tal
@tal@lemmy.today
- Comment on Lots of times the restaurants won't even have milk 9 hours ago:
I don’t think I’d really like giving up my present diet for the one that my hunter-gatherer ancestors were required by circumstance to eat.
- Comment on Lots of times the restaurants won't even have milk 9 hours ago:
Might also depend on where you are. I understand that in Finland, it’s extremely common to drink milk all the time, whereas in East Asia, where adult lactose intolerance is the norm, adult milk consumption isn’t really a thing.
googles
en.wikipedia.org/…/List_of_countries_by_milk_cons…
Yeah, Finland’s #1.
- Comment on Lots of times the restaurants won't even have milk 9 hours ago:
Milk is absolutely disgusting during a meal since it gets so warm and gross
Historically, milk was generally consumed warm. Breasts aren’t kegerators.
- Comment on Web publishers brace for carnage as Google adds AI answers 4 days ago:
but LLMs, a very specific and especially inscrutable class of AI which has been designed for “sounding convincing”, without care for correctness or truthfulness.
I think that I’d put it in a slightly less-loaded way, and say that an LLM just produces content that has similar properties to its training content.
The problem is real. Frankly, while I think that there are a lot of things that existing LLM systems are surprisingly good at, I am not at all sure that replacing search engines will be it (though I am confident that in the long run, some form of AI system will be).
What you can’t do with systems like the ones today is to take one data source and another data source that have conflicting information and then have the LLM-using AI create a “deep understanding” of each and then evaluate which is more-likely truthful in the context of other things that have been accepted as true? Humans do something like that (and the human approach isn’t infallible either, though I’d call it a lot more capable).
But that doesn’t mean that you can’t use heuristics for estimating the accuracy of data and that might be enough to solve a lot of problems. Like, I might decide that 4Chan should maybe have less-weight as a solution, or text that ranks highly on a “sarcastic” sentiment analysis program should have less weight.
- Comment on Web publishers brace for carnage as Google adds AI answers 4 days ago:
I can believe that it won’t happen in 2024.
I am pretty confident that in the long run, pretty much everyone is gonna wind up there, though. Like, part of the time spent searching is identifying information on the page and combining from multiple sources. Having the computer do that is gonna be faster than a human.
There are gonna be problems, like attributability of the original source, poisoning AIs, citing the material yourself, and so forth. But I don’t think that those are gonna be insurmountable.
It’s actually kind of interesting how much using something like an LLM looks like Project Babel in the cyberpunk novel Snow Crash. The AI there was very explicit that it didn’t have reasoning capability, could just take natural-language queries, find information, combine it, and produce a human-format answer. But it couldn’t make judgement calls or do independent reasoning, and regularly rejected queries that required that.
Though that was intended as an academic tool, not something for the masses, and it was excellent at citing sources, which the existing LLM-based systems are awful at.
- Comment on England gets 27 new bathing sites – but no guarantee they’ll be safe for swimming 4 days ago:
putting pressure on water companies to stop dumping sewage in them.
I mean, it’s a result of using older combined sewers. The sewer and drains go to the same place, so when there’s enough rain, the system gets overwhelmed and dumps some amount without treating it.
I’m sure that if people are willing to pay what it’d cost to upgrade the sewer system, that upgrading it isn’t a problem, but it’s not free, and one has to weigh the cost against that benefit.
I’ve got one relative living in a city in the US that’s in the process of doing that shift away from a combined sewer system, and the total cost of the rebuild is around $5,000 per resident. That’s a fair bit of money to ask the population to pay.
In their case, it wasn’t driven purely by a desire to convert from a combined sewer system, but because the existing system needed to be fixed, and if you’re going to have to do major repairs anyway, then it’s time to bite the bullet and pay for dealing with the combined sewer. I’m thinking that it may be that British cities might do something like that – kick the can down the road until the system really has to be replaced anyway, and then pay what it costs to move away from the combined sewer.
- Comment on For security reasons 5 days ago:
But you can’t use emails starting with mail@, admin@, support@, info@, main@, etc.
If it’s exactly stuff like “mail@”, many mail systems will redirect stuff with a plus suffix to your main mailbox, like “mail+changeorg@”. That might be okay.
- Comment on Euro bottles are so much better now 5 days ago:
Humans as they discovered they made a small continent out of trash in the ocean.
