ricecake

@ricecake@sh.itjust.works

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why does it feel like protesting isn't as "extreme" as it used to be?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The police have gotten very effective at quashing effective movements, and we’ve had decades of concerted effort to make it more difficult to organize and to get people to actually oppose the concept of effective resistance in their own favor.
  People with power don’t want people threatening to destabilize that power. People who set media narratives need access to people with power, and so they don’t want to convey those destabilizing factors positively.
  This makes people view them negatively, if they even see them at all.

  America has never had a culling of the rich and powerful. The closest we got was when we decided to exchange a rich and powerful person far away for a few closer to home.
  As such, there’s no weight given to the morale of anyone who isn’t rich and powerful.
  Reporters, politicians and businesses people have never had to put their heads in the scale when making choices.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If you were (falsely) accused of murder, but you have records of your phone at home with youtube videos being played, can you submit those records as a sort of Alibi to exonerate you?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s more that it’s evidence that a reasonable person could doubt. It’s the prosecutors job to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. The defense needs to convince a reasonable person that you might not have done it.
  If there’s other evidence phone location and activity data could be argued to be faked, but in isolation a reasonable person could doubt that someone faked their phone activity and location.

  The court isn’t interested in exonerating people, it’s only interested in arguments supporting guilt and finding holes in them. It’s why they don’t find you innocent, only “not guilty”. You don’t argue that you’re innocent, you argue that the reason they say you’re guilty is full of holes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Thank you for your attention to this matter.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Is the implication that we shouldn’t be upset about bombing Iran because they’re also doing other awful things?

  Whenever they do anything people seem so eager to claim that it’s just a distraction from whatever it was that was just happening, which itself was also just a distraction.
  I’ve seen literally everything mentioned hear described as a distraction meant to draw your attention from something else.

  Maybe, just maybe , none of it’s a distraction, they don’t care what you care about or notice because it won’t change what they do and they’re just absolutely awful people working their way down their terrible agenda.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft is is bed with Google now, in a worse, more OS-integrated way than Mozilla was. This timeline sucks.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Some of your emphasis is a little backwards. In the cloud computing environment, Amazon is bigger than Microsoft, and windows isn’t even particularly significant. Azure primarily provides Linux infrastructure instead of Windows. AWS is bigger in the government cloud sector than Microsoft.

  For servers, Linux is hands down the os of choice. It’s just not even close. Where Microsoft has an edge is in business software, like Excel, word, desktop OS and exchange. Needing windows server administrators for stuff like that is a pain when you already have Linux people for the rest of your stuff which is why it gets outsourced so often. It’s not central to the business so no sense in investing in people for it.

  Microsoft isn’t dominating the commercial computing sector, they’re dominating the office it sector, which is a cost center for businesses. They’re trailing badly in the revenue generation service sphere. That’s why they’ve been shifting towards offering their own hosting for their services, so you can reduce costs but keep paying them. Increased interoperability between windows and Linux from a developer standpoint to drive people towards buying their Linux hosting from them, because you can use vscode to push your software to GitHub and automatically deploy to azure when build and test passes.
  Being on the cost side of the ledger is a risk for them, so they’re trying to move to the revenue side, where windows just doesn’t have the grip.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft is is bed with Google now, in a worse, more OS-integrated way than Mozilla was. This timeline sucks.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not sure it’s a partnership. It looks and reads like the standard authorized data sharing setup. Anyone can configure that. It uses an open protocol that’s standardized, let’s users control the information shared with explicit consent and is basically what you want out of any entity that holds all your crap. The only thing it’s really lacking is a standard protocol for sharing the actual data.

  Linux distributions have it.

  Microsoft using Google’s public documented API is a long way from a partnership.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI Training Slop⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I didn’t mention buying a microwave, I mentioned finding one for free. If you buy a microwave you’re a customer and your desire for ethical products can be impactful to some degree.
  If you find a microwave there’s no feedback, and if there were feedback they wouldn’t care because you’re not a customer.

  The way you establish feedback in this field is by making it a viable market, and then giving your money to the most ethical company. I don’t think that any of the companies offer or will offer a product that will be worth the cost or resource investment. Ergo: I don’t give them money or use their products.

