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 Trump excludes smartphones, computers, chips from tariffs 2 days ago:
Be careful with this sort of comment. You don’t want to piss off Musk by mocking his property, do you?
- Comment on Adobe Deletes Bluesky Posts After Furious Backlash 3 days ago:
Delicious.
- Comment on You Might Think of Shrimp as Bugs of the Sea: But Bugs Are Shrimp of the Land 3 days ago:
More like bugs are shrimps. Like, some shrimps are closer to bugs than to other shrimps.
(…wait, does this mean that insects can undergo carcinisation? It would be cool to see.)
- You Might Think of Shrimp as Bugs of the Sea: But Bugs Are Shrimp of the Landwww.smithsonianmag.com ↗Submitted 3 days ago to [deleted] | 4 comments
- Comment on LC vibe check 3 days ago:
That reminds me, that in the 90s it was really common to put steel wool on the TV antenna. At least in my chunk of Latin America.
Digital TV is killing our culture!! /s
- Comment on I think there's a bigger issue here 3 days ago:
Uh, TIL Ruffy’s mum was a poster woman for eclampsia!
- Comment on I think there's a bigger issue here 3 days ago:
The more I look at it, the more I see it wrong:
- breech position
- small head, huge hand
- even if you remember the acronym you won’t remember each letter
- is the umbilical chord supposed to be so thick???
- that symbol between “med” and “naz” looks like piercing her heart
- Comment on wednesday, my dudes 5 days ago:
- Comment on Asian tech reacts to US tariffs with delays, doubts, deals 1 week ago:
I feel like those tech companies will do this “let’s set up a façade in Vietnam, until Vietnam gets tariffed and we do it elsewhere” silly dance for now. But eventually they’ll stop caring - as USA’s customer market becomes increasingly impoverished, it becomes less of an issue to appease its kinglet Musk and its dog Trump.
- Comment on shrimp colour drama 1 week ago:
Yup - as far as we know the dance conveys three pieces of info, about a food source:
- direction - by the direction of the waggling
- distance - by the duration of the waggling
- benefit - by how frequently they do it (based on the resources and potential predators)
They also release some pheromones while dancing, but I think that’s just to warn other bees “hey, someone is dancing in the hive”.
- Comment on shrimp colour drama 1 week ago:
how can they see each other dance? I assume it’s because they’re experiencing the dance some other way, but how? (Also it’s hella dark in there, isn’t it?)
By touch. This 50s video shows it well.
- Comment on Teachers warn AI is impacting students' critical thinking 2 weeks ago:
Kinda - it was about people being unable to do maths if they rely too much on calculators. And it’s actually a valid argument, if you care about mental maths*.
There are two differences here, though:
- Calculators are rather good at simple calculations. Large language models suck at outputting anything resembling critical thinking. They’re always bullshitting, and unless you have good critical thinking you’ll swallow bullshit after bullshit, because your tool requires a skill that you don’t have due to your unrestricted usage of that tool.
- Critical thinking is a considerably bigger deal than being able to do simple maths by head or by hand.
*you should - it’s often faster and less laborious to do coarse maths by head than by calculator, and it allows you to spot errors you wouldn’t otherwise. Same deal with any other tool, tools are great but you should be able to do the basics without them too.
- Comment on Teachers warn AI is impacting students' critical thinking 2 weeks ago:
Dunno if it’s by design, “bug turned into feature”, or simply neglect. In any case, the result is the same, though - masses that are easy to manipulate, composed of dysfunctional individuals.
The lack of critical thinking is why the far right has room to breathe
100% this. People often say “you’re not immune to propaganda”, and that’s true - complete immunity is impossible. However, critical thinking does raise your resistance, as it makes you less eager to swallow bullshit.
- Comment on Teachers warn AI is impacting students' critical thinking 2 weeks ago:
The root of the problem is way, way older than AI. It’s a mix of
- humans being naturally lazy, typically not developing skills or knowledge unless we’re clearly getting something out of it
- we have a thoooousand tools enabling us to do stuff without skill/knowledge
- our education systems do not value self-improvement enough to promote the development of those skills and knowledge
So it’s a lot like you not remembering phone numbers by heart because you can check them in your contact list, you know?
And, yes, text generators do play a role on that. But when it comes to critical thinking, it’s a death of a thousand cuts.
- Comment on Elon Musk’s X has a new owner—Elon Musk’s xAI 2 weeks ago:
As I mentioned in another post, about the same topic, he’s tying a sinking ship to another. So both can sink together.
Musk said the combined company will “build a platform that doesn’t just reflect the world but actively accelerates human progress.”
The funniest part is that this might not be a lie - I wouldn’t be surprised if Musk genuinely believed that.
…let’s get real. xAI’s main product is Grok, a text and image generator. Twitter is basically a blog platform for the sort of people who whine “WAAAH! TL;DR!”. Merge both and you’ll get what? Automated shitposting!
- Comment on [deleted] 2 weeks ago:
Here’s how I’d answer it: “No. And do not contact me further.”
Odds are that they will insist. If they do, the answer is longer:
*“You seem to have a really hard time understanding simple words, such as «no». So let me rephrase what I said, in a way that hopefully even you will understand:
I DO NOT WANT TO TOUCH YOUR BLOODY COMPANY, LED BY A LITERAL NAZI, WITH A THREE METERS POLE. NO MEANS NO. SOD OFF YOU BLOODY MUPPET, THIS IS NOT UP TO DEBATE, STOP BUGGING ME WITH THIS SHITE.”*
then block it.
