Crotaro

@Crotaro@beehaw.org

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨There Are No Weird Blogs Anymore Cause It’s More Fruitful to Drive Them Out of Business⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Thanks for that link, I read through that and absolutely love it! I already downranked sites I found to be AI-written on a personal basis, but this could be much more powerful. From what I understand, there’ll be human review of every AI report, so the potential to abuse the system is also relatively low (if the Kagi team does their due diligence)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨There Are No Weird Blogs Anymore Cause It’s More Fruitful to Drive Them Out of Business⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Like most search now Kagi has chosen to include Instant Answers that are AI generated, which means they’re often wrong

  You briefly mentioned in your user-experience-list that the AI answers are only there when you want them to be, but I just want to emphasise it, since to me it makes a world of difference in comparison with other Search Engines like Google. You only receive an AI answer if you press a specific “Gimme AI answer”-button (which is very unobtrusive) or add a question mark at the end of your search query!

  I rarely jump to the defense of some company, but I only know of this one lori-person who tried to lay out reasons why Kagi is bad and, as you showed very well, @AmbitiousProcess@piefed.social, most of their reasoning/arguments aren’t really all that good when you look at them in more detail. And when they just plain refused to take an interview with the lead of Kagi, by burying their head in the sand and going “I don’t care if you want to clear up misunderstandings, I don’t want to talk to you!”, it kind of sealed this person as not being a trustworthy source of criticism and more of “I’m mad that a new company is doing something different than other companies in the same sector”

  I’ve been using Kagi for about 3/4 of a year now and I will certainly renew my annual payment to them. Of course it’s not a magic bullet without any flaws at all, but currently it does the things it offers much better than any competitor I could find and all they want is around 10€ per month. They won’t spam you with advertisement nor will they suck up your (arguably infinitely more valuable) private info to sell to the highest bidder. For now, Kagi has been doing and still is doing more good than most other tech companies.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Valve Reveals New Hardware Lineup: A Controller, Compact Gaming PC, and VR-Ready Headset⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Thank you for that info. I read about the capacitive sensor, but I was not quite sure if that would apply for each finger. That is going to make VR sign language much easier (or keep it at least as easy as with the current Index controller)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Valve Reveals New Hardware Lineup: A Controller, Compact Gaming PC, and VR-Ready Headset⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The Steam Controller is almost going to be a sure buy from me, but I am very unsure about the new iteration of VR controllers. I can’t find anything confirming or denying that they have full finger tracking (instead of only thumb/index). The full and intuitive finger tracking of the Valve Index Knuckles is just so nice and for me pretty much necessary in multiplayer stuff like VRChat

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[RANT] Why is so much coverage of "AI" devoted to this belief that we've never had automation before (and that management even really wants it)?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I would love for it to be different, but they’re mostly right.

  The hardcore shareholders, who probably have shares in more than one company and for sure only see these companies for their mometary value and nothing more, wluld not care if the company’s creative work featured AI giveaways like twelve-fingered people occasionally and inconsistent storylines, if it would mean they could save on all their artists salary by paying only for one AI subscription.

  Yes, you can still tell (mostly) when somethings made by AI, but the fact is that we already do see creatives being replaced with AI, leaving them free to do dishes and laundry instead of the other way around. The Coca Cola AI ads are one prominent example. Executives and shareholders don’t care about their product being inferior if it means it saves them even 20% in expenses. And we both know that replacing all your creative team (often even just one or two) with AI is a bigger saving on “Creative expenses” than just 20%. We know that because we can literally look up salaries vs subscription price for stuff like Sora and Veo3.

  Yet, contrary to what I perceive as your main argument here, we don’t see widespread adoption of AI in all kinds of companies to do the tedious labor. That seems to still be done often either by traditional methods, because LLMs and generative AI is just not good at repairing a leak in toilets or checking for damages in a factory or welding or even just pushing a button to announce break-time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨GTA VI developer accused of union busting in mass firings⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s unfortunately the reality of it. For a lot of topics where you think you’re only semi-well informed/confident, you’re still much better informed than 90% of people.

