nucleative
@nucleative@lemmy.world
- Comment on Startup will brick $800 emotional support robot for kids without refunds 5 weeks ago:
I guess this device needed to connect to some remotely hosted server that enabled its functionality. And the company was losing money and hoping that sales would eventually pick up enough to make them profitable. But their latest investor decided not to put any more money in, and the company ran out of cash and can’t pay its bills anymore.
The entrepreneur thought he could get more investor cash and ran the business in such a way that it would fall off a cliff if he didn’t. And… He failed to secure more financing.
I have mixed feelings about products like this… If the device somehow needed to host an entire internet’s worth of data to function, it certainly wouldn’t have cost only $800. But when you buy a product that depends on the ongoing viability of the seller, you’re in a position of caveat emptor - You better vet them out yourself, especially if they’re new.
Hopefully the founders feel some emotional attachment to their product and the trust bestowed upon them by their unknowing customers, and release whatever on the back end makes the thing work so that motivated customers could reactivate their devices somehow.
- Comment on Google must sell Chrome to end search monopoly, justice department argues in court filing 1 month ago:
The buyer of chrome could make bing the default search engine and re-enable whatever broke Ublock origin (the ad blocker)
They could also cripple gapps and gmail a bit. It would also be harder for google to unilaterally develop new web standards.
That would no doubt consternate a few at Google and knee cap them forcing web shit down our throats that only improves their ad business.
- Comment on Bluesky hits 20 million users 1 month ago:
Me too but here’s one useful function:
Perhaps you are aware there is an ongoing event, say for example a football game, or an election, or an outage of your email service provider. You go to one of these “scream into the void” social sites, search on the topic, and learn what people are saying about it. Maybe someone knows what’s really going on, maybe some of those people have some interesting insights and you engage with them, not unlike you and I are engaging right now. Others can observe, perhaps contribute, and after the event has concluded, everyone goes their own way. Hopefully in the end the interactions are beneficial for all.
- Comment on Feedback about our name: someone's concerns on sharing 2 months ago:
Could build a reverse proxy to mask Lemmy links behind something that seems more legit
- Comment on Microsoft fires employees who organized vigil for Palestinians killed in Gaza 2 months ago:
And if you work for a company that supports causes you don’t agree with… Move on.
- Comment on Feds Say You Don’t Have a Right to Check Out Retro Video Games Like Library Books 2 months ago:
I could lend out my old computer with old games installed to somebody else to use, right?
What if instead i lend my hard drive, is it still the same thing? Or what if I lend out my remote access screen sharing password to my old PC. Still the same?
Maybe the legal workaround is to game the system here a bit - forget downloading executables which feels a lot like pirating and just lend access to a system that is legally running the original license.
- Comment on San Francisco to pay $212 million to end reliance on 5.25-inch floppy disks 2 months ago:
You are correct. Later drives sometimes had a cable select dip switch/pin or different ports on the motherboard.
- Comment on Help Identify This Connector 2 months ago:
Yeah there’s so many manufacturers of various connectors that it can be really tricky to nail down the exact model numbers
- Comment on Help Identify This Connector 2 months ago:
Looks a lot like MX23A series
- Comment on Is American politics really as seemingly satirical of itself as it is portrayed? 2 months ago:
It’s important to realize that in most democracies this isn’t a bug, it’s a feature of the system. The founders of these systems wanted to ensure that major decisions were deliberated, not rushed into, and that there wasn’t a lot of room for an executive power to make snap choices that would determine the future of the nation.
- Comment on China calls for realtime censorship of satellite broadband 3 months ago:
Meh, your phone probably is. Also likely whatever else you use for connecting to the internet in the west too.a that irony isn’t lost on the local but we’ll educated in china, they just use a VPN. Those who aren’t educated, well, they just don’t know what’s out there.
- Comment on AI bots now beat 100% of those traffic-image CAPTCHAs 3 months ago:
There is a Russian captcha solver bot called xevil that costs under $100 (I think, last time I looked) that has been able to solve nearly all captchas for years. You just have to supply it with relatively expensive proxy IP addresses because Google rate limits solve attempts.
So the title of this article has been true for a long long time. Capatchas are absolutely useless except against poor or uninformed script kiddies.
- Comment on The Tor Project merges with Tails, a Linux-based portable OS focused on privacy 3 months ago:
What is the state of I2P vs Tor these days?
- Comment on Facebook 4 months ago:
She understands there is a problem, just doesn’t understand the solution. Good on her for having privacy concerns and paying attention.
- Comment on Microsoft backtracks on deprecating the 39-year-old Windows Control Panel | Microsoft has either backtracked or clarified its language to remove the note about Control Panel being deprecated 4 months ago:
I for one would be fine going back to the ini files of win 3.1
- Comment on Six people missing, including British tech tycoon Mike Lynch, after tornado sinks luxury yacht off Sicily 5 months ago:
That is lightening strike “fuck you in particular” god energy
- Comment on Google denies reports that it’s discontinuing Fitbit products 5 months ago:
Yeah, if they are healthy companies they could snag some market share from one of Google’s products.
