RegalPotoo
@RegalPotoo@lemmy.world
- Comment on Should naming your children stupid names be illegal? 3 days ago:
If you are going to propose a law, you need to define “stupid”
- Comment on Hype-fueling science fiction or plausible scenarios? 5 days ago:
I find it telling that AGI people seem to assume that AGI will spontaneously appear as a distinct entity with its own agency rather than being a product that will be owned and sold.
People who have hundreds of billions of dollars can get mid-single-digit percent ROI by making very safe investments with that money, but instead they are pouring it into relatively risky AI investments. What do you think that says about their expectations of returns?
- Comment on Backup compose and env files 3 weeks ago:
Check them into Git, but be cautious about credentials that might live in the env files that you don’t want to expose publicly.
- Comment on Get your new PebbleOS watch 4 weeks ago:
… so I shouldn’t use the CEOs history of bankruptcy and failed a Kickstarter when judging if I think it is going to succeed or not?
- Comment on Why don’t wireless connections (WiFi, Bluetooth, etc.) use anything between 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz? 4 weeks ago:
IIRC Ubiquity make a line of point-to-point ethernet bridges that operate in the 20GHz range (because more bandwidth, and if you have line of sight you don’t care about interference as much). Responsible vendors won’t even sell you one without sighting a license cos they can also get in trouble for selling it to you if it turns out you are operating it illegally
- Comment on How Three Alleged Tesla Vandals Got Caught 5 weeks ago:
The irony of being asked to sign up to a website to be able to read an article about opsec failures
- Comment on Get your new PebbleOS watch 5 weeks ago:
My concern isn’t that things will get delayed, it’s that I’ll give them my money and get nothing in return
- Comment on Get your new PebbleOS watch 5 weeks ago:
I’m pretty excited about this; my Pebble Time was the best watch I’ve even owned - smart or otherwise.
That said, I don’t think I’m going to be preordering this given how badly the last Pebble Kickstarter went. For those who weren’t around at the time, Pebble (whose CEO is behind this venture) built his whole business around Kickstarter. The first 2 generations were wildly successful, but for the third generation they massively overextended themselves trying to get hardware into mainstream retailers, prioritised building stock for retail channels (because contracts) and ran out of cash before shipping for the majority of backers who had bankrolled this whole thing. Eventually everyone who hadn’t had their orders fulfilled got a refund, but that was only because FitBit decided to buy them. Eric seems like a nice guy and great at the technology - and I’m not saying that I could run a business any better - but I think I’ll wait until there is stock on hand for me to buy outright before I hand over my cash
- Comment on When Lemmy got named did no one think that the "lemming" association might alienate people? 1 month ago:
There are two truely hard problems in computer science; P=NP, naming things, and off by one safety
- Comment on What's easier to shoot, a bow or a firearm? 1 month ago:
Beyond just being able to draw a bow, being able to draw it well enough to have a chance of shooting at all repeatably takes a lot of training - it’s not just lifting a 50+lb weight, pulling it towards you with one and and pushing it away with the other while keeping your arms stable requires a lot of strength in muscles the people don’t tend to use.
Source: former colleague is an international competition level archer - the sheer amount of core strength and coordination and balance you need to be a good archer is wild
- Comment on Sergey Brin says AGI is within reach if Googlers work 60-hour weeks 1 month ago:
They talk about AGI like it’s some kind of intrinsically benevolent messiah that is going to come along and free humanity of limitations rather than a product that is going to be monetised to make a few very rich people even richer
- Comment on I hate this image because idiots will see it, not understand what its showing, and make up some crazy shit based on it. 1 month ago:
Oh one one eight nine nine nine…
- Comment on France is about to pass the worst surveillance law in the EU. 1 month ago:
So I’m going to get down voted to hell for this, but: this kind of legislation is a response to US tech companies absolutely refusing to compromise and meet non-US governments half-way.
The belief in an absolute, involute right to privacy at all costs is a very US ideal. In the rest of the world - and in Europe especially - this belief is tempered by a belief that law enforcement is critical to a just society, and that sometimes individual rights must be suspended for the good of society as a whole.
What Europe has been asking for is a mechanism to allow law enforcement to carry out lawful investigation of electronic communications in the same way they have been able to do with paper, bank records, and phone calls for a century. The idea that a tech company might get in the way of prosecuting someone for a serious crime is simply incompatible with law in a lot of places.
The rest of the world has been trying to find a solution to the for a while that respects the privacy of the general public but which doesn’t allow people to hide from the law. Tech has been refusing to compromise or even engage in this discussion, so now everyone is worse off.
