kyub

@kyub@discuss.tchncs.de

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨As Microsoft Forces Users to Ditch Windows 10, It Announces That It’s Also Turning Windows 11 into an AI-Controlled Monstrosity⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  In order of priority:

  1. Check for a Linux-compatible alternative
  2. Try installing/running it via Bottles (a veeeery easy to use Wine frontend, hiding lots of wine complexity). Wine allows running most windows programs directly on Linux, with almost zero performance overhead.
  3. Try installing/running it via winboat (basically WSL in reverse - a well-integrated Windows VM or container running on Linux so you can run pesky Windows-only programs with it) (haven’t used it myself yet)
  4. Use a regular full Windows VM on Linux (likely less well integrated and more resource intensive than #3, but maybe even more compatible). Set up a shared folder between host and VM for easy file transfers.
  5. Dual-boot Windows from another disk. Set up a shared folder/partition for file transfers.
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The AI-Powered PDF Marks the End of an Era⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Not sure about the removal thing but first every commercial software is going to get enshittified with forced AI additions that are only semi-useful and introduce lots of errors and tons of privacy issues (on top of already existing privacy issues of course). It will still wow some people who assume intelligence and assume accuracy. As long as it still wows some people, the bubble is still growing. Unfortunately this tech industry has become so similar to the fashion industry, it’s so sad. If you don’t have AI these days you’re SO out of fashion. But what does it get you? Inaccurate / low quality output which a subject matter expert needs to review anyway, so it can’t replace the experts. At best, it speeds up prototyping and gathering examples for those experts. Oh, and in doing all that it accelerates the problem of resource wastefulness and climate disaster. And if the AI isn’t self-hosted and under your own control, then it also massively breaches all of your data protection efforts because employees will use it for probably everything, including sharing all sorts of documents and data with it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If AI takes most of our jobs, money as we know it will be over. What then?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The current tech/IT sector is heavily relying on and riding hype trains. It’s a bit like the fashion industry that way. But this AI hype so far has only been somewhat useful.

  Current general LLMs are decent for prototyping or example output to jump-start you into the general direction of your destination, but their output always needs supervision and most often it needs fixing. If you apply unreliable and constantly changing AI to everything, and completely throw out humans, just because it’s cheaper, then you’ll get vastly inferior results. You probably get faster results, but the results will have tons of errors which introduces tons of extra problems you never had before. I can see AI fully replacing some jobs in some specific areas where errors don’t matter much. But that’s about it. For all other jobs or purposes, AI will be an extra tool, nothing more, nothing less.

  AI has its uses within specific domains, when trained only on domain-specific and fact-based data. You know, things like AlphaZero or AlphaGo. Or AIs revealing new methods not known before to reach the same goal. But these general AIs like ChatGPT which are trained on basically the whole web with all the crap in it… it’s never going to be truly great. And it’s also becoming worse over time, i.e. not improving much at all, because the web will be even fuller with AI-generated crap in the future. So the AIs slurp up all that crap too. The training data gets muddier over time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A lengthy discussion was had⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Two words which every internet-using person should know about because they tend to be forgotten: proportionality and sophistication.

  Just because there is some element of crime within a specific group within a society, doesn’t mean that the solution is to completely exterminate the whole society.

  This is what the word “extremism” means - if you’re an extremist you find extreme measures at least OK because you’ve stopped differentiating and thinking about proportions. And when doing extreme measures to a specific group of people (usually a minority group, or even a whole weaker country), then you’re right-wing extremist.

  You wouldn’t want those things to be done to yourself when you’re part of a subgroup that’s under attack. You wouldn’t want to be a victim of extreme measures. That’s one reason why these extreme measures shouldn’t exist in the first place.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s just a tendency, not a hard rule.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  German here. These are some cultural and day-to-day differences compared to the US:

