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ultranaut, in The desire to build a self-defense kit from Google and the Internet as it is today

Nextdns or a pihole would be a good first step. Blocking tracker and ad domains (and whatever else you want) at the DNS level is fairly easy and inexpensive to accomplish. I use nextdns on my router and on every device that leaves my home network, it took less than an hour to get everything set up.

vanveen,

Sorry, but I haven’t a clue of what you are saying.

novalex, (edited )

That’s your cue to research. You’re gonna have to get technical and learn about these options if you plan to up your privacy game. In short though, both will handle DNS queries from your devices and block those that are known for ad serving or tracking purposes. That way you essentially have an ad-blocker on your entire network, rather than on each device or browser.

vanveen,

where do I start from scratch, taking into account that English isn’t my mother tongue and Italian is? Could you point me a guide, video, something for dummies that can explain, and is authentically conceived to educate and teach to person like me who wanto to learn but 4 times out of 5 ends up with frustration for the jargon and language for initiated the is in forums often spoken?

novalex,

I see, not many guides in my native language either, but I think the respective websites are explaining things well enough and if they don’t have an italian translation available already Google Translate should do the job.

NextDNS is probably your best bet, as it can be setup on your devices or router directly and is not as technical to get started: nextdns.io

For Pi-hole you will need a dedicated device on your network, like a laptop or Raspberry Pi, or a router with custom firmware. On it you install the software, and after that it will basically act as your own instance of NextDNS, and you can point your devices to it for DNS resolution: pi-hole.net

Disclaimer: i am also just getting started with these tools, still in research phase with not a lot of free time to invest in it so if i made any mistakes explaining i apologise, and definitely understand your frustration.

vanveen,

thanks a lot, very very kind. A curiousity: why google translate and not deepL that seems way more accurate than the previous?

novalex,

I wasn’t aware of DeepL actually. Google Translate had been my go-to service for a long time so I never searched for another one, but DeepL looks promising , I’ll have to give it a try, and you should certainly use it instead of Google if you know it’s better.

Varyk, (edited ) in Traffic Engineering: a help from Italy

Highways notoriously create more traffic , every time we expand a highway or create a new highway, traffic gets worse.

If you just search “highway creates worse traffic” or something similar, there are many, many videos that will give you very good information and statistics about how building roads does not help convenience traffic or a sense of narrow or broad community in most situations, and new roads or new highway lanes almost always create more traffic in urban situations like cities.

vanveen,

Thanks, but I’m also looking for vidoe, articles, divulgative materiel that show alternative sustainable solutions.

tenacious_mucus,

Not always the case, but you’re not wrong. Most of the times the new road or added lanes was needed because the traffic density had already increased. Kind of a chicken or the egg scenario. For a new road, well roads arent just built for no reason…obviously the road was needed, so now there will be traffic on it. Sometimes even just an influx of people using the new “alternative route” because they think no one will be on it from the old route, yet many other people had the same idea.

Exception to all this, however is evacuation routes. I grew up in the south, on the gulf of mexico. When hurricanes are coming and everyone is trying to leave, you need those huge highways. 30 years ago you would just have 1000s of people grid-locking 2 lane highways just trying to get anywhere away from the storm, and in some cases being stuck in their car for the storm. Now a lot of those highways are full-on 4 lanes with medians, huge shoulders, etc. These are everywhere across the south, more still being built. Even extra bridges built across bays and sounds that are largely unused (usually have high tolls). 99% of the time the big highways are mostly empty (which makes road trips super nice!) and someone not familiar would think it’s a huge waste. But come an emergency situation, and their purpose is served!

Varyk,

It’s definitely the egg, since the chicken was the road and the egg(traffic density) increases after adding another highway or lane to a “super highway”.

Before that highway or lane was added, there was less congestion.

tenacious_mucus,

Ehhh, i still disagree, because that doesnt make sense. Less congestion with less lanes? The extra lanes are added to ease the growing congestion in an area. OP asked about traffic engineering, there is it very simply. Adding lanes doesnt magically create more cars on the road.

I’ve seen the exact opposite in places like Hawaii when they expanded H1 at Honolulu, shrinking all the lanes down to the minimum 8ft so they could add another lane. Now at, I think 6 lanes each way, in places. No space to expand, so the lanes were shrunk to make room for another. You know what adding another lane did? Lessen congestion. Sure there’s still congestion, but it’s way better. They, and other big cities (ie- San Fransisco), literally add and change lanes throughout the day (zipper lanes) to ease congestion. Or even legally allow the shoulder to become yet another lane during peak hours. Because more lanes = more flow.

I’ve also seen what happens when the extra lanes arent open (like the zipper lane cant function because the truck is broke) the whole place is gridlocked taking people up to 9 hours to get home. Because of 2 less lanes.

Not just in America. Places like Auckland, NZ and their famos Nippon clip-ons. If adding lanes added congestion just because of the fact that there is more lanes, then why are roads expanded in the first place? Everything should just still be 2 lane roads.

Varyk, (edited )

Adding more lanes does not “magically create more cars on the road”, but it does mundanely create more traffic, so that increasing traffic lanes provides diminishing returns of reduced congestion.

You have to factor in how many cars are acquired every year, how many people are driving, how they are driving where, and when.

