TehPers

@TehPers@beehaw.org

• ⁨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)?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s not really (which says more about corporations than anything).

• ⁨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)?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Yep! You would need not only an AI superintelligence capable of reflecting and adapting, but legislation which holds liable those superintelligences and grants them the rights and obligations of a human. Because there is no concept of reward of punishment to a LLM, they can never be replacements for people.

• ⁨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)?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  There is a fundamental limitation of all LLMs that prevents it from doing as much as you might think, regardless of how accurate they are (and they are not):

  LLMs cannot take liability. When they make mistakes, they cannot take responsibility for those mistakes. The person who used the LLM will always be liable instead.

  So any automation as a result of LLMs removing jobs will end up punting that liability to the next person up the chain. Management will literally have nobody to blame but themselves, and that’s their worst nightmare.

  Anyway, this is of course assuming capabilities that don’t exist.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Here’s what ads on your $2,000 Samsung smart fridge will look like⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Graham Platner isn’t an elected official, nor are any of the three legislators named Graham Platner, nor are any of Louis Rossman’s other names Graham Platner.

  Please, if you’re going to troll, make a better attempt at it. Or even better, take it somewhere else.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Here’s what ads on your $2,000 Samsung smart fridge will look like⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  He literally put out a video not that long ago praising three democratic legislators for proposing a right to repair bill. Weird impression.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Here’s what ads on your $2,000 Samsung smart fridge will look like⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  By “crackers” I mean “black hat hackers”.

  Ok I just misread it then, sorry!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Here’s what ads on your $2,000 Samsung smart fridge will look like⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  What they’re doing should be outright illegal in most countries; it’s equivalent to changing a contract unilaterally after both parties signed it.

  Update to [COMPANY NAME]'s Policies

  Yes, this should be illegal, but it’s already common practice. I’m just hoping that enough of this will eventually get people to stop buying these products, and hopefully we can start seeing some real legislation against it in some countries.

  Additionally, I’d strongly advise against buying any sort of “smart” device, unless you’re pretty sure the benefits of connecting your toaster to the internet outweighs all the risks.

  This should be obvious at this point. “Smart” just means “internet-connected”, and we already know what happens to every device that connects to a remote server during regular operation: telemetry (and not the nice debugging kind but the “what do you use” kind), and advertisements.

  Including corporations and crackers

  The “crackers” part of this confuses me. Samsung is a Korean company. The chairman’s name is Lee Jae-yong (이재용). Samsung NA’s CEO is Yoonie Joung. Maybe I’m misreading this?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The oldest Minecraft server, MinecraftOnline, is being shut down by Microsoft⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  This seems entirely tangential to the thread. At least from what I’m reading, they’re discussing whether Britain and Germany allow freedom of speech. Nobody in the thread seems to be talking about MS’s stance.

  I think the statement that Microsoft is not your friend is noncontroversial, a given, and applies to every large corporation on the planet.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The oldest Minecraft server, MinecraftOnline, is being shut down by Microsoft⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I recommend you look into Minecraft specifically because the model has its quirks.

  I’m familiar. The first server I hosted was an alpha hmod server for some friends, and I’ve played a lot since then.

  What MS is doing doesn’t prevent anyone from connecting to a server. It only puts a wall in the way, saying essentially to both the host and the players that this server violates MS’s terms for hosting, but not preventing them from doing so. Server owners can bypass this restriction in a few minutes with a single restart (assuming they aren’t using a modded server that can apply the change at runtime).

  This isn’t unique to Minecraft. Games have supported custom servers for as long as I’ve been alive, and more recently as software became more and more internet-connected, restrictions on those servers have also been enforced. Being self-hosted or a custom lobby on a game doesn’t change this - the server software is still owned by MS and licensed to the users.

  If anything, that it is so easy to bypass this shows that it’s nothing more than signaling. I would be much more concerned if the solution weren’t simply to change online mode to false. Sure moderation is another story, but there are alternative solutions, like IP banning.

