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 His name is 16 hours ago:
Leosqualo da Vinci? Johaainnes Vermeer? 鳍白石 / Qí Báishí? …Pi-cação?
- Comment on Nudify app’s plan to dominate deepfake porn hinges on Reddit, docs show 2 days ago:
Check how the whistleblower phrased it: “advertising posts in special Telegram channels, in sex subs on Reddit, and on 4chan”. If that’s accurate they aren’t buying reserved ad space in 4chan, they’re simply paying people to post this shit there, as if it was content.
- Comment on Nintendo faces legal action over ability to brick Switch 2s whenever they want 2 days ago:
In both cases you have businesses using the lack of legal representation to avoid following local laws. But that’s it; everything else is quite different.
- Xitter - blocked after orders of the federal court, because there was a legal representative but he was explicitly removed to avoid following the court decisions.
- Nintendo - a state customer protection organ is requesting legal representation, to address violations of customer laws. Nintendo assigned a temporary representative, to handle this specific issue.
I don’t think Procon organs have the power to ban the sales of an imported good within their states. But even if they do, note that this would only apply to the state (in this case São Paulo). Plus Nintendo is being considerably more tactful than that braindead idiot called Musk.
- Comment on Nudify app’s plan to dominate deepfake porn hinges on Reddit, docs show 2 days ago:
Clothoff is seemingly hoping to entice more young boys worldwide to use its apps for such purposes. The whistleblower told Der Spiegel that most of Clothoff’s marketing budget goes toward “advertising posts in special Telegram channels, in sex subs on Reddit, and on 4chan.”
advertising posts on 4chan
Is Clothoff asking to be raided? Because that’s what happens when you spam 4chan. Ask Anontalk aka AnT.
- Comment on Converting numbers is easy 2 days ago:
22 yards in a chain
What. I had to websearch this because it sounds too silly, but apparently it’s true.
But, really, even if it used saner numbers (like 12:3:24:8:3), it still feels nothing like a “metric dozenal” would look like. It’s missing the two things the metric system did right:
- All prefixes are unit-agnostic, like they were numbers. For example you can plop “kilo” = 10³ on weight (kilogram), length (kilometre), volume (kilolitre), energy, (kilojoule), etc.
- All prefixes must be an integer power of the base. For example you could make a 10⁸ prefix, even if there’s none, and it would be OK; but you can’t make, say, a 10^(2.447) = 300 one.
- Comment on Nintendo faces legal action over ability to brick Switch 2s whenever they want 2 days ago:
A lot of the Switch 2’s UA is also illegal in Brazil. For example, check section 7 (Dispute Resolution) - law protection is considered an inalienable right in Brazil, you can’t simply sign it off.
However Nintendo has been shielding itself by saying “ackshyually, we aren’t conducting business in Brazil”. That’s why São Paulo’s Procon is calling it out.
- Comment on Nintendo faces legal action over ability to brick Switch 2s whenever they want 2 days ago:
Procon-SP is a state customer protection organ. It’s more like “São Paulo’s watchdog” than “Brazil’s watchdog”. However since the state in question is populous and has relatively high purchasing power per capita, typically megacorpos beeline towards it anyway.
I’ll coarsely translate here the news from Procon-SP’s site. Emphasis mine in all cases, as I want to highlight something.
Translation
>Procon-SP notified Nintendo to request changes in clauses deemed abusive, present in contracts made with Brazilian customers. The main complain involves the unilateral and unjustified cancellation of service subscriptions. >This showed a wider problem: Nintendo lacks formal representation in Brazil. This absence hinders conflict intermediation and the conduct of customer protecting organisations. >To handle this case, Procon-SP had to contact the headquarters of the business in USA. Only then the business named a law office in Brazil, but solely to handle the relevant clause. >The absence of formal representation in the country is an important warning to customers. Without such legal presence, the protection predicted by the Customers’ Defence Code is limited. >“The existence of legal representation within Brazil needs to be one of the criteria [potential customers] take into account to decide their purchases, specially so for digital services or foreign platforms”, says Álvaro Camilo (Procon-SP’s Service and Orientation director). “Without such groundwork, Procon organs cannot act in full power, given different countries have different laws”. >This precaution applies both to abusive clauses and common problems, such as delivery delay or service failure. When the business is not registered in Brazil, often there is no way to sue it. >In the last years, the number of purchases in international sites grew sharply in the country. However many of those platforms conduct businesses with no local judicial link. >Even for smaller purchases, there’s a real risk: the customer gets no goods, no answer, no support. Procon-SP recommends to be extra careful, doubly so for sites handling fashion, electronics, and accessory items. >Before purchasing something, it’s essential to verify if [a business] has CNPJ [i.e. it’s considered a legal entity in Brazil], a real address in Brazil, and support channels; those pieces of info are fundamental so Procon-SP can act in case of problems. >Nintendo informed that’ll analyse the request from the organ, and that it’ll answer it within 20 days. Until then, Procon-SP recommends customers should report irregularities through the site www.procon.sp.gov.br.
