scarabic
@scarabic@lemmy.world
- Comment on [deleted] 20 hours ago:
When I was young I was told it would stunt my growth.
Now that I’m a parent I think people just didn’t know how to say “we don’t want kids to get caffeine because it will make them wild or prevent them from sleeping properly.”
- Comment on Seagate just unleashed 44TB hard drives 22 hours ago:
It’s just my opinion but the “brand war” on HDDs is a little overblown in my opinion. I too recall one or two periods where Seagate got bad pr for quality issues, but I’m not concerned that 10 years later any HDD I buy from them is going to croak as soon as it’s half full. There’s no way they would still be in business if that image is true. I think many times if there is a different in quality between brands it’s the difference between 99.999% and 99.998% - gasp! double the failure rate! - and then it evens out again.
- Comment on Microsoft patents system for AI helpers to finish games for you 23 hours ago:
It’s so hard to raise kids to turn off the light when they leave the room, with huge wastes of electricity like this just running rampant in the world.
- Comment on Avocado. Is it really so untasty or I am doing something wrong? 23 hours ago:
You seem to be expecting a sweet fruit. It isn’t that. It’s fatty and savory. Your post reads like “Fruit is really expensive in my area so I started buying butter… why does anyone like this?”
Spread it on bread and sprinkle on some taco seasoning and salt. You’ll thank me.
- Comment on (serious) What would we be losing in a world where most people didn't own a car? Please read the OP before posting. 3 days ago:
So for example, last night I went to see a play with my wife in the big city we live outside. 8pm show. Our location has better options than most in the US for public transit, but still not enough to fully rely upon and it’s hard to envision that changing.
We have a regional transit rail system we could have taken. It would drop us off close enough to the theater, perhaps 2 city blocks.
But the station is 6km from our house so the problem is on this end. We live in an area that’s not quite rural, more suburban, but it is out on the open countryside a bit and this natural beauty is what we love about living here.
We do have excellent bike lanes and even a network of bike trails that are separated from the roads. Our local station is about a 20 minute ride. We can do it but we’re in our 50s and it’s not our first choice when getting dressed up for a date night to begin with 20 minutes of vigorous exercise. And we would have had to repeat that ride at 11pm on the way home, tired, with a glass of wine in our bellies.
So the problem I guess is our home location. We live in a medium-to-small sized town that’s nestled up against a state park. The only public transit I can really imagine would be a bus system and it would have to cover a very wide area with many vehicles to serve this region. And even then I can’t imagine it would be quick.
I would still prefer a world without cars. I guess I’m just telling you why cars still fit into our needs and why our options are.
In the future I’m pretty optimistic that we can change the math on busses. Autonomous vehicles would allow us to move away from large busses piloted by a human driver to many smaller ones with more comprehensive coverage and better approximation of point-to-point transit.
The appeal of this path is that it’s something car-centric areas can transition to smoothly. We can get mass autonomous bus service going without banning cars and building rail lines or other large projects.
A small country that was laid out centuries ago, before cars, has a different layout and distribution of people that makes things like rail work better. The problem is that the US is huge and was built on cars, which are excellent for spreading individuals out with no regard for central planning.
Today’s generation of Americans are stuck with cars and not always in love with them. The way our population is distributed, it’s hard for mass transit to replace them, so it really doesn’t matter how great civic rail works in Lisbon.
We might address the topic of whether it’s responsible for people to be so spread out. I would certainly have a hard time saying goodbye to my beautiful natural surroundings.
- Comment on Americans: How the hell do you meet new people or get into relationships after college? 4 days ago:
I didn’t say it above but I completely agree. He sounds about half an inch from using the word “females” at some point.
- Comment on LLMs can unmask pseudonymous users at scale with surprising accuracy 4 days ago:
Do y’all not write differently when you’re trying to be discreet on Blind?
- Comment on Americans: How the hell do you meet new people or get into relationships after college? 4 days ago:
I think you’re confused. Neither OP nor the commenter immediately above are limiting their remarks to friends only.
- Comment on Americans: How the hell do you meet new people or get into relationships after college? 4 days ago:
I was responding to OP asking about friends and relationships, so not just “young single women.” But I did also say try a dating app. Singles is pretty much all those are for.
Obviously no one can give you town-specific suggestions but are bars and restaurants the only things women do you where you live? I’d be very surprised if that’s true.
- Comment on Americans: How the hell do you meet new people or get into relationships after college? 5 days ago:
OP did say “get into relationships.”
- Comment on Americans: How the hell do you meet new people or get into relationships after college? 5 days ago:
Volunteer. Audition for community theater. Get a job. Join a hiking group. Take an adult learning class. Download a dating app. Get yourself out there.
- Comment on Dynamic pricing could be coming to your local supermarket 5 days ago:
It doesn’t even have to be per person. It can just be by time of day.
- Comment on Dynamic pricing could be coming to your local supermarket 5 days ago:
Let’s call it what it is: price discrimination.
- Comment on Anthropic says it ‘cannot in good conscience’ allow Pentagon to remove AI checks 6 days ago:
if my own government was conducting mass surveillance on me I would be particularly furious at the betrayal. But I would also not support it conducting surveillance on foreigners either.
I’m not trying to pin you here, just explain why it did indeed sound an awful lot like you were saying that. Conducting no surveillance is pretty much not having any intelligence operations. Are they supposed to wait by the phone for tips? This is where I was coming from. You didn’t use the word “mass” then. If you tell me you meant something different, I believe you, but this is how I got you wrong.
