dhork
@dhork@lemmy.world
- Comment on Is This Social Media? 1 day ago:
Since so many people are here because they consider the other platforms to be too enshittified, I like calling Lemmy “Antisocial Media”
- Comment on A real question about trans athletes and records 3 days ago:
Every organized sport has some sort of governing body, and that body is concerned with making sure competition is fair. (And taking bribes, right, FIFA?) The people who organize the sport should be able to determine what is fair for their sport. Often, there will be some scientific basis for allowing some people and not allowing others, based on hormones or something like that.
The decisions should be made by people who know the sport and decide what fair competition might look like, not by asshole politicians looking to push an agenda.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 days ago:
Is your dad elderly and needs care because of his age? In the US, depending on the state you live in, you could be considered a “family caregiver” and might be able to collect additional benefits. Some states give out a bit of money to these family caregivers if it keeps those elderly people out of the care of the state.
- Comment on Crypto mogul Do Kwon, known as ‘the cryptocurrency king,’ pleads guilty to fraud charges 1 week ago:
The main use case for crypto is for peer to peer transactions that do not require the permission of any third party (or government). A secondary use case for crypto is the enablement of self-executing smart contracts.
The problem is that the financial speculation aspect of crypto has eaten everything else. “Number go up” is now the main use case, and people do t actually transact much with crypto anymore. And the only type of smart contract that has gained any popular use whatsoever is the type that makes more shitty crypto tokens. Any general utility it had years ago evaporated when it became too valuable to transact with.
Except for those criminals and fraudsters you mentioned: they do put crypto to good use evading government oversight of their transactions. In this respect, crypto is no different than a briefcase full of cash. Yes, you could legally stash a briefcase full of cash in your house, but there are so many better (trackable) places to keep that cash that if the cops found that briefcase in your house wbile executing a search for other reasons, they would cite the existence of that briefcase as proof of sometnig nefarious.
- Comment on Crypto mogul Do Kwon, known as ‘the cryptocurrency king,’ pleads guilty to fraud charges 1 week ago:
I wonder what the going rate is for a pardon? How much $TRUMP does it take?
- Comment on Fortnite developer Epic Games wins Australian court battle against Apple and Google 1 week ago:
It was always about the game.
All Epic cares about is their own profit margins and control over distribution.
These statements contradict each other. If all Epic cares about is money, the other game doesn’t matter as long as it sells.
- Comment on Drug Enforcement Administration agent used Illinois cop’s Flock license plate reader password for immigration enforcement searches 1 week ago:
Because immigration enforcement is a civil violation, not a criminal one. Imagine if the government said that license plate readers could be used to enforce copyright violations, or defamation. Say a bad word about the President and they will use the system to find your car and wait for you to send you to Alligator Auschwitz without a trial.
- Comment on What if a billionaire wants to help you? 1 week ago:
It’s a scam. Do not engage. If a billionaire really wanted to send you money, they can pay for the lawyers and accountants to make sure it is all above board. Maybe thry make a foundation and give you a cushy job there. That’s how actual billionaires do it.
Ironically, if it weren’t a scam, then crypto can be the safest way to receive any funds. If you securely generated your own crypto wallet, and sent him an address on a reputable blockchain to send funds to, and he actually sent them, then the money is yours, forever, no backsies.
Of course, that’s not how crypto scams work, either. They always guide you to use a wallet that they control (and can drain funds out of easily), or tell you to send crypto to them first to unlock something.
- Comment on Fortnite developer Epic Games wins Australian court battle against Apple and Google 1 week ago:
It was never about the games. It’s about who can be the gatekeeper between the game devs and billions of people on the planet. That gatekeeping gig is a genuine racket: they charge 15% to 30% just for the privilege of distributing an app and hosting a bunch of servers for download. Yeah, there’s a lot to that, but is it really worth 30% of the top line? Not even the Credit Card companies, famous for screwing over small merchants, charge that much to process payments.
