thebestaquaman
@thebestaquaman@lemmy.world
- Comment on Frequent TikTok users in Taiwan more likely to agree with pro-China narratives, study finds 2 days ago:
Whatever anyone China-affiliated says they’re not doing, it’s a safe bet that’s exactly what they’re doing.
I’m not going to push any conspiracy theories, but I believe the strongest evidence pointing towards Covid-19 originating in a lab is the Chinese government insisting that it didn’t, while prohibiting anyone not under their control from investigating. That doesn’t mean it did originate from a lab, but if anything, that’s what it points to. To be explicit: My impression is that, currently, most available evidence points towards natural origins.
- Comment on Frequent TikTok users in Taiwan more likely to agree with pro-China narratives, study finds 3 days ago:
This is a case where you have to be careful about cause-effect order. I assume that Tiwanese people that are heavily opposed to China are more likely to avoid tiktok. But of course, it’s been shown that tiktok tends to show more pro-China “content” as well, and likely influences the opinions of its users.
- Comment on Scientists in Japan develop plastic that dissolves in seawater within hours 4 days ago:
To be fair, this was originally the point of plastic. The primary point of plastic today is that it is an extremely cheap material that you can mould into pretty much any shape.
Need a bag to carry stuff? Plastic.
Packaging for toothpicks? Plastic.
Packaging for clothes? Plastic.
Fake plant. Plastic.
Part of the problem is that we’re using a wonder-material that lasts forever (plastic) for a bunch of mundane shit where we don’t need it, because that wonder-material turns out to be the cheapest material around as well.
- Comment on Scientists in Japan develop plastic that dissolves in seawater within hours 4 days ago:
If you read the article, you’ll find that they claim it’s broken down into something which is processed by naturally occurring bacteria. I would have preferred that they linked to an actual research article for details, but this is explicitly not one of these “degradable” plastics that just dissolves into microplastic.
- Comment on Scientists in Japan develop plastic that dissolves in seawater within hours 4 days ago:
Without checking out the details, I can say with fairly high confidence that a material that will be degraded by a sodium chloride solution will most likely also be degraded by other electrolytes as well.
However, the electrolyte-concentration in drinks is much, much lower than that in seawater. And if it can’t be used for electrolyte-containing drinks, it could be used for water bottles.
Maybe we could use this stuff for umbrellas too? My major concern is what this new material is broken down into.
- Comment on [deleted] 5 days ago:
These to are grammatically equivalent to the English version though, because we use the “er/et”-ending in the verb instead of the English “is”. Without a subject it would just be “regner/regnet”.
- Comment on Pro-AI Subreddit Bans 'Uptick' of Users Who Suffer from AI Delusions 1 week ago:
And the glory of the interwebz is that those 5000 people are bound to find each other and start a movement around it, where just 25 years ago they would be laughed out of the local pub as a raving idiot…
- Comment on [deleted] 1 week ago:
I’ve used this kind of short-range FM receiver in an older car to get Bluetooth capability. Just set it to some available frequency and save the channel as “AUX” or something, then you can switch from the radio to Bluetooth by just switching to that channel. Works like a charm.
- Comment on I see your bred sheeran, and I raise you with my 1 week ago:
The most purebred of steeds, Mr. Sheeran is.
- Submitted 1 week ago to [deleted] | 7 comments
- Comment on Literally 1 week ago:
“Do you need to” != “Have you”
- Comment on Amazonian tribe that received Starlink satellite internet sues The New York Times, TMZ, and Yahoo for $180M over defamation and more, claiming a viral 2024 NYT story smeared members as porn addicts. 2 weeks ago:
While I’m aware that pretty much everything I do online is tracked, the stuff that’s shoved at me the rare times I open instagram or facebook indicate that they are clueless about how to get me to stick around. They throw a bunch of shit at the wall (mostly soft-porn or comic strips), but never anything that makes me look twice.
- Comment on Amazonian tribe that received Starlink satellite internet sues The New York Times, TMZ, and Yahoo for $180M over defamation and more, claiming a viral 2024 NYT story smeared members as porn addicts. 2 weeks ago:
I pretty much never use instagram, but I follow a shitposting channel there, and every now and then I go into instagram to show someone some old shitpost.
I’ve concluded that the instagram algorithm is frustrated as fuck from not understanding anything about me, because I never click or hover on anything it shoves in my face. However, it’s concluded that I’m a horny dude.
The result is that it floods my feed with a bunch of soft-porn. I have no idea where this all comes from, or who is spending their time uploading a bunch of soft-porn to instagram, but there’s an absolute shitload of it.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 weeks ago:
Exactly! I’m sick of people being labelled as racist because they’ve said some keyword that someone has decided makes them racist, even when their intents and opinions are clearly not racist.
Saying it’s “uncivilised” to publicly beat someone to death because they <insert whatever>, cannot be racist, because you’re not concerned with “race” in any way. Going further and saying that a country that allows such practices is uncivilised is, again, inherently not racist, because the reason for calling them uncivilised has nothing to do with the “race” of the people involved.
- Comment on Grieve with me 2 weeks ago:
I honestly enjoy it when this happens. It’s so satisfying getting to pull obscenely large wads of lint out of the port
- Comment on Github Discussion: Allow us to block Copilot-generated issues (and PRs) from our own repositories #159749 3 weeks ago:
I would absolutely be happy to have a feature where an LLM could read previous issues, the docpage, and the FAQ/wiki, then you could query it regarding your issue to (a) see if it is a legitimate issue, (b) check that the issue you submit contains the info you need, and © help you link in previous issues/PR’s referring to relevant stuff.
Never in hell do I want an LLM to be generating issues by itself.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
Exactly: I have friends that got a drivers license in th US, and the education/test is honestly a joke compared to what they require here, and it clearly shows in the number of driving-related deaths.