It’s just an area of higher density particulate matter in the water.
en.wikipedia.org/…/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch
Despite the common public perception of the patch existing as giant islands of floating garbage, its low density (4 particles per cubic metre (3.1/cu yd)) prevents detection by satellite imagery, or even by casual boaters or divers in the area. This is because the patch is a widely dispersed area consisting primarily of suspended “fingernail-sized or smaller”—often microscopic—particles in the upper water column known as microplastics.[4] Researchers from The Ocean Cleanup project claimed that the patch covers 1.6 million square kilometres (620,000 square miles)[5] consisting of 45,000–129,000 metric tons (50,000–142,000 short tons) of plastic as of 2018
- Comment on This laptop was MADE to be HACKED! 1 week ago:
I don’t know about M4, but with the M3 Apple’s compute-per-watt was already behind some AMD and Intel chips (if you buy hardware from the same business segment, no budget i3 is beating a Macbook any time soon). The problem with AMD and Intel is that they deliver better performance, at the cost of a higher minimum power draw. Apple’s chips can go down to something ridiculous like 1W power consumption, while the competition is at a multiple of that unless you put the chips to sleep. When it comes to amd64 software, their chips are fast enough for most use cases, but they’re nowhere close to native.
Oh, that’s interesting, thanks. I may be a year or two out-of-date. I believe I was looking at M2 hardware.
- Comment on How the Great Firewall of China Detects and Blocks Fully Encrypted Traffic 1 week ago:
That can be used as a heuristic, and that may be good-enough to disrupt widespread use of VPN protocols.
But it’s going to be hard to create an ironclad mechanism against steganographic methods, because any protocol that contains random data or data that can’t be externally validated can be used as a VPN tunnel.
I can create “VPN over FTP”, where I have a piece of software that takes in a binary stream and generates a comma-separated-value file that looks something like this:
employee,id,position John Smith,54891,Recruiter Anne Johnson,93712,Receptionist
etc.
Then at the other end, I convert back.
So I have an FTP connection that’s transmitting a file that looks like this.
That’s human-readable, but the problem is that it’s hard to identify that maybe all of those fields are actually encoding data which might well be an encrypted VPN connection.
You can do traffic analysis, look for bursty traffic, but the problem is that as long as the VPN user is willing to blow bandwidth on it, that’s easy to counter by just filling in the gaps with padding data.
You can maybe detect one format, but I’d wager that it’s not that hard to (a) produce these manually with a lot less effort than it is to detect new ones, and (b) probably to automatically train one that can “learn” to generate similar-looking data by just being fed a bunch of files to emulate.
A censor can definitely raise the bar to do a VPN. They don’t need a 100% solution. And they can augment automated, firewall blocks with severe legal penalties aimed at people who go out of their way to bypass blocks.
But on the flip side, steganography is going to be probably impossible to fully counter if one intends to blacklist rather than whitelist traffic.
- Comment on This laptop was MADE to be HACKED! 1 week ago:
Messing with 18650s is rather risky, I’m not sure if exposing them as individual cells is a good idea.
I mean, there are plenty of devices with them out there. !flashlight@lemmy.world seems to only really be interested in lithium-battery-driven flashlights. I don’t think that an 18650 is intrinsically unsafe.
My understanding is that you can get (slightly cheaper) unregulated cells, but that normally, for end users, one uses regulated cells. The electronics on each cell aren’t smart enough to do things like measure and report charged capacity, but they should be adequate to avoid fires if the battery is shorted.
And there’s no standard for a “smarter” battery pack that would do things like report more information.
The native code of the game will be running translated, but the expensive calls to 3D engines and such will all be caught and replaced by native ARM libraries.
Yeah, that’s true – some games are going to be GPU-constrained, and the instruction set isn’t gonna be a factor there.
A significant chunk of what I’m getting at, though, is battery life. Like, my understanding is that Apple’s got somewhat-better compute-per-watt-hour ratings on their ARM laptops than x86 laptops do. But having that is contingent on one running native ARM software, not running emulated x86 software. Apple can say “we’re just gonna break compatibility”, and put down enormous pressure on app vendors to do so because they own the whole ecosystem. They have done multiple instruction set switches across architectures (680x0 to PowerPC to x86 to ARM) and that ability to force switches is something that they clearly feel is important to leverage.
For people who are only gonna run open-source Linux software – and this thing is shipping with Debian, which has a native ARM distribution – then it is possible that you can do this, because for open-source software
But Windows can’t do this, because there’s a huge amount of binary software that will never be retargeted for ARM. You’re going to be burning up your battery life in translation overhead. And you can’t do it with Linux if you want to run binary-only software – often Windows software – which is what Steam distributes. That library of software is just never gonna be translated; some of it probably doesn’t even have the source around anywhere. I don’t even know if Steam in 2024 has a native way to distribute ARM binaries (though I assume that one could have the game handle the target and running appropriate code).
