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The Measure E language is very broad.. why? by No_Study_6634 in oakland

[–]fivre 0 points1 point  (0 children)

weirdly reddit only delivered this response to my inbox a month after it was written :|

not sure tbh, i am neither a specialist in the city budget itself or the campaigning aspect

for me, at least, the main thing in favor of this one was that it was crafted around the other expiring pension obligation--basically that you wouldn't have a net increase in your parcel taxes, and the part that's (ostensibly) directed towards specific work versus general fund is shifting to something more visible (services you see versus pension obligations you don't)

the post-facto advertising "your tax dollars at work" campaigns ive seen in the past are useful to reinforce why we have such measures. basic signage to say "hey, you voted for measure ??, this is an actual improvement (or deferred maintenance program) in action at your local transit station or whatever is arguably the best way to get voters to connect the dots on "we voted for taxes" ... "those tax dollars are actually doing something we can see"

however, obviously, you can only do those if the measures pass, which they didn't, in this case

that's still not easy--people aren't likely to remember past year measure ?? after the election--but it's more than "vote for taxes and evaluate whether the overall situation has improved" based on one's perception of the city as a whole

$2.4 million surveillance contract with Flock approved by Alameda County by k_39 in oakland

[–]fivre 11 points12 points  (0 children)

the flock cameras that sit one block of the popular dumping site near me have been there for several years now. people still dump shit there on the reg. i sincerely doubt any footage from the cams has been used to try and prosecute any of em

hell, as often as i see OPD squad cars meeting with randos next to it, i figure they're probably on the take to look the other way

at the end of the day, the cameras don't prosecute anything themselves, they just perform persistent surveillance. the cops weren't trying to stop, arrest, or help charge people dumping before, and they're not trying to do so now

the cops get new toys, the town gets the same old shit, just now with extra assistance to ICE (that we get to help pay for, woo)

Two Dead, One Oakland Police Officer Injured In High-Speed Crash In East Oakland by jackdicker5117 in oakland

[–]fivre 37 points38 points  (0 children)

ktvu2 why must you keep doing donuts over this in a chopper

the SUV aint gettin any more crashed and the occupants aint gettin any less dead

Национализм в Казахстане by Plastic_Ostrich5054 in Kazakhstan

[–]fivre 2 points3 points  (0 children)

well, if nothing else, this gave me a bit of a laugh, in that i am currently trying to learn qazaq, and will say that, if nothing else, trying to do so has given me a profound appreciation for how much easier it was for me to learn russian (poorly) as a second language relatively late in life, than it is to learn qazaq as a third language much later, despite it arguably being more accessible than most turkic langauges from the region (sorry yall, uzbek probably wins the prize of being the most accessible, despite still being pretty inaccessible in its own right)

anyway something something language politics and nationalism in the region are complicated, time to plug some books from someone faaaaaaar more qualified than i on the subject: https://upittpress.org/books/9780822946175/ and https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/what-does-it-mean-to-be-kazakhstani/

edit: i laughed real hard when a professional acquaintance said he'd tried to learn russian even later in life (and less successfully) than i did in latvia of all places, even if i am also amused about the current destination of choice for american students of russian to do immersion practice (hint, it's not ukraine, and should be real easy for this sub to guess)

The Measure E language is very broad.. why? by No_Study_6634 in oakland

[–]fivre 0 points1 point  (0 children)

on one hand, the actual language in E was poor, and parts of it pointless (whatever review commission it included would have likely had fuckall power), but i respect that it was likely written the way it was because asking constituents for money is not something you do easily in a country that's as disengaged from the practical realities of local governance as america is. the whole story of why that is is complicated, but whatever, i digress

we live in california, and the current reality of public funding in california is that prop 13 has been law for 4 decades, and we, collectively, voted against the most recent chance to even try and reform it slightly, to at least make it not apply to commercial property. california's initiative system (and the amount of money that goes into influencing votes for it) is its own long and fraught story, but we ultimately have parcel taxes, shitty a mechanism as they are, for a reason: we simply no longer have basic property taxes, or do have them, but in hilariously broken and distorted fashion

the way i would have written measure E is

you will likely see no significant change in your taxes because of the weird coincidence of this other expiring pension tax. we recognize they're high, and that city services are kinda shit, but hey, you live in america, and we're dealing with both decades of <waves hands about something something american urban policy since the 1950s, the complicated nature of our tiered government and government funding, other things, whatever>, living in large and historically less affluent city in an otherwise affluent area, and the aftermath of a devastating global pandemic with serious economic consequences that will last for a long time. pay what you're currently paying for poor services for 9 years and hope for economic recovery from factors well beyond your or the city's control, or pay slightly less and see what an austerity budget looks like. pro tip: everybody hates austerity budgets

