No Stupid Questions

That's it. Any horse, any time period, any peoples, did they fit a shoe that helped the horse to swim in water?

(Was thinking about how horses are pretty good swimmers, maybe due to their power and hoof shape. Could they be better?)

I'd like to switch from a smart TV to an HTPC, but trying to navigate a standard desktop enviroment regularly with no desk is a royal pain. Is it realistically possible to set up an HTPC that won't require this for regular use? I expect it'd have to be controlled with a game controller, given that there is probably better (or the same) support compared to using a remote, but thats just a guess.

In particular, I'd like to be able to use a few of the larger streaming services, my own video files, and YouTube. Are there apps with controller (or remote) support for these? I'd also like to be able to browse the web when needed, or better yet, be able to cast to the TV from a phone.

For reference of my own skill level, I'm not tech illiterate by any means, I've worked in low-level IT jobs, but when people start talking about recompiling software or that, I tend to start getting lost.

Seems likely big businesses would be obvious targets for tons of unwanted phone calls, so how do they deal with this?

I'm embarrassed to say that I have encountered this, this particular type of story on multiple occasions... So I got curious, is there a name to this trope?

So this might be a weird one because I can just look this up anywhere, but Ive been dealing with some vexing medical problems the past year and I just want to see how allergies affect others. Maybe hearing from regular people instead of doctors will ease my mind a bit. A little back-story on my issue (though I'm not looking for a diagnosis), almost exactly a year ago I developed sever constant chronic rhino-sinusitis. I am constantly having to clear my throat and snort/sniffle. Its non stop every 30 seconds or so and no matter what combo of meds I take for allergies, nothing really helps. I have never had allergies before (that i know of) and all of a sudden, after well over 40 years on this earth, I'm allergic to everything. And I do have allergies. According to the test I took a few months ago, I tested positive for 45 out of 50 allergens they tested for. To make a long story short, every doctor I go to says its allergies. Says to get allergy shots and keep taking sprays and pills everyday etc. Nothing brings me any relief. I'm on the strongest sprays that are killing my sinuses and multiple 24hr allergy pills (Doctor ordered), and its almost like I'm not taking anything. So my questions to you wonderful people:

• What do allergies feel like for you?
• Are they constant or do you have flareups?
• Do meds help you significantly?
• Am I just being a big baby and how I feel is just what allergies feel like?

I know this is subjective and everyone will have different answers and that's fine. Honestly, I don't really have anyone to bounce ideas off of and talk about this, so this is as much a way for me to scream into the void and vent, as it is to gather info. Again, I'm not looking for a diagnosis, just your personal anecdotes so I can put my own situation into perspective. Love all of you peeps, thanks in advance for any replies!

Edit- Mods, I realize this kinda flirts with rule 3, please feel free to remove it if you so deem.

I don't see options in the settings, such as

• Receive an email when an account posts to Mastodon.
• Receive an email when there is a new post in a Lemmy community.

Normally idioms are language specific, but number of hours and days are the same.

I could be wrong here, but it seems to me that a common aspect amongst all languages is the tendency to raise the pitch of your voice slightly when asking a question. Especially at the end of a question sentence.

If I'm wrong about this raised pitch being common amongst all languages, at the very least do all languages change their tone slightly to indicate that a question is being asked?

I guess there needs to be some way to indicate what is and isn't a question. Perhaps a higher pitched voice reflects uncertainty. Is this something deep rooted in humans, or just an arbitrary choice when language developed?

I'm looking for 3rd parties who watch and report on developments in these large "world-shaping" corporations. Like a watchdog or a canary when they get into lawsuits or get caught doing bad things. Investigative reporting whether IRL or thorough internet documentarian style is ideal.

I've been thinking a lot about how google's algorithm changes have contributed to the web becoming the shit show it is now and what the alternatives could be. I do want to make sure I have a clear understanding of as much of the history as I can.

I tried searching "who watches google" and obviously just got advertised pages of Android Wear spy bracelets.

Is there a good old-fashioned directory page (or Community) for these anti-Web 2.0 resources?

Your help is appreciated!

Every time I close mbin and open it again, my feed keeps resetting to "hot". Is there a way to set it permanently to newest?

Obviously learning a couple of words in another language doesn't really make you bilingual, or being able to say a few phrases. But there's also clearly some point before full fluency where you can be considered bilingual, but how is it determined (formally or informally)? Is it purely vibes based, you'll know when you see it kind of thing?

I'm vaguely familiar with the CEFR levels measuring how much of a language you speak, but if there's a cutoff point for counting as bilingual in there somewhere I don't know where.

If you lived on a border of a country that speaks different languages how is it chosen what language you speak? If you lived on the border do you just learn both languages?

Or is it more if you lived even like 500 meters of a border do you learn the language of the country your in? Do people choose it based on nearest popular city to where they’re at?