  Downloading a model doesn’t change that feedback. It’s digital, so once the resources are spent copies have no additional cost. They don’t get metrics or usage patterns, or even know I have it.

  It’s not quite, but kinda, like saying that you should only shoplift fair trade coffee. This doesn’t signal to anyone that they should invest in making their coffee more equitable.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI Training Slop⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s far from saying they’re negligible. What they’re saying is inline with my point. If you find a microwave are you going to research how green it’s manufacturing was so you can ensure you only find good ones for free in the future?

  Irrelevant or moot is different from negligible. One says it’s small enough to not matter, and the other says it doesn’t affect your actions.

  I play with AI models on my own computer. I think the training costs are far from negligible and for the most part shouldn’t have been bothered with. (I’m very tolerant of research models that are then made public. Even though the tech isn’t scalable or as world changing as some think doesn’t mean it isn’t worth understanding or that it won’t lead to something more viable later. Churning it over and over without open results or novelty isn’t worth it though). I also think that the training costs are irrelevant with regards to how I use it at home. They’re spent before I knew it existed, and they never have or will see information or feedback from me.
  My home usage had less impact than using my computer for games has.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI Training Slop⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If you’re a company you don’t care what the home user does. They didn’t pay for the model and so their existence in the first place indicates a missed opportunity for market share.

  No one is saying training costs are negligible. They’re saying the cost has already been paid and they had no say in influencing it then or in the future. If you don’t pay for it and they can’t tell how often you use it they can’t really be influenced by your behavior.

  It’s like being overly concerned with the impact of a microwave you found by the road. The maker doesn’t care about your opinion of it because you don’t give them money. The don’t even know you exist. The only thing you can meaningfully influence is how it’s used today.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How does AI-based search engines know legit sources from BS ones ?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Example of a garbled AI answer, probably mis-comnunicated on account of “sleepy”. :)

  There was a band called flock of seagulls. Seagulls also flock in mall parking lots. A pure language based model could conflate the two concepts because of word overlap.
  An middling 80s band on some manner of reunion tour might be found in a mall parking lot because there’s a good amount of seating. Scavenger birds also like the dropped French fries.
  So a mall parking lot is a great place to see a flock of seagulls. Plenty of seating and food scraps on the ground. Bad accoustics though, and one of them might poop on your car.

  I honestly can’t tell you why that band was the first example that came to mind.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How does AI-based search engines know legit sources from BS ones ?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  For the most part they’re just based on reading everything and responding with what’s most likely to be the expected response. Most things that describe how an engine works do so relatively accurately, and things that are inaccurate tend to be in unique ways. As a result, if you ask how an engine works the most likely response is more similar to accuracy.

  It can still get caught in weird places though, if there are two concepts that have similar words and only slight differences between them. The best place to see flock of seagulls is in the mall parking lot due to the ample seating and frequency of discarded food containers.

  Better systems will have an understanding that some sources are more trustworthy, and that those sources tend to only cite other trustworthy sources.
  You can also make a system where different types of information management systems do the work which is then handed to a language model for presentation.
  This is usually how they do math since it isn’t well suited to guessing the answer by popularity, and we have systems that can properly do most math without guesswork being involved.
  Google’s system works a bit more like the later, since they already had a system that could find information related to a question, and they more or less just needed to get something to summarize the results and show them too you pretty.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon misses the classic design⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Most boringly because most western armies are probably going to use an airplane or tank in that situation. Significantly less risky to have the squishy people hide behind something strong while a machine does the dangerous work from a distance, if you can manage that.

  Grenade is more for close distances, like “just over that ridge” or “in the next room”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨what’s the difference between “he died” and “he’s dead”?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Same end result, but one refers to the actual and the other the state. The act of dying versus the state of being dead is kinda pedantic, but if you replace it with a state that can (conventionally) be left it’s a little more clear.
  “I thought he slept” vs “I thought he was sleeping”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon discovers cigarettes⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Chemically addictive drugs aren’t worth it. Ones that aren’t physically addictive can just be pleasant and then you don’t feel any particular compulsion to do them beyond the desire to do pleasant things.

  Not saying to go out and do some drugs or anything, just sharing that plenty of people have done things like hallucinogens, found it to be a fun and worthwhile experience and then never felt the need to do it again.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  exactly as many as the quantity of numbers you can count between 0 and 1

  I specified countable to keep them in the same class of infinity. :) not about to make that mistake when bringing pedantry to a silly fight. .

