Nibodhika

@Nibodhika@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What to selfhost if you have a lot of bandwidth⁩ ⁨⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  What do you mean unused bandwidth? Is that not the normal? Most of the time I’m not using my bandwidth so I guess I have lots of unused bandwidth too.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How to I prove to someone that the U.S. moon landing wasn't staged?⁩ ⁨⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  a) Explain why the US hasn’t gone back in so long,

  Why would they? Nothing of value came from any of those missions and the risk is enormous.

  and why with modern technology it seems so difficult? (especially given that NASA has been experiencing numerous delays in the Artemis missions, that certainly hasn’t given them a good impression…)

  Because transistors are a lot more sensitive to EM than valves. Our current technology miniaturized lots of things, but that also means that a single piece of conductive material (like moon dust) or a single electron (from an em pulse) in the wrong place can wreak havok to it. Old computers required lots more electrons and space for their actual function so they were a lot more resistent to random variations. And we can’t make old computers anymore because we don’t have the factories for them, and you’re not going to create an entire factory just to produce a couple pieces for one mission, so they have to focus on isolating and making things more resistent.

  b) How do you verify moon rocks without having actually been on the moon? How did scientists figure out what a moon rock looks like?

  The moon is constantly being bombarded by unfiltered radiation because of its lack of atmosphere. This makes it so they’re composed of minerals that rarely occur on earth (they usually bind with oxygen or nitrogen in the atmosphere), have different isotopes (because of the radiation) and are much older (because no interference from tectonic movement/rain/wind/etc)

  c) Why aren’t the old Apollo designs being reused for a moon landing? (by either the Americans or the Chinese)

  Because they can’t for the same reason the US can’t, they don’t work with modern electronics, and no one can produce old electronics.

  They say that there isn’t strong evidence either side (but believes that it is false, saying that “we will see” once someone else lands on the moon)

  There is very strong evidence, your friend can corroborate for himself by spending a few thousand dollars (or he can understand that if anyone wanted to they could). First you need to buy a very powerful laser, then a very sensitive sensor, you hook them so they very close together and fire at the moon, you will never get a reading back, because the moon surface is a difuse reflector with a rough surface the light will scatter and go everywhere. However, when the astronauts went to the moon they left retroreflectors in specific locations, so if you pointed at one of those you would get the signal back approximately 2.5 second later.

  And what other points can I bring up to definitively say, yes, the moon landing wasn’t faked?

  I guess it’s easier to ask them “what evidence would convince you” because the answer will be none, of there was any evidence that would convince them they would have been convinced already.

  Another thing, they also can’t believe that astronauts could bring and ride the little moon buggies. I am also partially interested in how that was achieved to be honest!

  Not sure what’s there to not understand about this, so I’ll just say same way cars get to a dealership and you ride them afterwards.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A sneaky demonstration of the dangers of curl bash⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  But what is a trusted provider? How can you trust it? How sure are you that you’re not being MitM? Have you fully manually verified that there’s no funky flags in curl like -k, that the url is using SSL, that it’s a correct url and not pointing at something malicious, etc, etc, etc. There are a lot of manual steps you must verify using this approach, whereas using a package manager all of them get checked automatically, plus some extra checks like hundreds of people validating the content is secure.

  To do apt get from an unknown repo, you first need to convince the person to execute root commands they don’t understand on their machine to add that unknown repo, if you can convice someone to run an unsafe command with root credentials then the machine is already compromised.