  Also, Mojang/Microsoft should be seen as an enemy of the common people for many reasons - including their Copilot AI. If the Chat Reports feature (where purchased accounts are neutered because of automated chat reports) isn’t reason enough to dislike Microsoft, consider the following: The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

  There are many, many reasons to dislike Microsoft. They have made many terrible decisions in the past, ethically speaking. This does not implicitly mean that every decision they make is bad or harmful. It only raises the question of intent behind decisions, and here the intent seems clear to me: they do not want their brand associated with the kind of speech allowed on that server.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The oldest Minecraft server, MinecraftOnline, is being shut down by Microsoft⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  The issue is whether they can limit speech on their platform. Their own hypocracy means absolutely nothing. They are free to be as inconsistent as they want so long as their rules stick to their own software and platforms.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The oldest Minecraft server, MinecraftOnline, is being shut down by Microsoft⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Are you ever planning to address the actual topic? Or do you just hurl insults?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨International Criminal Court to ditch Microsoft Office for European open source alternative⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  It will probably end up running better for them anyway.

  Seriously, I use Office at work, and I wonder everyday why anyone subjects themselves to it. Then I subject myself to it because that’s what I’m supposed to use. But I sure as hell don’t at home.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The oldest Minecraft server, MinecraftOnline, is being shut down by Microsoft⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  ICE is using Halo to recruit?

  That aside, the fuck does Halo have to do with Mojang? Unless you’re saying it’s the Xbox people as a whole I guess, which makes a lot more sense to me. I saw a bunch of people talking about Palestine and assumed you were just talking about that somehow.

  Anyway, none of this really explains to me why they should not be allowed to limit speech on their own platform, regardless of what speech is limited. People can always pack up and go somewhere else. This isn’t the government coming in and arresting some people for having an opinion they don’t like. This is a company coming in and saying they want that speech somewhere else.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Pacifist's Guide to Civilization 6⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve seen a few Deity pacifist runs before, and a lot of my runs end up being pacifist as well when I want to focus more on city building and less on combat. Managing the diplomacy with AI civs is surprisingly not that hard in Civ 6, and surprise wars can be uncommon if you’re comfortable with building military units as a deterrent even if you never actually use them.

  My favorite run that I’ve seen of this was actually with Khmer, using them to rush a culture victory as quickly as possible. It’s an interesting play pattern of managing relations to avoid wars and keep trade routes open (for bonus to tourism), city planning from the start for good natural park spots, etc.

  Regardless, I definitely recommend a mod for map ticks. For the early game city planning, it makes such a huge difference and makes pacifist runs much more viable. You usually have more resources (naturally) for city building, so planning it from the start makes the turns go by much faster.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The oldest Minecraft server, MinecraftOnline, is being shut down by Microsoft⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  While I would normally agree with this argument, this also comes right after they announced that they will stop obfuscating the code to make the game easier to mod. Most other software? Sure, changing the terms after the sale and all is shit. This? Write a mod. It doesn’t take that long if you know some Java. Or play on an earlier version I guess, or put the server in offline mode, etc.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The oldest Minecraft server, MinecraftOnline, is being shut down by Microsoft⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Mojang as well? Because MS employs hundreds of thousands of employees making their own decisions and owning their own work. I don’t see how Minecraft has anything to do with the poor decisions made on Azure.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The oldest Minecraft server, MinecraftOnline, is being shut down by Microsoft⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Not exactly. This would be like Reddit blocking links to Lemmy on Reddit.

  MS owns Minecraft and the client. They can’t stop them from running the server software, but they don’t need to connect to it from the client.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The oldest Minecraft server, MinecraftOnline, is being shut down by Microsoft⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  If you want to say what you want, go ahead. Nobody is required to host that speech or allow that speech to be hosted on their platform or software.

  MS is attacking free speech here in the same way that a moderator attacks free speech blocking a Lemmy server. Nobody’s saying you can’t use a modded client to connect to their server if they self-host it, but they’re defederating on the main client because they want no association with it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The oldest Minecraft server, MinecraftOnline, is being shut down by Microsoft⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  While freedom of speech means you can yell whatever racial slurs you want, it doesn’t mean you are free from consequences.

  This seems to be the MS stance as well, and they seem unwilling to associate with that kind of speech, so they want to cut that connection off as a consequence.

  MS isn’t telling them not to speak. MS is telling them to take their speech somewhere else.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨X is launching a marketplace for inactive handles⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Priority handles will be free and “often include full names, multi-word phrases, or alphanumeric combinations.” Rare handles, on the other hand, will be a paid option, and “may be priced anywhere from $2,500 to over seven figures, depending on demand and uniqueness.”