- Comment on Grok’s “white genocide” obsession came from “unauthorized” prompt edit, xAI says 3 weeks ago:
I would say that the “bad part of town” usually has overlap with the poorer part of town, regardless of what skin colour people have there. Of course, especially in the US, there’s significant overlap between economic status and skin colour. I just hate how the typical American view on “race” is projected onto other countries.
Americans typically have this hang-up on “race” that you really don’t find anywhere else. A lot of places you have talk about “ethnicity” or similar, but the American fascination with categorising people by their skin colour and then using that to make generalisations is pretty unique.
- Comment on Love this 3 weeks ago:
Drinking age is 18 in most of the world (with 16 also applying some places). Additionally, my impression is that it’s not as big a deal for 16-17 year olds to get ahold of alcohol in other places.
Where I’m from, the drinking age is 17, but it’s not uncommon or a big deal for people to get some beer or drinks for their 17th birthday party.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
You might want to check the details here: I know that in some European countries, you’ll have trouble renting a car at all with an American license unless you pass a driving test in a European country first to get certified. In fact, in several countries I don’t think an American license is valid at all until you pass a test. It’s probably worth checking out the details for Romania.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
For that exact reason some countries (my country included) don’t accept an American license unless you do a test here first.
Though IIRC, that applies for both manuals and automatics, because American drivers education isn’t really trusted here.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
I just want to underscore the crucial part of the monarch being apolitical. I believe the only Norwegian citizens that cannot vote are the royal family (whether by tradition or law I’m not sure).
I think it definitely has an effect of bringing cohesion and stability to a country that you have a formal head of state, or a “personification” of the nation, that is not tied to any political party. One thing is I foreign diplomacy, another thing is in bringing the country together during a crisis. In the latter case, the monarch is a figurehead that everyone can gather around, regardless of political affiliation.
- Comment on Klarna Hiring Back Human Help After Going All-In on AI 3 weeks ago:
With all the AI rollout in customer support, I’ve essentially built up a habit of almost immediately trying to get in touch with a human if the bot doesn’t give me what I’m looking for right away. My experience is that in most cases, the bot will try to walk me in circles, recommending that I try stuff I’ve already tried (that’s why I’m contacting support). In all those cases, the bot isn’t saving the company any time, it’s just wasting my time and making me irritated.
In some cases it does save them support capacity, if only because I eventually give up on getting any support and just quit the service.
- Comment on doctors 4 weeks ago:
When you look at how strongly obesity correlates with everything from back- and knee pains to weakened immune response to sleep issues and cardiovascular disease…
When a severely obese person has any of the above, it’s reasonable, scientifically backed diagnosis/prescription to say “these issues will probably go away by themselves if you lose weight”. This is about treating the cause and not the symptoms: When severely obese people are heavily over-represented among those with a certain disease or problem, you can try treating the symptoms, but should expect that they return rather quickly.
Of course, there are cases where the issues come from something else, but no matter who goes to the doctor with health issues, their first response will be to try to treat the post probable cause.
- Comment on Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College 4 weeks ago:
I definitely have a hangup on students I teach saying something along the lines of “I don’t know how to get started on this, I asked GPT and…”. To be clear: We’re talking about higher-level university courses here, where GPT is, from my experience, unreliable at best and useless or misleading at worst. It makes me want to yell “What do you think?!?” I’ve been teaching at a University for some years, and there’s a huge shift in the past couple years regarding how willing students are to smack their head repeatedly against a problem until they figure it out. It seems like their first instinct when they don’t know something is to ask an LLM, and if that doesn’t work, to give up.
I honestly want shake a physical book at them (and sometimes do), and try to help them understand that actually looking up what they need in a reliable resource is an option. (Note: I’m not in the US, you get second hand course books for like 40 USD here that are absolutely great, to the point that I have a bunch myself that I use to look stuff up in my research).
Of course, the above doesn’t apply to all students, but there’s definitely been a major shift in the past couple years.
- Comment on What is the likelihood I see trump shoot someone on 5th Ave? It's gotta be non 0, right? 1 month ago:
This is actually a good question. For pretty’s much any previous president, the chance that they will be shot heavily outweighs the chance that they will shoot someone while in office. With trump, I think it’s more of an open bet.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
Loudly cheer them on and clap when they finish.
- Comment on Should naming your children stupid names be illegal? 1 month ago:
Who dictates what’s stupid? Where does the sanity end and crazy name start?
Sanity ends when the name has an objectively high likelihood of causing the child harm, or otherwise severely hindering them in life. For example, naming your child “Hitler”, or “<insert slur of choice>” is objectively likely to be harmful to them. Likewise, naming them “Helicopter” or “Rollercoaster” is very likely to set them back in life through childhood bullying.
Who dictates this? In all countries I’m aware of that have laws around this: A government body of some kind.
- Comment on Should naming your children stupid names be illegal? 1 month ago:
Plenty of countries have this. Examples of forbidden names are “Hitler”, “Asshole”, “<Insert demeaning word here>”, and “Quisling” (name of a Nazi collaborator, commonly used as a synonym for “traitor” in daily speech).
The point is that “stupid” is defined as a name that is objectively likely to severely negatively impact the child. It’s not based on “I think X sounds stupid” but on whether “X” carries significant cultural baggage like being the name of a famous Nazi, a slur of some kind, etc.
- Comment on Python Performance: Why 'if not list' is 2x Faster Than Using len() 1 month ago:
The next best time is now
If my Easter break gets boring I might just start cleaning up that Python library… It’s the prime example of something that developed from a POC to a fully functional code base, was left largely unused for about a year, and just the past weeks has suddenly seen a lot of use again. Luckily we’re strict about good docstrings, but type hints would have been nice too.
