Jrockwar
@Jrockwar@feddit.uk
- Comment on Men are opening up about mental health to AI instead of humans 22 hours ago:
I don’t think it’s only men either, but it’s worth considering the implications and potential causes for what is being said here.
We have had not decades but centuries of macho culture, where mental health is a taboo for men because “I strong, me no cry” and we know that mental health struggles go underreported on men. This is just adding more evidence to a symptom that we already know, of a society that hasn’t been able to course correct because it’s too set in tradition to allow those who need help to seek it without feeling like garbage.
While I’m not saying this is a problem exclusive to men, I think the causes and effects on women and men are rather different. We’ve now known for a while that women with mental health issues or disorders tend to go undiagnosed (even more so than unreported). The case of autism is particularly blatant, as women only started to get diagnosed in a meaningful proportion in the 80s (despite autism not being sex- or gender-driven). www.autism.org.uk/…/autistic-women-and-girls
Similarly, that underdiagnosing came from the stereotyping of gender roles and the fact that being quiet and pretty equated being “feminine”, which is “good”, so can’t be autistic, because autistic is bad.
- Comment on 2 days ago:
I once had the great idea of drinking a litre of beetroot juice, which I had read is amazing for sports recovery because of something something helping blood carrying more oxygen or something like that.
Instant diarrhea, and on top of it, beetroot tinted it looked just like blood, so up until I realised what was going on and the fact that it actually wasn’t blood, that was a scary experience.
I don’t know whether beetroot is known to cause diarrhea or it was just my body noping the juice out of it, but I have steered clear of beetroot juice ever since!
- Comment on Judge Rules Training AI on Authors' Books Is Legal But Pirating Them Is Not 6 days ago:
I think this means we can make a torrent client with a built in function that uses 0.1% of 1 CPU core to train an ML model on anything you download. You can download anything legally with it then. 👌
- Comment on The emulator that lets you play NES games in 3D has left early access on Steam 1 week ago:
Still, being able to argue they’re not for profit is what typically has protected emulators from being sued to oblivion (and with Nintendo, even that’s risky)…
- Comment on Honda successfully launched and landed its own reusable rocket 1 week ago:
In different ways. For example, it’s very rare for a car to explode in a collision, other than in movies.
One of the reasons that make hydrogen difficult to work with in this sense is that hydrogen (H₂) molecules are so small that they can permeate most materials, such as steel. Then it can get somewhat easily to wherever there is a spark, and chaos ensues. Annoyingly you don’t even need 100% Hydrogen for that to happen, as it can ignite with a concentration of just 4%.
After we stopped using Hydrogen mostly as a consequence of Hindenburg’s accident, it’s taken years to perfect hydrogen fuel cells to a safety standard that can be used in cars. As far as I know, its use has been limited to rockets/space propulsion otherwise (where you can just throw millions at the problem to make it safer).
- Comment on Cancers can be detected in bloodstream three years prior to diagnosis 2 weeks ago:
Only 6M €? For an event of that size that feels a lot cheaper than I would have thought.
- Comment on Digital Foundry: Yes, It's Faster: Switch 2 Back Compat vs Batman Arkham Knight + the Witcher 3 3 weeks ago:
A console in 2025 “runs at a stable 30” fps and that’s good news? Of course this is slightly faster than a mobile chip from 10 years ago, but that’s an incredibly low bar to set.
- Comment on Duolingo deletes all its TikTok videos after AI backlash—and then returns with a strange message 5 weeks ago:
What you’re saying absolutely makes sense. However as someone with ADHD I couldn’t relate any less, I wish I could get addicted to something like that and not lose interest after ten minutes!
- Comment on Duolingo deletes all its TikTok videos after AI backlash—and then returns with a strange message 5 weeks ago:
Even assuming we’re okay with using AI for language learning - then why would anyone pay for Duolingo instead of the many LLMs that people already use and pay for?
They’ve alienated their customer base hard. And this marketing video pretending they are siding with the users and against “their corporate overlords” is horribly tone deaf.
- Comment on YSK how to unclog a toilet 5 weeks ago:
I’ve had success with just dish soap - it makes blockages “slide” more easily.
In the last flatshare I lived, I had a particularly annoying combination of a slow toilet and a flatmate incapable of solving any blockages. Whenever I’d see that, I’d go “fuck this”, squirt a silly amount of Fairy in the bowl (I’m talking like 100 ml at least) and usually the blockage would resolve itself overnight.
- Comment on The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source. 5 weeks ago:
In my view it’s a Linux subsystem for Windows.
Why the name is the other way around, I’ll never understand.
- Comment on Duolingo will replace contract workers with AI | The Verge 1 month ago:
It’s okay. We can all play that game. I’ve replaced my use of Duolingo with AI.
Pro tip: have as your “system prompt” in your LLM of choice “at the end of every query, include me a short Swedish relates to my prompt”. No need for Duolingo.
- Comment on Facebook Pushes Its Llama 4 AI Model to the Right, Wants to Present “Both Sides” 2 months ago:
“There are some bad things on the internet”
“Just… Don’t use the internet?”
- Comment on 6* months away now. If you're on 10, do you plan to upgrade? Make the jump to Linux? 2 months ago:
The ads for apps, Xbox games, trial versions of Office preinstalled, the minesweeper and solitaire collection that are preinstalled but actually ad supported or non-free, depending on the region spotify/TikTok/Facebook also come preinstalled, “Movies & TV”, Bing/MS News…
I think all of those count as bloat. I haven’t included Edge because I guess having a browser is a necessity, or copilot/cortana because you said “excluding AI features”.
