BertramDitore

@BertramDitore@lemm.ee

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How Google Spent 15 Years Creating a Culture of Concealment⁩ ⁨⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  I get what you’re saying, but internal company communications (especially for publicly traded companies) still should be accessible to valid legal inquiries, otherwise there is absolutely no hope for any kind of accountability. Having IMs between end-users be off the record by default seems totally reasonable and good to me, but internal communications should not be deletable at all, let alone manually by executives. The US Government has record retention schedules, through which non-records (water-cooler talk or the digital equivalent) are kept private and real records are identified and preserved. This is the kind of thing that Congress needs to regulate for private companies. Google blatantly and actively deleted conversations they knew would be relevant to the case, that’s unacceptable.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Pope Francis urges investigation for possible crime of genocide in Gaza⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  No, you’re right, the more investigations the better. It’s just any “Vatican Investigation” should be treated with extreme skepticism.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Pope Francis urges investigation for possible crime of genocide in Gaza⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t think we need another investigation to prove that what we can all see with our own eyes is actually happening.

  Also, Frank, I think there are some other investigations you might want to focus on before feigning your moral high ground. Get your own fucking house in order if you ever want to be taken seriously again, you diddler-protecting fuckwad.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨NVSTly Named Finalist in Prestigious Benzinga FinTech Awards 2024⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  This is not the right place to advertise your investing app. This is gross.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Meta Opens Its AI Models for the (U.S.) Military⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Mark Zuckerberg and Nick Clegg are bad people. There is no ethical way to give militaries this kind of tool. They will use it to kill innocent people, while disingenuously touting its ‘ability’ to save lives.

  If you still have any kind of Meta account or use any of their products, you are helping to legitimize them and give them more power. I’m tired of “it helps me buy junk in my neighborhood” or “but event invites!” excuses. Nope, they’re bad people, running a bad company, that causes real harm to real people every day. If you care at all about the health of society, you must stop giving them the ammunition they turn around and use against you. Stop. Using. Meta. Products.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are some self hosted services that you think are essential?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Same, Syncthing is amazing. I use it with Mobius Sync on iOS and have it synching my keepass, Obsidian vault, photos, and a folder for random file transfers between devices. It’s so much better, faster, and more stable than all the most popular corporate cloud providers.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Consumer Financial Protection Bureau moves to place Google under supervision⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I imagine CFPB is at the very top of the hit-list to get fully doge’d. Because fuck consumers, why would they ever need protection from anti-union, discriminatory billionaire oligarchs like Musk?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨USA President term limits⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  US Presidents are limited to two terms, it doesn’t matter if they are consecutive. Grover Cleveland is the only other president who has served two non-consecutive terms.

  Term-limits are a relatively recent addition though, the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution was only ratified in 1951 after Franklin Roosevelt served four terms.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Spotify’s Plans For AI Generated Music, Podcasts, and Recommendations, According To Its Co-President, CTO, and CPO Gustav Söderström⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  The only legitimate use I can think of for AI in podcasting might be for realtime translations so people who don’t speak the language of the podcaster can still listen. Even that makes me feel weird, but I think it could be done ethically-ish. Same deal for voice-cloning, I think that would be super-useful for realtime translations, so listeners still kinda hear the host’s voice, even translated. But every other use I can think of is ripe for abuse and won’t result in quality content.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I want to feel like a bad-ass wizard⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Have you played Dragon Age Inquisition? I hadn’t until someone here recommended it, so I grabbed it for $3 and am deep into it. As a mage, it’s full-throated magical glory. You can use lightning, fire, and ice magic, get badass staffs, and have a good combination of AoE and normal spells. I definitely feel OP after crafting some custom armor and weapons. Lots of fun.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I got tired of killing my cactus so now I plant mint⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Oooh I love cooking with mint. It’s great with lamb, but it works with so many kinds of dishes!

  Here are some ideas:

  Mash it up and add it to some lemon juice, super refreshing summertime drink.

  Tabouleh is a very simple salad that includes mint, this is a goto of mine, works as a side dish with just about anything and is a great way to use up your herbs (if you’re growing mint, you know what I mean, it can quickly get out of control)

  Add some mint to your pesto for a fresh take.

  Sprinkle some mint on roasted green beans.

