lvxferre
@lvxferre@mander.xyz
The catarrhine who invented a perpetual motion machine, by dreaming at night and devouring its own dreams through the day.
- Comment on Anon finds a bot 1 day ago:
I’m not sure if gold would be a good fit for the Fediverse forums. As problematic as the voting system is, tying visibility to popularity is less worse than tying it to money spent.
Instead I think the current approach (donations) should be improved. I expect the same type of people who’d buy gold to finance their instances to be OK with donations, as long as they know it’ll be well used.
- Comment on Anon finds a bot 1 day ago:
As others highlighted:
This only helps the bots. It’s useless against stalking, since you can still find a list of the person’s post/comments by searching their username in Google or even Reddit itself. And a stalker, unlike someone trying to denounce bots, will do it.
If anything this harms users. A false sense of security is worse than accurately feeling unsafe.
And the motivation for that is clearly to hide the bots. Bots give you metrics. Metrics give you ad views. Ad views give you money.
- Comment on Anon finds a bot 1 day ago:
The bots know what is bot content and what is not.
Probably not. It’s way easier to generate bot content than to detect it. Unless they’re coming from the same group, but I find this unlikely.
- Comment on Anon finds a bot 2 days ago:
There used to be a site called Reddit, where you’d be your post history. Now that site is dead - the URL still works, I guess, but it links to some weird Twitter with an alien logo.
- Comment on Microsoft finally admits almost all major Windows 11 core features are broken 2 days ago:
“Microsoft”, who? Certainly not Suleyman, Davuluri, or Nadella.
- Comment on The ‘Great Meme Reset’ Is Coming: From Jack Dorsey to Gen Alpha, everyone seemingly wants to go back to the internet of a decade ago. But is it possible to reverse AI slop and brain rot? 2 days ago:
Even if you’re in the camp that understands memes like “6 7” have more significance than they’re given credit for,
I think 6-7 is a shibboleth. It doesn’t say much on its own, except which group you belong to.
Substance, as ever, remains a relative notion. Nyan Cat perhaps didn’t have the substance of an Andy Warhol image
I’d argue the Nyan cat is more substantial than what Andy Warhol came up with.
If you want a great reset you’ll need a new internet that is outright hostile to corporate interests. No corposlop being produced there, no derailing old memes to sell you junk.
- Comment on Elon Musk’s Grokipedia cites Stormfront — a neo-Nazi forum — dozens of times, study finds 3 days ago:
Nah, quoting Stormfront is not a bug. Quoting well-sourced facts retrieved from Wikipedia is.
- Comment on Microsoft AI CEO pushes back against critics after recent Windows AI backlash — "the fact that people are unimpressed ... is mindblowing to me" 4 days ago:
I’m mindblown at him being mindblown.
Oh wait, I’m not. Because I know those CEOs are completely detached from reality, and take users for dumb cattle ready to be herded.
Funny but insightful comment from the link:
“Never get high on your own stuff. A lesson this guy doesn’t seem to have learned…”
Fediverse, please enlighten me - is Windows a drug? …on a more serious note, “don’t overestimate the desirability of what you’re trying to sell” is sensible advice.
- Comment on 1 week ago:
I am talking about the sort of everyday interaction that would make a 5yo get scolded for not being nice. This is clear by context.
- Comment on 1 week ago:
Her 5yo got it right.
By default you should be nice to people. Care about their needs, avoid offending them (and if you do, apologise), avoid unnecessarily lies, all that thing. And since most people are surprisingly reasonable, they’ll do the same towards you.
However. There’s always “that” arsehole, petty, assumptive person. No matter how nice you are towards them, they won’t be nice to you. Don’t be nice to them - even if on the outside it’s irrelevant, it’ll eat you from the inside and make you feel like shit.
- Comment on It's OK to just like lemon water. 2 weeks ago:
0.25 mL of lemon juice is probably too much already.
She’s doing the maths for the concentration of citric acid in lemon juice through the formula C(acid) = 10^(-pH). That works fine for a strong acid, because you can be pretty sure all that acid in the solution is dissociated, and thus lowering its pH… but citric acid is weak - and weak acids don’t dissociate properly in already acidic conditions.
This means there’s probably way more acid in that solution than the pH makes you believe, but that acid will react once you raise the pH, by mixing the lemon juice into the water.
(I don’t blame her for using the strong acid maths. It’s already enough to convey her point, plus the maths for weak acids is a bloody pain.)
- Comment on Here’s what ads on your $2,000 Samsung smart fridge will look like 2 weeks ago:
Yeah, the terminology is currently a mess. Not just due to language changes, but also synchronic variation - different people using the same words for different meanings, at the same time. But for me, it’s a mix of motivations, methods, and morality:
- hacker strictu sensu - like a kid who dismantles toys to see how they work. Sometimes they break things, but they want knowledge the most. Usually grey hat, sometimes white hat, only rarely black hat
- cracker - like a kid who bashes toys with a hammer. Not interested on the knowledge itself, except when it allows them to bully other kids. Almost always black hat.
