deathbird
@deathbird@mander.xyz
- Comment on Request for FPS recommendations. 1 day ago:
Serious Sam 3 is an FPS distilled into its most essential parts, imo.
- Comment on Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week? 1 day ago:
Minecraft. Still on 1.21.4. Need to build a storage building/system, but feeling a little blocked.
- Comment on Online ‘Pedophile Hunters’ Are Growing More Violent — and Going Viral: With the rise of loosely moderated social media platforms, a fringe vigilante movement is experiencing a dangerous evolution. 1 day ago:
See this is that shit.
This is that shit.
Stop doing this.
There are plenty of things wrong with Elon Musk that are well documented in the public record by diverse and reputable sources that can easily be cited.
Do that, not this.
- Comment on Online ‘Pedophile Hunters’ Are Growing More Violent — and Going Viral: With the rise of loosely moderated social media platforms, a fringe vigilante movement is experiencing a dangerous evolution. 4 days ago:
This is part of the reason why casual accusations of pedophilia have always disturbed me. Because it can lead even people who in most other circumstances would be considered pro-justice and pro-human rights into mini-Mengeles.
And I’ve seen people just throw out the accusation without even prompt or justification, just because they hate somebody (maybe for other good reasons) and want to see if it sticks. It’s fucked up.
Then there’s other cases like that one where that 18-year-old got jumped for being baited into going on a date with another 18-year-old, while under the impression that she was… at least 18. A couple of people posted about that already.
- Comment on Sen. Schumer: 'My Job is to Keep the Left Pro-Israel' 5 days ago:
It’d probably be easier if there wasn’t a radical right wing government there.
- Comment on Windows 11 is closing a loophole that let you skip making a Microsoft account 6 days ago:
Come on in, the water is fine. The latest version of Ubuntu is like 24, so things have changed a lot, and for the better.
Get yourself a Kubuntu image, and give it a try.
- Comment on 'An Insult To Life Itself': Hayao Miyazaki’s AI Criticism Resurfaces As OpenAI’s Ghibli-Style Image Trend Takes Over Social Media 1 week ago:
Mostly true, but…
Replacing clip art, generic filler from Getty images, and other hand-crafted slop with machine-made slop for things like slideshows, YouTube thumbnails, and other applications where the image isn’t meant to convey something actually existing from the primary content, that I think is fine.
Of course it should be based on free software (such as AGPL) and use only freely provided or public domain inputs.
Of course it shouldn’t be used to misrepresent its outputs as produced by, authorized, or of people that it is not.
But what we have right now is an another sort of enclosure of the cultural commons, blended with plagerism-by-another-name. If there are already terms for this sort of misappropriation, I can’t think of them right now.
- Comment on 'An Insult To Life Itself': Hayao Miyazaki’s AI Criticism Resurfaces As OpenAI’s Ghibli-Style Image Trend Takes Over Social Media 1 week ago:
See this is the (well, one major) problem with copyright.
Imaginary property for me (“AI” goons), not for thee (actual artists).
- Comment on Samsung CEO Jong-hee Han has died 1 week ago:
Well I’m sure they’ll get another one.
- Comment on Why I recommend against Brave. 1 week ago:
I appreciate your perspective, and I agree that we should probably be more concerned with how the company functions than the personal character of the CEO .
Sam Walton was a hardworking, amiable, humble man by all accounts. And even when he was alive Walmart the company was cutting throats.
At the same time, if a CEO deeply ingrains himself in the political process, I can probably take a pass on his products even if they are marginally better. So these days Musk is doing so much damage to the functioning of the US government that even if Teslas were good I wouldn’t buy one.
The Chikfila guy on the other hand was just donating to a few discriminatory “Christian” charities last I checked but stopped trying to change policy, so…as fast food shops go it’s actually not too bad even if I don’t prefer to eat there.
Starbucks…evil CEO, but preemptively boycotting before the organized shops strike doesn’t help the workers.
Brave…has had too many fuckups for my taste. On the rare occasion that I need a privacy focused Chromium-based browser I just use Chromium with uBlock Origin for the one website I need to visit.
- Comment on Musk’s X suspends opposition accounts in Turkey amid civil unrest 1 week ago:
I don’t like the either/or, but I think Elon is an easier target in the Anglosphere. But the US government, of which Elon is a part, has been enabling authoritarian douchebags, and even if this act is consistent with the company’s pragmatic compliance choices, it also aligns with the US administration’s general tendency. And Elon has in other cases shown that his commitment to free speech is pretty weak if it’s speech that he doesn’t like.
- Comment on Musk’s X suspends opposition accounts in Turkey amid civil unrest 1 week ago:
I mean, he’s free to say it, but we’re free to call him a liar until he uses his immense resources to shut us up like he always does.
- Comment on Microsoft tells Windows 10 users to just trade in their PC for a newer one, because how hard can it be? 1 week ago:
A testament to the shot development standards at MS. An OS literally should not in a million years be this resource inefficient, especially out of the box.
