ragebutt
@ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- Comment on Where did the conspiracy theory that America was behind 9/11? Was there any evidence to back up these claims (real evidence)? 19 hours ago:
Also Clinton looking at intel (based on credible statements from people involved in the first wtc attack and plane bombing that no one remembers anymore because relatively few people died) related to bin Laden planning “a huge attack” in the final few months of his presidency and being like “ehhhh”
Then bush looking at the same intel and being like “ehhh”
Then 10 years later Clinton writes about it in his autobiography as his biggest regret
The thing that the loose change crowd got wrong is that it wasn’t that 9/11 was straight up planned by the USA, it’s more that it was allowed to happen. Whether that’s due to incompetence, truly a belief that it wouldn’t be all that big of a deal (which, tbf, was easily possible), or opportunistic is debatable. Regardless, the opportunistic got quite a lot out of it
- Comment on Sony 6 days ago:
Piracy for consoles isn’t like it was in the Xbox 360 and earlier days (excluding Nintendo although they seem to have finally gotten their shit together with switch 2 in this regard). Security for consoles was a joke back then and easily defeated with hardware mods, sometime within weeks of release. Now the focus is more on soft modding and even then it can take ages, if ever.
The ps5 is technically jailbreakable but only in an extremely narrow and unlikely set of circumstances (eg did you buy a ps5 several years ago and never connect it to the internet awaiting a hack that may never come?). And even that took years to release. A far cry from the days of 10 different ps2 modchips and softmods for you Xbox, both available relatively quickly with a super active scene supporting them
- Comment on Good for him. 1 week ago:
That’s not inherently true, infinity can be bound
There are an infinite amount of numbers between 2 and 3 but none of them are 5
- Comment on Yes, yes they are 1 week ago:
LLMs are sycophantic and will do what it takes to align with your framing
Here is the response to your posts fed into one with the framing “why is this bullshit”:
This is a much better-dressed version of the same move — real citations bolted onto claims they don’t actually support. It’s more sophisticated bullshit, not a vindication.
Going through it:
The Overfitted Brain Hypothesis is real but doesn’t say what’s being claimed. Erik Hoel’s OBH is genuinely a real, interesting hypothesis — but it’s about why we dream (proposed as a regularization process against overfitting to daily life), not a claim that some people’s brains “run out of plasticity” or hit a “ground state” requiring demolition. Citing it here is a bait-and-switch: borrowing the credibility of a real, narrow hypothesis to backstop a much broader and untested claim it was never meant to support.
Point 2 is real but doesn’t establish a “structural” or biological claim. Research on dogmatism and cognitive flexibility (e.g. Zmigrod’s work) is real and does show correlations between rigidity and extremism across ideologies. But “lower cognitive flexibility on psychological tests” is not the same as “synaptic connections have crystallized and occupy physical volume.” The report quietly swaps a behavioral/psychometric finding for a structural/anatomical one — that’s the same sleight of hand as the original post, just relayed through real citations.
Point 3 conflates two different things. Synaptic consolidation and memory reconsolidation are real, well-established mechanisms — but they apply to specific memories, not generally to “belief systems” or “core values” as monolithic structures. There’s no research establishing that changing an opinion about a social group requires literally destabilizing identity-load-bearing memory structures in the way described. The “metabolically demanding” claim is real for reconsolidation at the level of individual fear memories in animal studies; extrapolating that to “changing your mind about people of other races costs forbidden metabolic energy” is not something neuroscience has shown.
Point 4 is legitimate and is honestly the strongest part — identity-protective cognition (Dan Kahan’s work) is well-supported and genuinely explains motivated resistance to belief change. Notably, this is the one part that doesn’t need any biological mechanism at all — it’s a cognitive/social psychology finding, not a neurons-and-synapses one.
The summary sentence is the tell. “Aligns with the scientific consensus” is doing enormous work to paper over the fact that none of the four citations, individually, support the specific mechanistic claims in the original post (no plasticity “running out,” no literal “ground state,” no “forbidden” metabolic cost). Each citation is real, but they’re being stitched into a chain of inference none of the original authors made and that doesn’t follow from their actual findings.
So the underlying instinct — rigid/dogmatic thinkers show less cognitive flexibility and resist belief change for identity-protective reasons — is genuinely supported by real research (points 2 and 4 particularly). But the specific neurological storytelling (overfitting as literal synaptic crystallization, forbidden metabolic costs, needing to be “torn down and rebuilt”) remains invented, now laundered through real papers that don’t actually claim what’s attributed to them. This is a fairly common pattern with AI research tools: ask it to find support for a thesis, and it will surface real, adjacent literature and then summarize it in a way that overstates the connection to your original claim. The citations are real; the synthesis is not.