- 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 weeks ago:
It’s more than that: they’d need to have desires, aversions, goals. That is not automatically granted by intelligence; in our case it’s from our instincts as animals. So perhaps you’d need to actually evolve Darwin style the AGI systems you develop, and that would be way more massive than a single AGI, let alone the “put glue on pizza lol” systems we’re frying the planet for.
- 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 weeks ago:
My guess:
Coverage roughly follows money, and that money comes the top of the hierarchy. However, the top is too far from the production to actually get that 1) automation is nothing new, and 2) AI won’t help as much with it as advertised.
The middle of the hierarchy is close enough to the production to know those two things. But it’ll still parrot those two things knowing they are false; because it enables the inefficiency they love so much, under the disguise of efficiency.
Then you got the bottom. It’s the closest to the production, but often suffers from a problem of “I don’t see the forest, I see the leaves”, plus since it has no decision power so it ends as a “meh who cares”. So it’ll parrot whatever it sees in the coverage.
As such, who’s actually going to get screwed here? The answer may surprise you.
All three. However not in the way people predict, “AI is going to steal our jobs”. It’s more like suckers at the top will lose big money on AI fluff, and to cut costs off they’ll fire a lot of people.
Setting aside “and how will it do that?” as outside the scope of the topic at hand, it’s a bit baffling to me how a nebulous concept prone to outright errors is an existential threat. (To be clear, I think the energy and water impacts are.)
Ditto.
- 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 weeks ago:
Interestingly enough, not even making them actually intelligent would be enough to make them liable - because you can’t punish or reward them.
- Comment on I'm both people 3 weeks ago:
More like an Autumn/Spring thing than a Summer one, but…
If you live in a place where temperature varies a lot across the day, you’ll want to wear a jacket at some hours, but not others. Then you need to choose between three options:
- Wear the jacket through the day. You’ll feel hot at ~noon.
- Don’t bother with the jacket. You’ll feel cold at ~early morning and ~early night.
- Take off the jacket at ~noon. Now you’re carrying (and potentially forgetting) yet another item.
All three suck. But people disagree which one sucks the least, and for some it’s #1. So you get people wearing jackets even when it’s too hot for that.
- Comment on Here’s what ads on your $2,000 Samsung smart fridge will look like 3 weeks ago:
No problem - miscommunication happens.
- Comment on Here’s what ads on your $2,000 Samsung smart fridge will look like 3 weeks ago:
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.
Problem is, people won’t stop buying them. Often “smart” products are sold comparatively cheaper, because the business expects additional profits through ads; and if Samsung is going this way (ads on your fridge), it’ll do it.
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?
By “crackers” I mean “black hat hackers”. The sort of people who’d love to drop some ransomware into your fridge and then say “if you don’t want me to brick your fridge, pay me a few bucks”.
(After some websearch, apparently Americans use it as a derogatory term. I wasn’t aware of that.)
- Comment on Here’s what ads on your $2,000 Samsung smart fridge will look like 3 weeks ago:
However, Samsung is giving users the option to turn off ads.
For now, like the author herself mentions later on (“The bigger issue is that of trust. […] that’s today.”)
I asked Higby why they were bringing ads to the fridges. He said via email, “This pilot further explores how a connected appliance can deliver genuinely useful, contextual information. The refrigerator is already a daily hub, and we’re testing a responsible, user-controlled way to make that space more helpful.”
What Shane Higby is saying here boils down to “we’re trying to help the user”. But if he said so, in clear words, every bloody body would call it bullshit, because it’s common knowledge companies smear ads on your face for their own sake - not yours. But if you hide it behind fancy words, like “further explores” and “deliver” and the likes, it’s harder to call the bullshit.
I’m getting real tired of this shit.
This is similar to the justification Panos Panay, Amazon’s head of Devices & Services, made to me last month when I asked him about advertising on its Echo devices. He said it was looking to be “elegantly elevating the information that a customer needs.”
Emphasis mine. You can always trust Amazon in one thing: belittling the user.
[Higby] "…future promotions will depend on the feedback and insights gained from the program.”
Translation: “we’re just testing the waters now. Let’s see if the suckers swallow it or spit it.”
The problem here isn’t just the ads themselves (although they are a problem); it’s that they are being added to the device after it’s in my home.
[Warning, IANAL.] Fight this shit. Seriously, fight it. On legal grounds. What they’re doing should be outright illegal in most countries; it’s equivalent to changing a contract unilaterally after both parties signed it.
Additionally, I’d strongly advise against buying any sort of “smart” device, unless you’re pretty sure any benefit outweight all the risks of connecting your household appliances to the internet. Including corporations and crackers taking control of it, building kill switches into it, etc.
- Comment on Civilization VII set for a big change to allow you to play as one civ continuously 3 weeks ago:
The game is unreasonably expensive, and bundled with malware (DRM). Both issues can be fixed by pirating it, but… frankly? I don’t think it’s even worth pirating it.
Check the Steam reviews. Bad interface, the ages system undermines the premise of the game, shallow diplomacy, AI is easy to manipulate, and apparently released in a broken/incomplete state. Whoever made this game doesn’t play the series, and it shows.
