive increase in support for Trump but it is a significant drop in support for the Dems that lost them the election.

The mandate “myth” is irrelevant. They won all 3 parts of government , they got their mandate.

In the UK we had Brexit and it was extremely close at 48% to 52%. Yet ever since all we ever heard about is how it was decisive and people treat everyone in the UK as if we’re pro Brexit. In our elections the tories got 42% of the vote yet massive majorities so dictated what we did.

In short the problem is not the number of voters, it is the electoral system. In the US system if you win enough votes in the right places you win decisively. That seemed like a good system when there was a consensus. Not so good when there is division.

The solution in the US is the same as the UK - electoral reform is needed. The problem in the US is the same as the UK - no one will deliver that as the parties that win power are the ones who benefit from the rigged system.

Statistically if you’re born, at some point you will die. Being born is deadly.

Jeeze both people come across as petty idiots. Lots of passive aggressive nonsense, and both sides want to have the last word.

Also it drives me up the wall when 2 people argue and one person tells the other to “calm down”. And in this case it’s “CALM DONW” and “CALM YOURSELF” between line by line quotes. So fucking childish.

I wish Blackbeard all the best on Bluesky; I think they will be disappointed. Human nature is human nature; I’ve been around long enough to see the cylical nature of social media. A new thing comes along, everyone joins, there is a love-in, and a “consensus” is built around how this time it’s be great and what is and isn’t allowed. Then things grow and a consensus that holds with 10 people breaks down with 100 or 1000, and people blame the new people for the change.

And mods at each others throats is just the nature of the beast. This has played out over and over on the internet - Usenet through to X, Reddit, etc, and the fediverse will experience the same. It’s just human nature.

Apple’s focus is vendor lock-in. Everything in their ecosystem integrates perfectly. They’re selling devices that lock you in to their ecosystem and they get a 1/3 cut from all digital sales from competitors also using their platform.

They’re not interested in getting as many people as possible watching their shows. They’re interested in getting as many people as possible buying Apple TV devices, and then getting drawn into the Apple ecosystem.

Regard the $20bn spent on TV shows as marketing spend.

The reason is Apple is not in the streaming business, it’s in the hardware business and sales business.

Apple is not trying to get you to just join it’s streaming service. It’s trying to get you to buy it’s hardware so you’re in it’s ecosystem so it gets 1/3 of everything you spend on content and services. It’s the ultimate route in upselling.

You buy an Apple TV device, you watch some of their shows but also you buy some apps, and you sign up for other services (who have to pay apple for access), maybe you buy content through iTunes.

Apple wants you using Apple TV, and get an IPhone and a Mac and tablet etc. If you’re not on an Apple device they don’t want you because you’re able to spend money elsewhere.

Apples whole business is vendor lock-in. They just lock you in a gilded cage so you don’t realise you’re a prisoner. And they make you pay for the gilding.

$20bn is nothing in the scale of Apples ecosystem.

Democrats need to play this carefully.

“protect our undocumented immigrants” plays into the MAGA playbook that the dems are weak on immigration issues.

I don’t know what the right play is though. All left leaning parties find it hard to communicate clearly on immigration issues.

But this kind of headline at a glance makes it look like the governor of illinois is in favour of illegal immigration?

Its difficult topic to communicate clearly on when you have the right behaving hysterically about the topic and conflating terms like “undocumented” with “illegal” in people’s minds.

Your html looks wrong to me in your second example.

The type should be closed with " not continued with ; Codecs should also use" "

I don’t think the Codecs bit is needed though. Having the Type correct should be enough.

<video controls preload="none"> <source src="FooBar.mp4" type="video/webm"> </video>

Edit: Also presumably your files are definitely AV1? Double check that. I think you can also drag and drop video into Firefox to see if they will play.

Edit2: Also on searching I’ve seen someone say you may need to use the video tag itself for mkv:

<video controls preload="none" src="FooBar.mkv"> </video>

It’s one of the solutions lower down on this stack post, but you’d need to test that. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21192713/how-to-playback-mkv-video-in-web-browser

As a side, it’s very frustrating to see how many people wrote code on that page that just works on Chrome. So much for Web standards!

Politicians would be better focusing on things that matter like how the Democrats lost the election to Trump and how they’re going to win the midterms.

A crappy paper finding rude words and phrases on steam is not really worthy of anyone’s attention but Valve’s

“Millions” of examples sounds dramatic until you look at how many billions of exchanges have been made in valves forums and comment pages. It needs addressing but it’s not of international or even national importance.