- Comment on 2 weeks ago:
5 felt like they half wrote 3 different games, realized they were running out of time, and then smushed them all together. Finishing the campaign becomes a chore long before the ending. Speaking of the ending if you do manage to chug through your reward is an abrupt and extremely weak ending that again feels like they just ran out of time
It’s crazy because then they plopped out red dead 2 which was a tremendously excellent narrative by comparison. They clearly have the means to make something fantastic.
- Comment on 1 month ago:
It will shift to streaming that can run on anything and things like mods, running older clients, and cheats will essentially be impossible. Unless of course you pay for them with in app purchases, which publishers love
Short sighted consumers will eat it up because “oh now I don’t need an expensive console, I can just run an app on my tv!”
Then comes the death of all the above, as well as a generation of kids having access to not just gaming, but 3d modeling and serious digital art, programming (as well as learning through modding and finding ways to cheat), music production, video editing, etc. how many of those things were only available to kids via piracy? Capitalists don’t give a shit about this. They’re salivating at everything become a streaming client which both essentially eliminates piracy as well as turning a one time software purchase into perpetual subscription hell.
The crazy part is everyone but the tiniest sliver of people will be fucked by this. You know how musicians have shifted to basically making dick from streaming, and view it essentially as advertisement to funnel people into physical merch and concert ticket purchases, their only remaining revenue streams? Developers will be in the same place. It’s arguably advantageous now to be on something like gamepass but that’s because Microsoft is purposefully taking a small percentage barely above costs (10.5%). Once it’s dominant do you think they won’t shift to 30% like apple, steam, and google? And probably even more once distribution outside of their platform is unfeasible?
And for the short sighted consumer saving $3-500 on a console once every 5-10 years becomes another $30 subscription, which outpaces the cost of a console in 2 years and also robs you of the shred of autonomy you did have
- Comment on Valve raises Steam Deck prices by more than $200 1 month ago:
ram is a volatile commodity that, while difficult to manufacture, is not as difficult as say a gpu or cpu. As a result in the past manufacturers have been pushed to sell supplies at or even below cost. It seems like a no brainer to start up a new fab right now but the reality is that would take years to get to a point where it’s outputting any kind of reasonable supply and in that time prices could (and hopefully will) return to a much thinner margin
Apple could, for example, start up a fab. They have the cash. But it’s a lot of cash, it doesn’t stop (the fab needs continual significant investment to stay competitive), and when ram prices dive they are stuck holding the bag for this 15-20 billion dollar fab that needs several billion dollars a year to keep playing the game. This is why they stick to fabrication of things where they can differentiate (eg m series processors) and control the market. And then they can do what they’re doing right now: leverage their huge position to get far better prices than someone like valve, who’s barely a player in the hardware game, and ensure the architecture of their custom silicon maximizes ram performance (uma) and even use that influence to codesign new types of ram that align with their interests (lpddr5x)
- Comment on Wonder why? 2 months ago:
Adding green energy at 8x the rate of the USA with a total of 3.89 terawatts, which is 3x larger than the entire USA energy grid, and accounting over 30% of the worlds spending towards green energy while the USA has less than 25% of the grid as green energy
Essentially ending homelessness
A notably lower prison population than the USA despite like 6x the population
A minimum wage set by provinces who are heavily encouraged to give increases every few years tied to inflation and cost of living
Actually working to shift a fee for service healthcare system to a socialized model with significant progress occurring
No airstrikes, bombings of another country, or declared wars since 1979. Even in terms of proxy wars post 1979 has been far more about economic support and diplomacy than shipping weapons
Etc etc but yes Xi and Trump are equivalent because they have a social credit score and government surveillance. That’s definitely not like the America, who has just normal credit scores, palantir, and a large chunk of your tax money funding proxy wars (and now actual war) instead of maintaining critical infrastructure or any quality of life improvements for its people.
- Comment on Nier Automata 3 months ago:
I will just give yoko taro my money if he does something, basically
Although imo replicant was better, albeit more tedious to get to the end. He really has a disdain for the people that consume his media and I love it
- Comment on Sony is testing dynamic pricing: one game - different prices on the PlayStation Store 4 months ago:
In some cases the ps5 can as well but only older firmwares have the full chain of exploits. That said you can run game backups and if you get an old enough firmware you can even install Linux and run steam games
- Comment on halal paintball 5 months ago:
Agar maybe, or alginate
- Comment on Animetosho shutting down 5 months ago:
This really sucks; it was very very VERY helpful to be able to quickly download attachments for a given release
- Comment on lightbulbs 5 months ago:
Modern led bulbs can do both and then with home assistant you can script it so the color temperature changes through the day as the sun changes.
