megopie

@megopie@beehaw.org

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨China admits to being behind Volt Typhoon cyber activity targeting US⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  So two anonymous observers saw someone else receive an indirect and somewhat ambiguous comment? And this is a bullet proof definite smoking gun admission? Or just… mildly informed speculation that could mean a thousand other things?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bubble Trouble - An AI bubble threatens Silicon Valley, and all of us.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s so funny, because people act like open AI has a viable business model, but they’re loosing money even on their paying customers, even the highest tier of subscription. The product they’re selling really isn’t good enough to charge the price they would need to charge to pay for the operation costs, let along the training costs, and that’s with Microsoft giving them a bunch of servers for essentially free.

  Like, there isn’t a path to profitability for them, certainly not on this scale. They’re just praying that if they throw enough data in to a big enough model that somehow it will start doing something different than what it currently does. It’s not a plan, it’s a prayer, a cult.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI surge to double data centre electricity demand by 2030: IEA⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  “ don’t worry, we’ll offset some of the demand by restarting nuclear plants to prevent burning as much fossil fuel”

  “Wait so we could have just had those running already rather than burning fossil fuels?”

  “Noooo… because… uh… reasons”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google will develop the Android OS fully in private, and here's why⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  when average users start fleeing en mass, it’s already to late, and arguably it’s approaching a critical mass where there is enough common knowledge and “friends who use that” to make the jump easier. Right now, the average user doesn’t have much of a reason to jump, but if Google has to restructure their business model due to their ad monopoly getting crowbarred, they might implement stuff that would be enough to get average users to start jumping.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Cloudflare turns AI against itself with endless maze of irrelevant facts⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  great, just, one issue.

  “The company says the content served to bots is deliberately irrelevant to the website being crawled, but it is carefully sourced or generated using real scientific facts“

  Nah, screw that, actively sabotage the training data if they’re going to keep scraping data after being told not to. Poison it with gibberish bad info. Otherwise you’re just giving them irrelevant but not unuseful training data, so no real incentive to only scrape pages that have allowed it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Porn on Spotify Is Infiltrating the Platform’s Top Podcast Charts⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  but think of the shareholders! How would they feel if the company stoped growing? They need to cram their attempt at an audio content monopoly down your throat or else they’d only just be a music streaming monopoly.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨FOSS infrastructure is under attack by AI companies⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I wonder how effective it would be just to put a bunch of data on servers meant to position the training data they’re scraping. Like, make it data that only a bot trying to get everything would find, not something that users would see or encounter.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Reddit Rated Sell as Redburn Flags Risk From Google Algorithm⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s so absurd, the website’s appeal lies entirely in the user driven experience created by volunteer moderators and user submitted content. Yet the path of profit growth for them lies in company placed ads, and LLM bots spamming comment sections to astroturf. The more they push for profit, the less appeal to users the site has.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tesla's latest decline could be one for the history books - $795 billion since Dec 17 or 53.7 percent⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That drop largely just cancels out the numbers since November. If it drops further then it indicates a general souring if market opnion.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Gadget Boom Fizzles Amid AI Hoopla: ‘It’s a Bloodbath Out There’⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  The problem is that the AI branded software doesn’t run easily on old devices, unless you just stream it from one of their server farms. But they’re losing money every time they run one of these services for you, and the vast majority of people aren’t going to pay them for it.

  They’re trying to justify selling new devices with software now, not giving out software that can run on old devices. You gotta replace your 2017 laptop to run windows 11. Gotta get a new computer with an NPU to run AI models locally. But it’s happening again, users are not embracing these new AI features, let alone buying new devices just so they can use them.

  Much like wearables and VR headsets, the interest for these things is largely limited to enthusiasts spaces and isn’t translating to mass adoption. The average person doesn’t care about having their computer writing their email in to a limerick, they just want their email client to not freeze up and crash because they got an email with a weirdly formatted gif.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google binning SMS MFA and replacing it with QR codes • The Register⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  How am I supposed to scan a QR code sent to my phone… with my phone?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Algorithms are breaking how we think - Technology Connections⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Perhaps there is a better term and I should be more clear, but people know, roughly speaking, what “new” does, even “active” is fairly straight forward. They are literally algorithms but not what people are talking about when they complain about “algorithms”.

