Just for clarities sake, there is one big sticking point here that I want to make clear. Pay, hours, etc cannot incentivize a fix to this system because it’s not about attracting good people or bad people or dumb people or smart people, it’s about the system. If cops made $120k starting with 5 weeks of vacation and only had to work 32 hour weeks, we would not see significantly different outcomes because it is simply the institution and systems and culture that are the problem. Honestly, that would probably only increase the problem since it just further removes police from the normal humans they’re policing. Probably also instead of attracting people that are mission driven, it attracts mercenaries, basically. This is how we get billionaires; they’re mostly not evil, just so far removed reality and doing one of the most human things possible – rationalizing our own behavior for our benefit.

The idea that there are purely good or purely bad people is mostly a myth. There are people that we could objectively define as purely good or purely evil, but they’re the outlier. Nazis for example. The truth is even scarier than the myth. In most of our depictions, nazis are homogenous blob of pure evil. While nazi’s certainly had some purely evil people, the truth is the vast majority were just average people exposed to a system that creates an evil outcome. Of course, there were also purely good people in that as well, but the system often led those people their graves, or they had to be the right combination of good/smart to resist and stay alive. But most people just participated or closed their eyes and went about their day.

The problem is not the people, it is the system and pay and benefits aren’t going to fix it.

Now all that said, the Uvalde cops clearly over-index on little tiny dick bitch ass cowards and kinda blow a hole in my thesis. I wouldn’t call them evil, but just speaking statistically you would think even one of them out of the scores of cops there would have had even an underdeveloped backbone. The cowardice shown here should be something that lives into myth and legend and the way people say “Benedict Arnold” to mean “traitor” they should say “Uvalde cop” to mean “coward.”

Indeed is reporting that the average starting salary is like $50k, and the average in the US is $60k. Policing also isn’t even in the top 25 most dangerous jobs. That link is also talking base salary, but even in the situation you’re describing, you’re talking overtime in the $20k+ range.

The problem with bad cops comes down to two main things:

• they’re not here for public safety or here to protect and serve, they’re here to protect capital.
• well, it’s really just the first one, but keeping that in mind, the system is setup in a way that the only outcome can be a corrupt police force. Legal civil forfeiture, qualified immunity, overly powered police unions (the only time I’ll complain about unions), deliberately low standards in hiring, deliberately not require the police to even know the law they’re supposed to enforce and probably a dozen things I’m forgetting. Police aren’t there for us, they’re there for capital.

Finally, police funding and increasing the number of cops has almost nothing to do with crime rates which is what calls to defund the police actually mean. Police are basically systematized violence where pretty much the only tools in their literal and metaphorical toolbelt are increasing levels of violence. The call to defund the police is more about funding the things that actually reduce crime – better education, economic outcomes, and people trained to deal with the types of issues that police are probably less qualified to deal with than the average retail worker like mental health crises. Advocates for defunding the police are instead advocating for spending to be allocated to people who are qualified to actually deal with these problems.

Anyway, tl;dr – if we offer cops better pay and better hours, we’re just going to be getting more expensive cops stealing our shit, incarcerating us at one of the highest rates in the world, and murdering people with less consequence than the cashier at Target gets for not upselling credit cards enough because while plenty of good people* become cops, policing as an institution in the US is corrupt.

* “Good” people and “bad” people are mostly a result of the systems and culture they exist in and very few are truly “good” or “bad.”

I really, really doubt that this is going to be a concern. First, while technically Mastodon can interact with Lemmy, in practice how often does it happen? It’s not zero, but it’s not a lot, either, and I doubt that Threads will change that much because while it’s a neat technical feature, link aggregators and micro-blogging platforms are pretty incompatible culturally.

And then we have to remember that we’re talking about Threads normies. Do we really think that a bunch of Swifties and Kardasholes and other influencers are going to look at the absolute zoo of Marxist/Anarchist/Linuxist users on Lemmy and be like “this is the type of content I’ve been waiting for, I need to interact more with that community”? This reminds me a lot of neckbeards saying they wouldn’t date Megan Fox because she has weird thumbs.

And then we have the whole thing with the actual fediverse and the tech behind it. There is still going to be no algorithm artificially inflating the popularity of what are thinly veiled ads. Meta has no mechanism for introducing ads into the Fedi. Lemmy is not suddenly going to be massively interested in the vast majority of content on threads and start upvoting to the moon.

And the dev team behind the fedi I would wager is going to prevent any sort of real technical takeover, so that means that at any point defederating is possible, and with basically no loss to the fedi.

