OpenStars

It makes sense - he spent so much time learning how the system worked, enough to get around it, so now he makes a living continuing the exploit. Many politicians and CEOs do the same.

Except Florida will fudge the numbers, and nobody will even know anything beyond "excess deaths", unless they take to hiding even those. Also, I still think "experiment" bespeaks of some intentionality, while simply being watchful and mindful of one's surroundings does not raise to that high bar. But you are correct: mindful people can learn from just about anything ("the sun has risen today, again, mark that on the recordings please, that is one more day in which that observation has occurred").

Anyway, I am giving you a hard time, but yeah I see what you mean: they wanted to lose herd immunity, so here goes nothing...

And no, I doubt the Florida government is willing to do much of anything at all, and the federal government is incapable. The Supreme Court is distracted, the upcoming Democrat Presidential candidate won't win Florida no matter what and the Republican Presidential one is likely to just egg the situation on further, and Congress hasn't even passed a budget yet, almost into the third month of calendar year 2024, but remember that this is the sixth month into the fiscal one - that's right, HALF THE YEAR HAS PASSED already without one yet, and they STILL are threatening another showdown when they come back from their weeks-long vacation. And even with such gridlock on all sides, the state government of Florida that is not struggling with a 2-party system at all still cannot hold a candle to the high level of functioning that even our entirely inept and broken (and corrupt) national government ends up having to do (see e.g. the Disney situation, making the state lose out on a BILLION dollars, and that is only one of the various ENORMOUS disasters that is just CURRENTLY going on in that state - the migrant worker crisis is another ofc, and there are far more besides).

This is why I say that this "experiment" of seeing whether and how democracy itself will work as a viable government strategy is currently underway. And so far the grim reaper seems to be winning:-(.

One problem with using Extensions to forcibly alter webpages - e.g. to convert them into a dark mode - is that they may have unexpected side-effects, which means that you cannot use it in your "main" instance that you use daily, or at the very least then you need to have a "backup" instance that always just works. I think I even have a couple (one was dedicated specifically to things like Google Docs), but I cannot trust them to work reliably so I do not even think of them anymore, plus they keep falling behind and not updating their code and after that do not work whenever the browser updates its own mandatory standards, and then I have to go hunt for another one, or else just find some other way to deal with it (reduce screen brightness and make sure not to work in a darker setting).

In order to really make a difference, one of the big-name browsers would need to integrate a change into its main code, which would then bring large amounts of market share users into the mix, helping to make development of the code a greater ROI. Though these days, almost everyone it seems uses Chrome (at least as reported stats show), and even all Firefox users simply get ignored - like, as long as a webpage runs on Chrome, companies stop testing it. Fuck Safari, Edge, Firefox, and most especially anything even smaller than that like LibreWolf.

All that said, most other browsers besides Firefox insert a small broken-image-looking icon whenever an image cannot be loaded. Though with increased connection reliability these days (inside the continental United States anyway), the number of situations where it would even be needed is vastly reduced compared to the past. And as for other places - like maybe Hawaii - well... fuck them. It is sad, but true: when Google makes e.g. Google Docs (that also lacks a dark mode), they did whatever tinkering they felt that they had to do at the absolute minimum in order to make a profit or indirect profitable impact, then called it a day and stopped.

Though Firefox was supposed to be different - it was supposed to lean heavily into its open-source nature, to provide a level of service to its true customers, the actual people using it, rather than the "customers" being the advertising companies who pay for certain features to be developed and pay far MORE for certain features to ever NOT be developed, if you take my meaning. Case in point: how Chrome now refuses to block ads.:-(

But anyway, none of the big browsers seem to be doing much with the Alt text these days - not showing it as a tooltip, and in the case of Firefox, not even showing it at all in some cases, or if it is, then it is just a weird text out in the middle of nowhere that seems disconnected to literally everything.

For instance, if you are capable of seeing this, compare the first and second renderings of "Test" in the image below:

The top one is how Firefox renders it - just this singular word out in the middle of nowhere, where even though you see it and it is therefore potentially better than leaving the insides of the brackets [] totally blank, it doesn't really explain or convey much of anything at all. Whereas the rendering below puts the broken-icon image next to the alternative text, that helps convey that this was meant to be an image, but instead you are seeing the alternative text. Otherwise, instead of putting [Test] inside of the brackets, someone would need to go as far as saying like [Test - this was meant to be an image but instead you are seeing this text here.]. That is a lot of work to place onto people who need to consider accessibility options for each and every image, and especially on a social media site like Lemmy that are meant to be fast-paced conversations, it simply will not happen. Therefore, my point is that Firefox is letting people down, by not using the same treatment that all other common browsers choose to do - they should have upped their game, in order to stay competitive. This is just one of many reasons why I continue to use Chrome, despite how ad-blocking is now disabled, unless I specifically need to go to YouTube to play multiple videos in a row (even then I will often just use Chrome to avoid the hassle of switching), or to visit a news website, which are so annoying that trying to read them without ad blocking is not worthwhile at all - i.e. I would rather read nothing at all then have to put up with their nonsense:-(. BTW, on Android I use Firefox, so here I am just talking about desktop browsing.