  • Sundays are officially a day of rest and so most shops and businesses are closed that day, with several exceptions like high priority stuff, restaurants, tourism/event-related stuff and so on. But you can’t go to a regular supermarket or expect a package delivery on a Sunday. Although some sundays are also different, it’s like an “event” where regular shops open sometimes. But that’s rare.
  • Cash is still very widely used (and you also should generally use it even if it’s less convenient because it’s probably the most privacy-preserving payment option), but other payment options are also available almost everywhere
  • There are tiny fees of around 1 € you probably need to pay when e.g. going to a public toilet or using a shopping cart. You also need to pay extra for bags, or bring your own.
  • Tip culture is very different, Germans usually pay very small tips compared to the US and no one expects you to, but in restaurants it’s common to tip something like 2 € for a bill of 25 € for example. Or you simply round up the number to avoid the hassle of small coins.
  • Prices always include taxes already
  • Water isn’t free and usually you can’t order tap water, although tap water is drinkable generally
  • You can drink alcohol with fully visible labels/bottles in public
  • For bottles and cans, there’s a “Pfand” which is like an extra deposit. So a bottle of water usually costs slightly more, but when it’s empty you can return it to get the extra deposit value back. It’s to encourage recycling.
  • Germans are more reserved in public and might do less small talk, and are usually more direct, but that doesn’t mean they’re unfriendly. This also applies to customer service! Personally I like this more than obviously fake and exaggerated politeness.
  • You should be more quiet in or near residential areas between like 10pm and 7am
  • Punctuality is highly valued, this is actually not exaggerated or a myth. Public transport might not wait for you if you’re 1-2min late. People will assume that something’s wrong when you’re a couple of minutes late to an appointment.
  • Highways have no speed limits in parts but you still probably shouldn’t drive much faster than 130 km/h. Pass other cars only on the left lanes, never on the right lanes. Also don’t drive on bike lanes.
  • Basically all streets or public spaces are safe to walk around. Also children don’t need supervision.
  • Most Germans have very good English skills, except maybe very old generations
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why Are Silicon Valley’s Utopians Are Prepping for Collapse?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Collapse will definitely come. Our way of living on this planet is not sustainable, especially now where everyone who would have the power/influence to change things does literally and openly the opposite (e.g. USA turning their back on climate friendly research/technologies for example). So I think it’s kind of over, I’m kind of an optimist but time is simply running out, we had the Paris agreement and all that jazz like 10 years ago and almost nothing really changed (the only time something changed for the positive was during Covic pandemic but that was involuntarily!), in fact it’s now probably worse than it was back then, so it’s kind of over. Sure you can and should individually continue fighting for it because every small improvement will at least delay the collapse a bit which is useful, but I’m not going to naively believe that we will be able to counteract this anymore. It’s too little, too late. And that’s not even taking into account the possibility of a WW3. And rich/powerful people probably know this as well that the geological and political situations become increasingly unstable which is why they are building luxury bunkers. I would build one too, if I had the spare change.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨One Angry Man⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  1 (2012)

  How to Wagon your Dragon

  Soldier (Platoon)

  Something quiet on the Western Contested Spot

  Raindrop Man

  Shaun of One Body

  E.T. - The Default Terrestrial

  Star War: Appearance of a Jed

  Indiana Jones or the Only Crusader

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨One Angry Man⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  One ring to rule one person.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨One Angry Man⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  1 Ronin Plan 1 From Outer Space Buena Vista Solitary Spot Clover One-dimensional Point 1: One-dimensional Point District 1 Eye Narrowly Shut Edward Scissorhand Gremlin 1: The New Item The Langolier The One Grassleaf Mower Man The Ending Chapter Monty Python Or The Holy Grail Planet of one ape Policeman Student A Tale of One Sole Sister South Park: Small, Short & Cut Joined Limbguard

  Tap for spoiler

  47 Ronin Plan 9/From Outer Space Buena Vista Social Club Cloverfield Cube 2: Hypercube District 9 Eyes Wide Shut Edward Scissorhands Gremlins 2: The New Batch The Langoliers The Lawnmower Man The Neverending Story Monty Python And The Holy Grail Planet of the Apes Police Academy A Tale of Two Sisters South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut Split Bodyguard

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft suddenly bans LibreOffice developer's email account, blocks appeal⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  By the way, ignoring as much of this big tech corpo crap as you can also makes you live an easier life.