- Comment on "Cancel ChatGPT" movement goes mainstream after OpenAI closes deal with U.S. Department of War — as Anthropic refuses to surveil American citizens 1 week ago:
The more I learn about this guy, the more amazed I am that his staffers stood up for him when he got fired. I guess they just hated the board more.
- Comment on "Cancel ChatGPT" movement goes mainstream after OpenAI closes deal with U.S. Department of War — as Anthropic refuses to surveil American citizens 1 week ago:
I know what you mean. It’s a pretty vague term though. You could argue that as soon as it enters the midsection of the bell curve at all, it’s “in the mainstream.” It doesn’t have to have captured a full 90% of the bell curve.
- Comment on "Cancel ChatGPT" movement goes mainstream after OpenAI closes deal with U.S. Department of War — as Anthropic refuses to surveil American citizens 1 week ago:
Yeah instead of arguing over whether Anthropic is actually good, let’s unite around “fuck OpenAI.”
- Comment on Anthropic says it ‘cannot in good conscience’ allow Pentagon to remove AI checks 1 week ago:
I’m hardly going to defend the Pentagon, but to say a country should not even have an intelligence operation whatsoever, that this isn’t elementary to protecting its citizenry, is beyond naive and unrealistic.
- Comment on Anthropic says it ‘cannot in good conscience’ allow Pentagon to remove AI checks 1 week ago:
Better to be skeptical about everyone here, and there are certainly no heroes.
However it should be obvious that a country’s department of war surveilling its own citizens is a completely inappropriate overreach. They exist to protect the country from outside threats. You’re casting it as some kind of discrimination, and claiming it would be more moral to treat everyone the same, but that seems willfully obtuse to me. Calling it a “special carve out” for a country to protect its own citizens… come on. Obviously since you are not an American it does nothing for you but you are working way too hard to spin that up into a sin.
- Comment on Anthropic says it ‘cannot in good conscience’ allow Pentagon to remove AI checks 1 week ago:
Crossing off mass surveillance and automated killing isn’t everything they could have taken a moral stand on. Personally I don’t think any list will be long enough for the Pentagon, and if it were, there wouldn’t be anything left that could be worked on.
But I keep hearing you say that no mass surveillance and no automated killings is so very little - almost nothing. That doesn’t seem right to me. I think those are both pretty big things. I’m not horrified that their moral stance would include only that.
- Comment on Anthropic says it ‘cannot in good conscience’ allow Pentagon to remove AI checks 1 week ago:
vying for slightly better contract terms
Do you mean that all this about principles is a smoke screen and Anthropic are just using it as a front to squeeze for more money?
- Comment on MSI's $80 AMD motherboards with DDR4 support swoop in to rescue gamers amid the global RAM crisis 1 week ago:
This is cool. I just hope game developers also get on this bandwagon. We could use a 4-year moratorium on increasing minimum system requirements.
- Comment on Burger King will use AI to check if employees say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ 1 week ago:
I love to see that kind of intercultural reading being made. In good faith, I respect it and disagree with its internal logic. If you think help is expected of you, you will not offer any mention of whether or not it’s a problem for you, period.
- Comment on Can a reasonable person genuinely believe in ghosts? 1 week ago:
I hear coyotes outside my bedroom window every night and I’m so glad I know what they are. The first time I ever heard them, I was alone in a tent surrounded by them. Absolute Blair Witch horror for about 5 minutes until my brain was awake enough to realize what I was hearing.
- Comment on Can a reasonable person genuinely believe in ghosts? 1 week ago:
The bar for “convincing” is very low when you want to believe.
- Comment on Burger King will use AI to check if employees say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ 1 week ago:
That’s a very generous reaction to being cussed at for following instructions. I have no problem being asked to wait. I actually appreciate having someone acknowledge that I’m there by telling me to wait. But damn. Keep it classy.
- Comment on Burger King will use AI to check if employees say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ 1 week ago:
I’ve come to accept that “no problem” is just some people’s way to say “you’re welcome” but I still really dislike the sound of it right after I say thank you for something completely normal.
Cashier: “Here’s your change.” Me: “Thank you.” Cashier: “No problem.” My brain: “Oh… I didn’t even think it could have been a problem to hand me my change, but I guess I’m glad to hear that it was not in fact any problem.”
- Comment on Active duty members of the United States, How are you feeling in regards of being under the service of the Amerinazis? 1 week ago:
True. Think about this though. I could probably come up with a question like this one for the professions of 90% of people here.
“Waiters of Reddit: how do you feel about working in an industry with its own special slave wage exception, an industry where the bosses expect you to dance for cruel patrons who have control over your compensation?”
“Medical researchers of Reddit; how do you feel about working for an industry that puts profits before people, whose CEOs are being gunned down in the streets?”
“Software engineers of Reddit, how do you feel about working for the evil tech bros who have sold the self esteem and mental health of a whole generation to make a buck?”
The answer to all of these is that while they have some truth, the people who work there believe they are also doing some good with their work, and earning a living, and not just selling their soul to enrich the demon at the top of the corporation.
- Comment on YSK Your smoke detectors should be replaced every 7-10 years 1 week ago:
And please check them to see if they are safe to throw in the trash before you do. Some of them contain small amounts of really nasty stuff. Even the hazardous waste dropoff on my county was reluctant to take a batch from me. They said “you’re really supposed to send those back to the manufacturer.” But they did eventually take them.
- Comment on Talents leave AI companies: "They are putting profits over sanity and safety" 2 weeks ago:
In a way this is what’s most scary. Because they are desperate. Any safety concerns will be damned and they are all racing to be the first who makes a breakthrough in the direction of AGI.
If we ever get there, this is not the way it should be done. I hope they remember that we need to have a world where they can spend their money.