Every year people are buying new cars and the old cars don’t just disappear, more people move to where more people already live, and adding new lanes only invites more drivers to where everybody is already going.

A simple, related and more accessible example is adding parking spaces into a downtown area. This does not lessen congestion but increases congestion as more people drive downtown and everyone drives around looking for a parking space rather than walking an extra 7 minutes from a less congested area.

A similar thing happens with highways, and research backs it up.

bloomberg.com/…/why-widening-highways-doesn-t-bri…

smv.org/…/how-does-roadway-expansion-cause-more-t…

Improve mass transit and public transportation and this problem evaporates.

NigelFrobisher, in What is it that makes a grand piano sound better than an upright piano?

Money.

AgentGrimstone, (edited ) in Does AI-generated art posted on lemmy bother you?

Not bothered. Just no longer impressed.

Tippon, in You have a magic pill, which de-ages you by 20 years. You can take it once in your life only, so long as you are at least 20. What age — past, current or future — do you reckon is best to take it?

Lots of people are treating this like you would go back in time and get a do over, rather than being de-aged.

I’m assuming that de-aging would roll back any age related aches and pains, but not affect my memory, other than possibly making it better. It would give me more energy, so I’d be overweight and young instead of overweight and old :D

I’d take it at around my late 30s to early 40s to get back to my late teens to early 20s. My body was fully developed, so I wouldn’t have to go through puberty or have too many teenage hormones, and I’d have enough energy to get in shape again.

If it de-aged me by putting me back into my body from the time, then it would be when I was 42. 22 was when I was in the best shape of my life, and before I picked up a few long lasting injuries. I found out in my early 30s that I’ve got a chronic illness too, and it hit me hard.

I’d get the doctors and dentist to work on the health issues that I didn’t know about when I was young, and stop them from becoming serious, and generally get healthier.

Most importantly, I’d take my kid out and do all the things that we haven’t been able to do together :)

Dkarma,

Good point! I didn’t consider this. In this case I’d probably just start taking better care of my body now and wait to take it until the pain gets real bad or I find out I have cancer.

KestrelAlex, in You have a magic pill, which de-ages you by 20 years. You can take it once in your life only, so long as you are at least 20. What age — past, current or future — do you reckon is best to take it?

It depends whether I can somehow go back to the body of a 20 year old but keep my current 40 year old brain. I’m not going to pretend the majority of my improvements in patience, empathy, humility, work ethic and dgaf-ness are me consciously maturing instead of improvements in brain chemistry.

HonoraryMancunian,

I think it’s a little of column a, a little of column b

I’d imagine so long as your brain is fully matured (~25+) you’d get to keep all those benefits you’ve accrued

NegentropicBoy, in You have a magic pill, which de-ages you by 20 years. You can take it once in your life only, so long as you are at least 20. What age — past, current or future — do you reckon is best to take it?

As late as possible.

On the other hand, right now.

ULS, in You have a magic pill, which de-ages you by 20 years. You can take it once in your life only, so long as you are at least 20. What age — past, current or future — do you reckon is best to take it?
Eheran, (edited ) in Is it possible to replace a damaged audio cable with a non audio cable?

I have, unlike the other comment, no idea what you want/can do or what “audio cable” you mean. But the answer is yes, both as in using the wire with and without the original USB connections. You can use essentially any wir for audio, or is essentially DC, so unlike wires that carry information (USB, HDMI, …) there is no need for shielding etc

Lemminary, in Have you ever learned anything on the spot?

That you can rotate your entire screen by 180° on Windows. I forget the shortcut key but I did panic a little when it happened the first time.

Srootus,

Control + shift + down arrow key I think, it was the peak of comedy in our secondary school IT classes.

favrion,
@favrion@lemmy.world avatar

Why is there a need for this?

ExtraMedicated,

Some people like to rotate their monitor to fit more text on the screen.

shottymcb,

My monitor is 9:16 so I can scroll tic-tok.

nieminen, in Best android app for news aggregation?

I use the “newpaper”. It de-sensationalizes the titles, and provides a weekly (free) or daily ($) email summarizing a bunch of newsworthy events in a categorized fashion.

thenewpaper.co

I like it because it seems to actually be what it reports to be, and I don’t just see partisan stuff.

Bishma, in If you could travel to a place and time while you're a certain age - where would you go?
@Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Late 70’s (in my late 20s) at the Menlo Park Homebrew Computer Club

Jarix, in Have you ever learned anything on the spot?

That I can change the cursor position when typing by sliding left and right on the space bar (key?)

And also if you long press the enter key it brings up a shortcut for emojis/gifs

Bitrot,
@Bitrot@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

On iOS you can also move up and down between lines and select text with the spacebar (hold space, tap on keyboard somewhere else with another finger, drag space to select).

Jarix,

Neat for ios users!

MisterNeon, in If you could travel to a place and time while you're a certain age - where would you go?
@MisterNeon@lemmy.world avatar

Tenochtitlan 1519 and I guess I would like to be 28.

ryathal, in Countries that let anyone in?

Assuming you don’t mean the US, but it’s basically the only place that let’s anyone in, even if it’s a limited amount by region.

uienia, (edited )

You would have to be very ignorant about the US immigration rules if you think it let’s basically everyone in.

ryathal,

Compared to every other country in the world, it’s exceptionally permissive.

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