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- Comment on Nintendo Is Already Punishing Switch 2 Users Over Piracy ‘Suspicions’ 3 days ago:
The change in EULA was the hint; I have not; and will not be buying any Switch 2 games, consoles or related merchandise. Nor will I be paying any further into my Switch beyond NSO as I have or buying any games for the Switch that are not explicitly on a physical cart.
I don’t buy games often anyways and would rather support Pocketpair and Palworld and Valve. So that’s where my discretionary spend and gift requests will go henceforth.
In general Nintendo is having it’s villainous arc; and I don’t believe they will survive it…given that they’ve run out or demoted their creatives and visionaries to workers. Nintendo is dead; what’s left is a greedy and soulless shell that behaves more like a gang or mafia. Given their History; that doesn’t surprise me.
- Comment on Anxiety is the most common mental health problem – here’s how tech could help manage it 1 week ago:
- Comment on Anxiety is the most common mental health problem – here’s how tech could help manage it 1 week ago:
Hell. To. The. No.
This is no different than the electroshock ‘therapies’ that were pioneered from 1930 and onward through the 1990s. This is based in medical quackery and this is highly problematic that it once again is being suggested.
- Comment on It’s official: There are no Nintendo Switch 2 reviews. Here’s what that means for us, and you [VGC] 2 weeks ago:
Nintendo is clearly hiding something; they clearly are highly afraid of critical reviews and this is clearly a strategy that is not unlike what Nvidia, led by Jensen Huang, does.
What they are hiding will remain to be seen. I’m sure that the bad reviews will not go away…only be delayed by a week or so.
If you are wise; you will avoid buying the Switch 2 for at least a month. If you can’t wait a month to see what Nintendo is hiding; just be advised; you bought into it blind and have no right to complain about the bad reviews later, nor should you take it personally when people start talking poorly about the Switch 2.
- Comment on Tinder tests letting users set a 'height preference' 2 weeks ago:
In a perfectly reasonable, civilized and rational world; this would be seen as an additional feature in “Bad taste”.
There is no rational reason for the company to permit any kind of detailed filtering; the longer you’re swiping through photos, the longer you use the app and the chance that you potentially give them money for services remains.
There is no rational reason to discriminate against people based on their height either. While it’s quite natural to have preferences, generally speaking, you know when you find someone attractive. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of someone genuinely only attracted to specifically only tall or short people; there’s usually something else there behind the reason. That reason could be any number of things from feelings to experiences and more.
Attraction, much like people, is a complicated and not so straightforward thing. It’s reason for being isn’t based on rationality always, we don’t always size up our mates the way a computer would. In general it’s oftentimes emotional, and attractiveness can be something that happens when someone manages to emotionally convey an appearance or vibe that matches something the one feeling the attraction might be looking for.
- Comment on End of 10 - Windows ten is ending. Microsoft wants you to buy a new computer. But what if you could make your current one fast and secure again? 1 month ago:
This is a good a start as any to market Linux to the common end-user. It’s not about the software being better; it’s about the software offering the user some advantage, like not needing to buy new hardware.
Linux is, far from perfect still. It has a metric ton of “foot guns” that cannot be pointed anywhere away from the feet; the user MUST move their feet away. It has a lot of pain points and still lacks polish in some ways. Most things mostly just work; but may the gods and goddesses help you if something for some reason does not work, or does not work as expected for any reason. Coaxing it to work exactly as expected might seem impossible for average users.
Then there’s the issue of Linux having only volunteer support in most cases. Getting help from an overworked and under-interested FLOSS developer is like pulling teeth; even when they’re literally the only person on the planet who can solve your problem
That being said; Linux is free and mostly usable. 9/10 times it does work and can save you a lot of hassle and headache if all your computing needs are basic and predictable.
- Comment on People are using Google's new AI model to remove watermarks from images | TechCrunch 3 months ago:
The solution to this is subtle and gentle amounts of 2D Perlin Noise, as well as a touch of Gaussian noise on and around the watermark as well.
The more you can cloak the area around the watermark with subtly increasing amounts of noise; the harder it is for AI to manipulate it without mangling the image in general. (or leaving the watermark behind)
Similarly; leaving smaller artifacts like small signatures or wordmarks embedded in the image also makes sense, particularly small signatures hugging things like lineart in inconspicuous places or hidden in places with intricate detail.
Tools like Glaze and Nightshade also exist to “Poison” images at creation-time such that, if they go viral and get re-shared and AI remixed heavily, they won’t be as easily usable by AI models to knock off your works. Yes, this technique is ineffective for existing works, as an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. These tools use many different techniques beyond just subtly masking the entire image with multiple layers of imperceptible perlin noise. Which is a task that could take you several hours to get to looking right in your favorite image editing suite, as you’ll be poking and prodding and tweaking that slider to maximize protection while minimizing it’s visual perturbations.
- Comment on Is This How Reddit Ends? 4 months ago:
- Comment on Please ban data caps, Internet users tell FCC 7 months ago:
I’m suspecting these companies are trying to use Data Caps to “Deter Piracy” without saying as much.
