TehPers

@TehPers@beehaw.org

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨China Moved an Entire Historical Building Complex Using Walking Robots - Core77⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Carjacking is going to mean something completely different with those Samsung car robots out in the wild.

  Also, imagine going home after a vacation and your house is just gone. (Yes I can see that they prepared the ground first, and I think your neighbor’s house driving down the street would raise some flags)

  But seriously, this is really impressive. Great job Samsung and Shanghai Construction No 2!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Trump Team Has Full Meltdown Over CNN Story on ICE-Tracking App⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Any clue if it’s open source? That seems like a good opportunity to spread it further and maybe get external support for an Android port.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft pushes staff to use internal AI tools more, and may consider this in reviews. 'Using AI is no longer optional.'⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The latest round of “stuff I wasn’t informed would be installed for me” included enough software to switch me to Linux. I’m still dual booting during the transition, but moving fully over when I can.

  I honestly used to love Windows too. Windows 10 was great, and 11 had problems but was still very usable on the happy path and came with some great improvements over time. These days, it’s just so full of bloatware. I just want my damn computer to be mine, and I’d hope an OS license that retails for $200 would be enough to get them to stop advertising to me and shoving shit down my throat but I guess not.

  Word and Powerpoint are good too, but there’s some real competition there these days. I haven’t needed those on my personal PC in years though, so that’s never been a problem for me, and it’ll continue to not be a problem as long as that software continues to require a subscription.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft pushes staff to use internal AI tools more, and may consider this in reviews. 'Using AI is no longer optional.'⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Insert “good bot” comment here

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨My Couples Retreat With 3 AI Chatbots and the Humans Who Love Them⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  You can see if a friend can run an inferencing server for you. Maybe someone you know can run Open WebUI or something?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft pushes staff to use internal AI tools more, and may consider this in reviews. 'Using AI is no longer optional.'⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  AI at Microsoft has not been optional for months.

  This is org-specific and role-specific, but it’s becoming more and more pushed onto people (as is evident by this article).

  when they need to find someone’s department

  This information is both present in most internal communication tools (org chart), and in the internal directory. Hopefully your friend found it.

  Everything else sounds horrible, and I hope your friend is doing better now.

  (Sauce: “I know a guy”)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anthropic destroyed millions of print books to build its AI models⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Quoting the analysis in the ruling:

  Authors also complain that the print-to-digital format change was itself an infringement not abridged as a fair use (Opp. 15, 25).

  In other words, part of what is being ruled is whether digitizing the books was fair use. Reinforcing that:

  Recall that Anthropic purchased millions of print books for its central library… [further down past stuff about pirated copies] Anthropic purchased millions of print copies to “build a research library” (Opp. Exh. 22 at 145, 148). It destroyed each print copy while replacing it with a digital copy for use in its library (not for sharing nor sale outside the company). As to these copies, Authors do not complain that Anthropic failed to pay to acquire a library copy. Authors only complain that Anthropic changed each copy’s format from print to digital [emphasis mine] (see Opp. 15, 25 & n.15).

  Further down:

  Was scanning the print copies to create digital replacements transformative? [skipping each party’s arguments]

  Here, for reasons narrower than Anthropic offers, the mere format change was fair use.

  The judge ruled that the digitization is fair use.

  Notably, the question about fair use is important because of what the work is being used for. These are being used in a commercial setting to make money, not in a private setting. Additionally, as the works were inputs into the LLM, it is related to the judge’s decision on whether using them to train the LLM is fair use.

  Naturally the pirated works are another story, but this article is about the destruction of the physical copies, which only happened for works they purchased. Pirating for LLMs is unacceptable, but that isn’t the question here.

  The ruling does go on to indicate that Anthropic might have been able to get away with not destroying the originals, but destroying them meant that the format change was “more clearly transformative” as a result, and questions around fair use are largely up to the judge’s opinion on four factors (purpose of use, nature of the work, amount of work used, and effect of use on the market).

  The print original was destroyed. One replaced the other. And, there is no evidence that the new, digital copy was shown, shared, or sold outside the company. [The question about LLM use is earlier in the ruling] This use was even more clearly transformative than those in Texaco, Google, and Sony Betamax (where the number of copies went up by at least one), and, of course, more transformative than those uses rejected in Napster (where the number went up by “millions” of copies shared for free with others).