- Comment on The Trouble with Forking Mastodon 1 week ago:
In light of the announcement of Mastodon’s US-based 501c3 Non-Profit, and the reveal of that organization’s board members, there has been backlash from members of the Mastodon community. Some people are even saying that this is the last straw, it’s time for a hard fork of the project!
I feel like there’s context missing. What’s the objection to the board?
- Comment on This laptop was MADE to be HACKED! 1 week ago:
shop.mntre.com/products/mnt-reform
The CPU features 8 cores: 4x fast Cortex-A76 and 4x efficient Cortex-A55.
Yes.
I think arm architecture are only going to become more prevalent with the success of the M line macs
I dunno. They have a long battery life (though somebody that is just having a large battery in the laptop). But…
This comes running Debian. If you’re just running open-source software, like stuff out of a Linux distro, then you can use Debian’s ARM build of everything. But if you’re gonna run Steam on it, then you’re gonna be running x86 code, and that emulation is gonna cut into battery lifetime.
- Comment on Am I the only person that feels that retro games are better? 1 week ago:
I’d say that in my experience, retro games or games with a retro design philosophy tend to be more enjoyable and replayable.
I don’t like chiptune music, where music is designed to sound like it’s being played on an old console’s frequency synthesizer.
I think that there are some good arguments for low-resolution pixel art in terms of reducing asset cost while still having a playable game – the brain is good at filling details in. But I don’t think that that applies to music, that there are good cost trade-offs.
And while I don’t have a problem with low-resolution pixel art graphics, I do have to say that for some of the successful games that I’ve played with it, I’d really like to be able to buy an HD graphics pack. I’m kind of surprised by how infrequently it is that I’ve seen game devs do that. Cave Story did it. I’d like to see some games like Caves of Qud have HD DLC.
- Comment on AI Wallpaper Changer for Android 2 weeks ago:
The open source version (released next week) will also allow (toggleable on or off) NSFW content, which is not possible in the Google Play version.
Huh.
Is that due to some sort of Google Play Store restriction?
googles
Apparently so.
androidauthority.com/best-porn-games-android-nsfw…
Please note this is NSFW. Additionally, the Google Play Store doesn’t allow these types of games as a matter of policy. All of our recommendations are sources for downloading third-party games. You’ll have to sideload most of these, so make sure to check out our guide on installing third-party apps that aren’t on the Google Play Store.
I’m kind of surprised that there isn’t some alternate app repo that people have converged on that permits it, just be an F-Droid alternate repo or something.
thinks
Maybe you need to be in the Google Play Store to use Google Play Services and that’s required for DRM or something like that.
- Comment on The “Require videogame publishers to keep games they have sold in a working state” petition just got a response. 2 weeks ago:
I don’t think that providing never-ending service is likely practical.
Certainly not if the game doesn’t have an ongoing service fee of some sort. World of Warcraft players pay a monthly fee, and so as long as they can keep the thing in the black, they can keep it going as long as they can cover costs. But outside of that, unless a game provider who provides ongoing service can make money by extracting money from player computers and data-mining players or something like that – not something that I’m really keen on encouraging – there’s inevitably a point in every online game’s life where service is gonna end.
I could see maybe an argument for, at purchase time, clearly-designating games that have an online component and thus will stop working at some point, so that the consumer can decide what he wants. There are some genres that just don’t work offline, but outside of those, it’d let a consumer more-readily choose offline games.
- Comment on If Britain is so bothered by China, why do these .gov.uk sites use Chinese ad brokers? 2 weeks ago:
Maybe they’re trying to get analytics service at no cost? It does seem kind of odd.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
I’d also point out that Disney’s parks are on the pricey side. Like, they do provide a lot of nice stuff, but it’s not like they’re the only amusement park operator out there.
googles
A few years back, but I imagine the ratios probably roughly hold.
businessinsider.com/cost-us-theme-parks-ranked-di…
On this list of 45 amusement parks in the US ranked by cost, Disney World is #2, Disney Adventure Park is #3, Disneyland is #4, and Disney’s Animal Kingdom is #5.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
And to be honest, I can’t blame them when people keep buying it and they’re still keeping the parks full.
I mean, for the parks, I’d increase the price to what the market could bear at the capacity the parks have, but also build more parks, if there’s that much demand.
googles
Apparently they actually do have a 14 acre expansion happening at Disney World at the moment.
www.cnn.com/2024/04/04/travel/…/index.html
But park visitors can one day expect to see much more beyond that wilderness at the iconic park in Central Florida – something more ambitious than just a ride overhaul or a retheming.