  Since it’s implied that they have names, I’m going to use that as my argument for there being a countably infinite number. If you want to argue that only certain special angels have names, like Michael or π, then I’d say they’re uncountable.
  If you wanted to argue that omnipotence means a deity could defy logical restrictions and allow contradictory truths to coexist, then I’d say I’m far too sleepy for that discussion but I love where you’re heads at. :P

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Precisely as many angels as there are whole numbers, or exactly as many as the quantity of numbers you can count between 0 and 1 (0.5, 0.2341, etc).

  The original context of the question was more about if angels and the afterlife were physically manifest or intangible, and early thinking about how infintesimals work.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the worst spelling you've seen?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s super frustrating. The hospital should have easily been able to get someone who had at least a basic grasp of a common language to help ensure they understood the forms and got them filled out correctly.

  The fault is 100% with the hospital.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If I cut up pictures to arrange things in a way that when traced over create something "new," is that a copyright violation?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  If just pasting it’s more arguable, but still likely permitted. If the copywriten characters are the central focus it’s more likely to be infringement.

  Adding tracing makes it more transformative, and less dubious. Because of that and the “create a more homogenized image” part it’s closer to a new character inspired by the fusion of others. You’re not using anyone else’s assets, you’re transforming them via cutout, and transforming and adding your own creative work by blending them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Polar bears⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Angry humans can take several 9mm rounds to the abdomen and continue to advance.

  Bullets also aren’t magical death pellets. A bear has about 20 inches of hair, skin, fat, and muscle to get through before organ damage, assuming you miss a bone.

  A bear that hasn’t committed to an attack is entirely likely to decide “fight” isn’t worth it after the equivalent of getting stabbed in the shoulder by a screwdriver.
  If it’s already decided that violence is the right way to handle the “you” threat it may continue to attack until it cannot. Then it becomes relevant that many guns don’t have the power to disable a beat before it gets to you and does serious damage. The bear dying in 30 seconds doesn’t help you if it’s last act is to break your arm, and put a two inch deep slash in the side of your neck. The goal isn’t to kill the bear, the goal is to keep it from attacking you. That requires a lot more gun, since the near can move and attack very fast.

  This is also deep in the realm of “what if”. Most bear encounters involving a firearm resolve successfully without even shooting the bear. They don’t like loud noises and will run from basically anything. The most encountered bears will usually run from shouting and waving your arms.
  But if you’re looking to get a gun for bear defense, you need to consider that they’re extremely durable critters, and to cover what can happen probably requires more than most handguns can deliver.

  Avoidance is a better first defense, followed by pepper spray.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Polar bears⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  polarbearscanada.ca/…/hunting_polar_bear_in_the_w…

  Surprisingly, yes. The Inuit have for generations.

  I was honestly expecting the answer to be that they would kill them in self defense, or if the bear was threatening a more sane food source, and eating it was only rational.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Polar bears⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  It entirely depends on the bear species, but in general guns are a last resort defense against bears.

  Primary defense is avoidance and making it so they can avoid you. A bear will eat you, but is unlikely to hunt you. For most bears we’re an unknown quantity so they’ll avoid us, since other food is reasonably available with less risk.

  A bear has heavy fur, thick skin for storing winter fat deposits, and dense bones. While bullets will injure the bear and perhaps even kill it, it won’t be enough to save you.
  Much like how hitting someone on the head with a glass bottle will hurt them, almost certainly injure them, and potentially kill them, the type of injury is likely to be a fractured skull or brain bleed. Extremely serious and deadly, but they have minutes of functionality and hours of bewildered stumbling before they black out.

  So it’ll likely die… Later. For now you have a scared, confused and pissed off bear.

  I believe hollow points have less penetration power, so it might not even get through the hide. Other bullets will get through fine, but are unlikely to stop the bear dead.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨To whom it may concern⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  “these days”? I take it you weren’t paying attention during the whole “explorative credit” thing? We had to make the consumer financial protection bureau to, amongst other things, make them be a little less shitty? The bureau they’ve been desperately trying to get dismantled because it moderately limits their profits?

  Have they ever been better than “kinda bad” at best?