  … Anthropic already had purchased permanent library copies (print ones). It did not create new copies to share or sell outside.

  TL;DR: Destroying the original had an effect on the judge’s decision and increased the transformativeness of digitizing the books. They might have been fine without doing it, but the judge admitted that it was relevant to the question of fair use.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anthropic destroyed millions of print books to build its AI models⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The books were purchased and destroyed to digitize them. There is nothing wrong with digitizing a work. The books were destroyed because duplicating a work without permission is illegal, but destroying the original means that there is only one copy in the end still.

  The LLM training is the problem. This is not.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨iOS 26 Beta 2 tones down the Liquid Glass effect⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  If everything got updated like this, then that’s an awesome change. What made Aero so nice was that it didn’t interfere with legibility, while Glass threw legibility out the window. Striving for a proper foreground to background contrast ratio should be the bare minimim for a company like Apple, and this improves that significantly.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Another reason to love Linux⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  What’s wrong with 3.13?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Apple to Australians: You’re Too Stupid to Choose Your Own Apps⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s the EFF. They’re not neutral. They advocate for stuff - that’s their whole thing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Only 1 in 3 Euro consumers are trading in their old phones⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  40 months is just 3y 4mo. Do people get new phones every two years or something? I usually just get a new one when my old one’s not working for me anymore.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  A full license still costs more than the whole machine, assuming you just want to buy a license. The machine you bought probably had an OEM license on it though, which is priced differently. Also, there are cheaper places to buy Windows keys online, so nobody should really be spending $200 on a license for their home machine.

  Why it costs $200 for pro and they still try to sell you shit in the settings menu is beyond me. I’m still on the hunt right now for a Linux distro I like that isn’t a nightmare to maintain with a modern NVIDIA GPU though, so I’m stuck with it for now.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Self-Driving Tesla Fails School Bus Test, Hitting Child-Size Dummies… Meanwhile, Robo-Taxis Hit the Road in 2 Weeks.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  School busses, at least in my region (and it appears in the image this is true as well), have flashing red lights at the top to indicate that traffic must stop. The stop sign also comes out, but it’s the flashing red lights that should be a dead giveaway to anybody driving.

  In my region, they also have flashing yellow lights before they stop, indicating that traffic should slow down and prepare to stop.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Self-Driving Tesla Fails School Bus Test, Hitting Child-Size Dummies… Meanwhile, Robo-Taxis Hit the Road in 2 Weeks.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Truly autonomous driving already exists. It’s called trains.

  Anyone trying to sell fully autonomous cars is severely underestimating the complexity of driving. Under highly controlled conditions, it may be possible, but I doubt these people are programming edge cases like planes crashing onto freeways and severe hail. There are far too many times when it takes good judgement to handle a situation properly.

  Still, I’m all for the progress this has made towards helping people drive safer. But the best solution is to just stop using cars IMO, just that it’d be problematic to force that for a number of reasons.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨In 3.5 years, Notepad.exe has gone from “barely maintained” to “it writes for you”⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Notepad went from barely maintained and barely useable (it couldn’t even handle undo/redo in a reasonable way) to surprisingly decent at basic text editing to now bloated with useless shit. They were so close.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google's new AI video tool floods internet with real-looking clips⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  This has been true for a very long time. There are entire generations that want to look in real life how face filters on Instagram and Snapchat made them and others look on social media.

  This is just another step in that direction, and it’s depressing how bad it is already.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨China begins assembling its supercomputer in space⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Imagine the latency on a data center in space. Uplink/downlink every time your server gets an inferencing request? Lol.

  I could see it being fine for longer running asynchronous requests, but that would be if the cost/benefit made any sense at all, and if the servers had any resources worth talking about.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨China begins assembling its supercomputer in space⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I have a server at home built from old parts and some refurbished drives with nearly that much storage. 2800 satellites like this would come out to around 230 of my servers, or ~7PB.

  A single 2U server with 12 drives, each with 24TB storage, can hold 288TB. It would take ~24 of those to get to 7PB, which is a lot of servers, but not so many that someone with quite a lot of savings couldn’t afford it.