Unfortunately; the reality now is that these Data Caps do not just affect rampant pirates or people who download a lot of things. They are trying to justify an outdated policy that no longer works as intended; and hoping customers won’t notice them taking a bit more profit off the top.
They’ve been more than caught now and the practice must stop or customers will get federal regulators involved
- Comment on Low Tech Magazine: Communal Luxury: The Public Bathhouse 8 months ago:
I think not.
We’ve been bathing in private for the past 200 or so years hereabouts. It is difficult, if not improbable, to reverse such a trend in society and culture so quickly.
While I may actually feel this is a thing that society might benefit from; I don’t see this happening outside of nations with a lower societal taboo on nudity. It works in Japan simply because that’s how their entire society has been structured from the start, and their society largely agreed that communal bathhouses made much more sense logistically and economically; largely due to the fact that it is an island nation, and land space is more precious there.
Furthermore; I personally also prefer privacy. As a trans individual; that privacy is strongly necessary to me for many valid reasons concerning my own safety and health; and for ensuring others do not feel unsafe; regardless of their reasons for feeling that way.
Society is not ready for this kind of thing anymore and has mostly chosen to abandon the practice to antiquity.
- Comment on After is a new dating app that tries to tackle ghosting 8 months ago:
I don’t think this app is problematic. I think it’s attempting something interesting. Whether that will work or not will remain to be seen.
As with many “untested” dating app concepts; “May the user(/buyer) beware.” My advice to people who doubt the app is to ‘avoid it’. There’s plenty of valid reasons why you may feel that it won’t work. I’m not going to invalidate those feelings nor those experiences.
Enough people will vote with their feet; either by using it, using and quitting it, or not using it at all that we will probably see within a few years if it works or if it quickly dies and languishes in obscurity.
I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing how well things performed in 5 years from now for this concept. I do feel it could help, especially if the boilerplate rejection text is designed intelligently enough. I certainly feel like enough people struggle with mental health that what they are trying to do could be beneficial to encouraging people not to act impulsively. I think providing mental health resources right there in the app may allow rejectees to seek help they need; instead of pinning their hopes on finding a potential mate to address their issues, then lashing out at, or stalking, those potential mates when they’re rejected.
To be clear; I do understand that many kinds of scary or bad experiences are a thing for some dating app users. I simply feel that, for those people who have not had such an experience and might feel safe or safer with such a messaging mechanic in a dating app; I do not see the harm in it.
At no point do I recommend this app anyone who feels that it’s unsafe to do anything but ‘ghost’ a bad match-up.
^Please,^ ^do^ ^not^ ^try^ ^to^ ^change^ ^my^ ^mind.^
- Comment on AI tool cuts unexpected deaths in hospital by 26%, Canadian study finds 9 months ago:
Agreed; when an AI is used to bring things to the attention of a qualified human handler; the two working in tandem can be pretty effective.
AI alone should never make decisions; and humans should always evaluate an AI’s findings carefully before acting on them.
- Comment on My dead father is “writing” me notes again 9 months ago:
We can no longer trust anything that is specifically sent to us via digital means.
Technologies like the Document Scanner and even the Photocopier will now have to encode secret data to authenticate that a real, functioning machine has digitized the document.
This can in fact, cause a great amount of trouble for people.
People will be required to never digitize themselves handwriting all letters of the alphabet; lest their handwriting be vulnerable to an AI learning it.
- Comment on Chrome will block one of its biggest ad blockers 10 months ago:
Firefox is open source. It’s not going anywhere; even if Mozilla Co. goes broke and closes down the Mozilla Foundation.
- Comment on Logitech has an idea for a “forever mouse” that requires a subscription 10 months ago:
Most reasonable consumers won’t go for this. it’s a greed play.
Give me mice that I own; not mice to rent.
- Comment on Logitech has an idea for a “forever mouse” that requires a subscription 10 months ago:
Disgusting. Utterly disgusting. This idea belongs in the garbage bin.
- Comment on 98% compatibility 11 months ago:
Linux must achieve 100% compatibility. Otherwise the doubters will not shut up.
- Comment on Alternative YouTube clients having issues loading videos 11 months ago:
github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/10397#issuecommen…
Looks like there’s several causes.
- Comment on Alternative YouTube clients having issues loading videos 11 months ago:
I should point out that this isn’t always “Google is trying to block adblockers” again!
Google can, will, and does simply change how the YouTube watch pages look, feel and operate behind the scenes quite regularly.
Thankfully we have people like those at the FreeTube, NewPipe and yt-dlp projects to sift through those changes and update the code to cope with the new output.
- Comment on Android Dialer App Recommendations? 11 months ago:
In general; I strongly don’t recommend anything on the Google Play Store except the Google Dialer.