- Submitted 1 month ago to showerthoughts@lemmy.world | 9 comments
- Comment on US could cut Ukraine's access to Starlink internet services over minerals, say sources. 1 month ago:
I’ve been looking at getting solar installed, and been talking to a few different companies for quotes. One place only supplies PowerWall batteries, and I said to the sales rep that I wasn’t really interested in buying anything from Tesla and his face made it pretty clear that that was the answer he’d been getting a lot recently
- Comment on 3DBenchy Sets Sail into the Public Domain 2 months ago:
Please tell me they struck a deal with Zack
- Comment on Man who lost $780 million in Bitcoin in a landfill now wants to buy the entire dump before city closes the site 2 months ago:
I mean, if he also wants to take on the costs of doing all the remediation work and ongoing maintenance and surveillance for the rest of time that’s probably a good deal for the city
- Comment on no words, much feelings 2 months ago:
What’s the bet those filters never get changed either?
- Comment on These still don't taste like Steve Harvey.. 2 months ago:
… My first thought was “is this loss?”. I’m probably too online.
- Comment on After completing my first job I'm thinking of quitting my regular job and doing plumbing full time 2 months ago:
Many years ago, the university I studied at did some construction work in the chemistry department, which included rerouting the supply lines from the big oxygen and LPG tanks so they could reach the new lab they were building.
Turns out the contractor was either an idiot or misread the plans, and ended up running the pipes straight through one of the fire-resistant walls designed to compartmentalize the building so fires can’t spread as easily - a hole in one is a Big Deal on its own, but then running pipes full of accelerant through it essentially voided the buildings safety certificate and insurance, and ment that if there was a fire, the main evacuation path would have been a deathtrap.
I don’t know what happened to the contractor, but labs were closed for a few weeks while they purged the lines of gas, removed the badly installed lines and repaired the wall
- Comment on Fill it up buttercup 2 months ago:
It won’t help, but not having it sure will hurt
- Comment on What is a metaphor you like in your language? 2 months ago:
No worries - I’m a native, but still had to think about it a bit. English is weird
- Comment on What is a metaphor you like in your language? 2 months ago:
Sort of, there is a parallel derivation where tool can be an innuendo for penis (“used his tool”), so describing someone as a tool is a slightly less vulgar way of calling someone a dick; unrefined, rude, obnoxious.
- Comment on What is a metaphor you like in your language? 2 months ago:
In colloquial English, you can say that someone is an idiot with the construction “you absolute [noun]” or “you complete [noun]” or similar.
It doesn’t actually matter what the noun is, but it works better the more obscure or specific the thing is. For example “you absolute saucepan”, “you complete hose pipe”, or my personal favourite “you absolute strawberry plant”.
- Comment on Apps doing year wrapped gives you a hint on how are you being tracked. There is probably a legal issue there somewhere like data retention. 3 months ago:
data retention
It’s the opposite - most regulatory frameworks require that you only retain data if you have a “legitimate purpose” for holding on to it; providing app features absolutely is a legitimate purpose, so by having a “wrapped” you can justify holding on to everything a user does - after all, you need it to provide features.
- Comment on Will pilots-less airplanes happens first, or driver-less cars? Why? 3 months ago:
I’m surprised it’s not already in place for rail freight. Pre-defined, well known routes, automatic right-of-way. You’d need some exception detection - spot things on the line or if any part of the train is behaving abnormally, but like cars you can “fail safe” - do an emergency stop if the computer or a remote operator decides that something has gone sufficiently wrong which you can’t do in a plane
- Comment on Will pilots-less airplanes happens first, or driver-less cars? Why? 3 months ago:
Technology wise, aircraft are already 90+% automated - autopilot does basically the whole cruise phase, pilots are there to do the communication with ATC, manage the autopilot, and be hands on for taxi, takeoff and landing.
From a legal/policy perspective, the aviation industry is held to a much higher standard of reliability and safety than the automotive industry - the AI driven YOLO that companies like Waymo get away with. It’s not just that autopilot systems have to always work, it’s that they have to always behave in a predictable way.
- Comment on If Orange Dickhead dies before taking his oath again will we party like it's 1999? 5 months ago:
Right up until we have an Arch Duke situation
- Comment on Not the worst sales technique. 5 months ago:
This is a weirdly body-positive message for a gym; you can be fat and beautiful or skinny and ugly
- Comment on Do PhDs HAVE to use Dr? 5 months ago:
“Doctor” is a title you become entitled to use by virtue of holding a PhD - you have the option to use it, but nothing compels you to do so if you don’t want to.
Note that the reverse isn’t true - representing yourself as holding a doctorate when you don’t can be a fairly serious crime - if you did for the purposes of getting money from some, then it’s probably some kind of fraud