Salamander

  • 2 Posts
  • 60 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
Cake day: December 19th, 2021
  • Salamander@mander.xyzMtoScience Memes@mander.xyz•Chat, is this true?English
    4·
    27 days ago

    How did I miss that?!

    My timeline is incorrect then. Since the post from sassymetischick.bsky predates the wiki edit, it is more likely that the wiki edit was made in response to this meme, and not the other way around. This pretty invalidates what I said above…

    I still can’t find any evidence of this being an actual trend, but I no longer have a good guess about the origin.

  • Salamander@mander.xyzMtoScience Memes@mander.xyz•Chat, is this true?English
    43·
    27 days ago

    EDIT: As indepndnt mentioned in a comment below, the OP was posted on February 14, which pre-dates the wikipedia edits. So, my conclusions below about the timeline are not valid.

    Hah, sure, let’s investigate 🕵️‍♂️

    The term ‘Chalchiuhtlicueyecatl’ was added as a potential Aztec name to the English wikipedia page on February 15, 2025, by user ‘Mxn’.

    The description of the edit is the following:

    Frum says the Aztecs had no specific name for the gulf, which is plausible in a practical sense, but Fernández gives a specific religious name and is more of a reliable source on this topic

    If we investigate a bit further, we can see that the term Chalchiuhtlicueyecatl is described to be a name for the ‘Gulf of Mexico’ in the spanish Wikipedia: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalchiuhtlicueyecatl

    This page was updated to include the description of Chalchiuhtlicueyecatl as the ‘Gulf of Mexico’ in September 16, 2018. I don’t have access to the citation so I don’t know if the citation specifies if this term is still known/used.

    If you check the history you will find that the same ‘Mxn’ fixed a typo in this page on February 15, 2025.

    So, from this sequence of events it is highly likely that the term ‘Chalchiuhtlicueyecatl’ was included into the Gulf of Mexico wiki page as a result of the user Mxn performing an active search for Aztec names for the Gulf of Mexico, and finding this connection between the term an the gulf by searching on Wikipedia. This information did not come from recent news about the term being used by natives.

    I can find no evidence of native people referring to the gulf of Mexico as ‘Chalchiuhtlicueyecatl’ more frequently or at all. I can find no mention of this becoming viral in Mexico.

    I find it highly unlikely that:

    • User Mxn added an obscure Aztec term to the Wiki page two weeks ago

    AND

    • This same obscure Aztec term coincidentally began being used by Mexican natives, and this trend became popular enough to be noticed by foreign media but not by Mexican media

    More likely…

    • Mxn actively looked for a term and updated the English wiki
    • Someone read the English wiki, thought this would be a nice story, made the meme

    And this concludes my little investigation 🧐

  • Salamander@mander.xyztoPrivacy@lemmy.ml•Opinion on the Matrix protocol
    71·
    1 month ago

    I have used XMPP for some time now and I tried Matrix for a bit, but have stuck with XMPP until now.

    I found it practically very easy to set up a prosody XMPP server in a raspberry pi. In XMPP you have the core standard that is kept quite minimal and then you can extended your implementation using XMPP extension protocols (XEPs) in a highly modular fashion. This approach of building on top of a light core using well-documented extensions I like very much.

    With Matrix, JSON is used instead of XML. I think that JSON is a nice format when trying to look under the hood at how the message data is structured. XML is a bit of a pain to look at in my opinion. And I think JSON might be more efficient in how it moves the data around. So, that is a big positive for me. But I Matrix appears to be more focused on being feature rich than on having a flexible modular structure. While it does have extensions, successful extensions do have a chance of being eventually integrated into the core protocol. This makes the core feel bloated to me, because I have very minimal requirements.

    In terms of security, in XMPP you start with the core and then you select the type of encryption that you like (OpenPGP, OMEMO, etc). OMEMO encryption has plausible deniability built into its design, and for me, plausible deniability is a property that I consider important for messaging. The modular approach to XMPP also means that these are choices that one gets to make in an active manner, and the protocols are open protocols that come from outside of XMPP. With Matrix you get their encryption protocol as part of the core - it is a protocol that they designed and that you need to accept to use their tool with encryption. It is probably a good protocol, but I don’t think it has plausible deniability built in, and that’s a choice you did not get to make.

    As for moderation, I don’t know. Do they mean moderation tools, or the actual absence of moderators and unmoderated communities? Because the latter is more a property of the people using the tool that the tool itself. You can have your own private communities.

    If someone asks me, I could recommend Matrix but would rather recommend XMPP, depending on what they are looking for specifically.

