ThePowerOfGeek

@ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sora might have a 'pervert' problem on its hands⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  A lot of the comments here seem to be missing some key points from this article:

  • The writer made her own likeness available to everyone on purpose. She did this knowing what would happen, but it was part of the exercise of seeing how weird it would get. So the points that she was stupid for doing, or that she was outraged by this, this are missing the point. Was she stupid? Maybe, but she made a conscious sacrifice on her likeliness. Was she outraged? Clearly not.
  • It’s short-sighted to say “yeah this will happen, so don’t put your is image out there”. There are lots of people (especially women and girls) who have gone out of the way to avoid having their image/likeness out there for these it similar reasons. But they have still ended up the victim of humiliation and trauma from photoshopped images or deep fakes made against them.
  • This second point was a big part of what the author was trying to point out. It’s both a warning to others about being careful of protecting your identity, and an alarm sounding that there are some really weird and creepy fetishes out there that people can get their likelinesses pulled into, even when you actively try to avoid that.
  • It also highlights the lack of safeguards on this kind of issue. Consent, age, level of fame… none of that matters in this issue. And in most cases the companies behind these tools don’t do shit to address these concerns.
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ICE just bought new tool to monitor hundreds of millions of smartphones. Experts say it’s dangerous⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Citizens United strikes again.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Great Software Quality Collapse: How We Normalized Catastrophe⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t trust some of the numbers in this article.

  Microsoft Teams: 100% CPU usage on 32GB machines

  I’m literally sitting here right now on a Teams call (I’ve already contributed what I needed to), looking at my CPU usage, which is staying in the 4.6% to 7.3% CPU range.

  Is that still too high? Probably. Have I seen it hit 100% CPU usage? Yes, rarely (but that’s usually a sign of a deeper issue).

  Maybe the author is going with worst case scenario. But in that case he should probably qualify the examples more.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Its all bots, isn't it?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  No u

  Beep boop

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why Companies Are Regretting Laying off Humans for AI⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  ✅ Fucked around ◻️ Found out

  Congratulations corporate world. Here we are.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What Trump’s H-1B crackdown means for Big Tech workers⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  A lot of self-promotion quotes in there from companies involved in the H1B visa industry. But one broad trend among them: this will empower developing and non-Western developed nations at the expense of the American tech industry - especially the tech industry outside the big 5 or 6 giants.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨TikTok’s Algorithm to Be Secured by Oracle in Trump-Backed Deal⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s the same reason IBM still exists. Massive multinational / government contracts keep them alive and healthy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨TikTok’s Algorithm to Be Secured by Oracle in Trump-Backed Deal⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Oracle will be handling TikTok’s algorithm? Okay, so TikTok’s back-end workflow/decisioning engine will rapidly bloat up and will need to be completely replaced every two years. Got it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If you had to buy a new TV, what brand would you get?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s are still some consumer TVs out there that allow you to use the green without an Internet connection. Although they are kinda rare these days.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If you had to buy a new TV, what brand would you get?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Sony Bravia. Because I just did this last year. My old TV was also a Bravia, and it lasted about 15 years. One big selling feature for me was that you can set it up as either a smart TV, or a ‘basic’ TV that doesn’t require an Internet connection and doesn’t pester you for one.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Vibe coding has turned senior devs into ‘AI babysitters,’ but they say it’s worth it | TechCrunch⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Amen. I’ve tried the vibe coding thing but it’s frustrating because a) too often the AI output has some profound problems and it gets annoying ‘babysitting’ it; and b) I usually prefer the challenge of figuring out syntax and implementation issues myself.

  If something is taking too long I’ll ask the LLM. But I feel like if I do this too much my skill set will atrophy and I’ll lose my sharpness. So it’s a balancing act.

  But this brings up another wider question: where is the line between “occasionally getting AI help” and “vibe coding”? Surely it’s subjective.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Exactly Six Months Ago, the CEO of Anthropic Said That in Six Months AI Would Be Writing 90 Percent of Code⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s almost like he’s full of shit and he’s nothing but a snake oil salesman, eh.

  They’ve been talking about replacing software developers with automated/AI systems for a quarter of a century. Probably longer then that, in fact.

  We’re definitely closer to that than ever. But there’s still a huge step between some rando vibe coding a one page web app and developers augmenting their work with AI, and someone building a complex, business rule heavy, heavy load, scalable real world system. The chronic under-appreciation of engineering and design experience continues unabated.

  Anthropic, Open AI, etc? They will continue to hype their own products with outrageous claims. Because that’s what gets them more VC money. Grifters gonna grift.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Roblox continues efforts for child safety by expanding age estimation to all users by end of the year⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Give it about a month and I’m sure there will be (…unfortunately).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Roblox continues efforts for child safety by expanding age estimation to all users by end of the year⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  For anyone who’s not aware, there are some pretty cool open source Minecraft options. Like Luanti (which is more like a playground for all sorts of FOSS Minecraft variants).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Roblox continues efforts for child safety by expanding age estimation to all users by end of the year⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah it’s crazy. They are trying to cater to older users, probably because they feel they can get more money from them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Roblox continues efforts for child safety by expanding age estimation to all users by end of the year⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  It should at the very least get a new, better CEO. And also calm down with their focus on getting older users and encouraging user dating services. They have a solid user base with younger users, and should be focused on them and their protection.