About that CommonMark page: oh I see, yeah you are right. However, even given your correctness, I still think that I am right: if someone like me who knows all of HTML, CSS (a tiny bit), and JS (an even smaller bit), and cares about accessibility did not realize that fact, then something is VERY wrong with that page. And right away I know what it is: that font is TINY. Those buttons are ENORMOUS in size - the width of the "code" and "previous exericse" is more than a third and approaching half the damn page width (at a glance, as I resize the window, it looks like ~40% of the left-hand size that excludes the right-hand vertical bar area with those square buttons?), and the text inside of the left-hand box and especially the size of that M in the right-hand box is ENORMOUS, but the text of the actual "Add alt text of Logo and title of Creative Commons licensed to this image:" is entirely missable, even given how few elements exist on that page. Normally, a tiny font size is a literal trigger, an indicator that "this item is skippable, of lesser importance, a footnote only for someone who is hunting/rooting/digging deeper into the details, but not for casual inspection", and sometimes people say the phrase "legal text", like just ignore it and go on with your day, unless you have a professional reason to care about it. So for this aspect to already be buried on page 8 of not even the help document but the link from the Lemmy help document... I guarantee that something >90% of people on the Fediverse are going to not know this, even given the highly technically skilled nature of our community. Hence why I was saying: if we wanted more people using Lemmy (or Mastodon, Kbin/Mbin, etc.) to know this, then additional work would need to be done.

Likewise I have never done anything at all with Mastodon, but I LOVE hearing how they are trying to increase their accessibility - that's wonderful:-).

And at least you convinced me to start putting something there here on Lemmy - so far I have been using the short word "img", that is more or less quick to type and seems to get the job done, at least insofar as an individual can offer, without going further e.g. to offer to do a redesign of that CommonMark page (that seems certain to be refused even if a finished product were offered wholesale with no strings attached).

I suppose you are talking about the FAAFO principle (since its meaning is crucial, I will spell it out to make certain we are all on the same page: Fuck Around And Find Out) - like a child sticking a fork into a live socket to "see what happens". There are no "controls", no observations are "recorded" for the future, there is no careful "design" of the factors involved, and second most importantly, no bothering to look up if the answer was somehow already known in the first place, that could have avoided the need to do the experiment altogether.

But I was arguing that the CRUCIAL factor of PRIME importance is likewise missing: the willingness to learn from whatever outcome may derive from the actions. If a child sticks a fork into a socket, but b/c it's low amperage somehow just laughs it off then sticks a fork into the socket again, then just laughs it off then sticks a fork into the socket again, then just laughs it off then sticks a fork into the socket again, then just laughs it off then sticks a fork into the socket again, then just laughs it off then sticks a fork into the socket AGAIN, etc. -> those are not "experiments", it is just plain dumb stupidity. No "learning" takes place, hence it was never an "experiment", just playing.

In contrast, when the USA started it up again after a long hiatus, democracy itself was our "experiment". It looks like it is about to fail, being too susceptible to internal squabbling + coercion from outside forces:-(.

But e.g. when Trump was impeached, the first time, and then when he was impeached, the second time, it was not an "experiment" to "see if he could be impeached" (very much unlike Biden's ongoing impeachment procedures), it was just what needed to be done.

TLDR: these people are not "experimenting" with anything, they are just Fucking Around, having not yet reached the Find Out stage (and never will, even long after the evidence becomes plainly and clearly obvious to anyone at all who is receptive to "evidence").

Exactly! So how does that not make it fraud, as in an attempt to spike the perceived valuation of his company's stock? Ianal, so my only guess is that it is different rules for a private vs. publicly-owned company. It being stock options is what made it possible, but I question whether it is legal? And either way, it seems unethical.

They seem to be hoping that now, with AI, they can. :-|

Oh noes (uwu), you forgot to include the link!

I think that one was inevitable, due to humans encroaching upon the bats territory and how fast it mutates - people were warning about it being inevitable over a decade ago. But yeah, climate change could bring about the next one. (Link)

Okay not sure about this based on on the other responses but...sure why not, so here goes:

"It looks like you already have".:-P

But somehow he still managed to pay himself $193 million - it boggles the mind, does it not, how he can pay himself >3x the amount that he LOST!?

[snorts] Floridans don't want to take care of their kids during the daytime.

What "experimentation" is being done here? We KNOW what's likely to happen - there is no real knowledge to be gained from this?