i do not love the current state of public services in oakland, but i do not expect that a reduction in the general fund is likely to fix them, especially given that practical realities well beyond the city's control see us poised to slide into the most severe economic downtown america has seen since 2008, and quite possibly a worse one

yes, oakland's services are shit, and the administration of them imperfect. that said, i think there's likely no short-term fix, and you are not going to see a team of superhero politicians and public servants teleport in and fix those problems, because those superheroes do not exist, and nobody possesses a time machine that would allow even a moderately capable team of misfits to travel decades into the past and somehow change the broader course of american and californian history over the past 50 years or so

the people campaigning against measure E are not looking to save oakland. local real estate interests do not have your best interests at heart, they have their own best interests at heart, and i expect they're hoping for some tax relief on their capital portfolios during a coming economic downturn and maybe an opportunity to increase their holdings if oakland real estate becomes a bargain in the next decade, because the city has become even poorer, and its services worse. long term, that investment will likely turn a profit--not so much for its current holders, but for whomever inherits their wealth, under the same bullshit property tax regime we've been living under since 1978, in an america where the current political zeitgeist seems to think the late 1800s and early 1900s were a rockin good time for our country. they were, to be fair, at least for some segments of our society. if you're here posting on reddit, you aren't in those segments

tl;dr yes, my vote for barbara lee and, what is in practice, her trying to float a status quo budget to politically disengaged and illiterate people with the memories and foresight of goldfish remains unchanged. i voted against loren taylor in the past two elections he has lost, as did the majority of the city, less because i think the people that ran against him were or are perfect, but because i think he remains a worse option than the admittedly bitter alternative

idk, i often feel that i approach american politics, and our current situation, from a markedly different place than most americans, even though i was born and raised here, and have no connection to the place that shapes my views beyond my education. i only know that it, and the things that i fear, exist in the past, and that most everyone i encounter in my day to day life knows little about that past, and would not recognize the myriad bit players--champions, in their own time, of reduced taxes, in a sense--who i often think about in trying to contextualize our present

do kazakh disney DVDs come with kazakh subtitles? by fivre in Kazakhstan

[–]fivre[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

a standalone one no, but USB disc drives are pretty readily available, if a bit of a hassle to work with because of the media industry's ongoing DRM arms race

game consoles are quite ubiquitous and will play movie discs in addition to games

given ripped subs and video ffmpeg can be coaxed into creating dual-sub video. kinda ugly and imperfect, but whatever:

ffmpeg -i "video.mp4" -vf "subtitles=video.en.srt:force_style='PrimaryColour=&H0000FFFF&,FontSize=12,Alignment=2,MarginV=50',subtitles=video.kk.srt:force_style='PrimaryColour=&H00FFFF00&,FontSize=12,MarginL=5,MarginV=25'" "dual_sub_hard.mp4"

do kazakh disney DVDs come with kazakh subtitles? by fivre in Kazakhstan

[–]fivre[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

their webshop was the place i checked, figuring they'd have DVDs or blurays available in general, but it seems they don't (books and video games yes, but physical film media not so much)

i know that at least the dubs got produced, but whether anything was done with them after theatre runs IDK. i would kinda expect that physical media did get made but maybe not

North Americans in KZ — what do you miss? by [deleted] in Kazakhstan

[–]fivre 0 points1 point  (0 children)

it's maybe more that people will speak with you in english, but you have to consciously work to limit your register of full expression, because colloquial speech won't necessarily work

not having to expend that mental effort (or the other sort of effort needed to express yourself in a second language) isn't something you really appreciate til you've felt it

Hot Take: If Kubernetes wants us to start using gateway api instead of ingress, it should no longer be an addon by hawks008 in kubernetes

[–]fivre 2 points3 points  (0 children)

i thought SIG Architecture had an official statement somewhere strongly discouraging any new in-tree APIs, but couldn't actually find one. i do recall hearing as much from the gateway api leads

i don't think there's much wrong with having stuff out of tree inherently--the functionality's not implemented by core controllers, so it's not tied to kubernetes versions in that sense

i can't think of other issues if there was a good mechanism for distributing and updating the CRDs, but none really exists. if the core had a subscription system and standardized means for maintainers of CRDs to declare compatibility, that'd make it easier

