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Joined 5 months ago
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Cake day: June 25th, 2024

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  • Doesn’t Austria have a law that allows employees to reduce hours to part-time as they see fit? We do here in Germany. Last place I worked at, my team lead didn’t want me to reduce from full-time to 80%. The Betriebsrat (employee council) was ready to go to bat for me, but I didn’t like the role anyway, so I interviewed for another place. They offered me 80%, a pay raise, a better role and benefits.

    This might come off as bragging, I realize. Sorry, not my intention. I just wanted to share my experience, maybe it’s useful to someone 😊




  • I feel like there’s two stories here:

    1. Snap is a pedo grooming ground

    2. Police are generating fake CSAM

    3. is, well, yeah . Like any major network you have creeps, Nazis and pedos and it’s good to root them out. It’s weird that themselves don’t do that.

    4. is … difficult. I feel like the cops that prompt GenAIs to produce (sexualized) images of children risk severe trauma. It must be punishing to ask a a machine to produce fake images of morally reprehensible material. That’s gotta take a toll on you. What’s even more important is that those people could be spending their time taking down actual child abuse images.

    I can’t wrap my head around that.





  • Don’t get me wrong, I love me a good pumped hydro solution, but they do come with a couple of disadvantages:

    a) as others pointed out, you need a somewhat steep gradient between two places. Preferably for a bit of distance so as to increase efficiency by putting more turbines in. Their need for a gradient limits their use in flat locations such as the entire US Midwest, for example.

    b) comparatively expensive and longer construction process than other storage forms.

    c) usually you have to build the upper reservoir. That’s an environmental harm. IMHO not that big if a concern, but it’s there.

    d) if you don’t build out a reservoir, but use an existing lake, you risk contaminating it with algae / cyanobacteria and wreaking havoc on fish and other wildlife.