  When people complain about the “algorithm”, in the colloquial sense, they’re talking about some nebulous unknowable method of sorting that only the people at meta and alphabet are privy to the details of, not the literal definition of the word.

  I should have chosen my words more carefully but I think the point stands, there is a marked difference between a system where it is clear to the user how things get sorted and the discovery or “for you” systems.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Algorithms are breaking how we think - Technology Connections⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Depending on how you browse, it was not algorithmically recommended. Even if you’re using “active” to filter, it’s barely an algorithm. Certainly not a personalized one, unless you’re just looking at the subscribed feed, in which case the personalization was done by you, not the formula.

  That’s kind of the appeal of this kind of website, when there is automatic sorting it’s very straight forward and user mailable.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Algorithms are breaking how we think - Technology Connections⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  There is this interesting push and pull with algorithms, they need to show content users will engage with, but, their main value to the companies is that it allows them to easily manipulate what is seen.

  They push people to hard they stop using the algorithm, but if they just let the algorithm act purely one what people engage with, then they can’t monetize it.

  There is a third access of preventing people from going down self destructive rabbit holes, but they don’t care about that until people start talking about regulating them or start moving away.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨TikTok Ban Fueled by Israel, Not China⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m shocked! Shocked I tell you!

  Well not that shocked actually.

  I think that meta might have pulled some stings as well because it was sucking younger user time away from instagram.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why Tech Companies Are Joining the GOP-Oil Alliance⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Previously there was an obvious cap on the value proposition to scaling data centers, mainly, that they needed population centers nearby who would need storage or processing for thin film devices. Latency is important for these kinds of things, so they need to be near to the demands

  Now they think they can make value regardless of demand from local population, through training weights for models, or running models and sending the output to population centers. So suddenly the cost of power to run the systems is what matters, and the most profitable (not the cheapest or most efficient) is fossil fuel.

  They see dollar signs with the opportunity to turn power directly in to value without the need for people nearby.

  It’ll be really embarrassing for them as the consumer market continues to fails to show interest in the outputs they’re making.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are we going through another scalping apocalypse?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There definitely has been some scalping, but also, just, not a huge amount of inventory available. A bit of a paper launch TBH.

  TSMC only has so much throughput available and NVIDIA has other products they’re selling that they can make better margins on than consumer GPUs. I’m a little surprised they launched at all given how few they’re shipping.

  I wonder how much of launching now was to generate buzz to get studios to adopt methods of rendering that work best with with software, make it harder for competitors to compete on hardware.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Framework (2nd Gen) Event is live on February 25th - Framework holding new product launch in 2 weeks⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That might be a bit niche to pursue. Like the mobile gaming device market isn’t that big, and devoting their limited resources to a niche product seems unwise.

  Would be cool if they did, especially if they partnered with Valve to launch it with steam OS, like valve did with Lenovo.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Framework (2nd Gen) Event is live on February 25th - Framework holding new product launch in 2 weeks⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I can’t imagine they’d release a new chassis unless it was something radically different to their existing form factors, and even then, it would have to be a fairly big market sector, since they’re not really big enough to target anything niche.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Framework (2nd Gen) Event is live on February 25th - Framework holding new product launch in 2 weeks⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  They’re probably not releasing a whole new model of laptop, and if they are, it’s probably a specialty design, like a steam deck or a surface as other’s have speculated.

  If it’s new components, you can probably drop them in if they interest you.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Elder Scrolls creator Ted Peterson is “glad that people are wanting to break away from” watered-down RPGs as he works on an epic Daggerfall successor⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Personally I’ve never been a huge fan of JRPGs, Some I’ve enjoyed, but rarely will I ever play them twice.

  Also I think there’s a fair argument to be made that if you cannot play a role, it’s not really a role playing game. It’s action adventure if it’s a linear story with only one way to play it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Elder Scrolls creator Ted Peterson is “glad that people are wanting to break away from” watered-down RPGs as he works on an epic Daggerfall successor⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I hadn’t even thought about preferences for photorealism being a streamlining thing, but it does fit the idea.

  I think it’s also a risk aversion thing as well. Few people will complain about a game looking realistic, so it’s very low risk from the point of view of publishers/investors/marketing. Most people will prefer a unique and stylized look that meshes with the game, but investors and marketing teams can’t be sure in any given case, so it’s written off as a risk.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Elder Scrolls creator Ted Peterson is “glad that people are wanting to break away from” watered-down RPGs as he works on an epic Daggerfall successor⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  For me, what I like to see in an RPG, is the ability to play a game multiple times and have notably different experiences, both in terms of play-style and narrative. It should make me want to go back and play again to see what I missed or how else I could do it.

