kbal

@kbal@fedia.io

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Android Developer Verification: Threat masquerading as Protection⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ 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.

• Android Developer Verification: Threat masquerading as Protectionf-droid.org ↗
  Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩ to ⁨technology@beehaw.org⁩ | ⁨22⁩ ⁨comments⁩
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh, sorry, did not mean to put that in c/technology.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ 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 ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩ to ⁨technology@beehaw.org⁩ | ⁨6⁩ ⁨comments⁩
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What do you think about the dead internet theory?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Peak Grauniad

• AI Economics for Dummieswww.mcsweeneys.net ↗
  Submitted ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ to ⁨technology@beehaw.org⁩ | ⁨3⁩ ⁨comments⁩
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Cloudflare CEO says bot internet traffic has overtaken humans⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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 ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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 ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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 ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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 ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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 free reports 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 ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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 ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨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?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  "The cloud" is just somebody else's computer.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When did programming become "coding"?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think the window for having that debate was some time around 1992.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do they turn Federation into a dystopia?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  How in the hell is this the same federation of TNG, Voyager and DS9?

  Clearly it isn't. Why should it be? It's the far future. Giant prison colony, shock collars, cruelty, punishment with no semblance of a fair trial on screen; clearly the Federation are the bad guys now, or at least adjacent to them. I was prepared to accept that premise. Could be interesting... but no, they immediately shove that concept under the carpet and pretend it doesn't matter because this one person involved feels really bad about it. It was all just another convenient plot device with no meaning, and they moved right on without stopping to think about it. It's utterly lazy writing, the kind where they go with whatever half-baked idea they come up with first whether or not it makes any sense for the characters and story. I say that with confidence because I've seen so much of it before. In this case the character they betrayed was literally Star Trek itself, but they're doing it all the time in smaller ways.

  Anyway I'm off to rewatch DS9 instead.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨RentAHuman.ai - AI Agents Hire Humans for Physical Tasks⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh, so that's what they're talking about when they say AI will enslave all humanity. I hope the fractured remains of non-assimilated human societies living on the streets among the security drones and human transport vessels will have enough to eat.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨EVs Just Outsold Gas Cars In Europe For The First Time⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The typical hybrid is still 100% powered by fossil fuels. The main thing they've done for us is demonstrate the Jevons Paradox.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨EVs Just Outsold Gas Cars In Europe For The First Time⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There's really no need to recycle this misleading headline forever, they're not in short supply.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The recent Star Trek series are often criticized for "not being woke enough", but I've come to feel the envelope they are pushing is much more radical, bolder, and important to our specific time...⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I don't know. It just seems like one plausible explanation for what's been produced. To me it has that feel to it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The recent Star Trek series are often criticized for "not being woke enough", but I've come to feel the envelope they are pushing is much more radical, bolder, and important to our specific time...⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Sure they were subject to all the constraints of commercial prime-time TV, but as that video discusses in some detail with respect to DS9, the writers still had freedom within that corporate framework to tell woke anticolonialist stories beyond the classic sci-fi adventure fare of TOS which itself often explored what was new ground for commercial television at the time. Under some other corporate masters it might've been possible for the new crew to find similar freedom today, if things had worked out differently — and if any of them have the ability to do it and the willingness to try. But Larry Ellison and the forces he's standing in for seem far more alert to the subtleties of it than they used to be. There's bigger money involved now and they're keeping it on a tighter leash.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The recent Star Trek series are often criticized for "not being woke enough", but I've come to feel the envelope they are pushing is much more radical, bolder, and important to our specific time...⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  For a more serious critique of new Trek that you might find more interesting than the angry tweets you refer to, consider this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB5DroolqFU

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Universal basic income needed to cushion blow from AI job losses, says UK minister⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah — I was just trying to guess at what prompted your initial reaction. I still don't get it. Now it seems like you're saying approximately the same thing my initial comment did.