kassiopaea
@kassiopaea@lemmy.blahaj.zone
- Comment on Google releases VaultGemma, its first privacy-preserving LLM 1 week ago:
In theory, it’s just an algorithm that will always produce the same output given the exact same inputs. In practice it’s nearly impossible to have fully deterministic outputs because of the limited precision repeatability we get with floating point numbers on GPUs.
- Comment on Apple Envy 4 weeks ago:
I make no claim against the lack of freedom on Apple devices, but “un-free” doesn’t mean “user-hostile”. We’re talking about the perceived quality of experience for the user, not anything else. Like, look, don’t get me wrong, I still hate Apple (and all the big tech corpos) out of principle- but they provide an objectively better user experience for the vast majority of people.
- Apple has been, while extremely restrictive, very consistent on what users are allowed to do with devices… Google has repeatedly shown that they can’t be trusted to actually commit to popular features or services that they put out.
- Apple has put forward several measures to increase [perception of] user privacy where Google has repeatedly shown that they have no interest in doing anything other than collecting as much of your data as possible and using it for their ad business.
- iOS/iPadOS accessibility features blow Android’s out of the water in terms of breadth and quality; where with Android you often have to rely on third-party apps that may or may not work consistently or break with an update.
- Comment on Apple Envy 4 weeks ago:
I fully agree with that sentiment, for what it’s worth. Apple is authoritarian but at least they’re mostly transparent about it.
- Comment on Apple Envy 4 weeks ago:
Fair, but I think that while Apple is generally more authoritarian with regard to developer experience, they’re less user-hostile overall and generally strike a good (at least compared to the current alternatives) balance between freedom, privacy, and usability for most people.
I think Google (and Silicon Vally writ large) is coming to terms with the fact that past a certain size userbase, authoritarianism is necessary to maintain control, consistency, and (very importantly) safety… where Apple has pretty much always embraced it; for better or worse.
I could easily turn this into a larger critique about society and governance, federated republics being necessary in the long-term versus corporate monoliths, and the “10x everything” culture being the root of the new tech-right, but I will digress, lol.
- Comment on Apple Envy 4 weeks ago:
Are we seriously going to pretend that Google hasn’t been just as evil for years now? At least Apple is able to provide a halfway-decent UX…
- Comment on Cry cry 1 month ago:
Kagi is good too.
- Comment on How do AI data centers manage to *consume* water, but when I cool my house, my A/C *makes* water? 1 month ago:
Because evaporative cooling is much cheaper and easier to accomplish at scale, and megacorps don’t care about long-term resource constraints until it begins to affect their wallets.
- Comment on AWS deleted my 10-year account and all data without warning 1 month ago:
Certainly sounds like they had their “friends” write the whole damn article too.
- Comment on Anon has a warning for incels 2 months ago:
Being physically healthy makes it much easier to be mentally/emotionally healthy, but they still don’t just get better unless you actively work on them.
- Comment on Anon has a warning for incels 2 months ago:
They took “self-improvement” to mean physical health while completely ignoring mental and emotional health.
- Comment on Anon conserves power 2 months ago:
ok but like, my brain would totally do that too
- Comment on AGI achieved 🤖 3 months ago:
This. I often see people shitting on AI as “fancy autocomplete” or joking about how they get basic things incorrect like this post but completely discount how incredibly fucking capable they are in every domain that actually matters. That’s what we should be worried about… what does it matter that it doesn’t “work the same” if it still accomplishes the vast majority of the same things? The fact that we can get something that even approximates logic and reasoning ability from a deterministic system is terrifying on implications alone.
- Comment on I hate Samsung and their dumb software design choices, and this is one of them. Why do I need a SIM card to enable a hotspot whereas every other phone works without one? 3 months ago:
But didn’t you know that teeth are just luxury bones?
- Comment on I hate Samsung and their dumb software design choices, and this is one of them. Why do I need a SIM card to enable a hotspot whereas every other phone works without one? 3 months ago:
That sounds like a hardware limitation more than anything. Is it normal for standard consume wifi chips to be able to receive and broadcast simultaneously on two different networks? I know that’s definitely not something you can usually do with PC hardware.
- Comment on Step by Little Step - A short game about Farewells 3 months ago:
That was beautiful, but I didn’t think it would still hurt this much.
It’ll be two years this month.
- Comment on What would it take to make Gemini suitable to be president of the world? 3 months ago:
There’s no president of the world yet.
- Comment on Held back no longer 3 months ago:
The truck I was driving had a DT12 (12-speed) and it would shift 1-2-4-6-8-10-12 if I remember correctly. Even with only 6 gears to go through, it still took forever. Maybe it wasn’t actually more time shifting than accelerating, but it sure felt like it lol.
- Comment on Held back no longer 3 months ago:
As a former truck driver: can confirm. It was mostly freeing because I could actually go to Walmart or do laundry in the city without worrying about where and how to park.
Also, without a trailer it accelerates a lot faster. Like, genuinely spending more time shifting than accelerating. Feels weird.
- Comment on Canon requires an account to transfer images from your camera. Forces you to sign up using Chrome. 3 months ago:
I remember having a PowerShot SX110IS back in 2010 and there was an open source firmware I loaded on it. I forget what it was called. It’s a damn shame that we can’t really do stuff like that anymore.
- Comment on Forbidden Tech 3 months ago:
Fair enough. I shouldn’t be posting within 30 minutes of waking up anyway…
- Comment on Forbidden Tech 4 months ago:
The problem is that people read a few things on the internet, think they’re now suddenly domain experts, and do it anyway.
- Comment on Forbidden Tech 4 months ago:
That would immediately blow the fuse in the lights and/or start a fire if the two strands were on different circuits that happened to be on different electrical phases.
While I wouldn’t doubt that some people are stupid enough to do that, it’s actually summer that it’s done the most for because of storms and power outages, and people learn that backfeeding is a thing (that you shouldn’t do unless you absolutely know what you’re doing).
- Comment on Forbidden Tech 4 months ago:
Well at that point all you need to do is cut a normal extension cord and strip the ends. Maybe add a switch or a button for extra safety.
- Comment on Forbidden Tech 4 months ago:
In my jurisdiction, backfeeding your house from a receptacle is very illegal. Transfer switches and interlock kits exist for a reason.
For anyone wondering exactly why it’s a bad idea: Power from your generator can, if your house isn’t isolated from the grid, travel back into the utility lines and backward through the big transformer at the utility pole (so now it’s a few thousand volts again) and give an unsuspecting linesman a nasty surprise. People have died from this. It is a bad idea.
- Comment on Black Mirror AI 4 months ago:
Wouldn’t Google’s crawlers respect robots.txt though? Is it naive to assume that anything would?
- Comment on "You can't just have Geralt for every single game" says his voice actor, and if you think The Witcher 4 making Ciri the protagonist is "woke," then "read the damn books" 4 months ago:
I would love to not let the nazis dictate how the swastika is used, but their perversion of the original meaning has permanently altered how it’s seen by the rest of the world. Claiming the moral high ground by trying to force something to mean what it no longer does is a pointless exercise.
- Comment on "You can't just have Geralt for every single game" says his voice actor, and if you think The Witcher 4 making Ciri the protagonist is "woke," then "read the damn books" 4 months ago:
Have you considered that the comment could, in fact, be a joke?
- Comment on The only way to be 4 months ago:
I think that’s what the US government is trying to do.
- Comment on My ravioli bowl won't unstick. Took about an hour of prying, and still I couldn't unstick the plate. 5 months ago:
Well it already got cold, hence the sticking together in the first place. All they need to do is get it hot again.