madsen

@madsen@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam does the opposite of forcing Arbitration on its users⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I have no idea how accurate this info on FindLaw.com is, but according to it, you don’t need a lawyer in small claims court (in the US). And according to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_claims_court there are many other countries with similar small claim courts: “Australia, Brazil, Canada, England and Wales, Hong Kong, Ireland, Israel, Greece, New Zealand, Philippines, Scotland, Singapore, South Africa, Nigeria and the United States”. I know the list of countries is not even close to covering a large amount of Steam users, but I suspect that us Europeans are covered in other ways, so there’s that.

  The Wikipedia page also mentions the lawyer thing, by the way:

  A usual guiding principle in these courts is that individuals ought to be able to conduct their own cases and represent themselves without a lawyer. Rules are relaxed but still apply to some degree. In some jurisdictions, corporations must still be represented by a lawyer in small-claims court.

  And I don’t think you need to sue Valve in the US. I think they’re required to have legal representation in the countries in which they operate, which should enable you to sue them “locally” in many cases. Again, not an expert, so I’m making quite a few assumptions here.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam does the opposite of forcing Arbitration on its users⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, you’re right. Sorry. I’ve edited my comment to reflect that. I didn’t read OP’s image but rather the news post by Valve on Steam, but missed the part that said: “the updated SSA now provides that any disputes are to go forward in court instead of arbitration”.

  it’s certainly not GOOD for Steam users to not be able to complain without lawyering up.

  But doesn’t the change open up for litigation in small claims court? (Again, I’m in no way knowledgeable in US law, so I’m just asking.)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam does the opposite of forcing Arbitration on its users⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  If, for example, I want to return a game in accordance with the rules and they won’t let me, I’m not gonna lawyer up and sue them from the other side of the Atlantic.

  While supposedly being a lot cheaper than litigation, arbitration isn’t free either. Besides, arbitration makes it near-impossible to appeal a decision, and the outcome won’t set binding legal precedent. Furthermore, arbitration often comes with a class action waiver. Valve also removed that from the SSA.

  I’m far from an expert in law, especially US law, but as I understand it, arbitration is still available (if both parties agree, I assume), it’s just not a requirement anymore. I’m sure they’re making this move because it somehow benefits them, but it still seems to me that consumers are getting more options which is usually a good thing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why are people seemingly against AI chatbots aiding in writing code?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  but chose bash because it made the most sense, that bash is shipped with most linux distros out of the box and one does not have to install another interpreter/compiler for another language.

  Last time I checked (because I was writing Bash scripts based on the same assumption), Python was actually present on more Linux systems out of the box than Bash.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Elasticsearch is open source, again⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Enterprise licensing for self-hosted setups is priced per chunk of 64 GB of RAM in your cluster. I.e. if you run Elastic on 2 machines of 32 GB RAM each, you pay for 1 node. It sounds like there may have been some poor communication going on, because they definitely don’t base the pricing for self-hosted setups on the number of employees or anything like that.

  They’re also not super uptight about you going over the licensing limit for a while. We’ve been running a couple of licenses short since we scaled our cluster up a while back. Our account manager knows and doesn’t care.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨An Algorithm Told Police She Was Safe. Then Her Husband Killed Her.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Odd. I replied to this comment, but now my reply is gone. Gonna try again and type up as much as I can remember.

  Regardless, an algorithm expecting binary answers will obviously not take para- and extralinguistic cues into account. That extra 50 ms hesitation, the downwards glance and the voice cracking when answering “no” to “has he ever tried to strangle you before?” has a reasonable chance to get picked up by a human, but when reducing it to something that the algorithm can handle, it’s just a simple “no”. Humans are really good at picking up on such cues, even if they aren’t consciously aware that they’re doing it, but if said humans are preoccupied with staring into a computer screen in order to input the answers to the questionnaire, then there’s a much higher chance that they’ll miss them too. I honestly only see negatives here.

  It’s helpful to have an algorithm that makes you ask the right questions […]

  Arguably a piece of paper could solve that problem.

  Seriously. 55 victims out of the 98 homicide cases sampled were deemed at negligible or low risk. If a non-algorithm-assisted department presented those numbered I’d expect them to be looking for new jobs real fast.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨An Algorithm Told Police She Was Safe. Then Her Husband Killed Her.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Your point is valid regardless but the article mentions nothing about AI. (“Algorithm” doesn’t mean “AI”.)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨An Algorithm Told Police She Was Safe. Then Her Husband Killed Her.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  so it’s probably just some points assigned for the answers and maybe some simple arithmetic.
  

