ranandtoldthat
@ranandtoldthat@beehaw.org
- Comment on Scientists say X (formerly Twitter) has lost its professional edge — and Bluesky is taking its place 12 minutes ago:
They banned a bunch of people including Jessie Gender (now reinstated) for mild criticism of the Harry Potter author.
They banned people for posting old (public domain) short films for fictional violence.
There was another ban wave when people were criticizing the hateful words spoken by that one guy who was violently killed.
There’s an explicit promise of an upcoming wave of noncon artists. (I’m personally not a fan of such art but don’t think they should be banned)
Some people have been reinstated, but the explicit focus on limiting speech has a real chilling effect.
I’m positive I’ve missed some from longer ago.
- Comment on Scientists say X (formerly Twitter) has lost its professional edge — and Bluesky is taking its place 6 hours ago:
For real. They just can’t stop banning people.
- Comment on Parents outraged as Meta uses photos of schoolgirls in ads targeting man 1 week ago:
They’ve intentionally maliciously set up systems where “carelessness” leads to these malicious outcomes.
It’s not fail safe, nor fail secure. It’s fail evil.
- Comment on Comcast Executives Warn Workers To Not Say The Wrong Thing About Charlie Kirk | 404 Media 2 weeks ago:
Billionaire oligarchs
- Comment on Nintendo now has a US patent on summoning characters and making them battle for you | VGC 2 weeks ago:
The problem is lawyers. Nintendo has billions to spend on them.
- Comment on Midjourney's troubles get worse as Warner Bros Discovery sues the AI image generator for copyright infringement 2 weeks ago:
Techdirt has covered this kinda thing for decades. Being familiar with their work I am confident no good will come of a Warner Brothers Discovery win in court. It absolutely won’t protect individual artists. It may even have the opposite effect of causing Gen AI models to avoid corporate art and only use art of individual creators who can’t afford to sue.
Maybe the best we can hope for is a private settlement that sets no precedent.
- Comment on Deus Ex's influence on Elon Musk 'may be its longest, worst legacy,' says its writer 3 weeks ago:
I love poe. Outside of occasional theoeycrafting, which he clearly paid someone else to do, it’s a very chill game and requires very little thinking once you you’ve played it for a bit. The complexity and difficulty is frontloaded, playing time literally makes the game easier (hence grinding) and he just skipped all of that. That whole thing with him claiming to be good at the game was so surreal.
- Comment on Doubting Your Favorite Web Search Engine 3 weeks ago:
I tried Kagi briefly a while ago. It’s fine. Google is much better for obscure stuff if you’re willing to use it like people did in the 00s. Refine queries based on results and repeat until you find what you want. It also has the benefit of very good results linked in the Ai summary, which people often overlook.
Kagi might be better if you want less commercial results for broad terms, but I don’t really search that way these days, so I don’t need it for that.
- Comment on Sony is reportedly planning a Nintendo Switch-style PlayStation 6 portable | VGC 3 weeks ago:
Playdate definitely takes advantage of its limitations
- Comment on Authors celebrate “historic” settlement coming soon in Anthropic class action 4 weeks ago:
Oracle vs. Google, and he mostly already had hobbyist knowledge of programming, but yes he did learn some Java for the case.
- Comment on To the dismay of sweaty 'movement kids,' Battlefield 6 is nerfing Call of Duty sliding and jumping to maintain a 'traditional Battlefield experience' 4 weeks ago:
Maybe? I’m not that deep in “gamer” culture, so I always just thought of it as descriptive of a particular intensity of play that leads to sweaty palms. We all experience that from time to time, some prefer it, others don’t.
- Comment on To the dismay of sweaty 'movement kids,' Battlefield 6 is nerfing Call of Duty sliding and jumping to maintain a 'traditional Battlefield experience' 4 weeks ago:
“Sweaty” has a specific connotation in video games, so it does provide some meaning.
- Comment on [Official Art] Morrigan Portrait - Dragon Age: Origins 1 month ago:
Dragon Age: Origins was a truly great game. Though fun, none of the other titles have captured the magic of the first.
- Comment on Wikipedia Editors Adopt ‘Speedy Deletion’ Policy for AI Slop Articles | 404 Media 1 month ago:
Speedy deletion is for deletions that require zero discussion, so it needs to be very simple and clear. For less sloppy genai there may need to be a discussion (unless it falls under different speedy deletion criteria.