  • Salamander@mander.xyztoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•Is it too late to develop a social life in your mid 20s if you never had one prior?
    5·
    2 months ago

    No, not at all! As you grow older, it may not be as automatic as when you are in school. Many of the people that you interact with might be focused on their own stuff (work, partner, family, hobbies, finance) and not too motivated to expand or even have a “social life” in whatever free time they have (if they even do). But this is not everyone. There is still a lot of people at every age that do want a social life, you just need to put in a bit of effort to connect with them.

    And, a tip, do not consider failed attempts at socializing as a “failure” on your side. Perceived rejection often boils down to people being very attached to their free time, and socializing not being on their list of priorities. If you keep this in mind then you do not need to feel discomfort from rejection, and you can be active in your search for like-minded people without worry.

  • Salamander@mander.xyztoPrivacy@lemmy.ml•"They already have your data"
    6·
    4 months ago

    If they can send me over the second half of my thesis I would appreciate it enormously! 😀

    The analytics tools that I am personally uncomfortable with involve dynamic, changing forms of data. I run GPSLogger on my phone (without a SIM card) and continuously log the GPS data to a text file. This data is then synced to my computer when WiFi is available. I can display this data on a map using gpx-viewer, and show very detailed tracking data of myself.

    I have explored this map with some friends/family. They get to see a time-stamped movie of my life - my trips to work, to the shop, when I go out, if I go on a trip, etc. The data displayed in this manner is somewhat intimate, personal information. Anyone I have shown this to has said that they would not be so comfortable with such a map of their lives existing… Well, if they are carrying a active phone with a SIM card, it does.

    To think that a company like Google can own such a map for a very large number of people makes me uncomfortable. On top of that, each of those map trajectories can be associated with an individual and their personality… They have the ability to pick out specific trajectories on the basis of the political ideologies or shopping behaviors of the personas behind them. This is extreme. I am of the opinion that the convenience afforded by a these technologies does not justify the allocation of that super-power to the companies that enable the technology.

    A few years ago Facebook enabled a “Graph search” feature. This allowed users to create search queries such as"Friends of friends of X who like the page “X” and went to school near Z". That tool seemed super cool on the surface, but it quickly became obvious how something like that could be easily exploited. Later on in Snowden’s book I learned about XKeyscore from the NSA, which is like an extra-powerful no-consent-needed graph search that is available to some people. This is not just targeted ads.

    I guess that what I am trying to convey is… For me, making the privacy-conscious choice is about not contributing to the ecosystem of very concrete tools that give super-powers to groups of people that may not have my best interest in mind. In my mind it is something very tangible and concrete, and I find many of those convenience tradeoffs to be clearly worth it.

  • Salamander@mander.xyztoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•What's your favourite Youtube channel most people probably haven't heard of?
    3·
    4 months ago

    Fresh from the Farm Fungi - he is a mushroom farmer from Colorado. He has a ton of valuable information on growing mushrooms and running a business. He also has a few series of videos on very interesting experiments such as growing boletus, morelles, and cordyceps.

    Microbehunter - he is a biology teacher that runs a microscope channel. His videos are very useful for learning the basics of microscopy.

    Huygen Optics - I’m not sure about this guy’s background. He worked in R&D for Phillips in the 90s and he knows a lot about optics and chemistry, but I don’t know much more. He has built some equipment in has garage for sputtering metals on surfaces and has some pretty cool videos.

    MissOrchidGirl - she is more popular than the others. She has great info about caring for orchids and a fantastic orchid collection.

    Ben Felix - he is a portfolio manager with very solid financial advice. He supports his claims with research articles.

  • Salamander@mander.xyztoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•How does the profanity filter work?
    7·
    4 months ago

    The “Slur filter” is a server setting. The filter makes use of a “regex” (a text matching algorithm) to automatically remove any text that matches those words. An admin needs to explicitly set the rules for that regex. The regex does not take language into account, it is a simple text matching algorithm.

    The box is in the Admin settings page and looks like this:

    I know that lemmy.ml makes use of a strict set of regex rules. The translation of the french word for “late” matches an ableist slur in English, and so it is removed by lemmy.ml. I am not sure about whether you can check regex for each individual server, but I believe that most instances don’t filter that specific word out.

    EDIT: Ah, I found out how to check the regex. You can check an instance’s regex by going to the the URL https://{instance}.{TLD}/api/v3/site and looking for “slur_filter_regex”. For example, for lemmy.ml you would go to:

    https://lemmy.ml/api/v3/site

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