Serious question though - how would you? Meta can’t push content in your feed. The only reason you’re going to see Meta in your feed is if the community here (or people you follow on mastodon) decide they want to show it.

I think it’s even slightly different in that Firefox has some dependence on Google (a scary level, actual, if Google ends that deal Mozilla is pretty much fucked) that the fediverse doesn’t - the people on the fediverse right now are enough to keep Fedi alive and moving, and I’d find it really, really hard to argue that they aren’t there deliberately to avoid being subject to the whims of Meta/Twitter/Reddit, etc. Like, in a lot of ways, it’s a sacrifice to be on these services because the bulk of content still exists in the proprietary silos. Because the actual protocols and main developers are also intrinsically motivated by the this separation, it’s hard to picture how they could even try to extend/extinguish here.

Like, if Threads fully federates, I’d guess that quite a lot of people block their instance just to keep their hands clean. Those that interact with Threads via Fedi probably fall into the boat that I would. I want some particular content or to follow some people, just not shoveled at me however Meta decides it should be, and not in a way that they can profit from showing me ads. If Meta pulls some bullshit, it’s likely the Fedi would more or less just block them entirely then give up and start a Threads account. And I have a hard time seeing a world where they go to Eugen or basically any of the other driving forces in the Fedi and are like “we need you to change Mastodon so we can [do some typical Facebook bullshit” and Eugen are like “yeah cool with me.”

I think its more likely that Threads users are eventually going to see fedi users dropping a long comment or some post that is about how it’s nice to have a clean ad-free feed and move clients if not over to the fedi in general. It won’t be enough to really matter for Meta other than to say “see we don’t have a monopoly!” and hey, if the fedi gets a little bigger it’s all good for the rest of us.

I didn’t know that. Hmm, sounds like it’s decently likely this is a bit overblown then. I mean, I suppose there are a lot of lazy companies out there that will skip this, but that severely limits the functionality in a way that it’s going to force the secure method.

Sort of. If you’re receiving a notification from a remote server on iOS or standard android, they go through Apple or googles servers. That said, some apps rather than sending your device the actual notification (where this vulnerability comes from) will instead send a type of invisible notification that basically tells the app to check for a new message or whatever and then will display a local notification so the actual message stays on device and inside of the hosting services servers (like a self host.)

I mean, Kissinger can have a layover on his way to hell to get his ass beat by Bourdain. This sounds like heaven to me.

oh, absolutely. I’ve never really lived in a proper city (bigger towns, maybe) so it’s still possible now, but the culture has def moved on. I mean, I see the occasional kids on bikes, but when I was a kid (80’s - 90’s) pretty much every kid had a bike and this was just the default.

I swear I probably spent like 2 solid weeks after school just running into walls in the Water Temple because I couldn’t figure it out. And I used to 100% like everything I played. You’d find out every secret, every cheat, and spend hours. Especially once things like GTA came out, just hours and hours of doing functionally nothing. Fuck even games I didn’t really even like I was an expert in. These days, I’m lucky to get a few hours a week on a game, and I rarely finish anything that’s not exactly the type of game I’m extremely into, and 100% is a thing that basically never happens anymore.

Dude, this is the thing that depresses the hell out of me. When I was kid there were skating rinks, arcades, malls, etc. Granted, those things cost money as well, but most of us could make a $5 last all day.

I’ve noticed with my kids I have to know where they are basically at all times. Leave school, go to friends house, I get notified. On weekends if they go from one house to the other, I need to know.

When I was a kid, I would get up and on my bike around 7-8am, would not be back until dark at least, and just go… anywhere? Ride 10 miles across the whole town, through construction, to the creek or up the big ass hill a little outside of town? Sure. And the wild thing about this is that it was completely normal.

Almost def. if it was Disneyland, it’s probably about 30 seconds before this person was fired because the mouse doesn’t play when it comes to shit like this.

Hey don’t forget about the other half of the posts, which are in a language you don’t understand. Seriously, my block list is long because language settings here mean nothing, and while I’m sure that’s quality content, uh, I can’t understand it.

Home Assistant allows you to select the source, so I tend towards using that. There are other remote specific apps that allow similar.

If you have money, I would recommend AppleTV, especially if you have an iPhone. It’s by far the best platform in terms of not being solely an advertising vessel and sucking up your data, and integration with the iPhone even just out of the box is pretty great. That said, they’re the most expensive by 2-3x.

Runner up is def Roku, which is much worse, but still pretty good.

