bogdugg

@bogdugg@sh.itjust.works

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨China’s Nuclear-Powered Containership: A Fluke Or The Future Of Shipping?⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Supposedly, a meltdown at sea is pretty low risk because you have the perfect heatsink literally everywhere around you, and its a molten salt design, which I think(?) (source: my ass) means that the fuel would at worst leak into the sea and immediately solidify back into some inert state.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can you use the same domain/username for different fediverse services?⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t know if there’s a service that provides both functions. I’m sure there’s a way to do it - Lemmy posts are already accessible through Mastodon. Currently, I assume you would need the instance itself to offer both services under one account.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨who are we defederated with?⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  “Instances” at the bottom of the page will take you to a list of, I believe, federated instances, and at the very bottom, blocked instances.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"Belief in Science" Oxymoronic Explainer for SecOps/Mathematicians/Programmers⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  If you want, you can view science as a system of organization. A way of making sense of facts. If I give you a file of seemingly random ones and zeroes, it is useless. If I give you an algorithm to decode those ones and zeroes into a message, that has utility. However, somebody else could produce an algorithm to decode those same ones and zeroes into an entirely different message. So, which algorithm is correct? Neither.

  But say I give you another file, and Algorithm B doesn’t produce anything useful for this message, so now Algorithm A is more useful. But I also provide a new Algorithm C which also finds messages in both files. Now which is more correct, A or C? And on and on. We continue to refine our models of the data, and we hope that those models will have predictive utility until proven otherwise, but it is always possible (in fact, almost guaranteed) that there is a model of the universe that is more accurate than the one we have.

  Consider the utility of a map. A map is an obviously useful thing, but it is also incomplete. A perfect map, a “true” map, would perfectly reproduce every single minute detail of the thing it is mapping. But to do so, it would need to be built at the same scale as the thing it is mapping, which would be far too cumbersome to actually use as, you know, a map. So, we abstract details to identify patterns to maximize utility. Science, likewise, is a tool of prediction, which is useful, but is also not true, because our model of the universe can never be complete.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"Belief in Science" Oxymoronic Explainer for SecOps/Mathematicians/Programmers⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t really know what this post is on about, but science is not truth. It’s a system of prediction. The closest you can get to “truth” would be observation and data. Science is the process of interpreting these facts to better understand what things will look like in the future. It is obvious that science is not ‘true’, because by its nature it requires change over time as our models of the world improve.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are some other sites like Lichess for tabletop/board games?⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  A couple years old, hopefully most of the websites on here are still alive:

  drive.google.com/file/d/…/view alinachin.github.io/onlineboardgames.html

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Quizzle – Can you guess the word in fewer than twenty questions?⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It might be because they are part of the Order ‘carnivora’, so in that sense they are carnivores even though they are omnivorous.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Quizzle – Can you guess the word in fewer than twenty questions?⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Managed it in 5 somehow. Very cool.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Would you prefer if games had a separate difficulty setting for boss fights?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Maybe you’ve read it before and you want to skip to the good parts. Maybe it’s non-fiction and you’re only interested in something specific. Maybe there are parts of the story that make you uncomfortable, but you’re enjoying it overall. Maybe a page is missing. Maybe it’s an abridged version and it’s not up to you, that’s just what was available.

  And to the original point, what of translations? Maybe the original author is dead, and somebody translated their book. Are you ‘circumventing’ the author’s original intent to ‘gain an advantage’? I mean, yes. Does that mean you’re ‘cheating’?

  What about audio books? Was the book intended to be read on a page? Are you cheating by having the book read to you?

  Calling these things ‘cheating’ is silly and unnecessarily loaded, and they assume that the goal of a work is completion. That the only reason you would start a thing is to finish it. I don’t believe that’s the case for any art. One might say that the challenge in a game is the point, but that’s only sometimes true, and challenge is relative. If something comes naturally easier to you, is it ‘cheating’ to use mods to make the game more difficult, because you’re gaining the advantage of improving your experience, against the original intent of the game? I don’t think so, so I don’t see why it is any different the other way around.

  To think about it another way: if you subtract that paragraph from that book, does it cease to be a book? No, it’s just a different book, and that can still have value to people. You’re not ‘cheating’, you are making a new experience for yourself.

  I could go on and on so I’m gonna stop myself here.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Would you prefer if games had a separate difficulty setting for boss fights?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Is it cheating to skip a paragraph in a book?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google loses fight to hide 2021 money pit: $26B in default contracts⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Feel like the inverse is more apt: where old people go, the young run the fuck away from.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨X adds video calling — and lets strangers ring you: Turned on by default, tool lets anyone you follow potentially call you up⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  An “Everything App” is just an operating system.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Amazon tells managers they can now fire employees who won't come into the office 3 times a week⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  The reasoning behind a specific system may not be arbitrary, but why is one system better than another? People have also used 8 day systems, and 10 day systems. It would seem to me that biggest reason it is still in use today is “it’s the way we’ve always done it”. The inertia of the 7-day system makes change very hard, though there have been attempts over the last few centuries by both France and the Soviet Union. So, even if you could scientifically prove that some other system would be more productive, you would have a very hard time implementing it.

