retrospectology

joined 1 year ago
 

In light of the recent Crowdstrike crash revealing how weak points in IT infrastructure can have wide ranging effects, I figured this might be an interesting one.

The entirety of wikipedia is periodically uploaded here, along with many other useful wikis and How To websites (ex. iFixit tutorials and WikiHow): https://download.kiwix.org/zim

You select the archive you want, then the language and archive version (for example, you can get an archive with no pictures, to save on space). For the totality of the english wikipedia you'd select the "wikipedia_en_all_maxi_2024-01.zim"

The archives are packed as .zim files, which can be read with the Kiwix app completely offline.

I have several USBs I keep that have some of these archives along with the app installer. In the event of some major catastrophe I'd at least be able to access some potentially useful information. I have no stake in Kiwix, and don't know if there are other alternative apps and schemes, just thought it was neat.

[–] retrospectology@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is exactly what people were warned about with "games as a service" nonsense. No one wanted to listen.

They wouldn't be doing it if there wasn't a plan to get consumers to be paying more in the end.

[–] retrospectology@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

Except this happens every year, during storms, during heat waves, during cold snaps. If it were just a one-off event it might be able to be waved away, but a pattern of failure is emerging.

Whether the storm was projected to hit as hard or not doesn't really matter, tropical storms and hurricanes are not some new event in that area of Texas, yet the state and local governments seem utterly unprepared. It was only a year or two ago that basically the exact same thing happened, and apparently nothing was done about it to shore up their services. It's an inefficiency of the private sector, they're not capable of providing vital services because their primary motivation is not reliability and efficiency, it's profit and cost cutting.

You don't see this happening in other states with the same frequency. I've never had the grid where I am fail, and we get both extreme heat and cold and occasional tropical storms.

[–] retrospectology@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Representatives don't have a free mandate in a democracy, they're bound by laws and by their constituency.

How are your councils formed and what restricts their power?

[–] retrospectology@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Those "academics" are wrong.

We know this because there are photos of bodies and bicycles smeared into a paste [Source. Warning Blood/Gore].

And because people who were there literally said that's what happened:

"The shooting was going on and people were still running to try and block the tanks, which were travelling at high speed, some positioning buses in the road. But the tanks crushed the buses and people, they didn’t care. People’s bodies were merged, moulded to their bicycles. They were flat.” [Source: Shao Jiang to The Mirror]

The CCP has desperately tried to cleanse the most brutal images and interviews of the massacre from the Internet, but even 30 years on they can't completely scrub it clean. There's a reason The Pillar of Shame monument is designed as it is.

[–] retrospectology@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's not the US manning the air defenses that keep the Chinese jets at bay.

[–] retrospectology@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Uh huh, remind me; who is threatening to invade who?

[–] retrospectology@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

I think the weakness shown around Ukraine is now having the opposite effect that the early strong support and western democratic unity had at the start of the war, the CCP senses there's blood in the water.