  Watermelon chunks with feta and chopped mint. Soo good. Might freak you out, doesn’t make sense to the typical American palate, but it’s amazing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I think the best use of GenAI is to summarise webpages⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This is a good analogy, and is one big reason I won’t trust any AI until the ‘answers’ are guaranteed and verifiable. I’ve worked with people who needed to have every single thing they worked on double-checked for accuracy/quality, and my takeaway is that it’s usually faster to just do it myself. Doing a properly thorough review of someone else’s work, knowing that they historically produce crap, takes just about as long as doing the work myself from scratch. This has been true in every field I’ve worked in, from academia to tech.

  I will not be using any of Apple’s impending AI features, they all seem like a dangerous joke to me.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Marvel's Midnight Suns is criminally underrated⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I loved this game! I got like 6 solid months of fun out of it. It took a really long time for the card combat loop to get old for me. I had never played an x-com style game before this (though I loved their meta callouts to x-com), so the mechanics were brand new to me, but it all just made intuitive sense. The card design and animations are top notch, and some of the fights can be super-challenging, but there’s always a way, and there’s nothing quite like the satisfaction of finally finishing a fight after 5 different tries.

  Agree on the story and voice acting, it’s all excellent. There are a couple very recognizable voices in there too.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Your anger is entirely justified, and I share it. This whole licensing issue is a massive problem and shows how little publishers care about their customers. That said, this has always been the case, they’ve just covered their legal bases by updating their TOS.

  But to answer your question, there’s no reason to keep using steam, other than it’s one of the easiest ways to legally game. It’s totally your preference if you want to keep supporting their business. There are lots of ways to illegally game, or pay way more for some DRM-free games that you can actually own, but then you’ll be extremely limited in your selection. I’ve invested so much time and money in my steam library, that I’m basically locked in (they count on this, of course). Sure I own a bunch of games on GOG, but they represent a tiny fraction of my overall library.

  This is a totally unsatisfying answer, but your only actual recourse, if you want to keep using steam, is to reach out to them and express your displeasure at their updated TOS and its implications. But it’s an industry-wide problem, so I think we’re out of luck until Congress gets involved and changes how digital ownership works.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨TikTok owner ByteDance sacks intern for sabotaging AI project⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Exactly. I wish more people had this view of interns. Unpaid ones, at the very least. I worked with a few, and my colleagues would often throw spreadsheets at them and have them do meaningless cleanup work that no one would ever look at. Whenever it was my turn to ‘find work’ for the interns, I would just have them fully shadow me, and do the work I was doing, as I was doing it. Essentially duplicating the work, but with my products being the ones held to final submissions standards. They had some great ideas, which I incorporated into the final versions, and they could see what the role was actually like by doing the work without worrying about messing anything up or bearing any actual responsibility. Interns are supposed to benefit from having the internship. The employer, by accepting the responsibility of having interns, shouldn’t expect to get anything out of it other than the satisfaction of helping someone gain experience. Maybe a future employee, if you treat them well.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨TikTok owner ByteDance sacks intern for sabotaging AI project⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah totally, that’s an important distinction. Paid interns are definitely different than unpaid interns, and can legally do essentially the same work as a paid employee.

  The way the distinction was explained to me is that an unpaid intern is essentially a student of the company, they are there to learn. They often get university credit for the internship. A paid internship is essentially an entry-level job with the expectation that you might get more on-the-job training than a ‘normal’ employee.

  This article doesn’t say if the intern was paid, but it does say the company reported the behavior to the intern’s university, so I’d guess it was unpaid.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨TikTok owner ByteDance sacks intern for sabotaging AI project⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I work at a small tech company, by no means big tech. I know it’s common for interns to be treated as employees, but it’s usually in violation of labor law. It’s one of those things that is extremely common, but no less illegal.

  The US Department of Labor has a 7 part test to help determine if an intern is classified properly. #6 is particularly relevant to this.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨TikTok owner ByteDance sacks intern for sabotaging AI project⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s very little detail in the article. I’d be curious to find out exactly what the intern’s responsibilities were, because based on the description in the article it seems like this was a failure of management, not the intern. Interns should never have direct access to production systems. In fact, in most parts of the world (though probably not China, I don’t know) interns are there to learn. They’re not supposed to do work that would otherwise be assigned to a paid employee, because that would make them an employee not an intern. Interns can shadow the paid employee to learn from them on the job, but interns are really not supposed to have any actual responsibilities beyond gaining experience for when they go on the job market.

