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 How I imagine mathematicians... 1 day ago:
Numbers are all made up stuff, and they’re all the same. Here, lemme prove it; let a=b, and…
a² = ab // multiplying both sides by "a" 2a² = a²+ab // adding a² to both sides 2a²-2ab = a²-ab // subtracting 2ab from both sides 2(a²-ab) = 1(a²-ab) // isolating (a²-ab) 2 = 1 // dividing both sides by (a²-ab)
From there you can prove any number is any number. 36=36 or 36=8 or 36=π.
- Comment on There is software/a technology company/a game named after most of the elements in the periodic table 1 day ago:
Guys, please don’t call anything after Zirconium or Niobium. We need the name for the Russian hacker groups Snugly Bear and Hugging Bear.
- Comment on Evidence That Humans Now Speak in a Chatbot-Influenced Dialect Is Getting Stronger 2 days ago:
Now I regret following it with only two points, instead of three. LLMs love listing threes.
I typically used the em dash only when writing professionally, but because of this AI thing I’m doing it in general, just to see how it turns out. (So far it’s a good way to sniff out assumers.)
- Comment on What does this pic make U think of? 4 days ago:
a ‘product of its time’.
Something like this, indeed. Or more like a product of the situation, plus a few laws - like network effect (the value a user derives from the OS depends on the number of users using it).
Note that not even the devs are to blame for this; it makes sense someone releasing commercial software would focus on the 70% (Windows), sometimes on the 15% (Mac OS), but almost never on the 4% (Linux).
- Comment on What does this pic make U think of? 4 days ago:
It does, but this is a vicious cycle: small market share → devs don’t release Linux versions for their software → the software ecosystem is fragile → users who’d rather use Linux still need to use Windows → small market share. Anything countering any of those “links” weakens the vicious cycle, including Microsoft pissing off some Windows users; that’s why the penguin gets smug.
- Comment on Let's stick with just the one observer from now on, then 4 days ago:
It’s like one of my cats. When she’s doing something silly, and I grab the phone to take her pic, all I get is a picture of her butt. Because to observe something you need to interact with it, and when I interact with her she collapses into the “I wants buttslaps!” state.
And before I watch it, she’s in a superposition of states. Much like Schrödinger’s cat. However her states aren’t dead vs. alive; they’re “sleeping”, “licking her own buttocks”, and “ruining my Christmas decoration”.
- Comment on What does this pic make U think of? 4 days ago:
Your typical Linux user (the penguin) gets really smug when learning about dumb shit Microsoft is doing with Windows. Because that dumb shit is making plenty Windows users consider ditching Windows for Linux.
One of those things is to force-feed AI into the users. Exemplified by Microsoft seeking to transform Windows into an “agentic OS”. People who don’t know how those systems work don’t want it; and people who do, even less.
- Comment on What does this pic make U think of? 4 days ago:
“Windows is now an agentic OS”.
- Comment on Evidence That Humans Now Speak in a Chatbot-Influenced Dialect Is Getting Stronger 5 days ago:
In the specific case of clanker vocab leaking into the general population, that’s no big deal. Bots are “trained” towards a bland, unoffensive, neutral words and expressions; stuff like “indeed”, “push the boundaries of”, “delve”, “navigate the complexities of
$topic”. Mostly overly verbose discourse markers.However when speaking in general grounds you’re of course correct, since the choice of words does change the meaning. For example, a “please” within a request might not change the core meaning of the request, but it conveys “I believe to be necessary to show you respect”.
- Comment on Evidence That Humans Now Speak in a Chatbot-Influenced Dialect Is Getting Stronger 5 days ago:
And AI sucks at that. If you interpret its output as a human-made summary, it shows everything you shouldn’t do — such as conflating what’s written with its assumptions over what’s written, or missing the core of the text for the sake of random excerpts (that might imply the opposite of what the author wrote).
But, more importantly: people are getting used to babble, that what others say has no meaning. They will not throw it into an AI to summarise it, and when they do it, they won’t understand the AI output.