See the bolded parts? São Paulo’s Procon is basically telling people “Don’t buy stuff from Nintendo, it’s an irregular business in Brazil.”
- Comment on Converting numbers is easy 3 days ago:
Metric “dozenalisation” would be perfectly viable, and metric-dozenal units would still look nothing like USA units.
I’ll use length for the example. All of them in base 10, just for clarity. (Also the name of the units would be different, but I’m not changing them for this example.)
- metric-decimal: 10⁻³ km = 10⁻² hm = 10⁻¹ dam = 10⁰m = 10¹dm = 10²cm = 10³mm
- metric-dozenal: 12⁻³ km = 12⁻²hm = 12⁻¹ dam = 12⁰m = 12¹dm = 12²cm = 12³mm
- USA units: 1/1760mi = 1yd = 3ft = 3*12 in = 3*12*6 P = 3*12*6*12 p
Are you noticing what the USA units do? They don’t stick to a base.
- Comment on Converting numbers is easy 3 days ago:
People are focusing on the Excel part, I’ll focus on the maths.
I wish our societies picked base-12 instead of base-10. Divisions in base-12 give you repeating digits less often, and being able to split exactly by 3, 6, 9 and 12₁₀=10₁₂ is far more useful than doing it for 5 and 10₁₀=A₁₂.
- Comment on Do you think she will notice when she gets home 3 days ago:
I once had a cat that “elected” one of the beds as her litterbox. I have a feeling that, if she could, she’d blame humans for her shit.
- Comment on UK | Tech firms suggested placing trackers under offenders’ skin at meeting with justice secretary 3 days ago:
Here’s a better idea: address the socio-politico-economical issues that make people resort to crime on first place.
- Comment on bork bork bork 5 days ago:
Peer reviewed by my neighbour’s dog. She’d probably add “even if you see no threat, and even if you don’t give a fuck about humans, it’s better to bark anyway just to be safe”. Except in posh paper speech.
- Comment on Microsoft pushes staff to use internal AI tools more, and may consider this in reviews. 'Using AI is no longer optional.' 6 days ago:
That’s good. The more Microsoft boycotts itself, the more people shift to Linux.
Using AI tools sometimes makes sense, sometimes it doesn’t. And by forcing the usage of a tool that won’t necessarily help, MS is only adding more meaningless busywork to its own development, like sand in an engine.
- Comment on Brazil rules that social media platforms are responsible for users’ posts 1 week ago:
I hope so, too. Their current situation isn’t currently the best (a lot of them went away in the late 10s, simply because people were using them less); I’m kind of hoping to see a revival, but that’s at the mercy of the STF, so I can’t completely rule out that the situation will evolve exactly like in the UK. It’s “let’s wait and see”, you know?
- Comment on Brazil rules that social media platforms are responsible for users’ posts 1 week ago:
When something similar happened in the UK, it was pretty much exclusively smaller/niche forums, run by volunteers and donations, that went offline.
[Warning, IANAL] I am really not sure if the experience is transposable for two reasons:
- UK follows Saxon tribal law, while Brazil follows Roman civil law. I am not sure but I believe the former requires both sides to dig up precedents, and that puts a heavier burden on the smaller side of a legal litigation. While in the later, if you show “ackshyually in that older case the defendant was deemed guilty”, all the judge will say is “so? What is written is what matters; if the defendant violated the law or not.”.
- The Americas in general are notorious for sloppy law enforcement. Specially Brazil. Doubly so when both parties are random nobodies.
So there’s still a huge room for smaller forums to survive, or even thrive. It all depends on how the STF enforces it. For example it might take into account that a team of volunteers has less liability because their ability to remove random junk from the internet is lower than some megacorpo from the middle of nowhere.
Additionally, it might be possible the legislative screeches at the judiciary, and releases some additional law that does practically the same as that article 19, except it doesn’t leave room for the judiciary to claim it’s unconstitutional. Because, like, as I said the judiciary is a bit too powerful, but the other powers still can fight back, specially the legislative.
- Comment on Brazil rules that social media platforms are responsible for users’ posts 1 week ago:
For context:
There’s an older law called Marco Civil da Internet (roughly “internet civil framework”), from 2014. The Article 19 of that law boils down to “if a third party posts content that violates the law in an internet service, the service provider isn’t legally responsible, unless there’s a specific judicial order telling it to remove it.”
So. The new law gets rid of that article, claiming it’s unconstitutional. In effect, this means service providers (mostly social media) need to proactively remove illegal content, even without judicial order.
I kind of like the direction this is going, but it raises three concerns:
- False positives becoming more common.
- The burden will be considerably bigger for smaller platforms than bigger ones.
- It gives the STF yet another tool for vendetta. The judiciary is already a bit too strong in comparison with the other two powers, and this decision only feeds the beast further.
- Comment on Dots! 1 week ago:
Yellowcake, sponge… lemon flavoured sponge cake?
- Comment on Dots! 1 week ago:
We need a cosmological law dictating harmful to humans = boring-looking. I mean, it isn’t just plutonium, look at uranium yellowcake! It’s lemon flavouring!