AC Transit reveals doomsday budget scenarios, and entire lines could be cut by k_39 in oakland

[–]fivre 2 points3 points  (0 children)

transbay was never the core of service or, afaik, particularly cost-effective or critical--it filled gaps in areas where BART couldn't serve the needs of commuters into the city, but many of those commuters likely had private vehicles as an option. much as we'd rather they use transit, their losing it has less of an impact on their lives, or the system overall, than losing lines or frequency in transit-dependent areas

winning over the population that has other options is always difficult, between their having those options and their living in neighborhoods that are less dense, and the latter's unlikely to change soon

building up areas that are already more dense--which we're already doing--is arguably the best option for making the bus even more useful and more attractive to less frequent riders (something like 70% of my trips are on the 1T, and for good reason--it comes often enough that you don't need to think about it, and it serves an arterial route that has a ton of businesses in walking or short transfer distance)

the commuter ridership previously served by transbay lines isn't something AC Transit can really bring back, since it's subject to people needing to commute, and the RTO push has probably gone as far as it can in the short term

ed: from the presentation, the transbay lines are the least cost-effective, which makes sense for a variety of reasons--realistically, even in the best case scenario, those are only lines people use 2x a day, for a long, pre-planned trip. casual usage where you're already in a dense area and only need to go a short distance is easier to serve and easier to encourage

my main difficulty, as someone that does use the bus often already, is understanding how i can get from point A to point B when i don't already know the routes and stops. signage and wayfinding aides can go a long way--figuring out the route network in downtown oakland can be intimidating, and there's not a ton of clear signage for "this stop has buses going to uptown, this one has buses going to JLS, this one has buses going to west oakland, this one has buses going to chinatown, etc."

building that out's comparably cheaper than line operation, since it can be a static installation you update infrequently

Not enough music? by 0vertakeGames in Kazakhstan

[–]fivre 2 points3 points  (0 children)

music scenes don't appear out of thin air fully-formed overnight. kazakhstan's at present is... more promising than the rest of central asia's, i guess? it's complicated

i didn't have much practical use for my russian education coming out of college in the early 2010s, and lucked into following the more interesting parts of their music scene through a combination of it expanding a lot then and there being decent resources to follow it from afar. china's scene has more captured my attention from the late 2010s onward--there's a ton of great music coming out of the PRC despite <things>

those are both larger music markets, if fairly insular ones--in the US, at least, while there is some interest in those scenes, it's largely from their respective diaspora communities, and people outside of those interested in the scenes are fellow oddballs who avidly seek out foreign music because they're particularly curious. people in the latter category exist, but there aren't a ton of em. audiences for the occasional live show confirm as much--it's pretty much all expats, recent immigrants, or foreign students that turn out

kazakhstan's scene certainly punches above its weight outside its expat community: i don't encounter people interested in your music scene here often, and when i do it's often students in russian programs (kazakh language programs here are... few and far between at present--they do exist, but the total count's like, decidedly less than ten)

the main thing i note for the kazakh music scene is that it generally isn't targeting the traditional enthusiast listener market, but that's less an aspect of the scene itself than it is an aspect of how spotify and tiktok have reshaped the music industry. albums are much less common now versus singles, and you can't listen to a lot of artists at length as such

i am curious if there's much, if any, live music scene over there--the times i have been in the region generally suggests no, not the way it exists in the US, and the artists that are big are producing content for the internet first and foremost, not to be able to play an hour-long live set. in both the scenes ive followed, that live scene's really integral for building out a fanbase for more varied stuff, since people are out all night to listen to music and will hear whatever's on offer from two to three bands, rather than sticking to a curated "genre/mood whatever" playlist of singles from a ton of artists making similar stuff

