adespoton
@adespoton@lemmy.ca
- Comment on If you had 1 dollar and 24 hours what would you do? 5 hours ago:
We used to start with random objects; usually something nobody would want.
- Comment on What do you think is the largest number a human can actually grasp / truly comprehend? 10 hours ago:
As an average, I usually see the number 7 bandied around. After that we start “chunking” where each group becomes its own conceptual object.
This is why phone numbers without the area code have 7 digits in North America.
- Comment on Is it possible to make wireless charging broadcast electricity throught an entire house similar to how wifi can broadcast to the entire house? 21 hours ago:
Not for a full house, but there are per-room solutions on the market today.
The problem is the rule of squares… for the field to be strong enough to charge devices at the edge of its range in a house, it would have to be strong enough to scramble all electronics and possibly cook your food at the emitter.
But one per moderately sized room? Yeah; very energy inefficient, but you can get it installed today.
- Comment on I'm an Israeli-American thinking of moving to Canada, is it a friendly place to move to? 2 days ago:
Really, it depends where you live; Canada has all the same types of people as the US. The difference is that so far, we have stuck with neo-liberals in power instead of neo-conservatives.
Outside the cities is more conservative, but only in some ways. We like our social services for the most part, even if healthcare is a shadow of what it was 50 years ago — but again, healthcare is now administered at a provincial level, so different provinces will have emphasis on different levels of care.
On the education side, expect the college of teachers to be without a contract 2 years out of every 10 — which results in strikes. Also, a lot of “extra” programs like the arts are massively underfunded at the elementary level. Teachers often go above and beyond to provide equipment and programs out of their own pockets because the government no longer provides the funding.
All that said, I feel a lot safer living north of 49, and feel like even if there still are things like systemic racism, at least it gets called out and doesn’t usually lead to violence.
Oh yeah, and school shootings are VERY rare.
- Comment on Is it possible to sell semi-old computers/parts? 4 days ago:
For Macs, I’d visit 68kmla.org, which has a buy/sell/trade forum. There are other forums specific to other platforms as well,
- Comment on DuckDuckGo now lets you hide AI-generated images in search results | TechCrunch 1 week ago:
Am I the only one who misread the title to say that DDG was now hiding AI-generated images in your search results?
- Comment on is there any way to invest ethically as a sole individual? 1 week ago:
Single word answer, but it really is the best option: invest in people who need a kick start but are for the most part too poor to be grossly unethical.
Just make sure you’re investing in an ethical microloan company; some of them aren’t above a bit of grift themselves.
- Comment on Why doesn’t Apple/Samsung/Google use new tech like every other phone maker? 2 weeks ago:
I’ve been using Apple products since 1979. I’d definitely say that the statement is true; Apple rarely leads the charge. That doesn’t mean they never do, but they tend to, in most cases, wait for a trustworthy tech to come along, and then push forward with it, dragging the rest of the market along behind them. There’s always innovations and synergies, many of which wouldn’t happen naturally in the market, but the stuff they integrate is generally already well tested and proved.
Counter examples include the original Macintosh, the Newton MessagePad and kinda-sorta the iPhone. More common behavior is related to things like PowerPC/ARM, USB, Firewire/Thunderbolt, nVME, trackpads, wireless peripherals, and the like.
- Comment on Now everybody but Citrix agrees that CitrixBleed 2 is under exploit 2 weeks ago:
I wish reporters wouldn’t conflate two timelines.
On June 26, Citrix had no verifiable evidence that it was being exploited.
On July 9, Gossi had evidence that it had been exploited as far back as June 23.
Now, Citrix isn’t innocent in all this; they’ve had 3 days to put out an update stating there’s now evidence it was abused as early as June 23.
But that second paragraph in no way damns the first: an executive at Citrix had as little evidence as everyone else of the abuse 3 days after it had begun. That does indicate that telemetry to flag this sort of thing was lacking though — and Citrix knew about the issue itself long before; that’s just when it was made public and immediately abused.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 weeks ago:
Well, browse Google below the SEO dreck. Then follow the links.
Or, find some niche hobby site and follow its links.
Branch out from the world wide web… I still visit Hotline sites, the odd Gopher server, and other protocols of yesteryear.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 weeks ago:
That means you need to get out more.
The old Internet is still out there; it’s just that it is as flaky and hard to navigate as it always has been.
The “modern” Internet is just a select number of services that send each other traffic and run by the algorithm.
Most of the Internet I use in my spare time is stuff that’s been around since the 90s and still has about the same number of users it had then. Some of it is even indexed by search engines.
- Comment on What is wrong with being "Black Pilled"? 2 weeks ago:
I wholeheartedly agree.
There are better emotions to feed, and they don’t tend to result in rejection.
“Black pill” is a different thing from not dating.
I never dated, just spent time with people who shared my interests. Eventually, I and one of the people who I shared interests with realized that we were often doing so exclusive of other people.
We essentially went from just living our lives to everyone seeing us as a couple, eventually us included.
Pursuing dating for the emotional high will let you down every time. Being real about who you are and what drives you, and learning to have healthy give and take relationships that don’t involve unrealistic expectations means you’ll end up with a more fulfilling life.