And then there’s me with a Fire TV, mostly because I buy them when they’re $25 for the max fire stick config, and you can automate through the android debug mode. So when I want to use the device, I rarely use the main interface, which is extremely garbage.

This is what I use as well.

So many things in your house that are probably pissing you off:

• it’s very easy to replace an outlet that doesn’t hold a plug or is a little off for whatever reason.
• ditto light switches
• door handles and shit. We hated the jank handle on our patio door that barely worked and required specialized training to get to lock. $12 for a new one, that was much more aesthetically from this decade. (that said, some lock lube, which is a thing, goes a long way)
• ditto for the various shitty faucets in this house (or any slightly older house.) You can get a ton of bathroom fixtures for under $30.
• hinges. Unless you’re trying to re-hang a safe door, you’re going to be under $20.
• faucet diffuser. They just screw on. Have you lived in your place for more than a few years and haven’t replace them? Just do it, it’s like $4 a faucet.
• doorbell. Smart doorbells can easily be had for under $50. A little easier often than replacing the traditional bell because you usually have a plug in chime rather than something wired.
• a can of sprayfoam. Seal that area that is letting in air. Trim it with a box knife, chances are you won’t know the hack exists.

a few random things:

• $5.99 magnetic measuring spoons. They stick together and nest.
• $18.99 MagSafe phone car mount. I use iPhone and my car supports Android Auto/Carplay, but there isn’t really a good place to stick your phone. This thing is basically a big magnet, I plug my phone in, throw it on this thing, and we good. Worth noting, even if you have CarPlay (guessing Android Auto as well) even though you don’t need to use your phone, some apps have some functions when you’re using them in this manner. EG: maps displays the next few turn by turn directions on the phone screen, and the overview of the map on the carplay screen.
• decent/good chef’s knife. I think the one I’m using now is about $30, but you can get the ol’ reliable Victorinox for around that price or a little cheaper.
• cabinet lighting pucks. I think Walmart has them for like $12 for two, but they are basically stick somewhere, motion activated lights that are battery powered. Paired with rechargeable batteries, I can now see the food that we push to the back of the cabinet to die.
• new streaming stick thingy. Though I greatly prefer Apple TV, it’s hard to justify the price of those compared to Roku/Fire TV. That said, if you’re hanging on to an older version of the Fire TV/Roku, upgrading helps the annoyance factor because it’s just far less slow. We just added a $24.99 4k Fire TV stick, much nicer.
• Wireless chargers for phones. You can get them for like under $10. Buy 5, put them where you generally set your phone down. Or more simply, right next to the bedside. I generally only charge at night, so much nicer to be able to just drop it on a pad/magnet, etc.
• $9 dimmer switch. Our master bath is weird. The toilet/shower area has a door. The sink area connects directly to the bedroom with no door. The sink area has large mirrors and massive amounts of lighting. Fucking sucks if you’re just getting up to pee and you now have the light of the sun on you and your partner at 3am.

more niche, bunch of smart home shit:

• just think about how $10-$20 and a little bit of thought can improve your life. I have a switch connected to my espresso maker, now I can yell in the shower to turn it on to pre-heat. If I had a regular schedule, I could automate this further just on time. I have it set so that once I tell it to turn on, it turns off after 20 minutes.
• motion sensor lights. though technically you don’t need a smart home for this, there are some lights in my house that I only want to turn on when someone is there. I have a hallway, for example, that is more or less a cave tunnel. Any time I’m in that hallway (or anyone else) I want to have some light. So I have a motion sensor that turns the light on, and based on the status of the sun, it dims accordingly. When I walk into my garage, there are a few lights that turn on in sequence and it feels like you’re walking into the bat cave.
• buttons! You can buy many different remotes for < $20. Pretty much anything you automate via voice you also need a button for. Pro-tip, use in-wall switches where you can, but in my case I didn’t have a neutral wire because it’s an older house, and my options were pretty limited/expensive.
• last example: my entryway lights. I have a door sensor ($10-15) so if I open it I can perform an action. My entry light has a smart bulb ($9.) I also have a floor standing lamp adjacent to this that has a smart bulb. What this allows me to do is check when I’ve recently arrived, and if it’s after sunset and the bigger light isn’t already on, turn on this entry light. If my TV is playing a movie, the light goes on in the dimmest setting so arriving people don’t disturb.

The vast majority of comments here complaining about Mac and macOS specifically seem to stem from really, really not understanding much about them. This comment is unfortunately not any different.

I’ve seen developers working for FAANGs unironically praise the M1 Macbooks as work machines.