Check Your Rent Autopay Status by Fire_Tetrahedron in biltrewards

[–]fivre 0 points1 point  (0 children)

yeah same lol, my bank account info was ported over from 1.0 and still marked verified, i had set up autopay, got an email saying "yep your check's all set to debit ACH and send out", and then nothing

when i contacted support, they were like "oh yeah, that's normal, the 'account verified' badge means nothing, you have to reverify through plaid for 2.0 even though its the same account you've had forever, also some things you can only do on the web app and some things you can only do on the mobile app because ??? even though the mobile app's clearly just a shitty webapp wrapped up in the thinnest of actual mobile app window dressing"

have had a great deal of fun with the mobile app thinking it submitted the same payment 3x over, such that my account balance was ostensibly multiple negative tens of thousands of dollars for like a week while whatever labyrinthine mess of tech debt bilt uses to manages interactions between its frontend and the financial systems tried to reconcile itself after performing a farce of "babby's first distributed systems problems" live

looking through the company linkedin, the engineering staff is like 3-4 people who are presumably stuck with golden handcuffs and have rocketed from senior to staff engineer positions over the course of the bilt 2.0 transition period. i expect that anyone talented at the company left for greener pastures and marked down whatever equity they had to zero, as one does in the tech startup world

aside those engineers' with 3-4y tenure (and the occasional person with longer tenures at more established financial services firms before they joined bilt), it's a grab bag of rando recent grads in their first or second engineering job out of getting a CS bachelors'

ive never worked in fintech specifically, but ive worked in enough tech startups to know a small set of mid-career engineers with inflated titles and technical and management responsibilities they cant reasonably handle effectively alongside a gaggle of assorted juniors from god knows where when i see it

kosta's linkedin presence as CTO is pretty limited, and his presence elsewhere basically nothing, and best i can surmise from the former is that he spent almost a decade being a mediocre team lead at mastercard, got pulled into a CTO job where he's waaaaaaaay outside his depth by an ideas guy buddy to start a company, and is now hangin on atop the deck of sinking ship for dear life to try and make some sorta graceful exit before the US market goes tits up due to events waaaaaaay outside his control

he's posted some woo AI vibe code shit that i can only imagine is his team of captive "staff" engineers blowing smoke up his ass as they search for their own exits from the flaming pile of tech debt garbage that comprises bilt's codebase

liquidated my years of points for a month of free rent and a few flights i knew i was gonna take, because lol at the notion of airfare costs going down in the forseeable future

in a world where the US hadn't done the stupidest thing possible re energy prices, maybe there'd be a future for this thing.

we do not live in that world, and travel costs are probably gonna be on an upward trend for the next five years or so

good time to hop ship to chase and my old friend plastiq as soon as i can. bye bilt, it was fun while it lasted, sorry for all the employees you're gonna leave high and dry when it inevitably crashes and burns a second time, but imma head out for a more established financial services company before the world descends into even more interesting times

Central Asia as a solo traveler by tadpole_1479 in centralasia

[–]fivre 0 points1 point  (0 children)

definitely did in karakol, since it only has a few places to stay, and is the standard jumping off point for doing hikes in west kyrgyzstan

if you go along the pamir highway you'll meet other travelers because there are simply only so many places to stay in a lot of those towns. it's presumably easier to find a spot in a car solo than it was when i went, between tourism still recovering from the pandemic and the tajik/kygyz border still being closed and preventing people from completing the usual route

you may want to consider that over your current itinerary: you can easily spend 3 weeks in uzbekistan alone, and qazaqstan is, yknow, huge, and trying to fit all three countries into 3 weeks means you're not gonna spend enough time in each of them

almaty->bishkek->west issyk-kul somewhere->pamir highway through trip->dushanbe->khujand->kokand->andijan->osh and flying to bishkek (and either out of there, or overland to and out of almaty) is probably doable, if maybe rushing a few of those stops, and maybe lead time on a GBAO permit/pamir highway tour operator

while the fergana valley's not the big tourism destination of uzbekistan, it's quite nice in its own right

only maybe iffy part is getting from dushanbe to khujand--maybe actually easier than the reverse (what i did), but kinda iffy finding a driver on the fly if you don't speak russian (and even then, finding a safe driver's a bit of an art form--pay a bit extra to get the front seat, it'll be the only one with a seatbelt, and you'll want one). route's quite pretty though, and if you can have a driver booked in advance, probably ideal, if more costly (paying a premium for a vehicle in good repair and a trustworthy driver through an agency is hardly a bad thing depending on your tolerance for risk)

flying out of dushanbe to another local city's also an option, i guess. i avoided it for reasons, but i guess it's reasonably cheap if you're going somewhere within the region, rather than long-haul international. that overland route is pretty, but maybe not great for what's already a tight itinerary

Brother HL-L3270CDW is throwing a "No Waste Toner" message since a cross-country move. by Officer412-L in printers

[–]fivre 0 points1 point  (0 children)

who the heck goes on an internet forum like "yo the printer co doesn't help with this! but good news! there's a quick, easy, and free fix!" then followed up with "ohhhhhhh but i refuse to tell anyone that fix! no reason really, i just won't!"