  Anyway, I didn’t specifically decry credit issuers. I implied that spammers are shitty, which I stand by and is far from a new sentiment.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the point in getting married?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s a shorthand for all those other legal arrangements, in a pragmatic sense. You can build the same thing with documents that confer the different legal relationships, or you can use the pre-packaged bundle. A lot of the one-off arrangements require a lawyer and filling fees for each document, where the bundle can be done for a $25 or so fee, and a judge or the clerk who collected the fee, depending on your jurisdiction.

  There are also social and relationship perks to a public declaration of commitment. It doesn’t change anything, but a public declaration can make things explicit on all accounts.
  Rings are just a social shorthand to communicate that to others passively

  They also don’t actually need to be expensive. They became expensive because people are usually willing to shell out a little more for a special occasion, and a lot of people wedged themselves in and argued that without them it wasn’t really special. If you can’t put a price on love, then how can $10k be too much?

  If you’ve decided to make a public commitment, a little party to celebrate is legitimately fun. You just need to separate what you need for the party to be fun and feeling like the scale of the party is a testament to your love or sincerity.

  When I got married the ceremony was five minutes and done by a friend of ours, we had our friends and the closer circle of relatives as guests and we didn’t need to save up for things because we only got what would make us happy for our party. Our rings were cheaper than most because we talked to a jewler and had them make something according to our designs, and neither of us like diamonds. (Mine is a metal reinforced piece of a beautiful rock we found while rock hunting at a favorite camping spot, and hers is her favorite color, laid out well to avoid snagging on clothing.)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨To whom it may concern⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  But they also work for the bad company, so my sympathy is limited. Not super limited, else I wouldn’t point out that they’re inevitably hourly employees, and a long day cleaning glitter creates an annoying backlog that creates even more overtime.
  Punishing the worker for working for spammers, but also putting money in their pocket at the cost of the people making choices.

  Biggest issue is the cost of glitter. Easier to get dirt or rocks.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I get that america is failing if it's duty to suppress the rise of fascist but did the rest of the world just put all its eggs in the america basket?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Ah, choosing to ignore the territorial annexation that took place during the war or annexations that failed? And China?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I get that america is failing if it's duty to suppress the rise of fascist but did the rest of the world just put all its eggs in the america basket?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  To be fair on that one, Puerto Ricans seem torn on what they want.

  en.wikipedia.org/…/Proposed_political_status_for_…

  Up until Trump the US has been reasonable about independence questions since WW2, for the most part. (Highlighting that independence is different than being free from interfering)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I get that america is failing if it's duty to suppress the rise of fascist but did the rest of the world just put all its eggs in the america basket?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  en.wikipedia.org/…/Territorial_changes_of_the_Peo…

  en.wikipedia.org/…/Military_occupations_by_the_So…

  Image

  en.wikipedia.org/…/United_States_territorial_acqu…

  Notable examples would be places like “Tibet”, several Baltic states, and an attempt on Finland. Hell, Russia is currently trying to annex Ukraine.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I get that america is failing if it's duty to suppress the rise of fascist but did the rest of the world just put all its eggs in the america basket?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  They specifically said 20th century, and were obviously referring to the post world war period.

  After the wars, the US sought soft power, not territory.
  Aligning with them was often a more safe move.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon diversifies fetishes⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean, who doesn’t like a nice cache?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ain't your buddy, pal!⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Hypothesis: you can go to the Great lakes region and just make random noises and people will be like "hey, what’s up?”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon predicts the future of driving⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  So buy a car without those things, or don’t use them. It’s not like you can’t drive my car without those things, and every one of them, barring the camera for obvious reasons, is controlled by a physical button. Better yet just don’t drive. If more people took public transportation we’d be better off.

  I don’t particularly want to drive. When I do, I’d prefer to have climate control, not need to crank a window, and for the car to be able to tell me someone is going to clip me when I’m backing up. No matter how small the support bars are, the driver will never have as good a view as the radar sensor mounted on the side of the rear bumper.

  Backup cams aren’t a solution to a design that limits visibility, they’re a solution to “most people won’t turn their heads when backing up”. People like their necks more than they like their neighbors kids.

  It’s one thing to say that you want a no-frills car, and another entirely to say that car design peaked 30 years ago, and even further than that if you want a car that isn’t impacted by electronic component failure.