Good point, I hadn’t thought about users and comments.

Thanks for the info!

It’s true in Kbin in the sense that you can block instances as a user preference. You can also block any other domain as well, which means what a post links to. Theoretically you can block Facebook itself, Instagram, Imgur, etc.

Bear with me here, I’m thinking about all this as a thought experiment…please don’t jump on me all at once :)

I don’t disagree with you, there is a difference in utility, however what would you say to someone who has two homes? Say a vacation home on a lake? This wasn’t uncommon for persons of older generations (before shit got expensive). Because while two homes may not seem egregious to citizens of highly developed countries, it is, relatively speaking, a true extreme luxury in many parts of the world, perhaps even obscene if you consider those who live in shanty towns or those who are homeless.

And what about extra cars? Or any other luxury for that matter? Anything that explains why those in less developed countries see middle-class individuals in developed countries as “rich”?

Now these are nothing in comparison to the several orders of magnitude greater that a billion dollars is, but take them as the best examples I can think of off the top of my head lol.

Remember marginal utility is relative. My point is that, who decides what defines excess to the point where you’d make the argument you just made? where is the line? Certainly billionaires qualify, but how many millions does one need to hit that threshold? And who makes that determination? The individual with the extreme wealth will have warped perceptions (“It’s one banana, Michael. What could it cost, $10?”), so then it must be the non-wealthy who have insight, if any, or is it all relative?

I’m not trying to defend or apologise for the ultra-rich, but I think about these things in the sense of: what would I do if I won the mega-millions? Or had some secret unknown relative bestow obscene wealth on me? Never in a million years of course, but I’m the kind of person who likes to have positions that don’t change situationally, I’d like to be confident enough of my beliefs that I’d know what I’d do if the situation were reversed.

Anyway, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk lol. Again please don’t think i’m trying troll or something, this is a philosophical question for me.

@writeblankspace

I agree, I have no idea how much karma I had on my account and I never looked or paid attention.

I’ve never been sure if all the chatter about it is people actually caring, or if it was always mostly a joke.

I use Kagi too, it’s surprisingly snappy! Like seriously impressive for a small org. They talk about speed optimisation being critical for them as well. I find the result to be excellent as well. A true Google replacement/feels like Google in its prime.

I believe they have their own index and bot as well?

I’m actually hoping that at some point we may have an automatic translation for content not in our chosen language. The way Mastodon does. I want to understand what the threads and comments in other languages are saying! I feel like it broadens understanding.

This is good news! And we/they should keep pushing for more, everywhere. Good for IBEW for continuing the pressure.

Yes….on a technical level. But the picture is bigger than that. Personally, I have a hunch that the choice of Rust is making Lemmy’s development slower. This seemed to be evidenced by the fact that Kbin has more functionality than Lemmy while having only been around for 2 months. Vs Lemmy’s 4 years. The Kbin dev has also been much more able to fix things on the fly during the surge in users. Whereas Lemmy will supposedly move off websocket use any day now.

Adoptability isn’t something to be discounted. The fact that there any more people out there familiar with PHP may give Kbin an edge over time. And let’s be honest, in real-world test PHP can very often be faster then - less-than-mature-Rust codebase.

They do have their own crawler and I believe supplement from bing only when necessary. Something like 98% of results are from their own index across all users. They actually have a breakdown for every search.

I think they actually have the largest independent index outside of Google/Bing right now.

Others that exclusively use their own index are:

Mojeek (results aren’t great)
Kagi (result are pretty good imo)

I think Google peaked about 6-8 years ago now and then started slipping at an ever accelerating rate.

It’s almost useless for me when searching anything remotely technical or otherwise niche.

I almost consistently need to go to the second page of results now, something I don’t remember doing since like 2009.

I find Bing acceptable. Brave search works well. But I’m actually using Kagi now since I’m hoping their paid model will actually mean I’m not the product.

That’s makes sense but from an engineering standpoint, anything below operating temp and pressure fundamentally causes more wear.

It may be minimised with configurations such as you describe, but it’s still more wear than if the engine hadn’t stopped in the first place.

How much, I don’t know, but over the course of hundreds of thousands of miles and thousands of stop-start cycles, it adds up.

Well I think I can answer that. It is more efficient for fuel consumption. They all have the systems because it allows them to hit better EPA fuel economy numbers. But better fuel consumption doesn’t mean there’s no effect on the engine.

I’m not saying I’m 100% correct btw, I’m waiting for a mechanical engineer to explain why I’m wrong. But my limited understanding hasn’t found an answer for my concerns yet.

That might be true, I’m not a mechanical engineer but despite that, my understanding is that within the engine block itself, cylinders are primarily lubricated via the system holding pressure. This pressure starts to drop the second the engine ceases.

You can notice the effect on cars that have realtime oil temp monitors. Mine does, and it’s digital. My stable oil temp is around 216 degrees Fahrenheit. After a start-stop cycle, even for only 5-10 seconds or so, the temp drops about 5-8 degrees. After a minute, the temp is down 25 degrees. That’s significant. Essentially the engine is no longer “at temp” for the first 30 seconds or so after it resumes. That’s 30 seconds of additional semi-cold, under pressure wear each cycle.

What about the fact that the oil drains to the pan in those few seconds that the engine is stopped?

This is my real concern. Sure you can upgrade starter motors and batteries to handle the extra cycles, but you can’t do anything about increased scoring and wear on cylinders in the milliseconds before the fluids start to circulate again.

Hah! Funnily enough that’s what I do if the former is already taken on a site…SpacemanSpiffy

Different name, although this is the one I use everywhere else. I just wasn’t early enough to nab it on Reddit ;)