Yaky

@Yaky@slrpnk.net

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do Americanized names of places etc exist?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  But you would call Alexander or Alexandra “Sasha” or even “Shura” in some Slavic languages. And you call Robert “Bob” in the US.

  On the same topic, are “Alexander”, “Aleksandr” and “Oleksandr” the same name or not? What about “John” and “Ivan”?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How does Google make money from Gmail, the google calendar, drive or other services when used with third party front ends?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  TBH I haven’t used traffic feature (or WeGo, really) enough to know if it’s good.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How does Google make money from Gmail, the google calendar, drive or other services when used with third party front ends?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I have been using Organic Maps for many years. They are offline-first, and use OpenStreetMap for the data. Since it’s OpenStreetMap, quality might vary by country and even city.

  If you’re looking for more commercial app, HERE WeGo / Here Maps has traffic and online accounts.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are there any non capitalistic technology companies still around?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  It really depends on the business.

  I worked for two smaller businesses (team of ≤ 10 software developers). One was mismanaged, ran by very unpleasant people, and abusive towards employees, resulting in a huge turnover and a “dead sea effect”. The other company got government grants because the owner’s relative was a politician, and had ridiculous surveillance software on developers’ machines.

  Ironically, the most “human” and enjoyable work I did was working on internal legacy software and code rewrites for a huge corporation before and during their move towards agile and modern “conveyorized” approach to software.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  From some philosophical standpoints (determinism, for example), a person is their mind, a brain; so reproducing or simulating the brain to a very high degree would result in reproducing that person. Whether that is true or not is philosophical, and is similar to the Star Trek teleporter discussion.

  In Alastair Reynolds’ Revelation Space universe, the classification is pretty sensible: there are three levels of simulation.

  Alpha level is a nanotech scan-copy of a real brain which kills the subject, but the resulting persona is considered intelligent, a human, with rights and all. IIRC there were only 60 people who did that.

  Beta level is a model built upon all available information about the person, all audio, video, text, etc. This is pretty much what we might now call a trained AI, but it is not considered intelligent.

  And gamma level is a fully artificial persona, usually used for chatbots and what we would use LLMs for now.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What determines whether people are likely to purposely (but mistakenly) put two words together (without a space)?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  IMO tech terms evolve a bit faster and are more accepted with their new spelling and meaning. Older words are less prone to such adjustments, but “alot” puzzles me as well.

  Here are a few more to add to the confusion:

  • From your own post, we now type “website” not "web site"
  • We use email now, not e-mail, and definitely not “electronic mail”
  • “Blog” is shortened "web log"
  • Is it “username” or “user name”? They could mean different things, but might not
  • It’s always “password”, not “pass word”. Same with “passphrase”.
  • Is it “filename” or “file name”? In software, this becomes even more confusing since “filename” could imply a full path to the file, or just the name (sometimes without extension)
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I watched Arrival (2016), there was a lot more to it than I was expecting⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  FYI Annihilation novel has the same premise and setup as the movie, but is quite different plot-wise. It’s more emotional, introspective, and has very vivid imagery. Much different from what I usually read, but I loved it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is a metaphor you like in your language?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Ukrainian “не лізь поперед батька в пекло” (“don’t rush to hell before your father”) - a mix of “don’t be foolish / try to prove yourself / hurt yourself doing so” and also “let experienced people do their job / lead”.

  Also Ukrainian “або пан або пропав” (“Either [you become] a lord, or you disappear”), an important risky choice, or sometimes used as YOLO of yesteryear.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do you have any recommendations for casual games?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Time Management: The Game

  Probably the most valuable IRL skill you can learn in a game. Or you can just chill and fish for a whole year, no one’s gonna judge you.