- Comment on What brush is the human equivalent of a dog slicker brush? 1 week ago:
Looks like you want a brush with super hard bristles. I guess some places sell wild boar bristle brushes, I wonder what the boars think of that…
- Comment on OpenAI claims GPT-5 AI model can provide PhD-level expertise. 2 weeks ago:
I know too many PhD’s for that to impress me
- Comment on Whatever happened to the blockchain/smart contract 'revolution' we were told about? 3 weeks ago:
VISA handles 65,000 transactions per second. That’s one of the major reasons we’re not seeing more widespread adoption.
I thought they were gonna fix that by running a bunch of bar tabs
- Comment on At this point who in the world could stop Trump over doing something totally illegal? Like lets say using bunker buster bombs to destroy DEM cities? Or is USA communially FUCKED? 4 weeks ago:
The US President is not subject to laws, when acting in his official capacity, unless at least 1/2 of the House and 2/3 of the Senate vote to impeach him. So winning the election is a license to do illegal things, if you have enough political support.
- Comment on New Executive Order:AI must agree on the Administration views on Sex,Race, cant mention what they deem to be Critical Race Theory,Unconscious Bias,Intersectionality,Systemic Racism or "Transgenderism 4 weeks ago:
I know, but it looks derpier that way
- Comment on Is it possible to sell semi-old computers/parts? 4 weeks ago:
I collect old stuff too. There are only a handful of things that have been useful over the years, mainly USB devices. People who work with hobby embedded devices can also make use of RS232 serial equipment. It might be worth holding on to a single old monitor that can also do VGA. Or a single SATA DVD drive in case you find some old discs you need to read. I have a box of C-64 stuff I am never getting rid of. The kids will have to figure out what to do with that when I am gone.
But all those old ISA cards? Parallel printer port cables? Zip drives? Yeah, nobody wants them. Maybe you can list those old Apple talk dongles on eBay and make a hundred bucks, but you also have to deal with shipping them and stuff.
Just be careful when disposing old drives. I have a stack of busted drives that I won’t get rid of because I don’t know if anyone will be able to pull the data with the right equipment. Every now and then if I get too bored I take one apart to play with the magnets, I figure it’s safe to discard the platters if I scratch them up good.
You may want to look for local “electronics recycling” places. They might charge a fee, and if they find something they can refurbish and sell they will do it. But then you have more space to accumulate new stuff.
- Comment on Why do some companies like a utility put out ads? 4 weeks ago:
I bet the local energy provider is owned by a large conglomerate, and they want you to think that the company is locally managed and any profits they make go back into the community, instead of to the Corporate Overlords…
This can be particularly important for heavily regulated industries, as their profits are contingent on the local politicians continuing to like them. So while I am sure a significant portion of their budget goes to greasing palms to make sure politicians take care of them, they also need to make sure the voting population is not hostile to them, so that they don’t get some grass roots movement going that elects hostile politicians.
- Comment on New Executive Order:AI must agree on the Administration views on Sex,Race, cant mention what they deem to be Critical Race Theory,Unconscious Bias,Intersectionality,Systemic Racism or "Transgenderism 4 weeks ago:
Brett Kavanaugh: Hold my beer, I got this!
- Comment on New Executive Order:AI must agree on the Administration views on Sex,Race, cant mention what they deem to be Critical Race Theory,Unconscious Bias,Intersectionality,Systemic Racism or "Transgenderism 4 weeks ago:
I read through the thing, and it’s a doozy. he seems triggered by the fact that AI might make a picture where Washington is a black man, or Hamilton is Latino. I hope he hasn’t been to Broadway lately…
- Comment on New Executive Order:AI must agree on the Administration views on Sex,Race, cant mention what they deem to be Critical Race Theory,Unconscious Bias,Intersectionality,Systemic Racism or "Transgenderism 4 weeks ago:
How do? You can say whatever you want on America today, as long as the President would agree. How is that not Freedom~tm~?
- Comment on To win the show Alone, could someone smuggle a GPS locator inside of their anus? 4 weeks ago:
Then that’s more feasible. It also means that it doesn’t have to try to operate while safely stowed. The contestant can remove it and then turn it on. They might even be able to strategically bury it somewhere. The small amount of dirt above it will attenuate the signal, but if buried in a place with an open view of the sky they will get a much stronger signal than they would in a building.