If the Google Dialer is not to your liking; I strongly recommend only trying Dialers you will find on F-Droid.org
- Comment on Spotify Premium User Slams App Over Audiobook Feature 1 year ago:
They could certainly “clearly pass the cost” of this on to the user by not offering Audiobooks to users who didn’t pay for the “+ # of Audiobooks” tier of Spotify Premium; instead of this horrible enshittified crap where it cuts you off midsentence like a greedy telecomm provider would. Or perhaps their limitation should be on how many titles you can listen to concurrently in a certain time period. (So if you open X books; that’s it; you have to shelve one or wait it out)
It certainly means that Spotify did a bad job at negotiating their rights to these audiobooks as well. That matters too; because that makes the product worse; and that should never have been allowed to happen. If they couldn’t have offered it nicely, they could’ve just not offered it at all or added it to a higher service tier so that the cost is diverted better.
- Comment on OpenAI Insider Estimates 70 Percent Chance That AI Will Destroy or Catastrophically Harm Humanity 1 year ago:
It isn’t AI itself, it’s AI as a vector for corporate recklessness.
This. 1000% this. Many of Issac Asimov novels warned about this sort of thing too; as did any number of novels inspired by Asimov.
It’s not that we didn’t provide the AI with rules. It’s not that the AI isn’t trying not to harm people. It’s that humans, being the clever little things we are, are far more adept at deceiving and tricking AI into saying things and using that to justify actions to gain benefit.
…Understandably this is how that is being done. By selling AI that isn’t as intelligent as it is being trumpeted as. As long as these corporate shysters can organize a team to crap out a “Minimally Viable Product” they’re hailed as miracle workers and get paid fucking millions.
Ideally all of this should violate the many, many laws of many, many civilized nations…but they’ve done some black magic with that too; by attacking and weakening laws and institutions that can hold them liable for this and even completely ripping out or neutering laws that could cause them to be held accountable by misusing their influence.
- Comment on Google must face £13bn advertising lawsuit - UK court - BBC News 1 year ago:
13 billion Euro British Franc Moneys?
That’s pocket change to Google.
Note: the above message is satirical. Do not reply.
- Comment on Im converting my boyfriend to linux, first step thigh high! 1 year ago:
Android rates as kneesocks at best; if you’ve rooted and installed a custom ROM
- Comment on Rabbit Gaslit Me, So I Dug Deeper | Coffeezilla 1 year ago:
This is pretty clearly a company practiced at “riding the waves” of what’s popular to sell absolute bullshit.
They appear to raise millions, develop what looks like a minimally viable product for it’s development phase, then pull the rug out and exit with the bag of cash, quickly pivoting away from discovered scams and name changing to avoid too much consumer ire or regulator scrutiny.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the CEO or anyone else at the top levels of this company has an entire resume full of these sorts of ‘scam and run’ operations, the kinds that melt into the background and vanish the moment any real strong consumer or regulatory/legal scrutiny hits it.
Basically this is investment fraud 101; you find something you can trick people into investing into, then spend as little as possible to get a ‘minimally viable product’ that appears plausible enough to give you time to exit stage left with all the fat cash you can take. Because this sort of operation does produce something; oftentimes they get away cleanly; because they did do something and oftentimes they obscure or obfuscate and hide the evidence of any planned malfeasance; usually the only places with any record of it is in the mind of the CEO or other executive(s), if they’re in on the scam too.
Sometimes the CEO gets ‘caught’ intentionally and then fired…or they just run the company into the ground. That latter case can let them off the hook with a tidy golden parachute as well; depending on the circumstances and what they ‘negotiated’ when they were ‘hired’.
- Comment on Chinese social media companies remove posts ‘showing off wealth and worshipping money’ while the gap between the country's rich and poor widens 1 year ago:
The shoe fits on the other foot as well. Both extreme communism and extreme capitalism have tendencies to turn into dystopian nightmares.
If ‘1984’ alarms you; so too should current works like ‘Ready, Player One’ or ‘Ender’s Game’ and it’s associated sequels.
Extremism in general tends to not work. I don’t pretend to know what the exact right balance is; but it does exist.
- Comment on Chinese social media companies remove posts ‘showing off wealth and worshipping money’ while the gap between the country's rich and poor widens 1 year ago:
Censorship like this is one fast track to things like the French Revolution.
- Comment on New Windows AI feature records everything you’ve done on your PC 1 year ago:
NOPE!
You cannot pay me to use Windows 11.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 year ago:
This kind of website sounds kind of problematic and useless. The ability to follow a specific person’s post is highly useful, and highly necessary oftentimes. If you want to reduce the friction that “Following” induces; you simply need to not disclose to the users how many people are following them, nor do you need to disclose how many followers a user has. Problems solved.
The same goes for Likes. Nobody but the sender of the like should know about that like. Instead of keeping counts for the recipients to obsess over; calculate a reasonable percentage of people who we can guess “like” the post algorithmically based on views of the post and clicked likes. I get that the feedback mechanism is necessary; but it should be a gentle one that simply encourages people to post what people like and will view. This percentage should not be used to rank a post above or below other posts, unless the user viewing the list asks for the list to be sorted or ranked as such.
- Comment on "No, seriously. All those things Google couldn't find anymore? Top of the search pile. Queries that generated pages of spam in Google results? Fucking pristine on Kagi – the right answers, over and over again." 1 year ago:
SearXNG has fediverse search functionality too.