This site is so cool!

             ／＞　 フ
            | 　_　_| 
          ／` ミ＿xノ 
         /　　　　 |
        /　 ヽ　　 ﾉ
        │　　|　|　|
   ／￣|　　 |　|　|
   (￣  ヽ＿_ヽ_)__)
    ＼二)

But how do people make these? I searched online and the best I could find were small Japanese communities still using MS Gothic (which is metrically incompatible with Arial/more-used fonts) and halfhearted JPG-to-ASCII-bitmap converters.

Further, how do people manage these? I'd imagine an emoji search, but these millionfold emoticons don't have names; and the other alternatives are "I've got a meme for that scrolls down infinite camera roll" or searching them up every time.

⠀/\_/\
(˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶) thanks lol
/ >🌷<~⁠♡

For the past few years I’ve been wrestling with Aeotec sensors (purchased because they seemed to be highly recommended everywhere). First it was spending weeks trying to get Z-Wave JS UI (nothing better than this??) to perform firmware upgrades, then replacing a Z-Stick 7 with an older version due to unfixable bugs in that, and now it’s on again / off again factory resetting and connecting the sensors back to the controller.

As time has passed my wife and I have essentially forgotten about automating anything based on temperature or presence. I replace the batteries in sensors from time to time (since they’re never not showing 100%) with no effect.

I ask because I’m planning on buying some Aqara devices that depend on WiFi. Preferably I’d like to use something other than WiFi since it’s usually the extremely congested 2.4 GHz band.

Do cats and dogs actually feel affection when you treat them right or is it really just an instinct for "more food and drink" etc?

I don't think I've ever seen dogs, cats and other domestic animals smile because they're happy and show love to their owners for treating them right.

Yeah I see memes but those are either photoshopped or snapped at the perfect moment to make it look like they're smiling.

I was experiencing some neck pain, and went online in search of some at-home remedies. Of the remedies, posture was one of them which got me thinking: "Does posture really matter that much?".

So will fixing my posture help with my neck pain and grant me numerous other benefits i see on these blogs?

Target has a fearsome reputation on the internet regarding how far it goes to stop shoplifting. As is commonly told, it is supposed to track repeat small time shoplifters until they have one last theft that puts them over $1000 (or whatever the magic felony amount is) and only then does Target drop the net and get the shoplifter convicted on a felony for the total amount that has been stolen over weeks or months as one charge.

As the story is told, it smells strange to me and creates many, many followup questions in my mind. I think those questions would be answered by reading through a court case. As famous as Target is, I feel like more dedicated online crime news followers would know of the case and how it played out. Can anyone point me at it?

Edit: The tale told here.

I've decided (after seeing the advice repeatedly!) to try and move away from Chrome and use FF instead. However I've immediately come across an issue which is a bit of a deal-breaker for me, and although I've looked into it, I haven't seen an answer anywhere.

One of the best features in Chrome is the abilty to create a shortcut for an individual URL. This shortcut can then be placed on the desktop, start menu or quicklaunch toolbar (Win 10) and opened as if it were a program in its own right - so, no URL bar, no tabs, no bookmarks, just the site content.

I use this method every day for a number of different sites - Outlook, Gmail, Calendar, Keep, Sheets, Docs, etc, and it's perfect. So much so that I usually forget that I'm technically opening all of these in Chrome at all, not least because the site favicon shows in the taskbar in place of the browser logo.

So, I assumed that FF would be able to do the same thing... but apparently not. Am I missing something? I've found people discussing old features like SSB (site-specific browsing) and PWA (progressive web apps), but as far as I can tell all work on this in FF has been discontinued.

I would maybe just put up with this, and use Chrome shortcuts for these sites, and FF for everything else, except that links clicked from within them will open in Chrome intead of FF, which makes for a confusing experience.

Anyone know of a good solution to this? Thanks in advance!

My domestic cats seem to locate any open available cardboard box and happily plop themselves into it. This got me thinking, would outdoor cats settle into a random box they find as easily too? What about big cats?

Edit- fixed title

By relationships, I mean both platonic and romantic. I'm just doing a bit of soul searching and reflecting on things I've done in the past.

For example, I used to get a weird sense of satisfaction by rejecting girls that showed interest in dating me, even though deep down I wanted a relationship and wanted to give them a chance. Not in a cruel way, just in a "sorry I'm not looking for a relationship right now" kind of way.

I also used to sabotage friendships that were forming before I got too close to the person. Sometimes I ghosted people, acted cold around them, or just didn't go out socially with them. The result was exactly what you'd expect - people just stopped speaking to me and didn't make an effort anymore, just as I hadn't with them.

I've hurt people that cared about me and can't figure out whether it's fear of getting close, fear of showing my vulnerabilities, or something else entirely.