  Whenever I see a story of “some guy who relies on <big tech account> working loses access to it and suddenly can’t do anything anymore” I think “this can never happen to me”. Which means there’s a whole category of problems you’re suddenly never going to see. It also means you’re less naive. So just don’t vendor-lock yourself in. Don’t put a log-in for an account which you don’t control in front of everything you need to do. Simple as that.

  On top of that, you’ll also leak less private data about yourself and probably others as well. So you even make yourself less of a target when it comes to data protection laws or something. I know, these get routinely ignored. I’m just saying, if you don’t even use the problematic stuff (or almost never), you’ll also have potentially less legal troubles at hand. And you never know, legel troubles might not appear for a while but they could lurk far in the future. For examples, many Nazis got into legal trouble for their participation in Nazi Germany, even decades later.

  I know, the guy from the story probably only needed that account to ensure he can compare some stuff with how MS Office is behaving compared to LibreOffice, or things like that. So it’s probably not a big deal. But generally speaking, you really shouldn’t vendor-lock yourself in.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Saw this on r*ddit, had to share with my people⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The “Borat” actor (forgot the name)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨RPGs that are optionally pacifist?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s not so bad. The good news is that the game gets easier the farther you go. The endgame is the easiest part. The bad news is that you still need to know about a lot of the enemies, items and potential situations that can occur and how to handle them. The most important thing is to gather what’s commonly called an Ascension Kit, which is an approximate list of items you pretty much should have in order to win the game because then you can deal with literally every enemy and situation (unless you make a stupid mistake). So you need to know what those items are, how to get them, how to identify them in the game and not waste them, and things like that. You can get somewhat far just through sheer luck but you’ll never make it through if you play blindly (don’t read any tips or spoilers) or just rely on luck.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨RPGs that are optionally pacifist?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  In Nethack, you can fully play as a Pacifist, although it’s VERY hard and the game is already hard to get into to begin with. In that case, you are only allowed to indirectly kill enemies by having your pet(s) kill them or by using spells which make enemies attack themselves. Or simply by avoiding enemies completely. Playing as a healer or wizard is the easiest option, but still very hard. The game rewards this and other conducts (= supported “challenges”) by mentioning it in the very end after you’ve ascended.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The 5090 might most of the time draw like 350W but like many top-end cards (also from AMD) power draw can spike really high and can reach double that even for very short moments. So you need a beefy power supply regardless. For a 5090 in combination with a top-end 16 core CPU I wouldn’t recommend anything under 1200W (so you still have some wiggle room. Power supplies are also at most efficient when they’re not at ~95-99% capacity but at ~80%).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨US condemns French inquiry into Elon Musk's social media platform X/Twitter.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Translation help from Fascist English to US English:

  • “activist” = a non-politician whose free speech we don’t like
  • "allow all voices to be heard" / “free speech” = extremist/unconstitutional/propaganda speech which serves the interests of the current fascist regime must be allowed, while every other speech will be labelled as being activist/communist/un-American/…
  • “defend […] all Americans” = at least the part of Americans which we tolerate or haven’t jailed yet (subject to change)
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Some potential optimization opportunities:

  • Memory doesn’t need to have RGB lighting (unless you want it for the optics), you can get the exact same thing without RGB for a little bit cheaper. IIRC, the non-RGB model is called “Flare X” or similar, “Trident” is the RGB one. Also, CL32 seems slightly slow… not up to date on this but you can probably get CL30 or CL28 for even more performance. 6400MHz seems OK, there are faster ones but there’s also a trade-off to be made between stability and performance so I think 6400MHz is fine. It’s important to ensure good compatibility with your mainboard. Also, 64 GB is still oversized for just a gaming rig. For pure gaming, you get basically no extra value with 64GB compared to 32GB. You only might need more than 32 GB for workstation-like use cases (video editing for example) and/or when you use VMs in parallel. Unused RAM provides no value and no additional perfomance.

  • A CPU with 16 cores could be slightly oversized for a pure gaming use-case as well, in most games you won’t notice a difference compared to the 12- or even 8-core variant instead. Again, higher core count is primarily useful for workstation-like use cases or VMs. Sometimes, the 12core can even be faster for games if it has slightly higher clock speeds for example. You should look at some benchmarks to see whether the 16core provides any benefit for gaming.

