One of my grandfathers worked for a telephone company before he passed. That man was an absolute pack rat, he wouldn’t throw anything away. So naturally he had boxes and boxes of punch cards in this basement. I guess they were being thrown out when his employer upgraded to machines that didn’t need punch cards, so he snagged those to use as note paper. I will say, they were great for taking notes. Nice sturdy card stock, and the perfect dimensions for making a shopping list or the like.

There are some viruses that have targeted Linux, but they’re rare compared to other platforms and their ability to spread is relatively low. One of the main reasons is just down to how software tends to be installed on each platform. Viruses have an easier time spreading on Windows or OSX where users are more accustomed to downloading an executable and running it. Once there’s a malicious running process, it has a comparatively high chance to spread because it can attempt to escalate its privileges either by exploiting a bug or socially engineering the user to click through a privilege escalation prompt. That entire workflow is practically nonexistent on Linux, users just don’t tend to download and execute random binaries. Instead most Linux software gets delivered in one of these ways, each of which has impediments that reduce the chance a virus could spread:

• through an OS repo; it would be difficult for a malicious actor to get a virus through the release process and into a trusted repo
• through a public source like Github; again it would be difficult for a malicious actor to get a virus into public source code without someone noticing
• through a container image from an image library like DockerHub; I believe a malicious container would be sandboxed, making it hard if not impossible for that container to take over the host system
• through an application image like a snap, flatpak or appimage; again, I believe these run in their own sandbox from which they would have difficulty breaking out

There are some exceptions, for example some companies like Hashicorp will distribute their stuff as precompiled binaries. Even in that case you’re probably fine as long as you don’t run the downloaded binary as root. Users in the habit of downloading strange binaries from sketchy places and running them as root just aren’t very common among the Linux userbase. I’m sure there are some (and they should really stop doing that), but there aren’t enough of them to allow a virus to spread unchecked.

I don’t think dedicated antivirus software is really required anymore. I haven’t run third-party AV software on any of my systems in the last decade.

On Windows, the built-in Windows Defender is good enough for most use cases. When it first launched Defender had a pretty bad track record at stopping viruses, but now it routinely ranks at the top.

On Linux, antivirus software has never really been required. One major exception I can think of would be if you’re running a file server or mail server that talks to OSX or Windows systems. Even then the AV software isn’t really there to protect the server, it’s there to make sure you don’t pass malware or viruses to those non-Linux clients.

I didn’t say I’d downvote in those situations. I would guess that Rule 5 needs to exist for a reason. Without it the community could get overrun with ragebait posts. Personally I wouldn’t consider any of your examples questions to be ones that violate Rule 5, but I’m not a mod and I don’t make or enforce the rules. I also wouldn’t downvote such a question myself, but I would consider reporting it if it seemed like the OP was consistently trying to pull the conversation into fractious territory. Anyway, if we want to to discuss the rules and downvoting vs. reporting, that should probably go in a meta post.

I know, I couldn’t resist the urge to make a Lionel Hutz reference.

Serious answer, the question might be one that broke one of the community rules like Rule 5 (“No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda”) or Rule 6 (No meme or troll questions, except on Fridays) and voters are expressing their displeasure.

Silly answer, the question wasn’t stupid. The name of the community is actually “No, Stupid Questions.” The missing comma is a typo.

Stay mad, savage.

You’ve failed the test.

What an odd coincidence… I’ve been following this boat-building channel on Youtube for a couple years, and they talked about wood grain in the episode posted just today. Here’s a link to the relevant timestamp in the video. I’m not a woodworking expert by any means, but if the boat people say tighter grain is better I’ma believe 'em.

Sadly, yes.

Canada’s logging industry devours forests crucial to fighting climate change

This shit has been going on since the 80s. It’s mostly bullshit instigated by US lumber companies. Available softwood lumber in the US is mainly on privately owned land, and the owners of that land want the price of lumber to be as high as possible so they can make more money. The softwood lumber companies in the US are effectively acting as an oligopoly, and they lobby US politicians for legislation in their interests.

Softwood lumber in Canada is mainly on public land, called “crown land” here in Canada. A lumber oligopoly isn’t possible in Canada because the government would never sell all of that land to a handful of lumber companies. Instead lumber producers in Canada are charged a fee for the logs they cut, that fee is set by the Canadian government, and it is less per log than what US lumber producers want to charge.

Instead of competing on price, US lumber companies lobby congress to impose softwood lumber tariffs for the umpteenth time. When the US lumber companies don’t need to compete with Canadian lumber, they can jack up their prices. When they do that the only people who benefit are the US lumber companies and the politicians they’ve lobbied. Americans pay more for lumber, Canadian lumber companies and their workers suffer.