Instead of virtue signalling, Warren should be asking how the Dems managed to allow Biden a free ride through the primaries, held on til the bitter end blocking alternatives and then endorsing Harris blocking any debate.

I’d rather Warren focus on fixing the Democratic Party. A bit of democracy in the Democrat party would be a start.

Nah Todd. The base game was boring, and the expansion sounds mediocre. The buggies aren’t the problem.

They should play The Witcher 3 or Cyberpunk 2077 or Baldurs Gate 3 - they all show what can be done with RPGs now.

Bethesda haven’t evolved enough since Skyrim. Starfield would probably have been seen as a great game 10 years ago. But the best description I’ve seen is that’s its as wide as an ocean but as deep as a puddle.

An expansion on one world doesn’t address the fundamental problem with the game. I don’t see this game having a No Man’s Sky ark. Please move on to Elder Scrolls 6 - it’s been 13 years already and it seems Betheasa have a lot to learn from the competition.

As someone who drives in Wales a fair bit, it was badly implemented so it became unpopular.

The blanket rule was applied to roads it shouldn’t have been, with a slow and costly process to fix the speed limits on roads that’s shouldn’t have been covered.

It makes sense on all side streets, but it doesn’t make sense on all main roads. Some yes, but not all inside towns and cities. I think this is being unpicked it seems with more flexibility for councils? I don’t really follow Welsh politics, like many people I suspect.

The other issue is enforcement or lack there of. There seems to be zero enforcement so you get into the situation of driving down roads and everyone is still going at 30 ignoring the law. It puts you under pressure to go at 30 and it’s easy to drift up to that speed.

I’m am generally a supporter of the new law but the politicians have to take ownership that the reason it’s controversial is because it was poorly implemented. Its easy to paint the critics as extreme or as part of a “culture-war” but that’s just people taking advantage of actual anger and frustration.

The policy can be popular I think - there just needs to be some minor changes. As an example I can think of 4 roads in the town I drive or walk on that could do with going back to 30mph; thats nothing in the 100s of roads in the area.

It’d even potentially be safer as people are just breaking the law and speeding on these road anyway making it less predictable for pedestrians.

An example is a long main road that climbs up a steep hill in my town. It’s actually a struggle. climbing it at 20mph, and I even get foot pain trying to keep the accelerator at just the right depression to stay at 20mph. The road is wide too so you’re struggling all the time with the accelerator, monitoring your speed as it’s natural to go faster on wide roads and other drivers putting you under pressure to go faster. People are even overtaking each other which can be dangerous as you don’t always see what’s coming down the other way easily.

So I’d be worrying less about the fringe lunatics stirring up anger and more about tweaking the implementation to get the majority on board. That’ll take the support and interest away from the fringe noise makers.

If you’re worried about DRM then look at GOG.com - they sell DRM free games, and you can download the installers direct from their website if you don’t want to use their client and want permanent backups. The installers are not online either. I have a large library of classics and new games from them.

For electricity generation: Solar across the UK was about 5% in last year, while Wind was about 29% and Nuclear 13.9%, and hydro 1.3% - so 49.2% of electricity generation over the last 12 months was carbon neutral.

That’s a huge success story - still a long way to go, particularly as that does not include Gas burned in homes, but the UK is moving in the right direction. And Scotland is a huge source of Wind & Hydro power for the whole country.

So even if the barriers to solar in your home are still high, the grid is getting cleaner and cleaner every year. There are also community projects installing wind generators which you can join/invest in if you do want to try and get a slice of cleaner energy and solar is not realistic.

Edit: Source on UK electricity generation: https://www.energydashboard.co.uk/historical Good data on UK electricity generation

Inspired me to donate too.

Donated €50 but misread the adopt an app thing so didn’t write a comment. Shame, but still happy to support KDE!

I use it on my OpenSuSE and Nobara devices, as my daily driver. I love Plasma, and Kate, Dolphin, Okular, Ark, Gwenview, KDE Connect, Spectacle, and Konsole in particular. Also love KDE’s Marble as a Google Earth replacement.

Polyamory is more common these days. It may be experimentation or real for her - only she can decide that. Be there for her, try to not to seem judgemental or negative so that she can trust you and be open with you if things do go wrong. That also means being accepting if this goes right for her.

I do wonder whether you are misinterpreting what you are seeing too.