- Comment on Beyond RGB: A new image file format efficiently stores invisible light data 2 weeks ago:
For further info, check this. Two things to keep in mind:
- your unaided sight doesn’t distinguish between a pure wavelength and a mix of wavelengths
- your sight only works for a rather narrow range of wavelengths, 380nm~750nm (violet~red)
And most of our tech and art are based on both limitations. For example, your screen outputs red (620nm), green (520nm) and blue (460nm) lights; it won’t output a pure yellow light (580nm), but who cares - you won’t notice the difference between that 580nm yellow and a mix of 620nm and 520nm anyway*. And image file formats were also made with that into account.
So far, so good. But this shit breaks once you need to take into account the actual wavelengths, instead of just replicating what you’d perceive as the same thing; the article mentions a few situations where this is relevant, but it’s mostly
- different substances and chemical elements emit specific wavelengths. This is useful to know the composition of something, or the presence/absence of a certain substance (like grease from merchant fingers messing with that precious Voynich manuscript)
- in specific light conditions, wavelength differences do make you notice things in a different way. [Black flames are cool example of that)[www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o8ktldjcog].
So far this has been handled by a format called OpenEXR, that allows an arbitrarily large number of colour channels. So instead of having red/green/blue channels you’d have, let’s say: one channel for 900nm infrared, another for 899nm infrared, another for 898nm infrared […] 650nm red, 649nm red… […] 380nm violet, 379nm ultraviolet… yup. No wonder file sizes were so bloody big.
Doing some simple maths, if you were to use one channel per 1nm range, and stick only to the visible range, you’d have 370 colour channels. Yup - and it gets worse if you include IR and UV. No wonder image sizes were so big.
*NOTE: at least, not with unaided vision. If you wear thick glasses, and look at the source of light sideways, the red+green light mix forms two partially overlapping coloured “ghosts”, and the pure wavelength doesn’t. But it’s your glasses doing it, not your body.
- Comment on In the latest Windows 11 preview build, Microsoft removed the “bypassnro” command, which let users skip signing into a Microsoft Account when installing Windows. 2 weeks ago:
I don’t even use Windows, but this “it’s for security lol” pseudo-explanation is so blatantly false that it’s pissing me off.
- Comment on Musk's xAI buys social media platform X for $45 billion 2 weeks ago:
The boat is sinking, so tie it to another boat. Now they can sink together.
- Comment on Musk 'Pressured' Reddit CEO to Silence DOGE Critics, Leaving Moderators Outraged: Report. 2 weeks ago:
Is this a surprise for anyone? It’s Steve “greedy pigboy” Huffman that we’re talking about, one of the saddest pieces of shit out there. He openly praised Elon “1488” Musk’s handling of Twitter, and has been doing the same with Reddit for ages.
- Comment on 'vegetative electron microscopy' 2 weeks ago:
I think you can use vegetative electron microscopy to detect the quantic social engineering of diatomic algae.
- Comment on Paradox date Stellaris 4.0, a "phoenix update" to attract new players and improve performance 3 weeks ago:
I’m pretty sure they mean The Company Formerly Known As Electronic Arts.
Exactly. (I should’ve used its full name, now I get where Madbrad200 got that “early access” thing.)
- Comment on Paradox date Stellaris 4.0, a "phoenix update" to attract new players and improve performance 3 weeks ago:
I know Stellaris isn’t an early access title. And it shows the same problems as EU4: Paradox is so invested on milking players through a predatory DLC policy that the game becomes a sloppy mess of feature creep, without any sort of consistent design behind the new features. Just like EA loves doing, except with a niche genre.
it’s also probably their best managed game.
Given how poorly managed the other games are, might as well say “so far the poor management is a bit more bearable”.
- Comment on Paradox date Stellaris 4.0, a "phoenix update" to attract new players and improve performance 3 weeks ago:
Hipsters’ EA is hyping a game update. “Wohoo”.
…seriously, I’m not touching anything Paradox does with a 3m pole.
- Comment on pain plant 3 weeks ago:
In the meantime, birds be like: “ultrahot? nom nom fruity”
- Comment on Reddit Rated Sell as Redburn Flags Risk From Google Algorithm 3 weeks ago:
Which is also how Digg v4 ended up, the brands as content submitters.
Exactly. Almost like Reddit decision makers know how Digg died, and yet they’re unable to not follow its steps.
- Comment on Reddit Rated Sell as Redburn Flags Risk From Google Algorithm 4 weeks ago:
Cordwell and Barker expect user growth for Reddit to stall in 2025 and, as a result, see revenue growth becoming more reliant on making the platform’s proposition more attractive for advertisers.
This won’t be even remotely fun for the people still using that platform. Because “making the platform’s proposition more attractive to advertisers” boils down to either more ads or ads that are more obnoxious, more disguised as content, more targetted.
- Comment on No one knows what the hell an AI agent is | TechCrunch 4 weeks ago:
Etymologically “agent” is just a fancy borrowed synonym for “doer”. So an AI agent is an AI that does. Yup, it’s that vague.
You could instead restrict the definition further, and say that an AI agent does things autonomously. Then the concept is mutually exclusive with “assistant”, as the assistant does nothing on its own, it’s only there to assist someone else. And yet look at what Pathak said - that she understood both things to be interchangeable.
…so might as well say that “agent” is simply the next buzzword, since people aren’t so excited with the concept of artificial intelligence any more. They’ve used those dumb text gens, gave them either a six-fingered thumbs up or thumbs down, but they’re generally aware that it doesn’t do a fraction of what they believed to.
- Comment on WWYD 4 weeks ago:
I do nothing. I went through QM classes in my Chemistry times and I still don’t get it. If I do nothing at least nobody can blame me for fucking everything up.
- Comment on Ring 4 weeks ago:
THE RING MUST BE DESTROYED!
