andrewrgross
@andrewrgross@slrpnk.net
- Comment on oh no 2 weeks ago:
Does uploading slow down downloading? I thought the two processes were totally decoupled. How does this work?
- Comment on What is wrong with being "Black Pilled"? 3 weeks ago:
I want to set aside my skepticism that this philosophy can be separated from misogyny.
Even if it could, it hurts the practitioner. This is a philosophy of nihilistic abandon and self-harm. If someone has adopted a radical belief in their own hopelessness and worthlessness, and the associated beliefs that life for them can hold nothing but suffering, that person is in crisis and needs help. There isn’t a healthy version of that, and we should consider those people at great risk and in need of assistance.
It does hurt someone. It hurts the person who is adopting these views.
- Comment on The Inescapable Intersection of SGF and ICE Protests 1 month ago:
I love LA.
- Comment on Mark Zuckerberg and Palmer Luckey end their beef and partner to build extended reality tech for the US military 2 months ago:
Yeah, anyone looking for more info should check out Luckey’s blog:
palmerluckey.com/if-you-die-in-the-game-you-die-i…
The guy is a little nuts. This military tech bullshit is no surprise.
- Comment on Does noise from different nearby sources 'add up'? Or do the different sources cancel each other out? In any case, please provide a formula and an example 2 months ago:
Can you demonstrate how you would have composed the question?
- Comment on What are the ethics behind purchasing a book from an author you don't agree with? 2 months ago:
I think people overthink spending money on things they don’t support. I think stealing it is justified, but If you’re doing academic studies or learning how to deprogram people, go ahead and buy a Nazi’s book if you have to.
That said, if you’re looking to argue with Holocaust deniers, trying to defeat them by studying their arguments is a classic blunder.
Conspiratorial thinking is rooted in social maladies, and attachment to a theory is a downstream effect. You can no more talk a Holocaust denier out of their belief with evidence than you can fix a broken watermain by sand bagging the street. If you’re trying to deprogram someone, you’ve actually got to learn how to get them to open up about the background experiences that led them to look for these answers and then find ways to help them find alternative hobbies that obviate their need for the conspiracy.
It’s a much slower process, but if that’s what you want to do, read up on that and don’t bother wasting money on Irving’s book.
- Comment on Bluesky Is Plotting a Total Takeover of the Social Internet 2 months ago:
I want to second this, and go further with a hot take: I liked Graber’s answers a lot.
I think skepticism of her and the entire artifice of VC and big tech is totally warranted. But a lot of people in this section seem to basically say, ‘no matter what she says I don’t trust her and I’m certain that BlueSky will be another bad actor.’ And I think that’s an overly simplistic take.
It’s true that there are no trustworthy CEOs. You shouldn’t trust Graber. It will always be a mistake to pin hopes of good management of a platform on the magnanimity of any business leader. However if we want to see a new era of decentralization but are honest about the fact that most users are more likely to join big, corporate-styled platforms (in the short term, at least) then the ideal platform is one that attempts to build their business model around portability.
It’s totally true that BlueSky isn’t there yet. But they’re basically building a set of escape hatches for users. Cory Doctorow talks a lot about how restricting users from leaving a platform is a key requirement to enshitify. So if BlueSky uses a protocol that at least has the potential for this, they’re creating an incentive structure that really does serve a purpose. They may later on try to reverse course. But at least for now, they’re doing the thing that gives users and the third party developers the best chance of escape if things go bad. And that is exactly what I want to see from a big tech platform.
- Comment on Bluesky Is Plotting a Total Takeover of the Social Internet 2 months ago:
I thought it was built on activity pub.
I’m gonna go over to my Mastodon account and try to reply to you. One sec.
- Comment on Bluesky Is Plotting a Total Takeover of the Social Internet 2 months ago:
Overall, I like the options today a lot better than what we had 10 or even 5 years ago.
I am glad that both Mastodon and Blue Sky exist. I would like both to be successful.
- Comment on Software engineer lost his $150K-a-year job to AI—he’s been rejected from 800 jobs and forced to DoorDash and live in a trailer to make ends meet 2 months ago:
I think this post is a cope.
You might be 100% right. But that wouldn’t change the fact that you’re focusing on the individual in a story about trends, and I think you’re doing so because doing so is a way to avoid engaging with the larger point of the article.
Tech work isn’t safe. No work is really safe these days. It doesn’t even matter if AI can do your job well. It is just a facet of a project to devalue labor and disempower laborers. And that project is going really well! Mo matter how good you are at your job, none of us can “merit” our way out of that project.
I’m great at my job, and my job is very AI proof. But that doesn’t protect me from the fact that my company is looking for ways to gigify the work and hire contract workers from among highly paid laid off scientists and engineers.
They’re not better than me. Neither they nor a chatbot will replace me in the next 10 years. But my company doesn’t need them to in order to limit my bargaining power! They’re fostering an ecosystem of abundant cheap, fungible atomized workers so they will never have to bid for your labor or worry about you being irreplaceable.
All of us need to get wise to the con. We need universal incomes, universal services, universal healthcare, universal housing. We need a guaranteed safety net that is high enough that everyone has the ability to turn down bad jobs. Even the people you think suck at their jobs.
You cannot escape this by dismissing any laid off worker as too slow to keep up. Because this is a team event. And the bosses are on the other team.
- Comment on Inside the life of a 24/7 streamer: ‘What more do you want?’ 2 months ago:
I don’t think that’s true.
I don’t think livestreaming your whole life is healthy or desirable, but I don’t see finding friends who are cool with it to be an obstacle. There are plenty of other Twitch streamers at the very least who are down with this stuff. And she lives in Austin. Why not have a couple of buddies to go on jogs with or play basket ball or cook with? I just don’t see how that would be hard to do.
