kbal
@kbal@fedia.io
- Comment on Inside McDonald’s push to have AI price your Big Mac 1 week ago:
I'm willing to give it a try at least once if I get to haggle with the cashierbot over the price of my cheeseburger.
- Comment on ⚠️ Digital ID for the internet coming soon 1 week ago:
Every news source is to some extent unreliable. The reputation of the source has some bearing on a rational reader's estimation of the value of what it produces but it's not the only factor. This one web page is the only thing I've seen from this author, and in what's said on it they are essentially in the right even if the style of presentation is off-putting to many of us. The "social media ban" is shaping up to be another major disaster for tech policy.
- Comment on ⚠️ Digital ID for the internet coming soon 1 week ago:
That they remain unreliable says nothing about whether or not they're essentially in the right on any given point.
- Comment on ⚠️ Digital ID for the internet coming soon 1 week ago:
The reliable and professional news outfits are too busy talking about earthquakes, wars, train crashes, the dangers of gambling, oil prices, personal financial advice, fashion trends, whatever Donald Trump said this morning, and AI. They don't really have time to go into detail on abstract problems that nobody in power wants them talking about and the audience doesn't already understand. They'll just repeat what it says in the government press release.
If it weren't for the cranks, grifters, lunatics, and microbloggers nobody would report on it as doing anything other than "protecting children" until it's already in effect and everyone finds out through experience that it sucks.
- Comment on Ofcom discovers issuing Online Safety Act fines is easier than collecting them 3 weeks ago:
So, are they still trying to go after 4chan? Or is it easier targets that they're having trouble collecting from?
- Comment on 5 weeks ago:
You'd think that "no AI" would be an easy feature to implement, and it's much in demand. Strange that it seems to be beyond the abilities of so many software developers.
- Comment on Is Myspace coming back? Owners confirm relaunch plans 2 months ago:
Weird that Myspace is still "owned" by someone when it's spent so long not being a thing that exists.
- Comment on MPs call for ban on fast food outlets opening near schools to tackle obesity 2 months ago:
It may sound like a stupid idea, but if the students have to walk slightly further to get their cheeseburgers it might be good for them.
- Comment on Android Developer Verification: Threat masquerading as Protection 3 months ago:
The hacker news discussion is surprisingly not bad. Very few Google stans coming in to shill for their corporate masters, and they're getting soundly ignored and downvoted.
- Submitted 3 months ago to technology@beehaw.org | 22 comments
- Comment on [deleted] 3 months ago:
Oh, sorry, did not mean to put that in c/technology.
- Comment on 3 months ago:
In the old days we had large numbers of people believing that being online meant using AOL, Compuserve, or whatever walled-garden type of "portal" they were lured into using. But we could mostly rely on tech-aware people like computer programmers to know better. Not any more. Today it's a more diverse group that knows better, but a less cohesive and politically influential one, and it makes up a much smaller fraction of net users.
- Submitted 3 months ago to technology@beehaw.org | 6 comments
- Comment on What do you think about the dead internet theory? 3 months ago:
It's about on a par with the "birds aren't real" theory.
- Comment on Amnesty International exposed years of anti-trans reporting at four UK newspapers. They ignored it. 3 months ago:
The problem isn't that they're a small part of the population though. Small groups can do newsworthy things. The problem is that the coverage they get is always "Trans people: Do they have a right to exist? The debate continues."
- Comment on VAT's The Problem campaign hopes to stop the tsunami of restaurant closures we're seeing right now 3 months ago:
The problem is that the entire economy is fucked. I don't think the answer is to subsidise the restaurant industry.
- Comment on The hill I will die on: I really don’t like ‘like’ – or other imprecise and redundant speech 3 months ago:
Peak Grauniad
- Submitted 3 months ago to technology@beehaw.org | 3 comments
- Comment on Cloudflare CEO says bot internet traffic has overtaken humans 3 months ago:
I wonder how Cloudflare estimates the increased rate of false positives they're getting after they made their bot detector even more oversensitive in recent weeks.
- Comment on 4 months ago:
You don't have to be rich for that, just stupid.
- Comment on I investigated BBC capture by trans activists. It was worse than I thought 4 months ago:
The "shareToken" in the url suggests you're a subscriber to the Times. Reading that article ought to be enough to make you want to reconsider that decision.
- Comment on Single-sex toilets must exclude transgender people, says EHRC 4 months ago:
What's really needed is a rigorous toilet-user certification regime where people are granted a license to use the appropriate facilities based on their demonstrated ability to pee standing up, to consistently avoid pissing on the toilet seat, and to correctly wash their hands afterwards.
- Comment on Fire and ‘sheer volume’: how Britain’s 6m-vape problem is putting recycling under strain 4 months ago:
They banned the ones with sensible tank sizes, which pushed everyone into using to the disposable ones. Everyone who knew anything about it knew that it was a mistake. They do not acknowledge that mistake and are hoping that we've all forgotten.
- Comment on 60% of PC gamers have no plans to build a new PC in the next two years — AI pricing crunch on RAM and other components paralyze enthusiast market 4 months ago:
Yeah I guess this RX 6600 I bought for $300 is going to need to last until [checks prices] forever.
- Comment on How is RAM size measured? Why doesn't it match the marketed size? 4 months ago:
Maybe it's not counting memory that can't be tested because it's needed for the kernel and device drivers. For example according to its man page
freereports total memory "memory minus a few reserved bits and kernel binary code" and on my desktop here that's about 15.5 out of 16GB. - Comment on Pupils hopeless and crying after 'poorly worded' Higher Maths exam 4 months ago:
the language was "totally unrecognisable"
Damn it I read the whole thing. At no point was the problem described precisely, and no examples at all were given.
It's like one of those articles where they're hyping up some scandalous thing that got posted on social media without ever telling the reader exactly what it was. I tend to assume that when they do that it's because the thing was deemed too horrible to directly quote, but maybe they just don't even realise that it's not much of a story unless they tell us what was actually said.
- Comment on 4 months ago:
Imagine how malevolent the next generation of AI will be, when it's trained on today's Internet text.
- Comment on What was the last physical retail store game purchase you've made? 5 months ago:
When The Witcher 3 came out I had the money and bought it shortly after release at a local shop, because my net connection then was way too slow to download anything measured in gigabytes.
I think it was a set of 3 CDs. I took them home, started installing, and then found out that 3 CDs was nowhere near enough and it wanted to download somewhere in the 10s of gigabytes before I could play. It took about three days.
- Comment on Why aren't non-selfhosed AI models/apps private? 5 months ago:
"The cloud" is just somebody else's computer.
- Comment on When did programming become "coding"? 5 months ago:
I think the window for having that debate was some time around 1992.