masterspace
@masterspace@lemmy.ca
- Comment on Gaming has a polarization problem 4 days ago:
Skyrim’s varied gameplay systems?
It has stealth, it has magic, it has melee combat, it has ranged combat, it has dialogue options for talking your way through stuff, it has multiple ways of solving quest lines…
It’s basically Skyrim, if it was smaller and more focused, with better combat, voice acting, and heads and tails better writing.
- Comment on Gaming has a polarization problem 4 days ago:
Also, from a mechanistic standpoint I think that mostly has to do with the high cost of entry for games.
At $80-$100 for a full priced game these days, it’s hard to just buy on a whim. The only time you would is when they’re on sale, which happens well after initial release. So initial sales of games are basically entirely driven by reviews and online discourse (which itself has an effect on reviews), and you basically just have a bunch of people all waiting for the signal to buy or not.
I do think that services like Gamepass are a genuinely good way of reducing that effect, because now anyone can try anything on a lark.
- Comment on Gaming has a polarization problem 4 days ago:
People are complaining about Avowed? What the fuck is wrong with them?
I’ve been too busy loving it to be online reading anything, honestly cannot fathom what their complaints are tho. Avowed has repeatedly impressed me by being more clever and nuanced than I was expecting a game to be.
- Comment on How Trump’s ‘51st State’ Canada Talk Came to Be Seen as Deadly Serious 4 days ago:
Let me be 100% clear. If America ever annexes, Canada, by military force, by economic force, or through normal American CIA style manipulation, they will have a violent terrorist situation on their hands the likes of which they could never conceive.
Ask England how easy it was to handle the IRA.
- Comment on no ragrets 1 week ago:
I mean possibly, the article describes him trying to train standard poodles as guide dogs for years without success, and then he crossed one of them with his boss’ lab.
So maybe? But also, isn’t that what unscrupulous breeders are going to do anyways? Like I don’t see how this breed makes puppy mills better or worse, it seems like it would just change the breeds they target.
- Comment on no ragrets 1 week ago:
The guy originally bred them as a hypoallergenic guide dog, and then they exploded in popularity.
The article basically paints the picture that the original guy bred them the right way (I don’t see how), but since then a bunch of unscrupulous breeders and puppy mills have turned two smart, somewhat inherently well behaved, breeds: labs and poodles, to a breed that is more chaotic and dependent (again, I don’t see how that’s any different from what he did or what most dogs aee like).
The article isn’t exactly well written or researched. It mostly just quotes him and throws in a couple quotes from Kennel Associations and Facebook pages. Provides no information on where this fits in the wider context of dog breeding.
- Comment on Why do people see me as far older than 19 when I type the way I do sometimes?/Why do people think full stops are rude? 2 weeks ago:
Young people focus on the tone they’re conveying.
Old people focus on following the rules that were beaten into them as children for no reason.
- Comment on Why do people see me as far older than 19 when I type the way I do sometimes?/Why do people think full stops are rude? 2 weeks ago:
Is your intention to convey a certain tone or win a grammar competition?
- Comment on Why do people see me as far older than 19 when I type the way I do sometimes?/Why do people think full stops are rude? 2 weeks ago:
They didn’t say do it right, they said do it with propriety, as in making sure to follow the rules for the sake of following the rules.
- Comment on Why do people see me as far older than 19 when I type the way I do sometimes?/Why do people think full stops are rude? 2 weeks ago:
Because those of who grew up communicating a lot via the written word stopped feeling beholden to type using classic grammar rules like ending every sentence of every communication with a period no matter what.
The entire purpose of language is to express yourself, and people started noticing that their texts sounded friendlier if they sounded less abrupt, so they started typing that way.
You type according to traditional essay writing rules which is how older people learned to write, younger people learned to focus on producing natural sounding language and conversation.
- Comment on Advice on enjoying your life 4 weeks ago:
No. If you’re going to be pedantic, at least be right.
Average
noun
- a number expressing the central or typical value in a set of data, in particular the mode, median, or (most commonly) the mean, which is calculated by dividing the sum of the values in the set by their number.
The term average, inherently refers to three different ways to calculate the central value in a data set. What you’re talking about is mean, but it can also mean mode, or median.
- Comment on [deleted] 5 weeks ago:
Picking out random people to lionize too much while you demonize literally everyone else, is still being cynical.