  • Mainboard: the MSI Godlike is extremely pricey and there’s very questionable, maybe zero additional value compared to a moderately priced one. The most important specs are probably the same anyway. You should take a look at a cheaper option here, unless you don’t mind throwing out money.

  • Monitor: If the player isn’t playing any fast-paced e-sports titles I think 240MHz refresh rate is overkill, but YMMV.

  • SSDs: not sure if PCIe 5 is worth the extra cash, could also go with PCIe 4 still, they’re slightly slower but it’s almost not noticeable and for gaming only affects loading times anyway (slightly!), it doesn’t affect your performance in actual gameplay. Not sure if WD is a good NVMe SSD brand actually. Consider Samsung or SK Hynix maybe.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Two major AI coding tools wiped out user data after making cascading mistakes⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  AI has some use but it always needs human oversight and the final decision must also be made by a human professional. If you use AI to speed up tasks and you know whether the output of the AI is valid or not, and you have the final decision, then you can safely use it. But if you let AI decide on and execute important tasks basically autonomously, then you have a recipe for disaster. Fully autonomous and mistake-free AI is a naive pipe dream which I don’t see on the horizon at all.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Women are anonymously spilling tea about men in their cities on viral app⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Generally yes but it’s not nearly always so clear cut that one is 100% the offender and the other one 0%. Which is why attention to details, context, sophistication, listening to both sides before coming to a conclusion, etc. Is so important. But guess what kind of things get lost when taking part in such a one-sided blame game on the semi-anonymous internet.

  Apps like this but also social media more generally allow for one-sided public naming and shaming of Individuals who probably don’t even know about it. It’s problematic because it can be deeply unfair.

  I get that there is also value in women protecting themselves against predators but more than likely most content within the app/service is probably one-sided public blaming and gossiping.

  And as we all know from right-wing propaganda, being the first to make a bold claim public and generate headlines with it is very powerful and spreads the message far and wide, whether true or false, and many will just believe it’s true without further investigation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Xonotic Vanilla Duel Cup | #xonotic.pickup Cups | MxCrab⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  As an ancient Quake 3 player, it makes me happy to see that Xonotic seems like a really great and even open source adaption of this type of fast-paced arena shooter game. Looks much better than I would have expected. Also, at least Kyle and Spike seemed really high skilled (at least as far as I can guess based on zero game knowledge), comparable to the best Q3/QL/QC players I’ve seen. Didn’t watch everything though, just skimmed through it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Native Arch Linux Games - Share Your Favorites⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Free: Battle for Wesnoth is really great, I haven’t played it in a long time but it was already great like 10-15 years ago so it’s probably even better today, Nethack (if you don’t mind the starting difficulty and the “graphics”) is also great, VERY complex gameplay but very rewarding if you know it fairly well. Also saw a video of Xonotic today, looks also really good if you’re into fast multiplayer arena shooters (Quake-like). Heard positive things about 0 AD as well (Age of Empires-like). All of these are open source and in the extra repository on Arch.

  Non-free but really cheap: Stardew Valley is probably great, I’ve never played it and it doesn’t look like my cup of tea but I’ve only heard positive things plus it’s like #1 or #2 rated on Steam, so it must be really good.

  Non-free: Stellaris (got into it recently, great game, native and well-maintained Linux client (not at all common), much better than I expected, VERY complex and content-rich but still not that hard to grasp, quite expensive when you want all DLCs. It’s like a live service game, you’ll pay quite a bit if you want everything, but you also get tons of content). Also, Alien Isolation is one of my favorite single player horror games of all time and it also has a Linux client (which was a surprise for me) but that one is probably outdated and not maintained anymore by now I’d guess (but didn’t look it up) so it might be better to play the Windows client via Proton. I’m not up to date on that though - look it up.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨US criticizes French inquiry into social media platform X⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  While this is “nice”, I guess, I also can’t fathom how naive this generally seems.

  X is a proprietary black box and X/Musk can change the algorithm literally at will, what they show which persons and when and when not. There is NO time ever where users have have any control over it, and to perform a statistical analysis on a blackbox is also kind of pointless in this case because the blackbox can change randomly, at any point in time, possibly right after the analysis has concluded, or right before.