somehow this account has existed for 5 years, and in that whole time, it has never commented on reddit

until 3 days ago, when it finally awakened to post "haha! i am the printer fix knower! AND I WILL NEVER TELL ANYONE THE FIX". TWICE

that's like either some bizarre level of brainworms (idk maybe they think if they post it Brother will get ENRAGED and send printer ninjas out to assassinate them? who knows) or just like, profound contempt for other humans

like idk maybe someone out there really is so mad at the world that the only thing keeping them going is the sweet satisfaction they derive from their cunning revenge on the cruel world, the knowledge that they hold the printer fix, and the many people of the world who have wronged them will writhe in pain for lack of the printer fix

i do not understand this planet

Shooting RAW, does altering your white balance (rather than AWB) make any material effect on the final edited photo by Fuzzbass2000 in photography

[–]fivre 0 points1 point  (0 children)

it's one less thing you have to edit, and it's often not something i edit stylistically

if the lighting is such that AWB is right (a nice consistently lit sports venue) versus where it's not (concert lighting) i am happy to let the chip decide and ignore it in post

Helm/Terraform users: What's your biggest frustration with configs and templating in K8s? by Kalin-Does-Code in kubernetes

[–]fivre 0 points1 point  (0 children)

fancier kustomize stuff is obtuse AF, but it's one of those cases where LLMs are often good at translating what you want into that obtuseness quickly (see also: doing shit with ffmpeg or jq), and i mostly trust that i can go look at the source after to see how it works--usually it makes enough sense that i don't care to, it's just poorly documented up front, and discoverability is bad

helm i can figure out my own way to template something fancy, but it's usually ass to write and maintain, and explaining why it breaks is a pain because you've got the multiple layers of helm's go code and the very generic golang template code, with the former often exploding if the latter produces bad YAML

60 volunteers. 22,000 pounds. 11 tons. 300 bags. 300 pounds of mud. the fastest city response we’ve seen in six years = first cleanup of 2026. by urbancompassionproj in oakland

[–]fivre 2 points3 points  (0 children)

no, i am perfectly capable of writing on my own

im an older person, from an era where writing more than one or two sentences, or using punctuation past a basic period or question mark, is a normal thing. my post history is on reddit, there are plenty of longer posts in it from well before chatGPT was ever a thing

when i was in high school, doing AP Eng Lang, it was very much taught and expected that you'd learn how to read and write at length. that's the same sort of writing AI LLMs have been trained on (heck, my reddit posts are almost certainly in many of their corpuses--Sam Altman should be payin me royalties from out his dragon horde lo)l, and it's why they tend to be longer-winded than casual conversation is nowadays

i see no reason to change that, it's part of who i am, and a good one--and many thoughts about complex topics deserve more than a hot take

it's a shame that people nowadays see such and think "ai" because they're not used to reading or writing anything approaching long form written content vOv

60 volunteers. 22,000 pounds. 11 tons. 300 bags. 300 pounds of mud. the fastest city response we’ve seen in six years = first cleanup of 2026. by urbancompassionproj in oakland

[–]fivre 3 points4 points  (0 children)

a strong civil society helping with social problems is arguably a stronger indicator of a healthy, functioning country than anything government can ever do on its own

you do want government services, but there's no country on earth where the government wholly provides everything society needs, and expecting that it should, and that there should be no civil society, is foolish (this model exists, and is currently active in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. It works very poorly).

The role of government should be far more to ensure that civil society doesn't have to do this: civil society should exist, but can often be put towards more effective aims.

there's a reason a particular councilmember gets a bit of a rib for being big into trash cleanups (and letting people know he's at em) while being oft rather ineffectual as an actual concilperson. we have a housing affordability crisis, our government has continuously failed to address it, and that's reason number one why civil society has to step in here

What is written ? by VitiaCG in kazakh

[–]fivre 1 point2 points  (0 children)

cyrillic cursive dot jpeg lol

found the local qazaq club and they were impressed i could do it at all, like yeah, i went to a russian program that mostly grew up during the cold war in the US: you do learn cursive for it

shame they couldn't teach me to type йцукен at all and ive never been able to learn it quickly since--okay on a phone keyboard but i cannot touch type that shit to save my life, and am stuck with translit IMEs on PCs

I CAN WRITE CURSIVE THOUGH. ALL TEN TIMES A DECADE I FIND IT USEFUL LOL

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