“It’s probably the largest expansion ever at Magic Kingdom,” Michael Hundgen, Walt Disney World site portfolio executive, said Tuesday during a rare media event previewing new Disney attraction designs and technology at its Walt Disney Imagineering facility in California.
He said the expansion will be about the size of Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge, which occupies about 14 acres. A Disney team is currently on research trips and going through concept design for this expansion area.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
goes to check how much actually is
This is only using yearly resolution, but given inflation from 2021 to 2024, $79.18 in 2021 would be $85.51 in 2024.
That’s 8.95% of the increase from inflation, and 91.05% of the increase being a real increase.
- Comment on ‘Huge disappointment’ as UK delays bottle deposit plan and excludes glass 3 weeks ago:
For our ocean’s sake, we can’t keep kicking the can – or bottle – down the road. We call on the UK government to speed up this law and to follow Wales’s ambition to include plastic, metal and glass.”
The “ocean’s sake”?
Glass doesn’t float. If it winds up in the ocean, one just gets beach glass.
In fact, we had a place up in California where a beach was being directly used as a dump once. The only remaining stuff, after the metal had rusted away and such, was glass, and it all got turned into beach glass. The state went from trying to stop people from dumping things on the beach to banning people hauling away the beach glass; it had become a tourist attraction.
- Comment on ESA says members won’t support any plan for libraries to preserve games online 3 weeks ago:
It’s still circular. The ESA doesn’t run the Library of Congress. They can argue that the LoC shouldn’t do that, but they don’t have decision-making authority in that.
- Comment on Why are there two different genres both called ARPG? 3 weeks ago:
I’m just curious why a new designation hasn’t sprouted up for one or the other to make things less confusing.
There is for one of them: you mentioned it.
- Comment on ESA says members won’t support any plan for libraries to preserve games online 3 weeks ago:
I mean, okay. But it’s not really the ESA’s responsibility to archive art and cultural works for posterity. They’re going to care about whether it’s going to affect their bottom line and if the answer is “yes”, then they probably aren’t going to support it. Why ask them?
There was a point in time in the US when a work was only protected by copyright if one deposited such a work with the Library of Congress. That might be excessive, but it could theoretically be done with video games. Maybe only ones that sell more than N copies.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_deposit
Legal deposit is a legal requirement that a person or group submit copies of their publications to a repository, usually a library. The number of copies required varies from country to country. Typically, the national library is the primary repository of these copies. In some countries there is also a legal deposit requirement placed on the government, and it is required to send copies of documents to publicly accessible libraries.
- Comment on MoD giving Ukrainian soldiers in the UK free cigarettes to 'boost morale' 3 weeks ago:
It sounds like we’re talking about people who already have a nicotine addiction and are faced with either going cold turkey during training, which is indeed probably gonna be a distraction, or paying very high British tobacco taxes. Hmm.
considers
Maybe:
-
Talk to the Ukrainian government and see what they want done if that hasn’t already been done? The people are serving Ukrainian military members and being sent by their command to the UK. I’d say that the responsible party here for determining policy is maybe the Ukrainian military.
-
Hand out vaping equipment? I have no idea if it’s what the people in question want, but if so, that’d let people get their nicotine fix, but avoid the associated lung cancer.
-
Rather than giving cigarettes, include some sort of “luxury allowance” that soldiers can spend on whatever during training, so that people aren’t placed in a position where only smokers get some kind of luxury, so that there isn’t an incentive being created to smoke. Like, if it’s £15 a pack, as the article says, and the government is willing to support a pack-a-day habit, just hand out £15 per soldier per day and let them buy a pack if they want or whatever else they want with it.
-
- Comment on Apple pulls WhatsApp, Threads and Signal from app store in China 4 weeks ago:
I’m guessing that the US is gonna do the TikTok ban too, then.
- Comment on 24% of 5-7 year olds now use smartphones: UK watchdog 4 weeks ago:
If you’re five years old, you walk down the sidewalk next to the street where you can be hit by a car. That can kill you.
If we can trust people to do that with some basic instructions like “look both ways before crossing the road”, I feel like we can probably trust people using the Internet.
- Comment on NASA 4 weeks ago:
NASA TV was actually one few things I recall being on the Mbone.
- Comment on British watchdog has 'real concerns' about the staggering love-in between cloud giants and AI upstarts 4 weeks ago:
Interesting, thanks.
- Comment on British watchdog has 'real concerns' about the staggering love-in between cloud giants and AI upstarts 4 weeks ago:
That’s kind of a broken Union Jack in the thumbnail there. The red diagonal bit is cut off there by the white cross.