We are spoiled with how quickly the GPS in our phones work, but they already have a good idea where they are from the cell towers, and they can also get information on which satellites are in view from the Internet. If the GPS receiver had to work without access to those resources, it may take minutes to get a fix.
Then, it also has to get communicate the position data: if there is no cell service, that would have to be some sort of satellite communication or other long-range thing.
- Comment on To win the show Alone, could someone smuggle a GPS locator inside of their anus? 4 weeks ago:
Many of the trackers that would easily fit (like AirTags) don’t actually have their own GPS receivers, they piggy-back on the receivers in iPhones that are in bluetooth range (and also use those iPhones for the cell communication back to Apple).
- Comment on To win the show Alone, could someone smuggle a GPS locator inside of their anus? 4 weeks ago:
You may be surprised to find that GPS signals are quite low power by the time they get to Earth. Receivers employ a bunch of trucks to extract the signal out of noise. It does not take much in the way to attenuate them to the point where they are useless. If a receiver is embedded in a body cavity it is unlikely to work well unless it has a direct full-sky view – which is especially troublesome for that particular body cavity.
It might be easier to embed a tiny receiver in someone’s skin: in their shoulder, or the nape of their neck. A strategically-placed tattoo could help cover it up. The receiver would also need power so you would either need to embed a power source in it (which may be larger than the receiver itself) or work out some RF power source nearby. (But if you didn’t know where in the world they were, how would you know where to place the power source?)
- Comment on Is the periodic table still getting new additions? 4 weeks ago:
My (flawed and amateur) understanding is that they create new elements by smashing together atoms on particle accelerators to see if their nuclei stick. If you can create an atom with a new number of protons in its nucleus, in a manner which can be repeated, then you have created a new element.
The last new element that was created with a natural process was found sometime in the 1930s. Many of the artificially generated elements are extremely unstable. Our labs may be the only place in the universe they are made, that aren’t inside stars.
- Comment on Google develops AI tool that fills missing words in Roman inscriptions 4 weeks ago:
Who knew this inscription wad about “Biggus Dickus” all along?
- Comment on “You can't be expected to have a successful AI program when every single article, book or anything else that you've read or studied, you're supposed to pay for” Donald Trump said 4 weeks ago:
It tracks, his entire career has been spent getting other people to pay for stuff for him
- Comment on YSK Billionaire Rupert Murdoch owns Sky News, The New York Post, The Sun, The Times,Fox News and the Wall Street Journal. He is the most powerful businessman in the West 4 weeks ago:
He owns the Sun and the Sky? Is he gonna buy the Land next?
- Comment on YSK Employers do NOT verify your total work history unless you're applying for a government position. 4 weeks ago:
Good advice, but it depends. Some people don’t want to show a gap in their resume, for any reason. It all depends on the story you want to tell. If you think the experience is directly relevant to the story you are looking to tell, put it in.
Did you do some temp work in your field for few months between full-time gigs? Probably best to include that, especially if you learned or applied relevant skills. Did you end up working in a different field to make ends meet instead? Probably best to leave that out, unless you can relate that unrelated experience to what you want to do now.
- Comment on [deleted] 5 weeks ago:
Asking about “return” is kinda useless in this context. AI is frequently being integrated into things that people didn’t ask for, and making them more shitty.
And while Bitcoin mining does generate a return, there is nothing inherent in cryptocurrency that says it must consume electricity to generate these returns. Ethereum transitioned to an algorithm which secures it’s network just as well for a fraction of the energy cost. Bitcoin only consumes so much energy because it’s developers are stubborn.
But to answer your question, people think that AI applications will consume fully half of all datacenter power by the end of this year, and if it does it will likely have a higher energy footprint than BTC.
- Comment on Is it sexist to say "I've never worn a wet dress before" 5 weeks ago:
She might be conflating it with a wet t-shirt contest
- Comment on Sid Meier’s Civilization VI: Platinum Edition is free to claim on Epic 5 weeks ago:
Did 7 get any better with the updates? I bought it on release but it couldn’t hold my attention for more than an hour, and I haven’t been back.