  Also, the servers on the ground can be cooled by, idk, air if needed. Or water. Or I guess liquid nitrogen if you want. Point is there’s an atmosphere for the heat to dissipate to, unlike space.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft Raises the Price of All Xbox Series Consoles, Xbox Games Confirmed to Hit $80 This Holiday - IGN⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  When you tariff them by over 100% of their value, they tend to cost more to import.

  My whole comment was on the tariffs specifically, and there is a 100% chance they affect sales in the US. Even with cost reductions in manufacturing over the total lifetime of the console, there’s no chance they cut costs enough to keep up with the tariffs, and there is no chance they planned for the tariffs to be this high in their planning.

  Outside the US? These tariffs aren’t applied, but raising the prices globally limits the impact of them on one of their largest markets since they can amortize the cost across all their markets instead of just one.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft Raises the Price of All Xbox Series Consoles, Xbox Games Confirmed to Hit $80 This Holiday - IGN⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This depends on the markets. For example, if prices in the US raised 50% due to Tariffs, then they might lose one of their largest markets, but if they can raise them 10% globally, then they can potentially limit that loss and still have a chance (as much as possible anyway) in all of their markets.

  Either way, they need to raise prices because their costs have gone up. It’s a question of where that money is coming from, and how they can reduce its impact on them as much as possible.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨World’s First ‘Splashless’ Urinal keeps the Floor Clean and your Pants Pee-free - Yanko Design⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It also tends to spray under low pressure, which is unfortunately both at the start and end. Mid-piss, it’s generally fine from my experience.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨World’s First ‘Splashless’ Urinal keeps the Floor Clean and your Pants Pee-free - Yanko Design⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  If you’re asking if I sound before pissing, no. If you’re asking if I go out of my way to piss on myself, also no.

  Don’t claim your piss shoots out like a laser pointer. Nobody will believe you lol.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨World’s First ‘Splashless’ Urinal keeps the Floor Clean and your Pants Pee-free - Yanko Design⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I appreciate improvements, but I don’t think this will solve the problem of pee shooting out in random directions (occasionally vertically down) before setting on a gentle spray in all directions at once. It’s not even like we’re free-handed firehosing the stream or anything - even carefully aimed, it can decide to just fuck off to the right for no damn reason.

  Anyway, all this to say the floors will still be sticky, but hopefully less so.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The inarguable case for banning social media for teens⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There should really be a different term for Instagram/TikTok/FB/etc style social media sites (I call them “push-style” social media, though “algorithmic” is probably a better term) and websites like public forums, chatting platforms, etc. The former is what I think this article is talking about. The latter seems both fine and necessary these days, even in some cases among children.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨But what if I really want a faster horse?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Space, apparently.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨UN Database WIPO ALERT Helps to Facilitate Globalized Pirate Site Blocking * TorrentFreak⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Another way to get rid of piracy sites is to improve consumer protections. Maybe make it possible to actually own high quality media, and do something about the streaming service BS and some content being unavailable through any other means? That might help with piracy.

  I say this of course as someone who tends to prefer paying for media, but ran into situations where I literally could not or the process of doing so was not worth the effort.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Discord heightens ad focus by introducing video ads to mobile apps in June - Ars Technica⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The last thing I want to do with complete strangers is give them my phone number lol. Aside from obvious privacy concerns and call quality concerns, Discord is internet-based, so I don’t need cell service or international calling to talk to people.

  Screen sharing during voice calls is super helpful as well. It’s a pretty major feature of Discord, Teams, and I believe Skype (RIP), but Teams is not really any better than Discord and a lot more bloated.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Discord heightens ad focus by introducing video ads to mobile apps in June - Ars Technica⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Discord comes with other issues, but I would be fine with services offering an ad-supported free tier and an ad-free paid tier. That’s been a thing for a while. If Nitro gets rid of these ads, then that seems like a possibly sustainable approach to me.

  Of course, this is ignoring Discord’s other issues, like their handling of user data. I’d love a service like Discord that was fully e2ee, even if it had an ad-supported free tier (without tracking) and a paid ad-free tier. Existing alternatives often lack some Discord features, like screen sharing and voice chats.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mom horrified by Character.AI chatbots posing as son who died by suicide - Ars Technica⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Someone close to me gave up on the hotlines in the US and now just uses ChatGPT. It’s no therapist, but at least it’ll hold a conversation. If only the hotlines here weren’t so absurdly understaffed.