  I get your point, random internet scripts are dangerous but random internet packages can also dangerous. But that’s a false equivalence because there are lots of safeguards to the packages in the usual way people install them, but less than 0 safeguards to the curl|bash. In a similar manner, if this was a post talking about the dangers of fireworks and how you can blow yourself up using them your answer is “but someone can plant a bomb in the mall I go to, or steal the codes for a nuclear missile and blow me up anyways”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A sneaky demonstration of the dangers of curl bash⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  But those are two very different things, I can very easily give you a one liner using curl|bash that will compromise your system, to get the same level of compromise through a proper authenticated channel such as apt/pacman/etc you would need to compromise either their private keys and attack before they notice and change them or stick malicious code in an official package, either of those is orders of magnitude more difficult than writing a simple bash script.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A sneaky demonstration of the dangers of curl bash⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  You didn’t knew that the tool to handle URLs written in C (very creatively named C-Url) was handling URLs? It’s also written in C if you didn’t knew.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is #FFFFFF white, but mixing red green and blue paint is black?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  One curious thing if you understand this is to think on purple. Purple is blue+red, but like you pointed out 2 colors should give you the average wavelength, which in the case of blue+,red should be green. So why the hell do we see purple as something different? Well, that’s because humans have 3 sensors for colors, roughly corresponding to Red, Green and Blue, triggering both Blue and Red without triggering green at the same time gets interpreted differently than green, even though it shouldn’t. Which means that purple is not a color, but rather a mind trick your brain plays on you.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are some out-of-the-box ideas you've heard of?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Sort of, you can install it as a PWA and it is local first.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are some out-of-the-box ideas you've heard of?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  What’s wrong with silverbullet.md ?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘This shouldn’t be normal’: developers speak out about bigotry on Steam, the world’s biggest PC gaming storefront⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That review is no longer there, probably someone reported it. I think lots of these suffer from bystander effect, where people see it get indignant about being there but don’t report them, so they stay there.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mattermost is no longer Open-Source⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Sure, but which OSD criteria is being broken here?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mattermost is no longer Open-Source⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Open source and FOSS are two different things though. I think Mattermost is open source, just not FOSS and the licencing they mentioned might be wrong (GPL is invasive so they couldn’t have a closed source part IIRC), but it’s still open source as the code is freely available.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Discord will restrict your account next month unless you scan ID or face⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s overkill, a couple of passes with dd and it’s irrecoverable.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Where do I find cool stickers?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Curious no one mentioned www.stickermule.com/unixstickers which is where I got the stickers for my current laptop.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨💞 FairScan > Syncthing > Paperlees-ngx⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s a very cool idea, seems great for receipts and quick stuff.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam Hardware: Launch timing and other FAQs - Steam News⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If only they explained why I’m the article snippet posted…

  I guess If I were an article snippet I would also like an explanation

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Meta progression in roguelites was fun for a while, but it's starting to feel unrewarding⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  While I understand what you’re talking about, I would argue it’s bad metaprogression that you dislike. I liked Rogue Legacy when I first played, but didn’t enjoy the second one even though it’s essentially the same. Let me give you an example of good metaprogression: Dead Cells.

  There’s the metaprogression that allows you access to new areas and new mechanics, but that’s fairly quick compared to the length of the rest of the progression, and I would argue it’s not the sort of thing you’re complaining about.

  What could be similar is the way you unlock equipment, although you don’t become stronger with each run, you unlock more weapons. This gives you variety, but the vast majority of the progression happens in your head. If you have enough hours in Dead Cells and think the metaprogression is what made you so good at the game that you couldn’t finish one level when you started and now you play for hours, do me a favor and start a new save. After being on the second cell I bought the game for a different platform, on my first run I got to the first cell.