  Ok so if it’s a “high demand” handle then I guess they bend you over for it. Domains are like that too, but it isn’t exactly something to strive for.

  But more importantly, if you ever downgrade your X subscription, your account will revert back to your original username, and you’ll lose access to the one you snagged through the marketplace.

  I really hope someone pays 7 figures for one only to get fucked by this. I want to see it so badly.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Spit On, Sworn At, and Undeterred: What It’s Like to Own a Cybertruck⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Nah, it’s futuristic. It’s the embodiment of the future where car manufacturers sell you rust buckets full of tracking and make you pay way too much for it.

  I’ve seen some wrapped ones that look neat though, and anyone who owns a Cybertruck and isn’t wrapping it is just wasting more money than they already did buying it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Big Week For Unions At Blizzard As Hearthstone Team Also Votes ‘Yes’ [Aftermath]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I wouldn’t put it past Blizzard to suddenly decide to axe Hearthstone. As sad as that would be, it already has a pretty dwindling playerbase from my understanding.

  Although, to be fair, WOTC has been the best advertising recently for any card game that isn’t MTG, so maybe they’re seeing a surge now.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Name a game that you found SO FUN, but no one talks about it anymore.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  n

  (The sequels are just as fun, but I saw a post about n++'s 10th anniversary last night so I guess that doesn’t count.)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Name a game that you found SO FUN, but no one talks about it anymore.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  SSX 3 was basically all I played back when that came out. That game was so fun.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Masters of timing, Microsoft: Just one day from Windows 10 EOL and apparently the official Media Creation Tool isn't working⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Windows 11 also comes with some new, great features that you’ll miss by not upgrading! Your windows will sometimes decide not to repaint their surfaces, especially under load or while screen sharing. You’ll have a OneDrive ad in the main settings page. Copilot and Teams will randomly install themselves when installing your forced updates. And we can’t forget about all the work being done to ensure you have no choice but to link your account with a MS account!

  Look, it used to be tolerable. The bugs made me install Linux, and I haven’t missed it at all.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 still has secrets fans haven't found, says director⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Sounds like you just started the game! If you like the gameplay, keep going. There’s more to the story.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Framework under fire for Omarchy/DHH/Hyprland support?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Right to repair does not match well with right wing politics (TL;DR AuthRight need control and in lib-right absolute capitalism having reparable stuff is a surefire to kill your company ) but it’s a murky and difficult subject so I understand why it’s not mentioned.

  While I agree, especially around farming, right to repair is a massive topic and advocated for strongly. It’s weird that they’d then advocate against it with their other views, but logic hasn’t existed in politics for longer than I’ve been alive, so yeah.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Framework under fire for Omarchy/DHH/Hyprland support?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I can say the same about my Framework 16. Best laptop I’ve owned, in terms of the features I care about anyway.

  But also, I’d like to be able to advocate for it without worrying about the association.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Framework under fire for Omarchy/DHH/Hyprland support?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The purpose of these communities isn’t to help people learn to not be assholes. A Framework community, for example, is a community centered around Framework’s products and ecosystems.

  As far as responsibility, a community is built by its people, and it is not my responsibility to change someone’s views. I have no sympathy towards people who would harm or advocate/celebrate the harm of myself or anyone close to me. They can fuck off.

  These views are harmful to communities because when acted on, they exclude entire groups from the community. They tear apart communities, turning it into a political “us vs them” rather than discussions about the original topic.

  Nobody is saying people with these views can’t be members of the community, but that they are required to accept the presence of those they are prejudiced against in order to contrbute to it. But if they make the rules, they will forbid those they are prejudiced against from being members at all.

  If someone’s actively interested in a discussion and wants to learn, then that’s one thing. But it’s still off topic for most communities.

  Note that none of what I just said is specific to far-right views. It’s just most common with them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨OpenAI signs $1 trillion worth of chip deals to feed its AI habit⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That anyone would even imagine a Dyson Sphere being remotely possible to build is beyond me.

  Even supposing you managed to build one somehow, the maintenance cost would scale with the size (and therefore be astronomical, in the literal sense).