In the morning my house is cool light around 3k and over the day it warms up to about 6500k
- Comment on [deleted] 5 months ago:
IP is a bullshit concept that slows down the progress of humanity. They take what is learned and improve on it then sell that because why the fuck wouldn’t you. The only people who have a problem with this are moronic capitalists that say “grrr how dare you improve my technology before I earn my money from it! It’s my idea! I own it forever”.
There is maybe some debate about a small reasonable period to allow someone to recoup r&d costs. On the other hand we can look to an example like during Covid: American pharma companies were not sharing research about mRNA vaccines with each other or the world in the hopes of being “the first” and the financial gains that would come with this. Accelerating this process through collaborative effort would’ve literally saved tens of thousands of lives. This was often defended by Americans who are so indoctrinated they couldn’t possibly conceptualize a world without this approach. “Of course Pfizer needs the IP? How else will they make their money??”
We excuse it because most of the time it doesn’t really matter. A slightly better phone or laptop or whatever is not a huge deal. But then you see things like the Covid example and start to wonder: if that broke down and everything was basically “open source” how much further along would we be?
- Comment on Cant Decide 🤖 5 months ago:
Yeah this was my reaction, before AI cynicism there was “this is obviously scripted” cynicism and then even tropes that built on it like nothing ever happens
- Comment on The boy who was relentlessly bullied by his uncle 5 months ago:
I straight up thought there was some shit on my phone screen
- Comment on If it fits... 5 months ago:
I got one eventually in a small city for doing the same. I didn’t bother fighting it because court would’ve taken all day and it was $20, which I assume is what they bank on, but I did want to go to court to have them clarify just what exact law did I break
- Comment on If it fits... 5 months ago:
I have a smart car and parked like that a few times years ago after seeing a picture like this and got a ticket eventually
- Comment on Wikipeter was the founder of the site in 1993 when he wanted to know more about model trains without having to visit the library 6 months ago:
Wikipedia has major process issues that make it unreliable especially in the long term. Editors are given a ton of power to wield, the process of giving them power is not something the laymen is involved in, once they have power it’s fairly entrenched and hard to remove, and bias absolutely occurs. For the most part the bias is tempered but it is seen more heavily in articles like Gaza, Crimea/Ukraine, Venezuela, war on terror, Autism, transgender issues, war crimes of Japan, articles related to colonalism, articles related to big tech controversies, etc.
It’s something they desperately need to address because the right wing nutjobs are gunning for them and are very well funded. They 100% are going to try to put people into the editorial process or convert people who are already there to swing bias (if this hasn’t happened already). The right wing has managed to do this with the us government, they can and will do it to Wikipedia
- Comment on People like this 6 months ago:
Sometimes I miss old forums where content was brought back up by simply posting within the topic (though that lead to the annoying and incessant “bump? bump? bump?” posts on threads people wouldn’t let die, i guess).
Post voting is understandable as an alternative but it just leads to so much vanity as a result. Sites like this and reddit have so many dorks that are like “my fake internet points… how could you”. If it matters that much to you just shitpost all the time and you’ll get those numbers up
- Comment on Someone has a LOT of dusty computers 6 months ago:
They get high on the propellant (usually difluoroethane), basically, enhanced by hypoxia
Nitrous oxide (“whippits”) is a whole other thing that is very much a grey market drug dealer “this should probably just explicitly be legal at this point because the hoops people jump through are kind of silly”. Like if you’re into cooking nitrous oxide chargers are a valid thing to own for making whipped cream and such so headshops often stock huge tanks under the guise of “for culinary use only”, just like how people only use bongs for tobacco, right
- Comment on Lasagna 6 months ago:
As if he hasn’t been drawing the same basic picture 500 times a day for 50+ years. He can probably draw and color a perfect Garfield strip blindfolded with a broken arm.
It’s like one of those Chinese artisan teapot makers that’s 70 years old. When you watch a video of them making a teapot it looks so simple and elegant but you know that ability to make such deliberate and precise action comes from basically making 100 teapots a day for 50+ years. Then you see that laminar flow and the intricate detailing and you’re like oh my god I want that and you search it up and find out a proper one from someone like that is like $400 so you stick with your electric kettle that was $17.99.