- Comment on How does AI use so much power? 2 weeks ago:
Supercomputers once required large power plants to operate, and now we carry around computing devices in out pockets that are more powerful than those supercomputers.
There’s plenty of room to further shrink the computers, simplify the training sets, formalize and optimize the training algorithms, and add optimized layers to the AI compute systems and the I/O systems.
But at the end of the day, you can either simplify or throw lots of energy at a system when training.
Just look at how much time and energy goes into training a child… and it’s using a training system that’s been optimized over hundreds of thousands of years (and is still being tweaked).
AI as we see it today (as far as generative AI goes) is much simpler, just setting up and executing probability sieves with a fancy instruction parser to feed it its inputs. But it is using hardware that’s barely optimized at all for the task, and the task is far from the least optimal way to process data to determine an output.
- Comment on In languages which use complex written characters (such as Chinese's logographs), is there an equivalent to English's "text speak" shorthand? 3 weeks ago:
Isn’t there also shorthand where you just write the base components and people understand what you mean because even though the radicals are missing, the core meaning of the glyph is still close enough?
The difference is that the shorthand isn’t based on phonetics but on the core meaning of the calligraphic strokes.
It’s why Japanese writers can communicate with Cantonese speakers through quick strokes on their palms. The radicals are all different but the base components are the same.
Similar to a German person stripping back words to core syllables.
- Comment on Those posts for little home gadgets that show up on social media, kinda like "as seen on tv" stuff but since it's tiktok/insta and other such sites, what would those be called? 3 weeks ago:
Tchotchkes?
- Comment on What is the "dip"? 3 weeks ago:
To protect them from parasites, yes.
- Comment on What is the "dip"? 3 weeks ago:
I always assumed it was sheep dip.
- Comment on I want to leave tech: what do I do? 3 weeks ago:
This isn’t leaving tech… it’s leaving corporate employment.
Still great options, but I was expecting something more like: pivot to a different role in your existing company and then find another non-corporate use for those skills, or get your apprenticeship in the trades, or become a bus driver.
- Comment on 32, f. Are there any dating sites that are actually free and don't suddenly force me to pay to actually use the site? 3 weeks ago:
What differentiates a dating site from something like Lemmy? The secret matching algorithm?
- Comment on Do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few? 3 weeks ago:
If asked in a vacuum, there’d be no audible answer.
Unless non-verbal communication was used and the participants could hold their breath long enough.
- Comment on US disrupts North Korean IT worker "laptop farm" scheme in 16 states 4 weeks ago:
These four North Koreans remain at large, and the ‘Rewards for Justice’ program has announced $5,000,0000 in rewards for credible information about their current location.
Wow… so PRK can make just as much by saying “here they are, at an office in Pyongyang!” as they made via this entire 5-year scheme.
- Comment on Is there something like a spreadsheet for hierarchical data structures? 4 weeks ago:
I’ll second the SQL database here. Especially since most people who use a spreadsheet actually treat it as a database in the first place, and not as a way to lay out data in a 2D table.
But if a hierarchical table is really what’s desired, any visual database interface should do the trick.
- Comment on Website containing a list of names of abilities, characters, locations, etc. from video games? 4 weeks ago:
Fandom.com?
- Comment on Is there a medieval equivalent of the youtube channel "Primative Technology" 5 weeks ago:
Bards. There were bards.
- Comment on Is there a medieval equivalent of the youtube channel "Primative Technology" 5 weeks ago:
It’s the answer that came to my mind when I saw the question. I was not disappointed to see someone had already written it 😃
- Comment on If one were so inclined, could you take your plot of land, parcel it up into 1-meter-squared (or smaller) sections, and sell each of those sections to different people/companies? 5 weeks ago:
Depends on your local laws. If there are no municipal or regional laws against it and the zoning allows for it, yes, you could do it.
You could also form a corporation that is owned by a lot of people and use that to buy a regular plot of land, and that would usually comply with local regulations. That’s how strata corporations work.
- Comment on [deleted] 5 weeks ago:
On the other side of this, I once had a co-worker who bought a keystroke recorder and attached it to his own computer.
The person who had been messing with his computer saw the mini camera he had set up but missed the keylogger. He was able to figure out who it was and what they were up to from that.
- Comment on Windows 11 user has 30 years of 'irreplaceable photos and work' locked away in OneDrive - and Microsoft's silence is deafening 5 weeks ago:
This is why I run my own NextCloud instance that backs up locally and via offsite rotation.
Sure, I could still lose it all, but it would be 100% my own fault if I did.
- Comment on Why is there such a negative connotation with the poos of horses, bulls, and bats? 5 weeks ago:
Horses, because they used to be everywhere. Step in the street, and you were likely to step in some.
Bull, because it’s very big and smelly and there was usually some around (steer manure is still prized for gardening).
Bats… because it rains from above and is really gross, and you’ve got a high likelihood of getting really sick from it.
Why we don’t go on about pigeon and seagull guano though? I have no idea.
- Comment on In this day and age is it possible to create a commune? With majority of vegetables coming from one acre and all put in to get wifi to our subdivision? So the bill is not that high? 1 month ago:
Usually in the US they call it a co-op instead of a commune, but yeah, things like that are already done.