After reading the article, I’m confused about how it works. Guinea worms are parasites that you get infected with from bad water sources. Unless you eradicate the source (e.g. the worms themselves), can you really say that you’ve eradicated the disease?

Many diseases can likely never be eradicated because they have a natural reservoir, some wild population of animal species in which the disease normally propagates. A natural reservoir will keep the disease in circulation and reinfection of humans can occur from contact with species in the natural reservoir. Ebola virus is like that, it keeps popping up now and then because it has a natural reservoir (believed to be fruit bats).

Guinea worms isn’t like that, which is part of why it’s a strong candidate for eradication. Its reproductive cycle has a step that primarily goes through people or dogs, neither of which would be considered a natural reservoir:

As such, if we reach a state where there are no infected people or dogs then guinea worm could go extinct. There would be larvae left in the wild at that point, but as long as those larvae don’t infect a suitable host then they never become worms. No new worms means no new larvae, and larvae have a fairly short lifespan so we would only need to maintain that situation for maybe a few years before we could confidently say that guinea worm has been eradicated (i.e. any remaining larvae must be dead by that point).

Apparently the technical term is protein poisoning. Digesting protein creates urea, and the body needs at least some fat in order to convert to ammonia that can be excreted. It’s also called “mal be caribou” in French (caribou sickness, I think), which I find fascinating.

How did this happen? Isn’t there usually a flight attendant standing right there as you board the plane?

Yes, but the 777 has two aisles. Here’s the Air Canada seat map. The flight attendant greeting passengers would be by the first aisle, directing passengers down the correct aisle for their seat. This passenger might have been directed to the second aisle, and rather than turning down the aisle they went straight across to opposite exit door. Or they might have used one of the other doors. The 777 has 10 full-sized doors, 5 on each side of the plane. Two of those doors open onto the wings, one of those would have been used for boarding, maybe two if first-class passengers get a separate air bridge, but that still leaves 6 or 7 doors where there isn’t likely to be a flight attendant to notice a passenger doing something stupid.

Consider jobs involving fieldwork. There are all sorts of jobs that involve a team in a remote / isolated location, and some tend to pay pretty well because most people aren’t up for that sort of lifestyle. For example my father was a geologist and could spend months at a time with a team in remote locations, conducting surveys and taking samples.

Removed by mod

Several years ago I was getting a lot of acid reflux. Went to the doctor, he gave me the “no-fun diet” list with all the foods to avoid because they can cause indigestion. Everything I loved was on that list. Beer. Cheese. Fried foods. Hot peppers. And, of course, coffee. I was highly motivated to achieve some kind of resolution to these stomach problems so I gave up everything on the list except coffee. Lo and behold, the symptoms remained. I switched the roles and gave up only coffee. The stomach symptoms disappeared, to be replaced by the worst fatigue headaches I’ve ever encountered. It took two weeks for the headaches to finally fade, and now I’m a tea drinker for life.

I drink Earl Grey tea, mostly because I’m forgetful as hell and I need a tea where I can just leave the tea bag in there for as long as it takes me to remember that I made tea. With most other black teas if you don’t yank the bag out at the right time your tea will get bitter as hell. Not Earl Grey, you can forget that shit for half an hour and the Earl don’t mind. You’ll still come back to a cup of tea that’s still perfectly drinkable. When I want to take it to the next level I get some Cream of Earl Grey, the kind with the little blue flower petals in it. Heavenly.

How can you be sure it’s the eggnog? To rule out other causes you should drink only the eggnog for the next 7 days. Y’know, for science!

Some of the alt UIs mentioned in this thread can be test-driven on lemmy.world:

• a.lemmy.world is running Alexandrite
• old.lemmy.world is running Mlmym
• p.lemmy.world is running Photon

And as others have said, once you find one you like you can self-host it and use it with any instance you prefer.

You could install LineageOS on your existing phone instead of upgrading. The OnePlus 7 Pro is supported. The install process can be daunting depending on your technical skills, but it’s a one-time process since the phone gets updates over-the-air after the OS is installed.

I did this with my OnePlus 6 a few months ago and the experience has been good. Switching to LineageOS bumped Android to version 13, whereas it was stuck on Android 11 on stock OnePlus firmware. I’m getting regular updates again, including open-source Android security patches. Not everything gets patched though, some of the core firmware is proprietary to OnePlus and that cannot be patched by anyone but them. It’s letting me extend the life of a phone still works well and has a 3.5mm headphone jack.