He’s like the shitty banal grandma comedy version of that
- Comment on My culture also loves music, dancing and telling stories 6 months ago:
we have a very good traditional bread that is served with a sauce or maybe flavored oil
- Comment on Anon's neighbors have chickens 6 months ago:
My neighbor had chickens and a rooster. It was loud, as expected, but it was lazy and would only start later in the day. In actuality it was probably because it was young and separated from other roosters. It probably eventually would’ve done the morning routine but a fox got them all one day
- Comment on Roundup of Roundup 6 months ago:
Replication as you describe isn’t done in most fields, that’s part of the “serious effort and funding” I mentioned. If I am applying for a grant to do research what do you think gets funded? Novel proposition or rudimentary replication? Funders want to be a part of glory just as much as institutions which is part of the systemic issue here.
There are researchers that aim to replicate but the numbers of them have shrunk across all fields because funders and universities are pushing for novel research.
Aside from this though one does not need to fully replicate a study to disprove it. In both the studies I pointed out people were sounding alarms for years about discrepancies in the data that in wakefields case should not have passed peer review. The lesne paper is more subtle and one could argue it still should’ve been caught in peer review. But in both cases it took ages of people saying “hey hey hey this shit is fucked” and that is the problem. In the case of Wakefield it was more decisive, in the case of lesne it was more insidious (kind of a sunk cost fallacy because the field bought into the hypothesis without verifying so hard)
- Comment on Roundup of Roundup 6 months ago:
It takes AGES for malfeasance to get consequences. The Wakefield MMR study (responsible for energizing the modern anti vaccination movement), published in 1998, wasn’t retracted until 2010. (He was also stripped of his license to practice medicine and has consistently doubled down since which has paid off dearly, marrying supermodels and being a literal millionaire).
The amyloid plaque hypothesis for Alzheimer’s that was based on falsified data from 2006 wasn’t retracted until 2024. This had thousands of citations, possibly tens of thousands, and the first author continues to defend the data manipulation as overblown. Essentially something like that the underlying experiments were sound, we just edited the images for clarity, there was no intent, all (8!) of my coauthors agreed to the retraction because they’re laaaaame, basically every drug made based on this hypothesis doesn’t work because of some other reason, trust me bro.
It’s very difficult to counter this. It takes serious effort to generate data contrary to the evidence presented. However, funding would help. But additionally this is something where criminal charges would be merited. Wakefield has created a world in which we moved backward for his own financial enrichment. One could argue that the children dead from measles outbreaks are in part his fault. He lost his license, sure, but this is meaningless. He is an antivax icon, he married Elle McPherson, he does podcasts and documentaries, speaking engagements, etc. he is paid far more than many doctors with none of the stress and liability. And it’s fairly clear his original intent was to discourage people from the MMR vaccine to push them towards a product he had a vested financial interest in. The antivax stuff was not his goal but it worked out because he is a sociopathic grifter.
Lesne is different. He is a scientist that is probably pushed to publish at all costs and did so. Perhaps he is honest and his manipulation was simply to improve clarity. If it was not and he was pushing to get an influential paper out then he is guilty of wasting billions in funding and tens of thousands of hours of researcher time as well as countless lives wasted doing clinical trials for treatments that were never worth exploring.
What’s a viable consequence for these people? Life in prison? This is such a huge crime against society. Similarly the Monsanto and Coca Cola ghost writing research, everything involved in tobacco, Purdue and OxyContin addiction, etc. the last one was treated as a civil matter but are these not criminal? Countless lives were destroyed
- Comment on Ope 6 months ago:
Why is there an arch that distorts the text for the image in the center? You couldn’t just make the overall image like 10 pixels longer??
- Comment on Amazon develops methods for inserting ads onto any flat surface in an existing video 6 months ago:
This is the inevitable next step. YouTube is looking at doing this too, where ads would be served as part of the same stream id as the content (eg your page wouldn’t refresh and the ad would be cut into the video itself) but they have to make the player work with changing states without refreshing the page across all platforms and it puts a lot more stress on CDNs (plus sponsor block would still be a method to defeat, although not as effective).
But integration of the ads more deeply into the content has always been the goal. That’s why product placement exists. The fault of commercials is that people can simply disengage - go to the bathroom, talk to friends, fuck around on phone, etc. but if the ad is part of the content they have to see it if they want to engage with it. You lose the ability to shill as effectively (unless you do the youtuber paid segment thing, which makes your ads programmatically skippable again eg sponsorblock) but you gain an ad that is practically unblockable unless the show is essentially censored.
Advertisers are scum. Destroy all advertisers. Admen are the cancer that destroy society. Every cool thing has advertisers encroach in on it once people realize how cool it is and then they destroy it - radio, tv, newspapers, books, the internet, literally any public space, etc. if you work in advertising you should be ashamed of yourself and your parents definitely feel like they went wrong somewhere
- Comment on Make me feel like a man 6 months ago:
- Comment on 6 months ago:
It means exercise and playing video games