Correct. We do not know the training data, which makes it silly to decide that it is definitely cribbed from OpenAI’s model. What we do know is how the code works, because it is open and they wrote a paper. What would you consider “evidence,” if not the actual code and then a highly detailed explanation from the authors about how it works, and then some independent testing and interpretation by known experts? Do you want it carved on a golden tablet or something?
Because the paper does not prove what DeepSeek is claiming. The paper outlines a number of clever techniques that might help to improve efficiency, but most researchers are still incredibly skeptical that they would add up to a full order of magnitude less compute power required for training.
Until someone else uses DeepSeek’s techniques to openly train a comparable model off non-distilled data, we have no reason to believe their method is replicable.
- Comment on [deleted] 5 weeks ago:
They HAVE done that. It’s one of the techniques they use to produce things like o1 mini models and the other mini models that run on device.
But that’s not a valid technique for creating new foundation models, just for creating refined versions of existing models. You would never have been able to create for instance, an o1 model from Chat PT 3.5 using distillation.
- Comment on [deleted] 5 weeks ago:
If that was all he said, I would have no issue with that. But no, he spent 10,000 words padding that sentiment out with as much tripe and snake as he could.
- Comment on [deleted] 5 weeks ago:
Lmfao, so now Lemmy thinks that the stock market is an arbiter of value and truth?
Shut the fuck up dumbass.
- Comment on [deleted] 5 weeks ago:
Look up the definition of the word cynical. It means, more or less, asserting that no one is motivated by sincere integrity. Accusing some specific people of lacking integrity, while holding up others as good examples of integrity that everyone should aspire to, is the opposite of cynicism.
Yeah, I know the definition of the word, and I meant what I said. Stop trying to think I said something else because you disagree.
He is incredibly cynical.
He thinks everyone in the tech industry is a moustache twirling villain and always ascribes malice where I competence would do. Like I said, he’s who you listen to when you want to hear someone go on an unhinged rant about everyone being evil, not someone with an accurate view of human nature or motivations.
He doesn’t address very much the idea that DeepSeek “distilled” their model from OpenAI’s model and others specifically because that is just a rumor with very minimal evidence for it.
There is very minimal evidence for literally EVERYTHING he writes about in this article. The whole talk of them working around the GPU restrictions also has incredibly minimal evidence and is just a rumour.
Once again, his motivation is not informing you, it’s dunking in the tech industry. It’s literally his entire persona and career.
The “rumors” you say he discusses about novel ways the Chinese researchers found to outperform OpenAI are based on an extremely detailed look at their paper and their code, as interpreted by experts.
No, they’re not. He just portrays it that way because that makes the tech industry sound bad. We flat out do not know how they trained Deepseek’s model.
- Comment on [deleted] 5 weeks ago:
Wanting a better world, and holding up a light to the current one to show the differences between what could be and what is, is not at all what “cynical” means. “Cynical” is the opposite of what you mean. “Pessimistic” or “negative” is definitely more apt, yes.
No, I said cynical and I meant cynical.
I don’t care that he criticizes the tech industry, I care that he feels the innate need to portray everyone in it as moustache twirling villains, rather than normal people caught up in the same capitalist systems and pressures as everyone else.
Even here, he spends all the article focusing on rumours about Chinese researchers making novel ways to outperform OpenAI and the like, and just makes a dismissive joke about the accusations that they effectively trained their model using OpenAI’s model. Regardless of whether or not you agree with the morality of ignoring copyright to copy a copier, it’s an incredibly important point because that is not a replicable strategy for actually creating new models. But rather than focus on that he just spends another couple hundred words trying to dunk on the western tech industry in the snarkiest way he can.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
Lol, Ed Zirtron is very paralleled.
He’s pessimistic and cynical to the point of being conspiratorial and delusional.
He’s someone to listen to when you want to hear someone go on an unhinged rant about the tech industry, not someone you listen to when you want to actually understand how it works.
- Comment on Marvel Snap is banned, just like TikTok 1 month ago:
They’re not banning Mastodon, or the Fediverse, or EU based messaging apps.
i.e. the objection is not the US government doesn’t control it, but that the Chinese government does.
- Comment on Marvel Snap is banned, just like TikTok 1 month ago:
Who cares. Find a new game.
- Comment on Anon gives a piracy history lesson 2 months ago:
Blatantly wrong. Netflix started producing their own shows because studios suddenly realized they could make more money charging for their own back catalog rather than leasing it to Netflix.
Allowing production companies to be distribution companies / streamers is inherently problematic given that copyright is based around monololies.