  For example if this study comes to the conclusion that there was no manipulation during the time of the study, that’s meaningless because it could have been before and it could happen afterwards. If it comes to the conclusion that there was manipulation at a certain time, then X can always claim that they’ve already “fixed” the issue and then it’s again a new black box and no one knows when the next manipulation is being activated.

  The ONLY solution to this is to ONLY use open source platforms where not a single company or host is able to do what they want with the complete service. Or in other words, the only solution is to avoid X and other proprietary social media platforms like the plague that they are.

  I really don’t get why people are so naive when it comes to proprietary online services. It’s almost as if they like being screwed over.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨White House unveils sweeping plan to “win” global AI race through deregulation⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The only “wins” for this current US regime are negative records: most cruel, most degenerate, most stupid, most racist, and so on. And the “grand prize” for these wins will be war (civil or conventional) plus a spot in history among the worst people to ever destabilize and rule a country.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Well now I'm no longer impressed⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  There are also 2 types of penis, not sure what they’re called in English exactly but we call them blood penis or flesh penis. Blood penis is quite small unerect but can grow up to multiple times its size and also gets thicker when erected. The majority of men actually have this type of penis. The other type is the flesh penis, which is almost the same size whether erect or not. It doesn’t grow much when erect. Both of course get hard when erect. Since I sometimes see those jokes about small penises in unerect state I assume that quite a few people don’t know of these 2 types and their differences, and if you don’t know this kind of important detail then a flesh penis might look more promising when you’ve only seen it unerect. But, of course, there can still be size differences between different ones. Independent of the type. Anyway, the main point is if you really want to compare penis sizes you always have to do it in erect state, otherwise it’s completely meaningless.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨“You can't be expected to have a successful AI program when every single article, book or anything else that you've read or studied, you're supposed to pay for” Donald Trump said⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Maybe it works as an excuse when you claim you just wanted to train your own AI model with all those priated books and videos. But who am I kidding. The reality is that copyright violation, as well as quite a few other things, is only a crime if you’re poor.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mark Zuckerberg Already Knows Your Life. Now He Wants His AI to Run It⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That, and also this might just be a fake PR stunt to make the Trump administration not seem so wrong. Remember that both Elon and Trump only really care about enriching themselves and their relatives. Anything they say or do doesn’t have much substance to it. It’s all about facilitating their goals. If they feel like they need to do a 180-degree turn in order to boost their public perception, they will do that. I don’t think they have much integrity, spine, morals or ethics at all. That would just stand in the way of enrichment.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How the US is turning into a mass techno-surveillance state⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes. Unfortunately, these systems are also a great gift for any upcoming fascist regime (like the Trump junta currently) which will not only happily continue using the existing infrastructure but also extend it like mad.

  Maybe humanity’s greatest weaknesses overall: the lack of foresight and the lack of wisdom learned from historic precedents. Everything’s always about short-term goals, ignoring any long-term disadvantages. See also: climate disaster.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Currently playing Talos Principle Reawakened (the UE5 remastered version). For anyone wondering whether it’s worth it, yes if you have the hardware for it. Because they also massively improved one of the most complex but also most frustrating mechanics in the original game (with the recorder thingie). So there are very useful improvements overall. Game looks great as well, but you need serious hardware for it. It’s not very performance efficient anymore. :)

  Other than that, I’ve played The Ten Bells and Exit 8. These are great small anomaly-hunting games. I’ve never played this genre before so it was a great discovery for me. If you’re curious about this genre, start with Exit 8. If you liked that and prefer more horror elements in it, as well as a bigger “map”, play The Ten Bells. Awesome small games.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft announces new Windows changes in response to the EU's (DMA) Digital Markets Act for EEA users, including Edge not prompting users to set it as the default unless opened⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  In other words: Users of proprietary OS like Windows have so little control over their own devices that it’s newsworthy when the vendor allows you to uninstall 2-3 bundled things out of many more. It’s pathetic.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI isn’t ready to replace human coders for debugging, researchers say⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  “AI” is good for pattern matching, generating boiler plate / template code and text, and generating images. That’s about it. And it’s of course often flawed/inaccurate so it needs human oversight. Everything else is like a sales scam.