Out of a reflex of distrust, I refuse to participate in any kind of loyalty program of the outlet of the large retail store around the corner.

I tell myself that by refusing to join the loyalty program (which basically comes down to scanning an anonymous loyalty card every time I make a purchase), I prevent them from adding my correlations (what products I buy, in what combos, at what time) to their data.

But since I normally pay by card, I guess they can (and do) already do that with my bank account information?

If I would pay with cash, they can still see those correlations per purchase, but they can't track my purchases over time?

Does anyone know if there are any companies/organizations that offer the possibility to sail the Atlantic by boat as a passenger (so not as a (more or less) experienced crew member). Are there any? Or announced plans or something like that?

(I'm not talking about being a passenger on a large cargo ship. I'm curious about the possibility to cross the Atlantic with a low carbon footprint).

Do these "cost per click" figures actually represent the money Google receives (received) from these companies for every time someone ends up on their platform through the intermediation of Google?

After watching this video I am left with this question.

The video ultimately claims that humans will not disappear, but doesn't do a great job explaining why.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but for the (or a) population to be and remain stable, the total fertility rate needs to be equal to the global replacement rate (which recently was 2.3).

And since the total average fertility rate appears to be currently at this 2.3, any drop in the fertility rate in place A would have to be compensated with a rise in the fertility rate in place B (assuming that, at some point, we would like to stop population decline)?

I guess one way for a population to remain stable, while women are having fewer than 2.3 children, would be to have fewer men? If a population has 100 women and 10 men, each woman would only have to have on average (a bit more than) 1.1 child? (Which would of course also require a collective form of prenatal sex selection.)

I realize that would be bonkers and unethical. Just wondering out loud.

Argentina's team is such a bunch of actors and lying cry babies (Messi). Winning like this is shameful. They didn't deserve the world cup and they don't deserve the Copa América.

El equipo de Argentina era (como siempre) actores y malparidos. Ganar así es vergonzoso.

This is a great way to travel through space and time, and get to know our planet better in a fun and beautifully designed way.

What could be reasons for my rsync, which is syncing two remote servers through ssh, to slow down over time like this? It keeps happening. How to check what is the bottleneck?

Does anyone else experience this? When I upvote a post and then bookmark it, the upvote disappears. I then have to redo the upvote.

!!

Today someone told me that he heard through the grapevine that OpenAI has been selling it's ChatGPT (not sure which version) complete model to one or more key organizations (companies) whose policies simply do not allow it to store any data on external servers. Does anyone here know anything about that?

If banks would not be allowed to lend out more than what they have in terms of deposits, or if they would only be allowed to lend out twice that amount, what would be the most significant difference with the current fractional reserve system (in which the cash-reserve ratio can be as high as 1:9)?

I'm reading that the current system increases the availability of credit, which in turn helps the economy to grow. But if banks would only be allowed to lend out half of what they are currently lending out, wouldn't the supply of money simply go down, and thus the value of money up, effectively leaving banks with the same lending power?

Current system:

• Total amount of money in circulation: central bank money x money multiplier. Most money is created by commercial banks.

Alternative system:

• Total amount of money in circulation: central bank money. All money is created by central banks.

I'm not asking what would happen if this would change over night (e.g. sudden decrease of money, monster deflation etc.). I'm asking what is the benefit (and to whom) of doing it the way it is currently done.

The Firefox extension "ChatGPT Summary Assistant" has been quite useful over the last few weeks, but sometimes I would like to be able to specify a question about an article. Do you know if any extension(s) exist(s) for that?

Hi all, just checking: is there a way to manually sort files (specifically photos)? So not automatic sorting on name or date, but (drag and drop) manual sorting?

Hi all, sorry if this has been asked/discussed before (I couldn't find any directly overlapping posts):

I have been running the Nextcloud snap now for quite some time, and although things have run quite smoothly, I never really managed to properly back things up.

I make weekly backups of the database, config and data, but it's very hard and time consuming to glue these elements back together. And as they say: when you can't check whether a backup works, it's not really a backup.

I have been experimenting with KVM/qemu lately and things look pretty great. The idea of simply backing up the entire OS that runs Nextcloud (a backup that you can easily deploy/run somewhere else to test if it's working) sounds very attractive.

Reading around, however, tells me that some of you recommend running the Nextcloud docker (instead of a VM).

My questions:

1. What would be the advantage of running Nextcloud as a docker, instead of within a VM?
2. What would be a sensible way to have an incremental/differential backup of the VM/Docker?
3. The storage usage of my Nextcloud instance exceeds 1TB. If I run it within a VM, I will have to connect it to a 2TB SSD. Does it make sense to add the external storage space to the VM? How does that affect the ease of backing the full VM up? Or (as I have read here and there) should I simply put the entire VM on the external SSD?

I recently asked an admittedly controversial question about the veracity of a Mastodon account. Some people understandably took offense, while others were willing to exchange thoughts. It was a conversation of about 13 comments.

I now find the post is gone. I can't find any message in my inbox about any removal. Now I understand that we cannot expect mods to provide elaborate justifications for all their decisions, and I understand that they (and admins?) are the final arbiters (although in this case I think it was a bit drastic, also considering that I there was a diversity of perspectives). But shouldn't participants in a post be notified or something? With an automatic notification? When a post is deleted?

!

I have seen great memes and posts about the fact that Lemmy doesn't have any Karma to pursue. But surely it keeps track of points? At least in Connect I can see mine and those of others?

!screenshot from Connect showing my points

Often political leaders at the top need to maintain some diplomatic composure and have the privilege to leave their dirty fights to subordinates. As a result we often don’t realize how much of an asshole these leaders actually are. A good test is to check what they allow (or encourage) their lower ranked allies to get away with.