- Comment on As the Canada "tax holiday" starts, Walmart increased the price of an item by the amount I would have saved 2 months ago:
Yeah. Try and follow the conversation.
- Comment on As the Canada "tax holiday" starts, Walmart increased the price of an item by the amount I would have saved 2 months ago:
Multiple competitors just results in them all agreeing to raise prices when taxes are lowered.
Price signalling happens in situations with low competition, in a healthy, competitive market, if you raises prices someone will undercut you to take your business.
Out of curiosity, how do you propose increasing the number of competitors? Or is this a situation of “gee, that would be nice. Oh well, I guess nothing can be done.”?
You literally just break up grocery store companies and stop them from merging in the future. The solution is not complicated.
- Comment on As the Canada "tax holiday" starts, Walmart increased the price of an item by the amount I would have saved 2 months ago:
No I didn’t.
- Comment on As the Canada "tax holiday" starts, Walmart increased the price of an item by the amount I would have saved 2 months ago:
It does. Competition is literally the only mechanism that drives greedy actors to lower prices or improve their service. Without competition they hoarde.
- Comment on As the Canada "tax holiday" starts, Walmart increased the price of an item by the amount I would have saved 2 months ago:
That’s not really relevant. A break in sales tax that just targets consumer necessities should be a progressive tax.
The problem is that a lack of competition in this country means that grocers can raise their prices with no fear of losing customers
- Comment on When leftists say "landlord are parasites" or similar dislike of landlords, do they also mean the people that own like a couple of houses as an investment, or only the big landlords? 2 months ago:
I’ve been in contract with them for 15 years and have a pretty exact idea of how much work they put in and how much they spend, read: far less than their own house and 1 hr a month on average is about right.
- Comment on When leftists say "landlord are parasites" or similar dislike of landlords, do they also mean the people that own like a couple of houses as an investment, or only the big landlords? 2 months ago:
By your logic, what happens when the roof needs to be replaced and it costs $15,000 to do that? The rent goes up by $15,000 that year? That’s ridiculous.
This is why rent is higher than a particular year’s costs – it includes capital costs over a period of time. $15,000 over 15 years is $1,000/year or about $84/mo.
I was including ongoing building maintenance costs spread over time as part of operating costs.
Add that to the cost of landscaping, utilities, turnover costs, plus a wage for the owner. Why is the wage $25/hour? Why not $100/hour? It’s a skilled job.
Lmao, no it’s not. It does not require a degree or any kind of specialized training. And tell me what landlord actually spend 10 hours per month working on an individual property, every month. If you want to nitpick the example we should lower that to probably 1.
- Comment on When leftists say "landlord are parasites" or similar dislike of landlords, do they also mean the people that own like a couple of houses as an investment, or only the big landlords? 2 months ago:
This describes any financial transaction in a capitalist system.
No it does not. If I pay you to build a water desalinating machine then suddenly we’ll have an abundance of fresh water. We’ve increased the available supply of water overall.
Similarly building more housing is not as morally bankrupt as buying up existing housing and renting it back out at a profit. If you actually build more housing, you are providing a service, if you only get paid for the hours you work and you only make a reasonable amount of money, you might actually be net benefit to society as a whole.
On the other hand when you live in a city where there is a limited supply of housing and you buy that up and rent it back to people at a profit so that you don’t have to work, you are simply draining the system of resources.
There is a reason that economists literally use the term ‘rent-seeking’ to describe behaviour that is personally profitable while draining the efficiency of the system as a whole, and not all types of businesses are considered to be rent-seeking.
- Comment on When leftists say "landlord are parasites" or similar dislike of landlords, do they also mean the people that own like a couple of houses as an investment, or only the big landlords? 2 months ago:
Lots of perfectly nice, pleasant, and moral people do jobs that make the world a worst place because of the circumstances they find themselves in.
Unless your aunt is only charging them what it costs her to operate the buildings + a reasonable hourly wage for the actual time she spends on the house every year, then yeah it’s immoral.
If she puts in 10 hours a month and charges rent that is equal to her costs (not the property / mortgage costs, but just the operating, and maintenance costs) + 120hrs of her time per year x ~$25/hr (or whatever wage is livable in your area) then it’s fair, but realistically that would mean she would be charging ~$800 / month for that town home, and I’m guessing she’s charging a lot more. In effect, that means that she is making renters pay for her mortgage while she’s not working, and at the end of the day will end up a multimillionaire off of her tenants’ hard work.