  The idea that I will work a few percentage points more or less over my life, as a direct result of the phases of the moon, is, while perhaps technically correct, a fundamentally silly reason.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Amazon tells managers they can now fire employees who won't come into the office 3 times a week⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  This is a tangent, but you ever think about how arbitrary the week structure is? Like, if weeks were 6 or 8 days long, it would be a big shift in work-life balance regardless of how you split the days up. But thousands of years ago we decided on 7 and it just kind of stuck.

  Assuming 8 hour days, here are some different splits for on and off:

  • 3 on 1 off: working 25% of the time
  • 5 on, 2 off: working 23.8% of the time
  • 4 on, 2 off: working 22.2% of the time
  • 5 on 3 off: working 20.8% of the time
  • 4 on 3 off: working 19.0% of the time
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A new CGP Grey video, try to keep spoilers out of the comments for this one.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I got the award for the “most unlucky, anti-lucky, possible player”…

  So there’s that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Am I strange for not loving Everything Everywhere All At Once?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I loved Swiss Army Man, the directors’ previous film, for its weirdness, charm, music, humour and visual flare. Everything Everywhere was an improvement over all of these aspects so I absolutely loved it, such that I can overlook the pacing issues. They never lose the very human story through the madness.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨As false war information spreads on X, Musk promotes unvetted accounts⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  From what I understand, there’s (at least) two kinds of free speech. There’s free speech as in the government will not restrict your speech, which is important for criticizing the state without fear of being locked up. Then there’s the fanatical idea of maximizing speech: that the marketplace of ideas requires minimal limitations on what can be said anywhere, and the ‘best ideas’ will naturally rise to the top.

  The problem with the latter is that it is incredibly noisy, easy to manipulate, and often an illusion anyway. Proponents of the latter in the US will use the former as cover, but they are different things. The 2nd Amendment has nothing to do with your ability to moderate private spaces. Removing trolls, enforcing rules, and focusing discussion are all necessary for engaging in useful dialogue.

  The Elon Musks of the world are both wrong and fuckin’ nuts, in my opinion. Often, what they really want is for the consensus of a place of discussion to more closely align with their own ideals. They think, “I am right, others disagree, therefore there must be some fundamental flaw in the system.” The simpler explanation is that they’re a moron.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are there any reputable independent gaming sites left?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I have two podcasts in my rotation currently:

  • Remap Radio; previously Waypoint Radio, sometimes their politics feel overly dogmatic, perhaps as a reflection of the audience and culture they have cultivated, but the vibes are good and they have insightful things to say. I’d say they are currently in a transition period so they’re still finding their rhythm.
  • 8-4 Play; Started by a localization company based in Tokyo, you’ll get a unique perspective of life in Japan, Japanese games, and industry connections that you can’t really get anywhere else, at least not in English.

  Used to listen to the Bombcast, but none of the splinters from what it was appeal to me much. New Bombcast, Nextlander, solo Gerstmann, are all flawed in different ways imo.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Reddit’s new Contributor Program will let you cash out gold given to your posts by other users in real money.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m guessing they don’t want non-qualified individuals benefiting monetarily from mental health services. I can only assume it’s a legal can of worms.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Curated Watch Lists?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  There are tons and tons of lists on Letterboxd, a social network built around movies. Sounds like exactly what you’re looking for.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Most U.S. adults don't believe benefits of AI outweigh the risks, new survey finds⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t disagree with your overall point, but as they say, anything that can happen, will happen. I don’t know when it will happen; tomorrow, 50 years, 1000 years… eventually nuclear weapons will be used in warfare again, and it will be a dark time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The IRS Is Using AI to Target the Ultra-Wealthy for Tax Violations⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Worth noting Biden recently put something like $60-$80 billion into improving the IRS.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Wyze security camera owners reported that they could briefly see feeds from cameras they didn’t own⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  As a child, I remember it was trivial to use Google to see through surveillance webcams that people from around the world had purchased and left unsecured and public on the internet. I hadn’t thought much of it then, including how obviously invasive of their privacy it was, but I think it has left me with an awareness of just how little these systems should be trusted to protect that privacy. I have no trust in the system to protect my data from anyone.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘The Bear’ Feasts in Streaming Rankings⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  There are moments of calm, but the show is very much about the chaos of the family and the kitchen.