- Comment on AI is ruining houseplant communities online 1 week ago:
Reminder there’s !houseplants@mander.xyz. I’m not affiliated with the mods there, but the comm is really good; I remember posting some orchid for id there and the folks there were quick to lead me to the right direction. If image models are ruining houseplant comms, that one is an exception :)
On-topic: this will get rougher with time. And it isn’t just plants; it’s everything. You could already generate fictional but realistic images of everything, but those models make it faster and easier, so of course some disingenuous people use it for scams since it doesn’t require any sort of skill any more. Eventually I think people will wise up, and learn to not trust images or videos, but while this doesn’t happen…
And the same deal applies to text content. Even if the content is human-made, you shouldn’t be relying on a single source of info, to begin with; now with text generators you’ll get even more babble, so the odds your “single source” is inaccurate raise sharply. For example if you need info on how to care about your pet potato plant you should be seeing a half dozen sites, cross-checking info, and seeing if some of them feel off.
- Comment on Chickenslap 1 week ago:
Who was this written by, a Brit?
Nope. Likely an American.
When cooking, people in general like to use round numbers, like “200°C”, since a difference of 5°C in oven temperature is not a big deal.
And yet they went with some oddly specific 205°C. That only makes sense if they’re used to Fahrenheit, eyeballed a round value (like 400°F), converted it into Celsius (204.4°C), and then rounded it up to discard the decimal.
I’m also going to say they’re completely clueless when it comes to cooking - 200°C is the oven temperature. The chicken itself reaches a far lower temperature, in the 70~80°C range. By the time the chicken reached 200°C, it’s already dry and close to catching fire. (The self-ignition temperature for biological stuff is typically between 200°C and 250°C.)
- Comment on Your data, your rules: Firefox’s privacy-first AI features you can trust | The Mozilla Blog 1 week ago:
Mozilla, please. Focus on developing a quality browser. Not on chasing random new gimmicks.
- Comment on User says access to ’30 years of photos and work’ in OneDrive denied by Microsoft, can't get a response after filing form 18 times — 'Microsoft suspended my account without warning, reason, or any leg 1 week ago:
Or even a dword.
- Comment on User says access to ’30 years of photos and work’ in OneDrive denied by Microsoft, can't get a response after filing form 18 times — 'Microsoft suspended my account without warning, reason, or any leg 1 week ago:
Uh, I remember seeing this in Beehaw. Basically: the user was negligent, but this does not excuse Microsoft in one bit. (Or byte. eh.)
One thing that the 3-2-1 rule of thumb doesn’t handle, and is important here: the reliability of each copy also matters. Specially when it’s a small amount of copies. And when you’re dealing with someone else’s computer (“the cloud”), the reliability is shit; doubly so if it’s the computer of some megacorpo, since you’re more expendable.
- Comment on Windows 11 user has 30 years of 'irreplaceable photos and work' locked away in OneDrive - and Microsoft's silence is deafening 2 weeks ago:
The stick in question is off-site; it sees the PC once per month, then it gets back to the drawer. And regardless of its fate, if I had a flood or fire affecting my PC, in the second store of a brick house, odds are that I’d have far more pressing matters than the data.
- Comment on Windows 11 user has 30 years of 'irreplaceable photos and work' locked away in OneDrive - and Microsoft's silence is deafening 2 weeks ago:
No, it’s really not.
It is enough for my use case, considering the likelihood of my SSD and the USB stick going kaboom in the span of a single month is next to zero; if only one of them does it, I can use the other to recover the data to a third medium.
- Comment on Windows 11 user has 30 years of 'irreplaceable photos and work' locked away in OneDrive - and Microsoft's silence is deafening 2 weeks ago:
I mean just about anyone of sufficient size is susceptible to this.
Sure - the bigger the business, the more expendable each user/customer is. And Microsoft is really huge.
Just keep multiple backups.
Two are enough for most people (the 3-2-1 rule); sometimes one. The catch is that at least one of those backups must be off-line, and in a different medium than the original. While you can use the cloud to increase the reliability of the whole system, you should never rely exclusively on it.
- Comment on Windows 11 user has 30 years of 'irreplaceable photos and work' locked away in OneDrive - and Microsoft's silence is deafening 2 weeks ago:
Reminder “the cloud” is someone else’s computer. If you’re going to use it at least make sure the “someone else” isn’t a clown hat like Microsoft.
- Comment on As ChatGPT Linked to Mental Health Breakdowns, Mattel Announces Plans to Incorporate It Into Children's Toys 2 weeks ago:
Have you been eating enough rocks? Geologists recommend one per day, you know~
- Comment on Threads is adding fediverse content to your social feeds 2 weeks ago:
In another situation, I’d say “nice to see services integrating the Fediverse”. But given this is Meta I’d say it should fuck a cactus.
- Comment on What are AI 'world models,' and why do they matter? 2 weeks ago:
It’s mostly babble from OpenAI to justify continuous development, while misleading people through the usage of malicious metaphors.