- Comment on Evidence That Humans Now Speak in a Chatbot-Influenced Dialect Is Getting Stronger 5 days ago:
I don’t see a big deal given
- What matters the most is not the words within an utterance, but the discourse conveyed by that utterance. [Translation: how you say it matters less than what you say.]
- Word usage is prone to trends. Not just slang. Easy come, easy go.
What I am concerned however is that those chatbots babble a bloody lot. And people might be willing to accept babble a bit more, due to exposure lowering their standards. And they kind of give up looking for meaning on what others say.
- Comment on Microsoft has a problem: nobody wants to buy or use its shoddy AI products — as Google's AI growth begins to outpace Copilot products 6 days ago:
Point still stands; the same “customers” of Vanguard and Fidelity own a huge chunk of both Google and Microsoft.
- Comment on Management lingo irritates me the most actually 6 days ago:
This. Plus what @MoonManKipper@lemmy.world added.
Good communication should be approachable, succinct, complete, and accurate. But those four things are mutually exclusive; if you focus too hard on 1+ of them, the others get worse. With jargon being a tool to make things more succinct, at the expense of approachability.
- Comment on Microsoft has a problem: nobody wants to buy or use its shoddy AI products — as Google's AI growth begins to outpace Copilot products 6 days ago:
Both are owned by the same corporations (Vanguard, BlackRock, Fidelity, State Street, Geode…), who’ll win either way. Until the bubble bursts, that is.
- Comment on French Anatomy 6 days ago:
It’s a Troy under the glorious Soviet Russia protection, tovarish.
In Soviet Russia, you don’t stuff the horse. The horse stuffs you!
- Comment on Mozilla’s Betrayal of Open Source: Google’s Gemini AI is Overwriting Volunteer Work on Support Mozilla 6 days ago:
On an individual level, Librewolf is a good idea, because it has saner privacy defaults than Firefox; and its devs are rather good at gutting out the crap.
However, on a collective level, the problem still remains: we have exactly two options, Chromium and Firefox (note LibreWolf is a custom version of Firefox). One is from GAFAM cancer, another is from a GAFAM vassal that keeps doing dumb stuff, since it’s nothing but contained opposition.
- Comment on Mozilla’s Betrayal of Open Source: Google’s Gemini AI is Overwriting Volunteer Work on Support Mozilla 6 days ago:
Mozilla is a mythical beast. It has many heads, but no brain. As such its actions and movement are unpredictable, erratic, and… dumb.
Replacing volunteer work with a bot does not make bloody sense dammit. You’ll actually pay for the bot, and the output is worse. The Japanese localisation community already called it quits, and others will follow. And every bloody thing is unnecessarily complex, from Mozilla’s structure to what it makes, even if there’s a single piece of its software people care about - Firefox. And Firefox only survives because its redeeming quality is negative — to not be Chromium.
- Comment on Anon asks out a girl 1 week ago:
Not really assumptions, but how it sounds like, in the context of a social setting. Or, if you want: that’s how people “read” it.
- Comment on Anon asks out a girl 1 week ago:
Because he spoke to a stranger that didn’t want him to speak to them.
Don’t be disingenuous. That is not even remotely close to what I said.
Not bothering further with you.
- Comment on Anon asks out a girl 1 week ago:
If you’re trying to say something like “you have connections, unlike all of the dating people”: that is not what I said. Everybody has at least some connections; it’s all about how you use them to know more people.
If you mean something else, please explain - I’m genuinely struggling to parse your sentence.
- Comment on Anon asks out a girl 1 week ago:
Paying too much attention on the others’ conversations, even in a public environment, is creepy.
- Comment on Anon asks out a girl 1 week ago:
I get your reasoning, but personally I never interpreted it as a transaction fee. It’s more like a token of good will; I do something similar when I find friends in a bar, too.
The main gender problematic I see is:
- If a woman approaches a man with a drink, society immediately labels both sides as bad.
- In some cases she’d be better off approaching a bear, but she won’t know it until it’s too late.