  Which brings me to the second metaprogression in the game, cells. They make the game harder, not easier, and it’s the way to progress, you have to purposefully make the game harder to progress. IMO this is how metaprogression is supposed to be done, you need to be better, and when you think you’re good enough to beat the game it lets you know “you’ve only just started”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If you had native-level fluency in a language, and don't talk in that language for a while, can you develop an accent later-on when trying to talk in that language again?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes, I speak 3 languages fluently and have accents in all of them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is the definitive way to play certain games?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Also with a rumble enabled controller, but you need to wipe your memory of that feature so the magic becomes real.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is Valve being sued for almost $900 million, but Epic Games wasn't sued when they bought Rocket League and Fall Guys to remove them from steam?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Sure, but that’s more about Valve not pursuing violations than anything else (in other comment I also mentioned how they turn a blind eye to Humble Bundle as well). But legally they could go after silent hill f and demand it be sold for a similar value to $31.49 since some time has passed and stem users have not been offered a comparable offer. I think what’s in the clause they make people sign is more important than whether they enforce it or not, because if it was about price parity with other stores then it would be abusive (even if they didn’t enforced it always), but if it is about selling something they provide then it’s not abusive even if they do enforced it always.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is Valve being sued for almost $900 million, but Epic Games wasn't sued when they bought Rocket League and Fall Guys to remove them from steam?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s not true, it only applies if you’re selling a steam key. Devs are free to set the price on any platform they want, want proof? Check out the currently free game on epic which has never been free on Steam.

  Steam provides developers with infinite steam keys that they can sell outside of steam for 100% profit, however those keys cannot be sold at a lesser price than what it’s sold on steam. Which honestly sounds like common sense.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is Valve being sued for almost $900 million, but Epic Games wasn't sued when they bought Rocket League and Fall Guys to remove them from steam?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  How does it do that?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam Owner Valve Faces $900 Million Lawsuit Over PC Monopoly Claims, Following UK Tribunal Ruling - IGN⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  What?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam Owner Valve Faces $900 Million Lawsuit Over PC Monopoly Claims, Following UK Tribunal Ruling - IGN⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Except that’s not what their terms say. Their terms prohibit you from selling a steam key cheaper than on Steam, they don’t regulate your game price on a different store if you’re not offering a steam key together.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do you need a launcher? (asking older gamers actually)⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  All of my systems are Linux, launching Windows games on Linux is not trivial, Steam takes away almost all of that complication. It also provides an excellent ten foot interface for me to use on my TV and buy/install/launch games from my couch without any hassle. Speaking of controller usage, Steam provides excellent support to remap controllers even if a game doesn’t support it, and provide amazing features at that (for example multiple layers, gyroscopic mouse)

  Games getting updated automatically is a great feature, I still remember having to download patches and applying them one by one after a fresh install. Similarly Steam also provides a workshop that allows you to install mods and keep them synced across different systems automatically.

  Finally, the convenience of cloud saves for someone with multiple systems or who uninstalls a game and reinstalls it later is not easy to achieve without a launcher (I still have a saves folder backed up somewhere from before).

  Besides all of that Achievement and other social features are important for some people. And for some games being able to easily play online with friends is amazing (if you’re not old enough to know what GameSpy is you don’t know what it was back then), although I don’t play too many online games so this one is not that important for me, but when I need that feature it is very handy.

  In short there are many reasons, but if you’re playing old single-player games with mouse+keyboard on only one windows PC, then none of my reasons apply to you. Still I would argue that buying games on steam is easier than pirating them, so there’s the convenience factor still (e.g. at a friend’s house and they mention a game, open my phone, and in 5 min with a very intuitive flow I have the game downloading on my home PC so when I come back it’s ready to play).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What would happen if a person proved in a lab they're gaining weight while in a verified calorie deficit?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Same thing that would happen if someone proved in a lab they’re filling a cup while removing more water than what they’re putting in. I.e. it won’t happen.

  In reality the body is a lot more complex than a cup of water, and it’s possible you gain weight on calories deficit by accumulating water or feces. But you WILL be losing fat and/or muscle, otherwise we will use you as an infinite source of energy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do babies learn languages at different rates depending on how hard the language is?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes, I agree, learning to write English is harder than to write Spanish, in fact Spanish has the most phonetic writing of all the languages I know. But your question was about babies learning, which is solely spoken language, you only learn writing after you’re already a fluent speaker.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do babies learn languages at different rates depending on how hard the language is?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes, that’s the same with most languages. My point is that being proficient in several languages I find English text a lot more repetitive, whereas Spanish text has multiple turns of phrases used to avoid repetition, which also makes it a lot harder to learn (although I don’t think we expect kids to know many synonyms for stuff, and children books tend to stick to simpler construction of phrases).