Sometimes those discussions are very straightforward, but they allow for dissenting voices. But for “almost obvious” cases not a lot of effort is spent on them.
- Comment on So, Linus Torvalds is a jerk 1 month ago:
I didn’t tell you told you to “shut up”, I’ve pointed out some of the the flaws/harm in your method of criticism. Others in this thread have also tried to help you understand the issue here. It’s up to you whether you choose to accept it and focus your energy on other topics. Nobody is going to force you.
Ultimately, people do improve. Look inward. Hove you ever improved? If so, realize others can, too. Linus Torvald has, by accounts of people who know and work with him, as did the other examples I gave.
All the best to you and yours.
- Comment on So, Linus Torvalds is a jerk 1 month ago:
It feels a little… Calvinist to not allow for people to improve themselves over their life.
Personally, I think it’s a good thing when someone with a reputation like Linus Torvald, or Tim Hardaway, or even George Wallace improves themself and their impact on those around them. Such improvement should be encouraged in others, not condemned as performative.
- Comment on So, Linus Torvalds is a jerk 1 month ago:
You are mistaken. His admission is well-documented. Check my links in another comment in this thread.
- Comment on So, Linus Torvalds is a jerk 1 month ago:
I think it’s pretty likely that without some “good principles” Torvalds would not have been able to admit his faults and begin working on them.
I think getting upset about how he used to behave isn’t very helpful, once he’s acknowledged and apologized.
- Comment on So, Linus Torvalds is a jerk 1 month ago:
Honesty and hostility are not the same. You can call code bad without cursing someone out or belittling their existence.
Linus himself admitted years ago to being a hostile jerk, and realized it had a negative impact on his life and projects. He took time to improve upon this. See my other comment for some sources.
- Comment on So, Linus Torvalds is a jerk 1 month ago:
And he’s at least attempting to improve, more than we can say for those who use their abilities to exploit others. arstechnica.com/…/linus-torvalds-apologizes-for-y…
- Comment on A Second Tea Breach Reveals Users’ DMs About Abortions and Cheating 1 month ago:
High school very much is real life for kids.
- Comment on Google Gemini deletes use's code 1 month ago:
Oof. This individual is really counting on “no such thing as bad publicity”. As someone who had had final say on a handful of hirings, this would be a red flag. Being able to use your tools is vital in software engineering.
- Comment on get sum 1 month ago:
Really depends on what the question asked. I’d mostly trust the GSS to report the data correctly, but not really trust Wapo to do so. I looked at GSS questions (can’t view data on mobile) and it seems like Wapo might be being drawing some misleading conclusions from the data, as no question specifically asked this. Hard to be sure.
- Comment on Sony sues Tencent over Horizon Zero Dawn ‘rip-off’ 1 month ago:
I agree with your latter paragraph but not the former. I’m really not liking these overbroad IP claims. This is almost worse than the Nintendo/Palworld stuff, which was already pretty bad.
Tencent may also be a villain, but if Sony gets its way here, it will be bad for games and other forms of expression.
- Comment on itch.io now seemingly affected by payment processor rules as Steam 2 months ago:
- Comment on Valve gets pressured by payment processors with a new rule for game devs and various adult games removed 2 months ago:
Thanks for the correction.
I’m not comfortable with tech execs making bank off sex workers, but I should aim to be more familiar with the outcome of the case.
- Comment on Valve gets pressured by payment processors with a new rule for game devs and various adult games removed 2 months ago:
Backpage is very different than Valve. Backpage execs were directly involved in the pimping of minors, this were proven in court.
I don’t believe Valve execs are pimping minors through Steam.
- Comment on Brazil rules that social media platforms are responsible for users’ posts 2 months ago:
Thanks for the context and analysis. Hope it works out for smaller forums.
- Comment on Brazil rules that social media platforms are responsible for users’ posts 2 months ago:
When something similar happened in the UK, it was pretty much exclusively smaller/niche forums, run by volunteers and donations, that went offline.
- Comment on Anthropic destroyed millions of print books to build its AI models 2 months ago:
I gotta reread Vinge’s Rainbows End