  Now that doesn’t mean you should not still take action when you can, but you have to come to terms with it that even if all of the currently informed people take action, it often won’t even be noticed by the company/government for years or decades (until enough awareness spread that it starts making a difference)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[RANT] Why is so much coverage of "AI" devoted to this belief that we've never had automation before (and that management even really wants it)?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think it’s more simple than you assume. From my limited experience (many stranger’s anecdotes and my team recently being fired literally because “the other (very different) production location is able to do it without a dedicated Quality Management team”) most employers / company chiefs just want to make more money or, at least, increase the perceived value so that being bought out becomes realistic and leaves them with more money. They don’t actually care if their product works well or efficient, as long as number go up. Maybe the original company founder does but how many companies are still there that have the founder for long-term in key decision making and without shareholders who kinda hold the real power and couldn’t care less if the company cleaned up oceans or burned children because to them it’s just one combination of letters that make them money?

  As @lvxferre@mander.xyz suggested, the top management might not even understand that AI won’t help, so they think it will make a short- (savings due to firings) and long-term ( profit. And those that are very informed about AI understand, at the very least, that they can increase short-term profits by firing employees (thus saving on needing to pay salaries to pesky humans) under the guise of increasing efficiency.

  So to top management it’s just a decision of “do I want more money now and in the future?” or “do I want more money now and maybe also trick idiots into buying us out before it goes belly-up?”

  Lastly, I think you might ascribe more self-reflection ability to middle management than they have. I want to believe that most of them truly think they are a crucial part of making the company work, so they don’t even see that replacing humans with AI would make them obsolete and thus prone for firing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Meta denies torrenting porn to train AI, says downloads were for “personal use”⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Unfortunately the main accusation - that Meta systematically downloaded porn to use for AI training data - might actually be false if they aren’t lying about only having downloaded around 22 vids per year. Seems way too little data for a training set to me. Nonetheless they shouldn’t get away with downloading files they didn’t have permission for.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Samsung brings ads to US fridges⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Maybe it did not have plans to put ads on every last home appliance, but when the interviewer gave them the idea, they started making all of the plans forehead tap

  I feel for those who got duped on their fridge. I couldn’t find an entry for this incident, yet, on consumerrights.wiki/Samsung so I’ll sit down and try my best to write it up.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTube Forces Dubs Now⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You’re right. With all the shit being brought into the spotlight, I easily forget to see all the good the internet is still being used for.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Itch.io are seeking out new payment processors who are more comfortable with adult material | RPS⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Good. I hope they succeed!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTube Forces Dubs Now⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Amazing how in less than the span of my 31 year lifetime the internet turned from absolutely world-changing great and probably directly or indirectly the most fun and useful tool humans can play around with to not-yet-unusable-but-definitely-closing-in slop where you can’t spend an hour without getting mad at some system working against us.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is Google about to destroy the web? Google says a new AI tool on its search engine will rejuvenate the internet. Others predict an apocalypse for websites.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah! I used DDG for quite a while and it’s pretty okay. Kagi definitely isn’t without fault but for me it’s the best true alternative to Google and I happily pay for it. Allows me to save so much time (cumulatively) by just guiding me to the actual result in most cases (instead of sponsored and ad-infested garbage sites)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Shower thought: Valve could do the ultimate boss-move this year⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That is an excellent suggestion!

  I recognise that for almost any one task, Linux has a solution that works better than Windows. My issue is just getting Linux to run not only one specific thing but all the dozens of programs with each having their own dependencies and possible quirks without losing my mind, weeks of my life, data or all three.

  If Valve (or really any other large entity capable of handling this for tens of thousands of users) stepped in to act as the guide for setting it all up in a safe manner and such that it just works without constant need for tweaking (unless you want to stray from the “installation wizard”), I could see Linux gain a big surge in users.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Games can no longer use virtual currencies to disguise the price of in-game purchases in the European Union⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  As @apotheotic@beehaw.org mentioned, that is actually not allowed and against the spirit of the “cookie banner law”. But since hundreds, if not thousands of sites break this law, it takes quite the time for government workers to sift through all of that (provided they even get around to it).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨To Kill a Dragon: Video Games and Addiction⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Big agree on all of that, including the Any Austin recommendation!