I don’t feel like this article answered my questions well.
- Comment on Inside the life of a 24/7 streamer: ‘What more do you want?’ 2 months ago:
I’m curious if she was interviewed over text or of she streamed it.
Also, why is she so alone? Can’t you have any friends over for board games while doing this?
It sounds genuinely fucked up.
- Comment on Behind the Scenes Bloopers from The Making Of 'Patrick Starship Enterprise' 2 months ago:
Okay, thank you.
- Comment on Behind the Scenes Bloopers from The Making Of 'Patrick Starship Enterprise' 2 months ago:
I’m confused. What’s this a blooper reel for?
- Comment on Firefox could be doomed without Google search deal, says executive 2 months ago:
'Your honor, we urge you to allow this company to continue breaking the law because our business is insolvent without the revenue we earn from crimes.’
I like Firefox, but if enforcing antitrust collapses Mozilla than so be it. How long has this car been going on? Have they not established any plans for what they’d do if this happened? They derive 75% of their whole company revenue from one source that was likely to be found illegal? They really thought that was a good idea? That’s a hell of a business model. It’s not a judge’s job to save them from that.
- Comment on What is the evolutionary benefit of loving a pet so much you melt into a puddle when they are around? 2 months ago:
I think animal affection – particularly for cute, non useful animals – is an extension of our infant protection drive.
- Comment on If I don't have my lunch my sugar crashes and I get sleepy 3 months ago:
I was going to say that I’m pretty sure these exist and they’re mostly run and attended by PhDs who love bluegrass music
- Comment on Tesla’s Remarkably Bad Quarter Is Even Worse Than It Looks 3 months ago:
This article doesn’t really live up to the headline.
I read to see why it’s worse than it seems, and the reason given is that Tesla isn’t competitive or popular.
That’s not really worse than it appears. That’s just as bad as it appears.
Which is really bad. But there’s no second shoe in the article. I want my two minutes back.
- Comment on bewCloud is a modern and simpler alternative to Nextcloud and ownCloud written in TypeScript 3 months ago:
I just set up a Nextcloud server this weekend, and this is the second time since I’ve heard people complaining about it.
I guess I should try some of the alternatives.
- Comment on Photographers Are on a Mission to Fix Wikipedia's Famously Bad Celebrity Portraits [404 Media] 4 months ago:
This is really cool. I love how things like Wikipedia just show how weirdly f’d up our whole society is by doing something without extracting maximum compensation and breaking systems.
- Comment on [deleted] 4 months ago:
Yoink
- Comment on Are conservatives mad about trans people or they just mad they get walk around out of the closet while they have to leave the white sheets at home? 5 months ago:
I sincerely mean this with no disrespect: while that sounds quite reasonable, it is thoroughly sophomoric and misinformed.
I think your impressions sound like very rational assessments that happen to be unfortunately based on bad underlying information.
Before I elaborate, would you mind telling me: what has been your personal first-hand experience meeting transgender people who are out to you? And what state do you live in?
Also, if you’re comfortable, what would you cite as a source of news and information that has guided your thinking on this issue?
- Comment on Bill proposed to outlaw downloading Chinese AI models. 5 months ago:
Can you prevent someone from setting up local instances of Deepseek? It’s open source. How would this define Chinese models?
- Comment on Poll: What's the cross-over between fans of Trek and solarpunk? 5 months ago:
Oh, you’re right. On my desktop it shows up, but I originally replied on mobile. That explains it.
- Comment on Poll: What's the cross-over between fans of Trek and solarpunk? 5 months ago:
I generally agree, although the use of replicators is a point of departure.
Solarpunk typically emphasizes degrowth and an end to scarcity that comes from a move away from endless consumption.
It’s not a criticism. Just an artistic difference responding to the 60s vs the new century.
- Comment on Poll: What's the cross-over between fans of Trek and solarpunk? 5 months ago:
I would also say that in general, Star Trek seems to steer slightly around discussing the actions needed to proactively achieve their society. It’s an end point, and you can find some info here and there about how they got there, but it’s really treated as the result of a magical tech breakthrough that resolved class conflict with the wave of a hand.
Anyway, solarpunk and Trek are definitely fellow travelers. But their tones aren’t identical.
- Comment on Poll: What's the cross-over between fans of Trek and solarpunk? 5 months ago:
Oh. They’re different servers! That’s actually a very clever joke. I’m sorry I didn’t pay close enough attention to appreciate it.
That got a chuckle out of me. Heh.
- Comment on Poll: What's the cross-over between fans of Trek and solarpunk? 5 months ago:
I think you replied to yourself…
It’s not quite: a key feature of solarpunk is nature, and our relationship to it. Trek is definitely aligned in concept, but aside from specific episodes, our relationship with nature is not a central theme.
- Submitted 5 months ago to startrek@startrek.website | 17 comments
- Comment on 'Star Trek: Lower Decks' Finale May Not Be the End, Says Tawny Newsome 7 months ago:
I think it seems hard to believe that the show really will end here. It just has the energy of a show with too much power behind it, both among fans and the people who made the show. And I think Newsome appears to agree with that take:
As far as the people creating it, we all would love to do that. I don’t know who writes the check for that, so I don’t know if they think it’s possible. But Mike has stories upon stories in him for these characters. He could do 10 more seasons. He is not done. None of us are done. Me, Jack, Eugene and Noël and not to mention the rest of our bridge crew and our recurring characters. Everybody’s like, “Yep, sign me up. We’ll be the next ‘Futurama.’ We’ll come back in 10 years, whatever you want.” So we’re all game. I would love a movie. I’d love a live-action movie, because we need to see Noël and Jerry and Eugene in human form — human-ish form.