- Comment on Bookwyrm.social, BookBrainz, OpenLibrary, etc. 3 months ago:
I’ve only started using Storygraph recently (which I also like) but I’d consider a federated alternative. Does anybody know whether its possible to migrate the history from SG to Bookwyrm?
- Comment on [deleted] 3 months ago:
PREGANANANT
- Comment on Meet Rayhunter: A New Open Source Tool from EFF to Detect Cellular Spying 3 months ago:
It’s the other way around, an Apple Silicon Mac would be able to run an intel binary through Rosetta (I think there’s almost no exceptions at this point). It’s intel macs that can’t run Arm specific binaries.
- Comment on Apple reveals M3 Ultra, taking Apple silicon to a new extreme 3 months ago:
I thought a few days ago that my “new” laptop (M2 Pro MBP) is now almost 2 years old. The damn thing still feels new.
I really dislike Apple but the Apple Silicon processors are so worth it to me. The performance-battery life combination is ridiculously good.
- Comment on Mexican President Threatens to Sue Google Over 'Gulf of America' Label on Maps. 4 months ago:
It’s UE in Spanish, from Unión Europea. (Non-doubled letters because it’s a single Union, there’s no plural like in “States”).
Sometimes people in Spain do use the English acronyms for both EU/USA, but I don’t think I’ve seen it often. Both UE and EEUU are more common from what I’ve seen, and also people rarely say these out loud, it’s exclusively a written language problem.
- Comment on Flohmarkt - a Fediverse replacement for Facebook Marketplace 4 months ago:
Language Native Speakers Total Speakers Sources English ~380 million ~1.5 billion Wikipedia German ~76–95 million ~155–220 million Wikipedia Mandarin ~941 million–1.12 billion ~1.1–1.3 billion Wikipedia Well, it has 10x more speakers than German, but it still has fewer speakers than English and most of them are localised in a single country.
- Comment on Thousands flee as Los Angeles wildfires burn out of control 5 months ago:
Trump will fix it. Concepts of thoughts and prayers.
- Comment on Aptera completes low-speed drive in its first production-intent solar electric vehicle 7 months ago:
Something I find incredibly weird about US company culture is how they talk about overtime like it’s a good thing.
“Our employees worked weekends, days and nights to make this happen! We wouldn’t have succeeded without people who are willing to give up their personal lives!”
I hope they not only succeed but get shares. Doing weekends or nights for a company you don’t (partially) own feels like a con.
- Comment on Russian TV companies demand 2 undecillion rubles from Google 7 months ago:
If they keep duplicating the ask, soon they’ll be asking for a googol from Google. Hehe.
- Comment on Court Orders Google (a Monopolist) To Knock It Off With the Monopoly Stuff. 7 months ago:
I’m not sure I’m following, it says developers can opt out!
- Comment on Apple’s first Mac mini redesign in 14 years looks like a big aluminum Apple TV 7 months ago:
I don’t think anything with the word “intel” can be taken seriously in value comparisons…
When I got my last laptop I ended up with a MBP because there were no high end options for Linux laptops with AMD. Now the options are better, but back then, the only realistic alternative to a MacBook Pro would have had a third of the real-world battery life if not less, even if I decided to spend £3k. That didn’t seem like an acceptable compromise so there were virtually no laptops in existence that could compete with an M2 MBP.
- Comment on Apple’s first Mac mini redesign in 14 years looks like a big aluminum Apple TV 7 months ago:
16 GB of RAM are kinda meh, but I can’t think of many $600 devices that can run three 6K monitors simultaneously at 60 Hz, plus then one at a lower res but still 60 Hz.
- Comment on Microsoft fires employees who organized vigil for Palestinians killed in Gaza 8 months ago:
How do people have the time to organise vigils and get into “coalitions” and politics in the workplace?
Granted I don’t work at Microsoft, but I feel me and everyone around me is overworked enough that when we have the time to stop working… We head home (or close the laptop if WFH) and rest, not engage in additional activities in the workplace.
- Comment on Why Surgeons Are Wearing The Apple Vision Pro 8 months ago:
Yeah, this sounds like a problem for only the 5% of the world who live in a specific country.
- Comment on India’s electric cab companies can’t find enough cars to put on the road. 8 months ago:
That’s not efficient enough, why don’t we make them larger and carry over 400 people instead? And we can do special low friction routes where people want to go, so that there’s even better efficiency!
Or, why don’t we accept maybe that there’s the need for different modes of transport and I’m happy commuting to work 8 miles in a bicycle but my 78-year-old mum sometimes physically can’t walk half a mile to a bus stop to take her to the doctor’s and she needs taxis to exist?
- Comment on 'Garbage in, garbage out': AI fails to debunk disinformation, study finds. 8 months ago:
That’s because it doesn’t learn, it’s a snapshot of its training data frozen in time.
I like Perplexity (a lot) because instead of using its data to answer your question, it uses your data to craft web searches, gather content, and summarise it into a response. It’s like a student that uses their knowledge to look for the answer in the books, instead of trying to answer from memory whether they know the answer or not.
It is not perfect, it does hallucinate from time to time, but it’s rare enough that I use it way more than regular web searches at this point. I can throw quite obscure questions at it and it will dig the answer for me.
As someone with ADHD with a somewhat compulsive need to understand random facts (e.g. “I need to know right now how the motor speed in a coffee grinder affects the taste of the coffee”) this is an absolute godsend.
I’m not affiliated or anything, and if anything better comes my way I’ll be happy to ditch it. But for now I really enjoy it.