  But yeah, just shutting down might be the best option.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨World Of Warcraft Turtle WoW Servers Hit With Blizzard Lawsuit⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  They’ve been going after private server farms for years, so this is nothing new really. For example, Blizzard forced Nostralrius (sp?) servers to shut down about 10 years ago.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft Word documents will be saved to the cloud automatically on Windows going forward⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I second this. There’s a little bit of a learning curve on some of the functionality, but it’s not bad at all. And most of the functionality is very easy to find. I moved over to Libre Office several years ago and it’s been great.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Comfortable is a table made out of comforts⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Or it’s being able to enjoy comfort.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ChatGPT 5 power consumption could be as much as eight times higher than GPT 4 — research institute estimates medium-sized GPT-5 response can consume up to 40 watt-hours of electricity⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  BTW a lot of it seems to be just inefficient coding as Deepseek has shown.

  Kind of? Inefficient coding is definitely a part of it. But a large part is also just the iterative nature of how these algorithms operate. We might be able to improve that via code optimization a little bit. But without radically changing how these engines operates it won’t make a big difference.

  The scope of the data being used and trained on is probably a bigger issue. Which is why there’s been a push by some to move from LLMs to SLMs. We don’t need the model to be cluttered with information on geology, ancient history, cooking, software development, sports trivia, etc if it’s only going to be used for looking up stuff on music and musicians.

  But either way, there’s a big ‘diminishing returns’ factor to this right now that isn’t being appreciated. Typical human nature: give me that tiny boost in performance regardless of the cost, because I don’t have to deal with. It’s the same short-sighted shit that got us into this looming environmental crisis.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTube just quietly blocked Adblock Plus — the internet hasn't noticed yet, but I've found a workaround⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That said though, there is one ad blocker that still works. Two words: uBlock Origin. Yes, I know that Google has blocked it from its Chrome Extension store, but there is still a way to get uBlock Origin on Chrome that our how-to extraordinaire Kaycee has detailed.

  Or… You could just ditch Chrome altogether!

  I don’t know why people are so fixated on using Chrome. It’s a crippled browser made by an evil company that is actively looking to screw the user at every turn.

  I switched to Firefox when Google essentially killed uBlock Origin on their browser. At first I ran into some problems with some sites not rendering correctly. But it seems like that’s become much less of an issue with later updates. And the best thing is that there are some phenomenal extensions for blocking ads - like a fully-fledged uBlock Origin to name just one. I don’t even see sponsor promotions in YT videos now.

  And if you don’t want to deal with Mozilla directly you can use Waterfox instead.

  All this dancing around and jumping through hoops to get uBlock Origin working on Chrome is kind of absurd. Just ditch Chrome (and all Blink-based browsers) altogether where you can (I get that corporate environments are often off the table for this).

  Collectively we should be sending a message to Google whenever we can that we are done with their browser bullshit.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Spotify to raise prices in September⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  So glad he didn’t get his grubby hands on Arsenal FC in the end.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Spotify to raise prices in September⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  And once you have them ripped (however you choose to do that), host them via a media server so you can access them from whatever device you like.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AOL will end dial-up internet service in September, 34 years after it's debut — AOL Shield Browser and AOL Dialer software will be shuttered on the same day⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I still have one, still in the cellophane. I use it as a coaster.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AOL will end dial-up internet service in September, 34 years after it's debut — AOL Shield Browser and AOL Dialer software will be shuttered on the same day⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  AOL… America Offline

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ChatGPT Is Still a Bullshit Machine⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m no longer even confident in modern LLMs to do stuff like convert a table schema or JSON document into a POCO. I tried this the other day with a field list from a table creation script. So it had to do was reformat the fields into a dumb C# model. Inexplicably it did fine except for omitting a random field in the middle of the list. Kinda shakes your confidence in LLMs for even the most basic programming tasks.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google Gemini struggles to write code, calls itself “a disgrace to my species”⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It must have been trained on feedback from Accenture employees then.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google Gemini struggles to write code, calls itself “a disgrace to my species”⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  High five, me too!

  At that age I also used to do speed run little programs on the display computers in department stores. I’d write a little prompt welcoming a shopper and ask them their name. Then a response that echoed back their name in some way. If I was in a good mood it was “Hi [name]!”. If I was in a snarky mood it was “Fuck off [name]!” The goal was to write it in about 30 seconds, before one of the associates came over to see what I was doing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨GitHub CEO delivers stark message to developers: Embrace AI or get out.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  But who else is going to micromanage and bully the employees and strut around self-importantly doing jack shit? /s

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Proton releases a new app for two-factor authentication⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, not good if them to not share that information.

  But for anyone who’s wondering, here’s a decent article that goes over the shady companies that discretely own most VPNs apps.

  Amusingly, and in counterpoint to the guy who you replied to, this article concludes that Proton is actually a solid VPN option that isn’t beholden to one of those sketchy VPN-hoarding companies.

  They also recommend Mullvad as a good option. I’ve never used them, but I’ve seen mentioned positively in other articles about VPNs.