millie

@millie@beehaw.org

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Petition calls to ban Elon Musk's X in Europe⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  I imagine that Twitter being blocked in Europe might actually lead to some of those sources moving elsewhere to continue to reach their audience. I’m not a big fan of blocking websites either in a general sense, but a I can see why countries would want to avoid having what’s happening to the US be repeated within their own borders, and that seems to be a distinct danger with Twitter. There’s a pretty good argument to be made that that’s literally its purpose at this point.

  Dismantling legitimate governments with disinformation seems like a pretty viable power grab strategy for billionaires trying to create a megacorp hellscape where they get to do whatever they want until the planet becomes uninhabitable for humans some time after their own deaths.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Large language models not fit for real-world use, scientists warn — even slight changes cause their world models to collapse⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  A few weeks back I got a parking ticket because I believed a google search result. Parking is free on Sundays and holidays, but the city’s website doesn’t specify which holidays. Google insisted that Halloween is a holiday and thus parking is free, but it isn’t actually federally recognized, which I found out the hard way.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Fake Or Real?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  I was watching a talk debate on consciousness yesterday where they briefly touched on this topic. One of the speakers was contending that attempting to create AI that is even convincing to humans is a terrible idea ethically.

  On the one hand, if we do eventually accidentally create something with awareness, we have no idea what degree of suffering we’d be causing it; we could end up regularly creating and snuffing out terrified sentient beings just to monitor our toasters or perform web searches. On the other hand, though, and this was the concern he seemed to find more realistic, we may end up training ourselves to be less empathetic by learning to ignore the potential suffering of convincingly feeling ‘beings’ that aren’t actually aware of anything at all.

  That second bit seems rather likely. We already personify completely inanimate objects all the time as a normal matter of course, without really trying to. What will happen to our empathy and consideration when we routinely interact with self-proclaimed sentient systems while callously using them to our own ends and then simply turning them off or erasing their memories?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Freevee sent to Amazon graveyard⁩ ⁨⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Amazon Graveyard sounds like a subscription service for apps that have been discontinued. Not like, a service that lets you keep using them, but you just get to have defunct apps that don’t work and pay Amazon for the pleasure.

  Only $14.99 per month! One IP per subscription!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘Not a Scam 😂:’ Caitlyn Jenner Is Being Sued For Memecoin Securities Fraud⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Don’t drag the rest of us into her shit. Being trans has nothing to do with why she’s a shitty person. We’re not here to beg for your approval before we get to be who we are, and we don’t need it. Pick another hill.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨To appease a Steam user's demands for straight representation, Webfishing added a 'Straight' title that costs 9,999 fish bucks⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Spam G in support.

  Meow meow meow.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Infintiy Infintiy Infintiy Infintiy Infintiy Infintiy Infintiy Infintiy⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean it seems like you’re just kind of asserting that it will be there. Just repeating it doesn’t make it more true.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Infintiy Infintiy Infintiy Infintiy Infintiy Infintiy Infintiy Infintiy⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  You’re shifting the goalposts, and that still doesn’t work.

  An infinite number of monkeys typing for an infinite length of time doesn’t necessitate that they stop once they reach 191,726 characters. It also doesn’t necessitate that they never repeat a pattern of characters. In fact, it’s incredibly likely that they repeat the same pattern more often than not. They’re probably going to repeatedly press keys that are in proximity to one another while moving around the keyboard. Things like: “;ml9o fklibhuasdfbuklghaol;jios9 fdlhnikuasdf”.

  If you’re measuring whether or not eventually you’ll produce Hamlet by typing out every single possible permutation of 191,726 characters on a keyboard, well… yeah, of course you will. But infinite monkeys aren’t a grid search system for combinations of keystrokes, they’re monkeys mashing the keys without knowing what they mean or in all likelihood what a typewriter is.

  You want monkeys on keyboards? You’re mostly going to get gibberish.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"EU-Linux:" Petition calls for the implementation of an EU-Linux operating system in public administrations across all EU countries⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s a world of difference between interconnectedness and an enforced monoculture of dependencies on a wide range of insecure repos maintained by hobbyists.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"EU-Linux:" Petition calls for the implementation of an EU-Linux operating system in public administrations across all EU countries⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s not, though. It’s a much wider potential for failure, as there are a great number of dependencies that are often left to individual developers to maintain. That may be a somewhat reasonable amount of risk when you’ve got multiple options for dependencies and no major target, but when the entire EU relies on single individual maintainers? That’s a massively exploitable threat vector. It would be absurd to assume no one will take advantage given what we’ve already seen.

  It would be an extremely foolish move to put the whole EU’s security on one single set of open source dependencies. Microsoft at least has a financial and legal incentive to try to prevent straight up breaches by state actors, shitty as they may be. There’s no such resource allocation or responsibility when it comes to open source repos.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Infintiy Infintiy Infintiy Infintiy Infintiy Infintiy Infintiy Infintiy⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Considering that there are an infinite number of potential arrangements of keystrokes that aren’t Hamlet? I’m honestly not fully convinced that you’d necessarily get Hamlet to begin with, let alone in a finite amount of time. Could you? Sure. But an infinite set minus an infinite number of possibilities still leaves an infinite number of possibilities. Any or all of which could not be Hamlet.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"EU-Linux:" Petition calls for the implementation of an EU-Linux operating system in public administrations across all EU countries⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Okay, but when’s the last time someone created a security vulnerability by sneakily taking over a Windows dependency controlled by a single developer after pressuring them into handing the keys over with a bunch of sockpuppets?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"EU-Linux:" Petition calls for the implementation of an EU-Linux operating system in public administrations across all EU countries⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It also means the entirety of the EU’s governments would be susceptible to the same vulnerabilities and bugs, and would share the same dependencies. Given recent issues with bad actors taking control of small but essential repos, this seems like a potentially dangerous security flaw.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The “can” in this title is pretty disingenuous.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sony shuts down Concord developer Firewalk Studios, game will remain permanently offline⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  How exactly are you presuming to accurately estimate future sales that don’t exist yet? They increased their cost if operation substantially by relying solely on servers they themselves host, and tie the future viability of their product to hosting those servers. That means there’s a clock on how long it makes sense to make the game available to the public.

  If they allowed for private servers, that small initial batch of players could potentially grow. Especially if they build in the extensibility of allowing players to mod the game. As it stands, the game now won’t make them any more money, and creating the opportunity for it to ever make them money had a continuous cost. There would be no incentive to shut down access to the game itself if it didn’t carry a cost you the company.

  If they happened to be one of the few successful games in their genre, then sure, hosting their own servers exclusively is a potential means of revenue. But if they’re not? It makes much more sense to leave the thing out there for people to fool around with. You never know when one streamer with a following might pick up a game and decide they like it. Can’t happen if it doesn’t exist though.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sony shuts down Concord developer Firewalk Studios, game will remain permanently offline⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  These companies really need to learn the private server model. How is your game ever going to get up enough players to be popular when you’re financially incentivized to bail as soon as possible? Put up some public servers for players to hop on, put out a private server client, and let people do their own thing. You can still monetize DLCs or even go the route TF2 went and release paid items and loot crates.

  People are still playing TF2 and still spending money in the item shop. They definitely wouldn’t be if Valve had bailed on it entirely the first time they had a slump in their playerbase.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Annoyed Redditors tanking Google Search results illustrates perils of AI scrapers⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  What I find not only strange, but extremely suspect, is that people who acknowledge that reddit has been heavily astroturfed deny up and down that it’s also happening here.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Please ban data caps, Internet users tell FCC⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Weird way to frame it! Is this post sponsored by Comcast?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨UK to consider USB-C as charging standard • The Register⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Gotta push the island across the Atlantic I think. Vote on it, I’m sure the logistics will sort themselves out after.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Players are now less "accepting" that games will be fixed, say Paradox, after "underestimating" the reaction to Cities: Skylines 2's performance woes⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Are they? Seems to me like they’re corporate leeches sucking the life out of every industry and offering nothing of value in return.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why 'free' proprietary software will always end in tears⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Be the change you want to see in the world. Start developing what people want and be responsive to suggestions. A handful of motivated developers can get a lot done, especially in the context of whatever niche they’re focused on.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Players are now less "accepting" that games will be fixed, say Paradox, after "underestimating" the reaction to Cities: Skylines 2's performance woes⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Tell that to the C-Levels who literally are putting in orders.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Players are now less "accepting" that games will be fixed, say Paradox, after "underestimating" the reaction to Cities: Skylines 2's performance woes⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Honestly, I think the bar for games these days is totally warped. People expect these cinematic masterpieces with ultra-realistic graphics in gigantic 3d landscapes with massive autonomy, extensive character creation options, full voice acting, juiced up complex mechanics, and zero bugs, and they want it yesterday. If it costs more than a full tank of gas they’ll say it’s too expensive, and if it isn’t fully patched on day 1 they’ll call it unfinished.

  It seems almost obvious that simpler 2D games are a better and more satisfying alternative in this landscape. No wonder AAA studios seem like they’re racing to the bottom.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why 'free' proprietary software will always end in tears⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s a really weird way of framing a hobbyist who isn’t being paid using their free time to code what they feel like coding. It seems to me that people who show up and make demands about what someone else does are literally attempting to dictate how that person spends their time. Someone coding what they want, rather than coding what other people want them to code, is just… independent? Autonomous? Do you really think that someone spending their free time how they want to constitutes being a ‘mini dictator’?

  It sounds to me like some end users like to have power over others and feel entitled to dictate how those who make the things they use spend their time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nintendo has reportedly shut down Ryujinx, the Switch emulator that was supposedly immune⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Is the new one better than Tears of the Kingdom?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨According to New GTA 6 Rumor, Main Story Might Be Shorter Than Red Dead Redemption 2⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  GTA Peace is kind of weirdly named for the content of the game. Maybe it’s meant to be ironic?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nintendo and Pokémon are suing Palworld maker Pocketpair⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Having played Palworld a bit, some of the monsters are distinct from Pokemon, but some of them are incredibly obvious clones.

  But like, looking back at some of the knock-off toys I remember seeing in the 80s and early 90s? It definitely seems like copyright has gotten more robust in its attempted overreach.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Concord is going offline beginning September 6th⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This is the problem with spending millions of dollars on games and focusing on profitability over actual quality or expression. Video games are fundamentally an art medium. You can choose to make some uninspired cash grabbing trash, and can even make a whole company built around that and make profit. But are you going to make a great game that way? Probably not.

  You’d be better off with half a dozen people with passion and a comparatively minuscule budget. You might have to scale back from ultra realistic graphics and massive explorable areas with dozens of voice actors, but I don’t really think that makes games any better anyway. A little 2d rpg with really basic pixel graphics can put a big project to shame if it’s made with passion and emotion

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Weekend Box Office: Deadpool & Wolverine hangs on to the top spot; Borderland a disaster⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The Silent Hill series was pretty great. Also, the original Mario Bros movie.

  Oh, and Advent Children!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google violated antitrust laws to dominate online search, rules US judge | Google⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Rip 'em apart! Make them into 6 different companies with single letter names and force two sets of two to share their letter to fuck with their marketing!