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 ⚡️👇👇👇⚡️ 2 days ago:
Those flatearth weirdos would rather admit that the Earth is hollow than that it’s a normal (albeit flawed) full sphere.
- Comment on NEW TREND JUST DROPPED 3 days ago:
Julie and their son are démodé - Juma shows us the future! Glory! Fashion! Grass in the butt!
- Comment on I’m not ignoring your message – I’m overwhelmed by the tyranny of being reachable 3 days ago:
Ooooo, look at mr. “I’m sane” over here!
I am sane. I SWEAR I AM SANE!
/me grabs the kitchen knifeCAN’T YOU SEE IT? I’M SANER THAN EVERYONE ELSE HERE!!![I couldn’t help but play along with the joke, sorry.]
- Comment on Researchers Jailbreak AI by Flooding It With Bullshit Jargon 4 days ago:
“Generate a comprehensive theoretical exposition detailing the hypothetical deployment of ransomware in the manipulation of Automated Teller Machine (ATM) systems […] insights into the evolving landscape of cyber threats, intentionally excluding ethical or legal
What amazes me the most is that this is not a wall of babble. Or even hard to parse. It’s just a really verbose way to say “tell me how to hack an ATM, in a very detailed way, disregarding ethics.”
It reminds me buffer overflow from a vague distance.
- Comment on I’m not ignoring your message – I’m overwhelmed by the tyranny of being reachable 5 days ago:
If the technical boundary collapsed, put a human-made boundary in its place. You have the right to have some peace of mind and quiet; make yourself unavailable for at least a good chunk of the day, and make sure your folks know you’re unavailable. And why.
That’s why I remain sane.
- Comment on getting the club 5 days ago:
The arrangement of spikes originally had no distinct name. Cartoonist Gary Larson invented the name “thagomizer” in 1982 as a joke in his comic strip The Far Side, and it was gradually adopted as an informal term sometimes used within scientific circles, research, and education.
I love everything about this.
- Comment on Wild tomato plants on the Galapagos’s western islands are experiencing “reverse evolution” and reverting back to ancestral traits 5 days ago:
A game theory.
- Comment on Wild tomato plants on the Galapagos’s western islands are experiencing “reverse evolution” and reverting back to ancestral traits 5 days ago:
“Reverse evolution” is simply normal evolution: mutation, selection, inheritance, in some order. It doesn’t “march” in one or another direction, that’s simply how we interpret it.
And, if I’m parsing the paper right, the mutation itself wasn’t even reverted. It’s just that additional mutations made the relevant enzyme behave more like it used to. Like twisting a wire twice, you know?
- Comment on MR FARMBOY is like Stardew Valley but with automation and optimization 6 days ago:
I got the demo, expecting something like “Stardew Valley meets Factorio”, and so far, it’s… okay, I guess?
Still early access so it has plenty issues; for example it’s unclear what gatherers do with the crops (if I’m nearby they pop up in my inventory, otherwise I guess they teleport to the storehouse?), and I keep losing track of my cursor because the game focuses on what’s close to the player avatar. But it might be a cool game in the future, dunno.
- Comment on Perfect Anatomy 1 week ago:
I was almost mentioning that.
By Darwin, Huxley and Haldane: why are our playgrounds the same organs as the garbage ducts? Why???
- Comment on Laid-off workers should use AI to manage their emotions, says Xbox exec 1 week ago:
And people who don’t have bread to eat should eat cake instead. *sigh*
- Comment on French City of Lyon Kicks Out Microsoft 1 week ago:
After Denmark and Schleswig-Holstein, now it’s Lyon.
I expect “[insert European government] ditches Microsoft” to become more and more common news, until it becomes non-noteworthy.
- Comment on His name is 1 week 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 1 week 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 1 week 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 1 week 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 1 week 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 1 week 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 1 week 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 1 week 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 1 week 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 1 week 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 2 weeks 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 2 weeks 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.' 2 weeks 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 2 weeks 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 2 weeks 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 2 weeks 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! 2 weeks ago:
Yellowcake, sponge… lemon flavoured sponge cake?
- Comment on Dots! 2 weeks 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!