You are seeing the guy as in control of this and bringing his 2nd girlfriend along. But actually she brought her boyfriend and a girl to dinner at home. Is your daughter also trying to tell you she is in a relationship with the girl too? Was it her boyfriend and her girlfriend?

It does seems odd to bring the girl to meet you if she was purely his girlfriend. Maybe she is more to your daughter than that or maybe she was trying to get a rise out of you? Or maybe she just wanted you to understand how the Polyamory thing works?

I do understand your reluctance around this, and your likely worries for your daughter. It’s easy to see her as being the “victim” of her boyfriends wants. But she does have agency and she has chosen this lifestyle - so I think you have to let it play out and be cautious about expressing your concerns too hard as it may push her away.

Be there for her - it’s very important to keep being her support network and not inadvertently isolate her if you disapprove of her lifestyle. You need to be the ones who are there for her no matter what and where she comes for advice and support if this does goes wrong.

Yeah, one part of the prediction and fears raised about the republicans is it gives them far too much credit to actually run a government.

They have held the house and the Senate before and then been crippled by infighting as with slim majoroties it only takes a few people to hold everyone hostage.

Some of Trumps nominations may not get through the Republican controlled Congress.

People seem to forget the republicans controlled all 3 parts of government in 2016 and didn’t get far. Yes they managed some significant things but tax cuts and supreme Court nominations are the main successes.

This time Trump is making batshit crazy nominations which are likely to divide their own party in Congress.

Gaetz nomination is particularly bad as he’s hated by a lot of Republican law makers. There are likely enough republicans who actually care about the legal system that his nomination will not get through. If it does get through then it’ll be a sign of how bad things can be. But it’s likely it will not get through and just sow seeds of discord between Trump and some of the republicans in Congress, poisoning more attempts to change things.

I predict one hell of a shit show over the next 2 years, but probably not from what they do - instead from what they fail to do and the recriminations that follow. All those Republican law makers telling themselves that Trump is diminished, less of a threat, and that they can control him are in for a hell of a ride.

I have a mini PC running linux and I use it for streaming (including a Jellyfin library) and gaming. I love it and use it almost exclusively. However I have not gone down the rabbit hole of HDR and Dolby Vision for 4K DRM content.

I have a Google TV stick for that content, which is very far from ideal, I know. But in fairness I find myself barely ever using it.

If 4K and Dolby is important, I saw someone else recommending an Apple TV box as you can easily disable telemetry and the device isn’t riddled with advertising or tracking, but then the apps you download would still be a law until themselves. But probably way better than Roku, Amazon and Google et al?

Sony bought the studio, Sony published this, and so Sony effectively greenlit it. Sony corporate then? This was not an independent game developed for PS5, this was in house.

Interesting. Although I’d contend no one “celebrates” daylight savings. It’s not a holiday, and unfortunately saying “it’s not 9am in my house” probably won’t get people far.

I do like the percentage clock idea.

I have a 24 hour analogue clock on my wall - one turn of the clock with the hour hand is a full 24 hours instead of 12. It really changed my concept of time in the day. 12 noon is at the bottom of the clock.

It always feels striking to see the clock at noon and realise how small the morning really is due to sleep and how much of the day is left.

It was intended to bring the existing Julian calendar in Eastern orthodox churches closer in to line with the gregorian calendar. It was not meant to be a universal calendar.

It’s not realistic to alter the existing calendar in this day and age. The gregorian calendar was already too embedded in 1923 to change, and now it’s globally dominant.

The only way to replace the calendar now would probably have to be a brand new calendar (to prevent confusion with the existing calendar, it’d need new month names for example) OR a global agreed change to the gregorian calendar.

Neither is likely; there doesn’t seem to be a big enough need or benefit to get countries together to change this. They can’t even agree on action on pressing crises like the climate crisis.

Yes it’s absolutely worth getting in to video games, there is huge breadth and choice on what to play, and a huge vibrant community.

Starting place is really what devices do you have? Do you have a laptop or PC? If so the world is your oyster and you will find plenty to play even if it’s not very powerful.

If you want something popular, cosy and accessible I’d recommend Stardew Valley. It’s cheap for such a great game, plenty of content, great learning curve and a huge wholesome community.

But there is loads of choice - you could play card games or puzzle games on you other devices and explore what’s available. PC games offer much more variety and depth compared to a mobile, and is very easy to access - no need to buy a console or hardware.