- Comment on ISP tricked customers about fiber optics being used in their internet service, German court rules — 'full fiber' customers found to have 'last mile' copper connections 4 weeks ago:
For those that aren’t sure if you have fiber, the fiber will literally run into your “modem” (your Optical Network Terminal or ONT) and it will be incredibly clear that you have fiber. The wire is incredibly thin and they will warn you about bending it too much.
And if the connector breaks, you can’t simply fix it at home like you would do with copper. You’ll spend an internet-less weekend until the technician fixes it.
Source: got this shit happening with me this month. On a lighter side the work piled up disappeared real fast!
- Comment on My brother in Christ you ARE the memory! 5 weeks ago:
This reminds me a bunch of dumb jokes in Portuguese between “RAM” and “rã” toad. Including questions about “memória sapo” (toad memory).
- Comment on Study proves being rude to AI chatbots gets better results than being nice 5 weeks ago:
I’m surprised the best strategy wasn’t the neutral prompt, due to removal of any fluff.
- Comment on Why Conservatives Are Attacking ‘Wokepedia’ 1 month ago:
Side thought/my own ramblings here: Has there ever been hosting where the information is scattered across the world rather than one localized spot? That seems like it might be helpful, but I honestly don’t know enough about site hosting
In a certain sense we are using a system like this, due to federation. I don’t think the exact same model would work well for Wikipedia, but it could try something similar.
- Comment on 1 month ago:
Quando eu ainda tinha Windows em arranque duplo (com alguma distro .deb*), percebi que o desempenho do Linux já era melhor para o Factorio e o Europa Universalis IV. Isto confirma o que falou, de quase qualquer distro ser mais suave para jogar.
E meu palpite é que a diferença aumente com o tempo - a Microsoft adora forçar na goela dos usuários ferramentas de uso questionável, que carregam automaticamente e não há como desativar. E entrou na onda da IA, então já sabe, né?
*não lembro se com Mint, Debian, ou Ubuntu. Digamos que trocava de distro como quem troca de roupa :-P
- Comment on Punch Time 1 month ago:
One of my favourite instances of adaptation got to be Ted Woolsey’s “son of a submariner! They’ll pay for this…”, for the English localisation of Final Fantasy III / VI.
In the game, Kefka (the villain) is saying this as the heroes escape him, but the original only says “ヒーーー くっそー！このかりは必ず返しますよ!”; literally “heeee shit! I will definitively return this debt” or similar. However:
- That “ヒーーー” interjection has no meaning on its own. It’s only there to highlight the character’s emotional state. It could be safely removed, without loss of meaning.
- くそ / 糞 kuso “crap! shit!” is vulgar, but by no means as vulgar as English “shit”. Specially given the 90s, and this game being marketed to kids. But it means the villain is being rude towards the heroes (makes sense, right).
So, translating it as simply “hey you!” or similar would mutilate the original, by removing the rudeness. But at the same time, Woolsey couldn’t use “shit” or “crap” or similar. So he looked at the context:
- Kefka is crazy, and the way he uses Japanese in the original is odd. For example, he uses the pronoun “ぼくちん” bokuchin to refer to himself, as if he was a kid - and yet he’s a court mage of an empire dammit. (It’s a bit deeper than that, but let’s focus.)
- a bit before Kefka says this, there’s a city in the desert also fleeing Kefka - by going underground instead, as if it was some sort of “sand submarine”.
So Woolsey went with “son of a submariner!”, something he likely made up on the spot. And you know what? It’s perfect - it’s completely on-character for Kefka to insult people in such a weird way.
- Comment on Punch Time 1 month ago:
It’s a bit more complicated: if you’re dealing with the sounds it’s transcription, if you’re converting from writing system into another it’s transliteration.
So for example, what you did is transliteration. But if you were to record some Japanese guy speaking and wrote it down (in kanji+kana, Latin, or even IPA), it would be transcription.
- Comment on Why Conservatives Are Attacking ‘Wokepedia’ 1 month ago:
“What I can tell you is that over the years, conservatives, libertarians, were just pushed out,” Sanger said. “There is a whole…army of administrators, hundreds of them, who are constantly blocking people…that they have ideological disagreements with.”
“Oh noes, people in Wokepedia aren’t willing to accept my opinion that gravity doesn’t work on Fridays!”
“Wikipedia is losing its objectivity @jimmy_wales,” Musk posted in 2022.
If you’re really, really invested on 2+2 being five, then 2+2=4 becomes “subjective”.
In my opinion Wikipedia being hosted in USA is a liability. Or even being hosted in a single place, whichever it is.
- Comment on Way past its prime: how did Amazon get so rubbish? 1 month ago:
If a corporation could profit nine zillions and fifty dollars, and instead it’s profiting only nine zillions, the shareholders are already screeching at the CEO "YOU INCOMPETENT FOOL, YOU’
- Comment on Windows 7 marketshare jumps to nearly 10% as Windows 10 enters final weeks of support 1 month ago:
I think I get it. For a lot of people, the situation is probably like this:
Basically “since both W7 and W10 are now unsupported, might as well stick to W7, I like it better.”