  Skyrim is amazing for this kind of mindfulness with its environments. The NPCs are a little so-so (once you spend an extended amount of time at the same location) but you can’t go wrong with setting up campfire and just taking in the wilderness and everything around you. X4 Foundations actually is pretty great, too, for this vibe-intake, when you land on a station and just exist (or sneak into another captain’s ship and see where it takes you)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨No one knows what the hell an AI agent is | TechCrunch⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Look, man, it’s trying its best. And frankly, I think it’s about as ready as it could ever get to replace every single billionaire in the world, considering the sanity of many billionaire’s choices we hear about lately.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨German thermostat company Tado locks previously free app behind fake paywall, claiming it's "marketing tests"⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  True, true. We literally omly have a wood furnace, so are absolutely not affected by this, but I’ll see how reporting potential GDPR violations in the name of someone else works.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨German thermostat company Tado locks previously free app behind fake paywall, claiming it's "marketing tests"⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Sorry that it didn’t land as an obvious joke. With the NSDAP NPD AfD on such a steep rise, I think I have transcended gallows humour and arrived at necromancer humour levels to be able to cope with this reality.

• German thermostat company Tado locks previously free app behind fake paywall, claiming it's "marketing tests"www.youtube.com ↗
  Submitted ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ to ⁨technology@beehaw.org⁩ | ⁨13⁩ ⁨comments⁩
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bill proposed to outlaw downloading Chinese AI models.⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Thank you a lot for the load of information! I just now got to reading it all. I was very skeptical about the fact that it is fed by the output of other LLMs but the way you explain it makes sense to me that it might not be that much of a problem. I guess a super blunt analogy could be “It’s only incest if it’s your children” lol

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨BioWare veterans confirm they were laid off by EA, including senior Dragon Age and Mass Effect devs⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Hahaha the production lead actually suggested that I might have been sick and coughed germs onto the sample sponge or that the sponges themselves were already contaminated during manufacturing, because every single sample showed high counts of pseudomonas.

  Maybe instead she should start listening to us when we tell her that production equipment from 1970 might not be sufficient to run a food production with the hygiene requirements of today. But no, replacing that would cost more money than just taking samples over and over until the results are low enough (probably because by the 37th swab I cleaned the surface better than the production workers)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bill proposed to outlaw downloading Chinese AI models.⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Thanks for the explanation. I don’t understand enough about large language models to give a valuable judgement on this whole Deepseek happening from a technical standpoint. I think it’s excellent to have competition on the market and it feels that the US’ whole “But they’re spying on you and being a national security risk” is a hypocritical outcry when Facebook, OpenAI and the like still exist.

  What do you think about Deepseek? If I understood correctly, it’s being trained on the output of other LLMs, which makes it much more cheap but, to me it seems, also even less trustworthy because now all the actual human training data is missing and instead it’s a bunch of hallucinations, lies and (hopefully more often than not) correctly guessed answers to questions made by humans.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨BioWare veterans confirm they were laid off by EA, including senior Dragon Age and Mass Effect devs⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Thank you for that perspective. It seems to be somewhat similar and thankless to when I get tasked with taking microbio samples from the machines to check for contamination and then get grumpy department leads because the analysis results show over and over again that their cleaning procedure is inefficient.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bill proposed to outlaw downloading Chinese AI models.⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Does open sourcing require you to give out the training data? I thought it only means allowing access to the source code so that you could build it yourself and feed it your own training data.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Reviewers giving high scores to poorly optimised games really grinds my gears⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Additionally, if a day one patch were actually enough to fix these issues, then just delay the game by a day. That way, the launch day gamers won’t suffer through a (sometimes) unplayable experience and possibly leave bad reviews.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨US cloud could soon be illegal in the EU as Trump punches first hole in EU-US data deal, European digital rights groups Noyb says⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Wouldn’t be the worst thing. I don’t mind the EU cooperating with USA but we’ve been piggybacking too comfortably off many US “services” when it comes to consumer tech and the military. That way we forgot to build something on our own in case of “Europe’s Saviour” turning into a political (if not, yet, military) enemy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Itch.io was taken down by funko pop⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Sounds like a job for a group similar to Anonymous, just less focused on actual illegal activities and instead just playing out the legal methods of fighting against corporations.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Valve must address swastikas and other hate on Steam, writes US senator in a letter to Gabe Newell⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Swastikas, okay. Happy merchant, sure. But how is Pepe an alt right symbol now? I read half of an article about it which seems to conclude that it depends on the context the meme is being used in. If it’s by a nazi in their username, it’s a nazi symbol, wow. To me this feels like “serial killers often use butcher knives, so butcher knives are serial killer dogwhistles”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How Self-Driving Cars will Destroy Cities (and what to do about it)⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Watched this video earlier today and I definitely hope German city planners in my area don’t embrace this required car-centric approach to infrastructure more than they did for cities like Munich .