- Comment on Israel publicly announces genocidal intent 2 weeks ago:
The Balfour Declaration?
- Comment on Substack rival Ghost is now connected to the fediverse. 2 weeks ago:
Open Source& Self-Hosted& Federated& & Free-as-in-Freedom
- Comment on Millennials are watching monthly student loan payments skyrocket from $500 to $5000 under Trump: This will ‘crash the economy’ 2 weeks ago:
The appeal is that you get to go to college. “Why not go to a cheaper school?” “Why don’t you just get a job?” “Just buy a starter home.” "Why don’t they eat cake instead?’
- Comment on Millennials are watching monthly student loan payments skyrocket from $500 to $5000 under Trump: This will ‘crash the economy’ 2 weeks ago:
They’ve basically removed all forgiveness options. Were you on year 9 of 10 working towards PSLF? Did you plan your life around it? Whelp. Enjoy the rug pull.
- Comment on Fucking leeches 3 weeks ago:
On the one hand you’re getting someone else to make full payments on your mortgage. On the other hand, it’s your sole property and the only way you could maintain ownership of it. You weren’t profiting over cost, or collecting money from the renters that would go to maintenance (the only actual service/labor that landlords perform). Your choices were practical, not profitable. At least less profitable than you might think. Profitable to the minimum that the system required for you to keep your one home. Short of a revolution where all mortgages are zeroed out, it sounds like you did the best you could.
- Comment on Discord in Early Talks With Bankers for Potential I.P.O. 3 weeks ago:
Devs using Discord instead of forums perplexes me as much as it annoys me. It’s just the wrong tool for the job.
- Comment on Brother accused of locking down third-party printer ink cartridges via forced firmware updates, removing older firmware versions from support portals 4 weeks ago:
Keep it off the Internet and don’t update the firmware
- Comment on Violence alters human genes for generations, researchers discover. 4 weeks ago:
“It’s not clear what, if any, effect these epigenetic changes have in the lives of people”
No shit.
Also let’s not pretend that the only response to scientific support of the existence of measurable negative epigenetic effects from generational trauma would be “being nicer.” It could also be genetic discrimination. Or sterilization. Or eugenics. Or a tactic in genocidal campaigns.
- Comment on Tech jobs are now white collar trades that need apprentices 5 weeks ago:
Co-ops and collectives can help bridge the gap between management interest and worker interest.
- Comment on Scientists move to Bluesky, transitioning away from X and Meta platforms 5 weeks ago:
Your rant is 100% sensible and/or valid and/or based or whatever one says these days.
If a user wants their own echo chamber, let them cultivate it themselves. The hosts should not decide for them, and the choice to defederate should be based on practical/material/legal concerns only.
- Comment on Scientists move to Bluesky, transitioning away from X and Meta platforms 5 weeks ago:
To me the biggest issue with federated platforms is defederation: deliberately breaking interoperability.
Like, imagine if email servers (the original federated network) blocked whole domains as aggressively Mastodon or even Lemmy servers do? It never would have worked.
- Comment on First Gaming PC 5 weeks ago:
If your primary gaming is through Steam, then you shouldn’t have to switch back to Windows much if at all.
- Comment on Scientists move to Bluesky, transitioning away from X and Meta platforms 5 weeks ago:
I mean, I hate BlueSky too, but I think the reason it’s more popular than Mastodon is that it’s more centralized and in practical terms that means it’s easier to adopt and engage with.
The biggest headache I have with Mastodon (and Lemmy, to a lesser extent) is defederation. I understand it’s the most practical thing to do sometimes, but it’s waaay overdone. Like, there needs to be a culture of only defederating as a last resort due to pratical concerns (e.g. bots I guess). Unfortunately the current culture is one where many instance admins treat defederation as a personal blocklist. I wish more admins would leave it to individual users to decide who to allow or not.
- Comment on Scientists move to Bluesky, transitioning away from X and Meta platforms 5 weeks ago:
It still needs polish, but the biggest deficit is lack of adoption.
Platforms like Twitter encourage casual breaks between public and private space, but Facebook-like platforms are better for passively extending existing friendship circles. Or so it seems to me.
- Comment on In light of recent events, here's OpenStreetMap editors discussing naming of the Gulf of Mexico 1 month ago:
Yeah I feel like there needs to be a huge asterisk by name declarations that, while formal/official in the barest sense, are blatantly arbitrary.
- Comment on In light of recent events, here's OpenStreetMap editors discussing naming of the Gulf of Mexico 1 month ago:
Literally no one ever called it “Gulf of America” until January. I appreciate the generally thoughtful conversation on OSM, but there’s no reason that declaration should be taken seriously.
- Comment on Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing? 1 month ago:
Replayed Myst. This time with environmental subtitles I was able to complete the rocket ship puzzle, so that was cool.