  Why yes, that’s all that machine learning is, a bunch of statistics :)

  I know, but that’s not what I meant. I mean literally something as simple and mundane as assigning points per answer and evaluating the final score:

  // Pseudo code
  risk = 0
  if (Q1 == true) {
      risk += 20
  }
  if (Q2 == true) {
      risk += 10
  }
  // etc...
  // Maybe throw in a bit of
  if (Q28 == true) {
      if (Q22 == true and Q23 == true) {
          risk *= 1.5
      } else {
          risk += 10
      }
  }
  
  // And finally, evaluate the risk:
  if (risk < 10) {
      return "negligible"
  } else if (risk >= 10 and risk < 40) {
      return "low risk"
  }
  // etc... You get the picture.
  

  And yes, I know I can just write if (Q1) {, but I wanted to make it a bit more accessible for non-programmers.

  The article gives absolutely no reason for us to assume it’s anything more than that, and I apparently missed the part of the article that mentioned that the system had been in use since 2007. I know we had machine learning too back then, but looking at the project description here: eucpn.org/sites/…/Buena practica VIOGEN_0.pdf it looks more like they looked at a bunch of cases (2159) and came up with the 35 questions and a scoring system not unlike what I just described above.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨An Algorithm Told Police She Was Safe. Then Her Husband Killed Her.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The crucial point is: 8% of the decisions turn out to be wrong or misjudged.

  The article says:

  Yet roughly 8 percent of women who the algorithm found to be at negligible risk and 14 percent at low risk have reported being harmed again, according to Spain’s Interior Ministry, which oversees the system.

  Granted, neither “negligible” or “low risk” means “no risk”, but I think 8% and 14% are far too high numbers for those categories.

  Furthermore, there’s this crucial bit:

  At least 247 women have also been killed by their current or former partner since 2007 after being assessed by VioGén, according to government figures. While that is a tiny fraction of gender violence cases, it points to the algorithm’s flaws. The New York Times found that in a judicial review of 98 of those homicides, 55 of the slain women were scored by VioGén as negligible or low risk for repeat abuse.

  So in the 98 murders they reviewed, the algorithm put more than 50% of them at negligible or low risk for repeat abuse. That’s a fucking coin flip!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨An Algorithm Told Police She Was Safe. Then Her Husband Killed Her.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t think there’s any AI involved. The article mentions nothing of the sort, it’s at least 8 years old (according to the article) and the input is 35 yes/no questions, so it’s probably just some points assigned for the answers and maybe some simple arithmetic.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨An Algorithm Told Police She Was Safe. Then Her Husband Killed Her.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The article mentions that one woman (Stefany González Escarraman) went for a restraining order the day after the system deemed her at “low risk” and the judge denied it referring to the VioGen score.

  One was Stefany González Escarraman, a 26-year-old living near Seville. In 2016, she went to the police after her husband punched her in the face and choked her. He threw objects at her, including a kitchen ladle that hit their 3-year-old child. After police interviewed Ms. Escarraman for about five hours, VioGén determined she had a negligible risk of being abused again.

  The next day, Ms. Escarraman, who had a swollen black eye, went to court for a restraining order against her husband. Judges can serve as a check on the VioGén system, with the ability to intervene in cases and provide protective measures. In Ms. Escarraman’s case, the judge denied a restraining order, citing VioGén’s risk score and her husband’s lack of criminal history.

  About a month later, Ms. Escarraman was stabbed by her husband multiple times in the heart in front of their children.

  It also says:

  Spanish police are trained to overrule VioGén’s recommendations depending on the evidence, but accept the risk scores about 95 percent of the time, officials said. Judges can also use the results when considering requests for restraining orders and other protective measures.

  You could argue that the problem isn’t so much the algorithm itself as it is the level of reliance upon it. The algorithm isn’t unproblematic though. The fact that it just spits out a simple score: “negligible”, “low”, “medium”, “high”, “extreme” is, IMO, an indicator that someone’s trying to conflate far too many factors into a single dimension. I have a really hard time believing that anyone knowledgeable in criminal psychology and/or domestic abuse would agree that 35 yes or no questions would be anywhere near sufficient to evaluate the risk of repeated abuse. (I know nothing about domestic abuse or criminal psychology, so I could be completely wrong.)

  Apart from that, I also find this highly problematic:

  [The] victims interviewed by The Times rarely knew about the role the algorithm played in their cases. The government also has not released comprehensive data about the system’s effectiveness and has refused to make the algorithm available for outside audit.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I Will Fucking Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again — Ludicity⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I read every single word of it, twice, and I was laughing all the way through. I’m sorry you don’t like it, but it seems strange that you immediately assume that I haven’t read it just because I don’t agree with you.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I Will Fucking Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again — Ludicity⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This is such a fun and insightful piece. Unfortunately, the people who really need to read it never will.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hades II Technical Test - Live Gameplay⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Elysium is definitely the slowest, but time saved carries over, so if you’re fast on Tartarus, you’ll have more time in Asphodel, which is relatively short in terms of number of rooms, and subsequently more time in Elysium.

  And as someone else mentioned, it saves time to be aggressive too, so never be idle and try to anticipate where enemies spawn. Enemies without shield (or when the shield is gone) can be stun-locked, so just hammer away at them.