- Comment on Anon asks out a girl 1 week ago:
I’ve seen it plenty, plenty times. Because I was looking for it. That was my “plan A” strategy when I still bothered dating; it works great as long as you know to be assertive without being pushy. (Some people want to be left alone, some only want to chitchat, both things are fine and you should respect that.)
My “plan B” was relying on connections, but that relies on luck. For example:
- you go to the bar with A
- A is acquainted with B, who’s drinking with C
- You say “hey, what if we all drink together?”
Then you have some room to at least know B and/or C better. And potentially ask one of them out.
- Comment on Anon asks out a girl 1 week ago:
Asking her out would be fine; the problem, as I already explained, is how. However I do agree with you that her answer was over the top; a simple “No.” would be the best.
Whole thing is no issue.
It was clearly an issue to the Anon, check the last paragraph.
If you are gonna randomly strike up conversations you will get cooked sometimes.
He wasn’t just striking up a conversation.
Additionally (and that’s neither side’s fault), mob mentality is a plague. She was in a group of four people; people typically behave worse in groups than alone.
- Comment on Anon asks out a girl 1 week ago:
What he says boils down to “I was eavesdropping your conversation, and I assume you’re desperate. You might as well lower your standards — date someone random you have no connections with, like me.” It’s bad; not bad enough to deserve that rude reply, but still bad.
A better approach would be to try to pick up a woman who’s alone, offer her a drink*, chitchat a bit, and then ask her for a date. With no references to what she said to other people. Creating some connection between him and her, before he asks her out.
*always ask the bar workers to bring it. Don’t bring it yourself.
- Comment on Anon asks out a girl 1 week ago:
The issue with Anon is not where he decided to pick the woman up, but how. What he said is basically “hey, I’m creepy enough to eavesdrop your conversation for three whole hours. Since you’re desperate you might as well lower your standards and date someone random, like me.”
- Comment on Anon asks out a girl 1 week ago:
Guy’s a creepo, gal puts people down unnecessarily. Both will unwillingly die alone.
- Comment on Why are there so many bloody roguelikes or roguelites, and what really makes a game roguish? 2 weeks ago:
Slay the Spire: yes. All four rules are there, specially in spirit. It’s also a deck-building game but that’s fine, a game can belong to 2+ genres at the same time.
I’m not sure on Balatro. I didn’t play it, so… maybe?
- Comment on Why are there so many bloody roguelikes or roguelites, and what really makes a game roguish? 2 weeks ago:
There are a thousand definitions and mine is just one among many, I’m aware. This is not a “right vs. wrong” matter, it’s how you cut things out.
For me, a roguelike has four rules:
- Permadeath—can’t reuse dead chars for new playthrus.
- Procedural generation—lots of the game get changed from one to another playthru.
- Turn-based—game time is split into turns, and there’s no RL time limit on how long each turn takes.
- Simple elements—each action, event, item, stat etc. is by itself simple. Complexity appears through their interaction.
People aware of other definitions (like the Berlin Interpretation) will notice my #4 is not “grid-based”. I think the grid is just a consequence of keeping individual elements simple, in this case movement.
Those rules are not random. They create gameplay where there are limits on how better your character can get; but you, as the player, are consistently getting better. Not by having better reflexes, not by dumb memorisation, but by understanding the game better, and thinking deeper on how its elements interact.
I personally don’t consider games missing any of those elements a “roguelike”. Like The Binding of Isaac; don’t get me wrong, it’s a great game (I love it); but since it’s missing #3 (combat is real-timed) and #4 (complex movement and attack patterns, not just for you but your enemies), it relies way more on your reflexes and senses than a roguelike would.
Some might be tempted to use the label “roguelite” for games having at least few of those features, but not all of them. Like… well, Isaac—it does feature permadeath and procedural generation, right? Frankly, I think the definition isn’t useful, and it’s bound to include things completely different from each other. It’s like saying carrots and limes are both “orange-like” (carrots due to colour, limes because they’re citrus); instead of letting those games shine as their own things, you’re dumping them into a “failed to be a roguelike” category.
- Comment on What's the coolest organic compound, chat? 2 weeks ago: