politicalcustard
@politicalcustard@beehaw.org
Politics, queer politics, techno, gayming, and books. Lots of books. Free Palestine! Trans ally. He/him.
- Comment on Why Large Language Models Like ChatGPT Treat Black- and White-Sounding Names Differently 5 weeks ago:
Shit in… shit out or to put it another way: racism in… racism out.
I propose we create another LLM… a Left Language Model.
- Comment on Kobo's new color E Ink eReaders start at only $150 5 weeks ago:
Sorry, you are correct. I researched plans to get a Kobo last year and I guess what I found out morphed from a rooted Kobo with Koreader into Kobo being open source. My apologies.
- Comment on Kobo's new color E Ink eReaders start at only $150 5 weeks ago:
I can’t wait to get a (regular) Kobo, my Kindle Paperwhite is still going strong and it’s 10 years old, but I really want a Kobo because it’s opensource. Amazon’s OS is dreadful, mine’s been in airplane mode for most of those 10 years and I just use a usb cable with it. I hope it dies soon so I will have a good excuse to replace it.
- Comment on You Can Now Follow President Biden on the Fediverse 1 month ago:
Let’s hope they chose a memorable password for the account… a very very memorable password.
- Comment on You Can Now Follow President Biden on the Fediverse 1 month ago:
@genocide.joe@beehaw.org?
- Comment on Amazon Ditches 'Just Walk Out' Checkouts at Its Grocery Stores 1 month ago:
People in India were watching people checkout?! Poorly paid workers watching Westerners consume… this is so grim.
Time to dust off those guillotines.
- Comment on Best printer 2024, best printer for home use, office use, printing labels, printer for school, homework printer you are a printer we are all printers 1 month ago:
People are still printing? I love it, proppa old skool that is. I thought the only person who printed stuff anymore was my mum who prints out her daily crossword.
Don’t forget to boycott HP as they provide computer hardware for the IDF, Israel’s police, and their Immigration and Population Authority. bdsmovement.net/boycott-hp
- Comment on Dragon's Dogma 2 MTX 1 month ago:
You should buy a game and that’s that. I am against MTX because they have put parents in debt when their children have racked up huge MTX bills and it’s very difficult/impossible to get refunds. Yes, parents can protect themselves against this but many parents are not particularly tech savvy and games companies will see these as potentially huge revenue streams and abuse the hell out of them… like EPIC did.
Also, gaming addicts should also be considered and potential routes to indebtedness avoided.
Knowing a game has MTX just makes me less likely to buy it in the first place. Price the game correctly in the first place, and offer DLCs if you want some extra revenue.
- Comment on Enshittification Continues: Discord to begin showing advertisements on it's free platform 1 month ago:
Oh, this looks great. Honestly, I am very happy when closed-source apps become worse, these are all just opportunities for open source to move in and take over.
- Comment on Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of March 24th 1 month ago:
I really wish they had; I was playing again today and her character was just being so awful to people. It would be fine to have such a character if over the course of the story she realises she has attachment issues and gradually tries to deal with them throughout the game, but she doesn’t, she just keeps being mean. I have no idea why you would have someone like this as the main character, I have no sympathy for her and the game is not even attempting to get me to empathise or sympathise with her. She’s meeting some really lovely people and I’m getting embarrassed by her behaviour! 😅
- Comment on Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of March 24th 1 month ago:
It’s still clunky and repetitive. I didn’t finish Zero Dawn and the more I play Forbidden West the more I feel it likely I won’t finish this either. I think you’re right to make a comparison to Ubisoft. Fine looking games with loads of potential but I suspect fear of bad sales result in bland, generic characters and storylines that are just not engaging.
- Comment on Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of March 24th 1 month ago:
Horizon Forbidden West, stunning graphics. I find the main character a bit off-putting as she can be a bit arrogant and rude and those are traits I don’t have a lot of patience for, but it really does look good.
- Comment on Android users who have a keen eye for design and detail, how is the whole stutter/lag situation? Esp. after a few years of use? 1 month ago:
I’d imagine quite a bit of the stuttering and lag on Androids was/is a result of all the bloatware phone companies insist on putting on their phones. I’ve a 2018 OnePlus 6 that doesn’t lag or stutter because the only apps on it are the ones I choose to have on it and allow to run - it’s degoogled phone running Lineage OS (Android 14) with zero bloat and zero ads and as a result a six-year-old phone running is still buttery smooth. Phone companies have a lot to answer for… it’s lucky they don’t sell cars; they’d sell you a Ferrari and then hook up a mobile home to the back of it.
- Comment on Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of March 17th 1 month ago:
I thought I didn’t like zombie games until I discovered Days Gone… it’s been really engrossing and has a wonderful plot, great characters and I don’t skip the dialogue, which is quite rare for me. It also looks stunning.
- Comment on Mozilla Drops Axe on its Privacy-Friendly Location Service 1 month ago:
Here’s some potentially good news about an alternative…
There’s an interesting comment on this Mozilla Github post about Graphene OS’ plans in this area, it’s quite a long comment so I’ll link it. The first para reads:
GrapheneOS Foundation has been planning to host a network location service for GrapheneOS and projects collaborating with us for a while now. We’ve received significant funding we can put to use for this to make a high quality, modern implementation on both the client and server side. A new unified app (cellular, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth beacons) for gathering data to publish as fully open data could also be part of it. We also plan to make a SUPL implementation as part of the same service as an alternative to our Google SUPL proxy to replace it as the default in the long term.
- Comment on Mozilla Drops Axe on its Privacy-Friendly Location Service 1 month ago:
The Ubuntu article is using this Mozilla announcement as its source (I am not saying they say different things, it’s just best to see the source material sometimes). The article mentions litigation and this might be the important bit, Skyhook Holdings Inc. was acquired by Qualcomm in May 2022.
Skyhook’s business is wifi location and I’m guessing the Mozilla’s been costing them money and Qualcomm might be looking for a little return on investment from its purchase of Skyhook.
I hope there’s an open source project that comes out of this that we can get behind and that this will turn out to be a good thing in the end. Mozilla did say their service was getting worse and it sounds like the litigation might be what’s behind this. I wish Mozilla were better at communicating stuff… oh well, that ain’t gonna change!