  The idea of having multiple ways to deal with a quest, and having that impact further story beats in meaningful ways is what I want to see. What i don’t want to see is meaningless scale full of nothing but filler.

  I don’t think dagger fall is the best example because much of its size was just procedurally generated landscapes. The ability to actually specialize and complete quests in unique ways, as well as a branching story, is great. Mindlessly massive map, not so much.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Elder Scrolls creator Ted Peterson is “glad that people are wanting to break away from” watered-down RPGs as he works on an epic Daggerfall successor⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think, at this point, most of the nostalgia is for Skyrim, despite being the newest one in the series, it is nearly 14 years old now and way more people have played it. It had issues, and lost a lot of what was great in Morrowind, but it’s a beacon of quality compared to what came after.

  It’s started to impact their success though, starfield has only sold like 3 million compiles so far, compared to the 12.5 million of fallout 4 on launch day. Hell, Morrowind has sold 4 million copies, albeit over 23 years.

  It’s probably to late for Bethesda to turn things around, but, it’s a great example of what not to do for other studios and publishers.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Elder Scrolls creator Ted Peterson is “glad that people are wanting to break away from” watered-down RPGs as he works on an epic Daggerfall successor⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s a question of longer development time with smaller teams, or short timelines with big teams. A small team working on content in series is more cohesive, but, requires a longer timeline. A big team can do a lot in a short time by making content in parallel, but this necessitates that content be siloed to prevent needing constant revision. A few long quest lines with lots of outcomes, or a bunch independent quests with simple outcomes.

  A small team working longer will cost the same as a big team working shorter (generally speaking). But the priority is short timelines, for the sake of chasing trends and packing the latest greatest tech in. This same kind of priority, trend chasing and insisting on the latest and greatest tech, also leads to spectacular failures of long timeline games, like “black flag” or “duke nukem forever “, but the issue there is not the long timeline, but the constant changes in priority to chase trends.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Elder Scrolls creator Ted Peterson is “glad that people are wanting to break away from” watered-down RPGs as he works on an epic Daggerfall successor⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s not necessarily even more expensive to develop, it just impossible to do with the management techniques brought in recent years. Techniques brought in with the intention of streamlining personnel management and to make lay offs easier.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Deepseek when asked about sensitive topics⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Would be nice if we could see the same kind of chain of response from other models.

  I’d love to see what other implicit biases other groups have built in to their models.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Reviewers giving high scores to poorly optimised games really grinds my gears⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Often times, the investors or stakeholders at these large video game companies have their backgrounds in Hollywood, or Tech. They then choose leadership who will run the company along the lines of what works well in those industries. This results in optimization being pretty damn near the bottom of the priorities.

  What has been most profitable in Hollywood? Not the final quality of the movie, but the marketability. How many people did you get to come see it, doesn’t matter if they loved it, so long as they heard about it, then choose to buy a ticket.

  What has worked well in tech? Getting to market as fast as possible with the latest technical developments. Doesn’t matter if it’s a buggy mess and riddled with technical debt, so long as we capture as much market share as possible before anyone else can compete.

  Combine these two approaches and what do you get. The fanciest graphics, huge maps, endless procedural fetch quests to make it look big, all so people will preorder it. Oh and it needs to be done in 2 years or else someone else will beat us to being the fortnight of “live service extraction farming sims”.

  So lots of demands on what needs to be in it, and no time to do proper QA, let alone optimize it, that will just have to be done in patches after launch.

  The cost of poor optimization gets externalized to the customers who need to buy new hardware or run it on settings so low it could be mistaken for half-life.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mark Cuban is ready to fund a TikTok alternative built on Bluesky's AT Protocol | TechCrunch⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think its appeal mainly comes from the fact that it’s not overtly biased. Other algorithms could achieve the same if it wasn’t for the fact that they’re so heavy handed in what they allow the feed to promote.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mark Cuban is ready to fund a TikTok alternative built on Bluesky's AT Protocol | TechCrunch⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Seems iffy to have any sort of federated system for a video based format. Maybe there are some clever compression or hosting tricks to reduce data load.