  Maybe I’m forgetting how much time and practice I’ve put into going faster, but if I can do it — everyone can, that’s for certain.

  Drawing inspiration from speedrun builds is great, so maybe check some of those (linked earlier) out. There are builds for different play styles, so I’m sure you’ll find something that works for you. :)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hades II Technical Test - Live Gameplay⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not too good at high-heat runs, but I usually enable Tight Deadline level 1 and 2 first, and Extreme Measures 1 and 2, which is already 6 heat without much of a difference in difficulty. Extreme Measures 3 is a bit wild, IMO, but I guess it’s just a matter of practice, and then that’s 9 heat. Middle Management isn’t too bad either, and that’s 2 extra heat.

  Other than that, I usually go for Malphon (fists/gloves) with Aspect of Demeter and a build with Ares’ Doom effects on attack and cast, Athene’s dash and special, which usually gives me access to their duo boon: Merciful End which triggers the doom effects when I dash into an opponent of use my special. It’s insanely powerful.

  The Hades community on speedrun.com has some good guides and forum posts on builds — and videos of speedruns obviously, there’s a lot to pick up from them as well: www.speedrun.com/hades

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hades II Technical Test - Live Gameplay⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The first game is a masterpiece. I had so much fun discovering all the nooks and crannies of the story. And then doing speed- and challenge-runs afterwards. There’s content and gameplay for years of playing.

  Plus it’s singlehandedly responsible for my kids getting deep into Greek mythology.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bethesda Quietly Removes Denuvo DRM from Ghostwire: Tokyo⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s great. Don’t get why they’re not announcing it, but whatever, I’m glad it’s gone.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Homeowner baffled after washing machine uses 3.6GB of internet data a day⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Couldn’t you just program it to start (and stop) at a given time, or make a note of how long it says on the display that it’ll take?

  It seems (to me) like a very, very minor improvement for a huge cost, namely that your washing machine is on your network and is internet connected.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft's draconian Windows 11 restrictions will send an estimated 240 million PCs to the landfill when Windows 10 hits end of life in 2025⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  What are you missing on Linux?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A New Chapter For Mozilla⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  LibreWolf is a very decent Firefox fork. Open Source is great because bad CEOs can’t really threaten the source code.

  Not saying this one is bad though — I have no idea. The last one was raking in $7 million/year which is less than ideal for an open source project.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Awesome Games Done Quick 2024 has officially begun!⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That opening rum of Tunic was great! It’s such a great game — nice to see it get some more exposure.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Weekly 'What are you playing?' Discussion⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I played Everything today. That was both hilarious and wonderful. Like Proteus and Mountain it’s definitely not a game for everyone, but if some silliness and philosophy doesn’t scare you away, you’re probably going to enjoy it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's up with Epic Games?⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Intro screens and the like can usually be dealt with easily in many games. Look up the game on PCGamingWiki — it’s usually much easier (and less malware prone) than pirating.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What Do You Want To Know About Synthesizers?⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That mess of knobs and buttons has been around since the '50s — longer than the more compact '80s synths: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modular_synthesizer Because of their size they are usually considered studio gear and not stage gear, which may also explain why the more compact synths were more visible earlier, because you rarely got to look into studios then compared to now.

  To answer your question: A synthesizer (when talking about sound) is an instrument that generates sound by creating waveforms and possibly combining them in different ways to achieve different sounds. Typically they come with filters and envelopes, that further affect the resulting sound.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Grand Theft Auto VI Trailer 1⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Sleeping Dogs is probably as close as you’ll get. That’s a great game btw.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Weekly 'What are you playing?' Discussion⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  High On Life. I’m usually not big on FPSs, but the writing is so dumb/hilarious that I’m still having a blast. Also, that dino love story b-movie that’s on the TV in the living room — I gotta check that out IRL.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How to pick a stylus to play a 78-rpm record⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Vinyl has, AFAIK, been gaining a lot in popularity over the last 20 years. The last few years pressing plants have had trouble keeping up with demand — in part due to supply chain issues, but also because everyone and their grandma wants vinyl pressed.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How to block posts about Elon Musk (or other custom string) on computer⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, good points. I did note, though, that it probably wasn’t perfect. I kinda figured it would probably catch other stuff too but I couldn’t think of anything specific at the time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How to block posts about Elon Musk (or other custom string) on computer⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You can use the regex: /\\bx\\b/i

  It’ll catch ‘x’ surrounded by word boundaries (stuff like spaces, dashes/hyphens, commas, etc.) but not ‘x’ with other letters on either side, so it won’t match e.g. “sax” or “boxer”, but it’ll match “x.com” and “Elon’s X” and stuff. It’s probably not perfect though, so use with caution.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I Wanna Maker has released on Steam⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’d argue that it’s for all skill levels — and you can always make your own levels.

  It’s free, so there’s no reason to not give it a go.