  The things I’ve seen people point to English to claim it’s hard are not really needed to be fluent in speaking the language (which is what kids do).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do babies learn languages at different rates depending on how hard the language is?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes, we don’t know the rules to conjugations, we just know them. But you know what’s faster than that? Not having that to begin with.

  In Spanish we also have lots of words that sound the same but mean different things, for example Punto means dot, point, spot, stitch, stop (in the meantime of bus stop). Plus, I would argue that’s not a problem when you’re learning the language, in fact the opposite is true, having many words to mean the same thing makes it hard to learn since the same thing can be said in a multitude of ways, and it might be because English is not my first language, but I find Spanish to have lots more synonyms or entirety different ways of saying the same thing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do babies learn languages at different rates depending on how hard the language is?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Since the main question here has already been answered by the Danish/Norwegian post, I would like to address something different. My native language is Spanish, and I completely disagree with you.

  English is a lot easier to learn to speak than Spanish. Spanish has everything English has, plus:

  • Conjugations (corro, corres, corre, corremos, corréis, corren, corrés, corría, corrías, corríamos, corríais, corrían, corrí, corriste, corrió, corrimos, etc, etc, etc vs run, runs, ran, running)
  • Gendered words (La Tienda, Las Tiendas, El Pape, Los Papeles l vs The shop, The shops, The Paper, The Papers)
  • Purposefully misgendered words in certain contexts (i.e. Feminine words that use the masculine article in some occasions: El alarma, Los alarmas)
  • Particles that change because of sound (Ostras o mejillones/mejillones u ostras : oysters or / mussels/mussels or ousters; insectos y arañas/arañas e insectos : insects and spiders/spiders and insects)
  • Extra sounds (hard R as in “Raton”)
  • Temporary being verb (Ella es rubia/ella está rubia VS she is blonde/she is currently blonde)

  The complications in English are later, after you know how to speak and have to learn how to write it, but we’re talking babies learning here. Spanish writing is much easier than English because it’s very phonetic, but just the conjugations are enough to drive English speakers insane trying to learn them because in English you use constructions to achieve the same effect, e.g. I run: yo corro; I ran: yo corrí; I would run: yo correría; I will run: yo correré; I used to run: yo corría; so that I would run; para que yo corra; so that I could run: para que yo corriera; run!: corre!; don’t run!: no corras!. Different verbs would use the same construction in English but may be different sounds for different verbs in Spanish: e.g. I ran, I walked, I had vs Yo corrí, yo caminé yo tuve (and yes, I get that using run is a bad example here since it’s irregular, but it’s only one of a handful, whereas Spanish has different conjugations for different verbs plus some irregular ones)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Does anyone else feel like "analog" stuff is more "tangible"?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  There are several ways to counter that sort of thing, but let’s start from the beginning. LLMs (what people call AI) is VERY computational heavy, you need a powerful GPU to run a model locally, and it occupies lots of power and memory. The idea that we’re even remotely close to something like that being embed into hardware without people realizing it is just absurd.

  But let’s imagine someone is able to make it, and magically prevents hackers from breaking it and using it as extra free power. This will have to live in the CPU as anywhere else wouldn’t have authority to “delete files”, and even the CPU would have a hard time doing that. Now this LLM needs to distinguish stuff I’m writing with stuff I’m reading, otherwise it would also delete files when someone is observing me. It also needs to reply in sub millisecond otherwise the computer will lag absurdly. It also can’t update it’s local model because it doesn’t have network access, so just use tokens it hasn’t heard of.

  In short if someone managed to add a piece of hardware capable of doing that it would have to be significantly more powerful than the piece of hardware it’s embed in, and it would only work until someone breaks it and gives everyone a free hardware upgrade.

  You can relax, nothing like that is even remotely close of being theoretically possible.

  That being said, Windows doing this or similar is a possibility, your best bet is to use an open source system.