TehPers

@TehPers@beehaw.org

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Self-Driving Tesla Fails School Bus Test, Hitting Child-Size Dummies… Meanwhile, Robo-Taxis Hit the Road in 2 Weeks.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨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.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨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”⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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 ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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 ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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 ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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 ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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 ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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 ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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 ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨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 ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨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 ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨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 ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨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.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨System76 or Framework for Linux gaming⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I have a 16 with a discrete GPU. Couldn’t recommend it more. It does sound like a rocket ship sometimes, but performs like a midrange tower, which is exactly what I wanted.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why can't we go back to small phones?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  My thumb does not happen to be 7 inches long. Unfortunately, app designers seem to believe it is and put their hamburger menus in the top left.

  And my hand’s not small. It’s moderately sized, I’ll have you know.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Meta fires 20 employees for leaking⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Sounds like they need some Flex Tape. One of the employees they fired might even have some lying around if they ask nicely.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's your "this is totally fine and I'm going to have a great time" FPS?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  For me, it highly depends. Turn-based strategy games, I can easily play at a much lower framerate (30 is fine tbh though I always appreciate more). FPS-style games? 60 is a bare minimum, but 100+ is what I would consider to be enjoyable.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mozilla's New AI Detector Add-On for Firefox⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s an entire category of machine learning dedicated to having two AIs “fight” against each other. One generates something while the other classifies it as either AI generated or genuine.

  Anyway, this is a complete tangent. Just thought it was interesting. AI detector tools for LLMs aren’t usually very accurate, unfortunately.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Pirate Party of Greece on the Stop Killing Games Initiative – A Few Modest Proposals⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  A Few Modest Proposals

  If anyone was going into this expecting satire like I was, the article appears not to be satirical.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Chinese AI lab DeepSeek massively undercuts OpenAI on pricing — and that's spooking tech stocks⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Where I disagree with you is not that the US is bad - the US is terrible, and there is plenty of evidence of that. I don’t even disagree with there being censorship in the US. In fact, Trump is objectively a piece of shit who wants nothing more than to become Xi/Putin himself.

  What I disagree with is equating censorship in the US with Chinese censorship. I can call Trump a piece of shit online without worrying that the FBI will show up at my door. The models that are trained in the west will happily entertain any (non-violent) political discussions I want. There may be bias, and Trump may be trying to create censorship, but it’s not quite to that level yet.

  Having personally received the bizarre internal agency emails circulating this week encouraging me to snitch out my colleagues to help root out the evils of DEIA thought in US gov’t the last week has only crystallized it for me.

  I am concerned that the US will become as bad as China in terms of censorship, which is part of why I’m trying to leave right now. However, it’s not there yet. They are not yet equal, nor are they even close yet.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Chinese AI lab DeepSeek massively undercuts OpenAI on pricing — and that's spooking tech stocks⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s a strong argument that any consumer facing chatbot AI is “censored”.

  If the model is not allowed to spew Nazi propaganda or tell the user to end themselves, that is censorship. Censorship is not automatically bad, but the kind of censorship can make it bad.

  This reeks of excluding all nuance to equate two things that are equal only at surface level. You’re bad because you punched the other person (ignoring that they stabbed your SO 15 times and kicked your dog across the room).

  Chinese state censorship is well researched and extremely well documented. It does not equate to censorship against violent or inappropriate language. It is political censorship.

  At best, western models are biased, not politically censored. You can make them say just about anything, but they will bias towards a particular viewpoint. Even if intentional, this is explainable by evaluating their training data, which itself is biased because western society is biased. You are not prevented from personally expressing or even convincing a western model from expressing dissenting political viewpoints.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨TikTok Starts Working Again After Trump Says He Will Stall a Ban⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Imagine being elected president then just deciding, entirely on your own, that a law (that you helped pass) just shouldn’t exist. So much for checks and balances.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨U.S. FTC Surveillance Pricing Study Indicates Wide Range of Personal Data Used to Set Individualized Consumer Prices⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  FTC learns that the grass is green.

  I’d have confidence in them doing something if Lina Khan weren’t on her way out. Even if she somehow stuck around, there’s no way that random court in Texas is going to let her do her job.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨low spec gaming looking pretty sunny right now gang⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Don’t forget Intel’s latest GPU launches either! For custom PCs, there are some really affordable and relatively powerful GPUs available now (for the price). Despite their performance otherwise, Intel is killing it in the GPU space now.

  For a lower spec build, you could definitely put together something with a 12100F (or other cheap CPU) and a battlemage GPU. Depending on where you get all the parts, you might be able to hit sub-$500 and get great 1080p performance, or for sure sub-$1k 1080p and likely 1440p performance.

  Handhelds also have a lot of good options available too. To save some cash, you can get low end Steam Deck and swap the hard drive yourself. Got myself the cheapest LCD variant and swapped the tiny drive in it with a 2TB drive off Amazon.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Discussion: Cybertruck involved in attempted bombing in Las Vegas auto-locked after explosion⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Cybertrucks have a lot of problems, but this seemed to be a clearly intentional explosion by somebody.

  That aside, can Tesla just unlock any of their vehicles remotely and access all the camera footage on it? That seems like a much bigger problem, especially since Mr. Musk is practically our next president.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Chinese ebook reader Boox ditches GPT for state-censored China LLM pushing propaganda⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  With how much hate I see about the US here, I could say the same thing there.

  Calling out people for doing bad shit is kinda normal. It just so happens that China, Russia, and the US do a lot of bad shit, so they get called out a lot. If it bugs you, then just filter out posts by specific people or with specific keywords.