Easier to kill them early.
- Comment on Indian telcos told to block scam telemarketers for two years 5 months ago:
Whack-a-mole. Once banned, a scammer will just sign up with someone else’s ID.
I mean, that’s kinda what they are pros at already, right?
- Comment on Break science with this one weird trick 5 months ago:
Nail it to the side of your house, in the sunlight, for a totally free charge from the sun
- Comment on Major shifts at OpenAI spark skepticism about impending AGI timelines 5 months ago:
This poster asked some questions in good faith, I don’t understand the downvotes when there’s a legitimate contribution to the conversation because that stifles other contributions.
- Comment on Elon Musk says SpaceX HQ officially moving to Texas, blames new CA trans student privacy law 5 months ago:
There was that moment it time when he was the underdog doing cool stuff. It seemed like he couldn’t screw up, because his companies were hitting the ball out of the park one after the other.
Then the pedo guy debacle taught us who he really is.
- Comment on Anyone else noticing more and more duplicate posts? 6 months ago:
I see this often. That tells me I’ve done enough scrolling and it’s time to get back to work.
I usually browse /all and top 6 hours
- Comment on Restaurant in NYC offshores cashier job to Philippines so they can pay below minimum wage ($3/hr in Philippines) 6 months ago:
If a remote worker can actually do the job at a high enough level, then the writing is on the wall.
Globalization will eventually take over those roles and laws that try to prop up a local worker will end up like Oregon’s old law that says you can’t pump your own gas.
The only way to ‘win’ is to equip the local guy with skills that absolutely cannot be done remotely, or educate him to do things at a level unmatched by the remote worker coming from another culture.
- Comment on Most consumers hate the idea of AI-generated customer service 6 months ago:
An exceptionally well trained AI customer service has the potential to be amazing.
I only call or try to chat/email with customer service if something has gone way wrong - like outside the typical customer service capability of assistance.
If an AI can realize that my problem is human worthy and escalate it faster, that would save me time in the chat queue talking with someone who barely knows my native language.
Alas, AIs will be poorly trained, so the bad-english CS reps will still be right behind the AI interface waiting for me.
- Comment on [deleted] 6 months ago:
I think this was the version right before WYSIWIG support was added. So you could still use fonts, and change font sizes but on screen it would show a strange notation but not the actual font. Complex layouts were tough 😅
- Comment on The return of pneumatic tubes 6 months ago:
When I was young I remember that banks often had large drive-thrus with pneumatic tube systems at each car stall. They’re only be one teller but they’d serve quite a few lanes.
If you wanted a cash withdrawal, you might put your ID and your withdrawal slip in the tube, and a few minutes later it would come back with cash in it.
It was pretty rad. But ATMs seem like a better bet overall.
- Comment on X is about to start hiding all likes 7 months ago:
Now Elon can like his favorite OF creators without anybody knowing it’s him.
- Comment on We have to stop ignoring AI’s hallucination problem 8 months ago:
Well stated and explained. I’m not an AI researcher but I develop with LLMs quite a lot right now.
Hallucination is a huge problem we face when we’re trying to use LLMs for non-fiction. It’s a little bit like having a friend who can lie straight-faced and convincingly. You cannot distinguish whether they are telling you the truth or they’re lying until you rely on the output.
I think one of the nearest solutions to this may be the addition of extra layers or observer engines that are very deterministic and trained on only extremely reputable sources, perhaps only peer reviewed trade journals, for example, or sources we deem trustworthy. Unfortunately this could only serve to improve our confidence in the facts, not remove hallucination entirely.
It’s even feasible that we could have multiple observers with different domains of expertise (i.e. training sources) and voting capability to fact check and subjectively rate the LLMs output trustworthiness.
But all this will accomplish short term is to perhaps roll the dice in our favor a bit more often.
The perceived results from the end users however may significantly improve. Consider some human examples: sometimes people disagree with their doctor so they go see another doctor and another until they get the answer they want. Sometimes two very experienced lawyers both look at the facts and disagree.
The system that prevents me from knowingly stating something as true, despite not knowing, without some ability to back up my claims is my reputation and my personal values and ethics. LLMs can only pretend to have those traits when we tell them to.
- Comment on Winamp has announced that it is opening up its source code to enable collaborative development of its legendary player for Windows 8 months ago:
Damn, I’d even works on mobile
- Comment on How Airbnb accidentally screwed the US housing market and made $100 billion 8 months ago:
I’ve heard a lot of people having this problem. Airbnb is next to useless, even with their guarantee.
Prices goes up, other hotels are booked solid, there are fewer options and travelers are left in the cold.
A big brand would be less likely to risk their reputation over $50 or $100/night difference if there’s some new big event in the area