The FAANG companies that fight tooth and nail to hire the best people who can basically work wherever they want because of their skill like Macs? Surely, they’re the dumb ones.

I have one and the damn thing has an option to change the “modifier key” for the fucking mouse

Originally, and for quite a while (probably early 2000’s) Macs shipped with a one button mouse, and there was no concept of a “right-click.” Originally, they were pretty dogmatic that the OS should be simple enough that one button was enough. You shouldn’t need to hide functionality in a context menu, it should be available through the standard UI. Eventually, that lost out, but they decided they wanted to make context menus* (or other “right-click” actions) a power user feature, rather than a default. So the decided to make it make sense for all of the machines that had always shipped with one button mice, you could hold ctrl and then click an item and you’d get the context menu. For decades now, they support right click, but if you built up years of muscle memory around ctrl+clicking instead, you still can.

like press the meta key

You like the meta key? Probably better thank Apple. Apple has had a “meta” key basically forever, only it’s been called “command.” I’m old enough to remember when more manufacturers started to add their own meta keys. If you go grab an older keyboard, you’ll probably find they also have a “context menu” button, which is basically a “right-click” and you almost def won’t find one now.

you want to do basic window manager things

Lots of people in this thread seem to really, really like being able to window snap, which I kind of get but also generally disagree with. macOS (again, going back a thousand years) has a different philosophy when it comes to managing windows. On [MS] Windows, pretty much all software aims for full screen, and users def do the same. Window snapping now means you have a convenient way to see 2 whole things. If you really, really want window snapping similar to how MS does it, there are a hojillion ways to accomplish this with very simple app installs. macOS has instead tried to make it so that you can manage multiple apps/windows easily without full screen, going back to tiny, tiny screens.

But let’s talk about “basic window manager things” for a sec. Windows has easily, and I mean easily had the worst window management generally for like 2 decades. Windows 10 and Windows 11 help catch up to things I switched off of Windows and to Linux for in like, 2004. Expose, or “Task View” as it’s now called in Windows started in macOS, and was adopted in Linux in the mid 2000’s. Not until Windows 10, and not even the first version, do we get that. Ditto for virtual desktops. In Windows, I can press alt-tab and switch between any open app. In macOS, I can press cmd+tab and switch between any open app, but I can also press cmd-` and switch between an app’s windows. In Windows, I can minimize windows to the task bar just as I can in macOS. However, I can also just choose to hide all app windows, or hide all windows except the app I’m looking at. And on macOS, I can use hot corners (which Windows barely touches with its “show desktop” hotcorner, sort of) which I can configure however I want. I can throw my mouse in any corner of the screen and get more “basic window manager things” than exist on Windows.

Its keyboard is that weird, unresponsive, flat form factor that makes it a nightmare to actually use as a portable device

If you have one the bad butterfly keyboards, yes. If not, this is nonsense. All laptop keyboards are bad, mac versions (with the very large caveat that the butterfly keyboards were insanely stupid/bad) are generally better.

I get that it’s a relatively powerful computer for the ludicrous amount of battery life it gives you, but that’s purely because it’s an extremely optimized ARM based processor that’s only designed to work with this specific operating system.

How is this supposed to be a negative? If we zoom out a little, this comment might as well be “oh sure, you can get your fancy graphic effects when you use a, what did you call it? graphics processing unit?” And even then, this is still not really accurately understanding why Apple has absolutely dominated CPU in mobile, and then is crushing in the class of laptop/desktop processors it competes in.**

But Apple is practically an antonym for FOSS at this point.

Aside from darwin, the kernel macOS runs on, Webkit, the browser engine that Chrome forked from, or passkeys, the thing that might replace passwords, you’re still really wrong.

Beyond those complaints, it’s got good speakers and never produces any heat. Honestly, the only good things about the machines are those hardware elements: the speakers, battery life, and lack of heat.

How about screens? Trackpad? Physical material, etc?

I also have a Thinkpad X1 Carbon, which is physically a worse machine: it gets hot, has a fraction of the battery life, etc.

“I can get vastly less done, and it’s going to be more uncomfortable the entire time.”

I wonder if the people that really like the M1s like them because it’s the laptop equivalent of an iPhone.

Lots of misunderstanding here, but I’m already a phone book in.

* really, they probably never would have added right clicks, but as more software adopted right click actions, especially cross platform stuff like Adobe software, they pretty much had to.
** they’ve basically ceded the extreme high end. If you really want the most performant CPU and power\heat aren’t a concern, it’s not Apple.