  Blaming the intern seems like a serious shift of responsibility. The fact that the intern was able to do this is at all is the fault of management for not supervising their intern.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'Garbage in, garbage out': AI fails to debunk disinformation, study finds.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Think about it this way: remember those upside-down answer keys in the back of your grade school math textbook? Now imagine if those answer keys included just as many incorrect answers as correct ones. How would you know if you were right or wrong without asking your teacher? Until a LLM can guarantee a right answer, and back it up with real citations, it will continue to do more harm than good.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Let him go!!⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It does:

  …the paper was reviewed, and its appropriateness for the journal’s publishing criteria was rated as “excellent” by the journal’s peer-review process. It was accepted for publication with minor editorial changes. The paper was not actually published, as Vamplew declined to pay the required US$150 article processing charge. This case has led commenters to question the legitimacy of the journal as an authentic scholarly undertaking.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Has "Self-Driving" devolved?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  In general I think you’re right about the tech just being shitty, but a slight correction: LiDAR was not developed for self-driving, it’s just a relevant application of the technology. LiDAR has been around for quite a while, and was initially best known as a remote sensing technology. It is effective at remote sensing because it can penetrate certain solid materials, most importantly foliage. So when an aerial LiDAR dataset is collected for a forested area, since the light can penetrate through most of the foliage, one can essentially ‘delete’ the vegetation from the resulting point cloud, leaving a bare earth model, which is a very close approximation of the landscape’s actual topography if there had been no trees. This can be especially valuable for archaeological research, as foliage is often a significant obstacle for accurately mapping large sites, or even finding them in the first place.

  All of that to say, yeah, self-driving buzz made LiDAR well known as tech, but it wasn’t developed for that purpose.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Airline airs ‘sexually explicit’ film on every screen – with no way to turn it off⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, back in my day it was totally normal for a plane to show one movie for everyone. There used to be one screen at the front of each aisle, and sometimes a few more that came down from the ceiling, but this whole personal entertainment system where you get to choose what you want to watch, is brand new relatively speaking. You used to get on the plane, find out what movie they’re playing, and choose whether or not to plug in headphones.

  I agree though, if the system is broken, just leave it off.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Three Mile Island owner seeks $1.6 billion federal loan to restart nuclear plant for Microsoft AI facility⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Bingo. They should invest in their own company, they have the money. There’s reason for taxpayers to play any part in this.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Three Mile Island owner seeks $1.6 billion federal loan to restart nuclear plant for Microsoft AI facility⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  As of October 2024 Microsoft has a market cap of $3.109 Trillion. (Source). So uh, fuck that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Suggestions⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Bret Stephens has been pissing me off since he started writing opinion pieces for the New York Times. He’s one of those conservatives who works incredibly hard to try to sound ‘reasonable,’ but if you pay attention to his language, he’s still just a warmongering piece of shit who pretends Israel can do no wrong. He has always believed that Israel is never the aggressor, despite the tens of thousands of innocent people they have indiscriminately murdered.

  He has been on the wrong side of history for sooo many different conflicts and political issues, not just regarding Israel.

  Yeah, he’s a never-Trumper, but that doesn’t make him a good person.

  You can reliably find him justifying immoral and hateful uses of violence and destructive neoconservative policies. So I guess he fits right in at the New York Times.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Altech’s sodium chloride solid state battery exceeds expectations⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Wow, it’s hard to know just how impactful this will be, but it sounds like they’ve got something here.

  its batteries which it said avoid using metals such as lithium, cobalt, graphite and copper, providing a cost reduction of up to 40% compared to lithium-ion batteries.

  Altech said its batteries are completely fire and explosion proof, have a life span of more than 15 years and operate in all but the most extreme conditions.

  That’s huge, especially the fire and explosion proof part.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI and Scientists Face Off to See Who Can Come Up With the Best Ideas.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ll be honest, I looked at this with the intention of poking holes, but that was a surprisingly thorough article on researchers doing a year-long study trying to figure out practical uses for AI. I for one am still not convinced there’s a practical or truly ethical use at the moment, but I’m glad to see researchers trying. Their results were decidedly mixed, and I still think all the trade-offs don’t work in our favor at the moment, but this was a surprisingly balanced article with a fair amount of subtly on an issue than needs to be examined critically. They admitted that hallucinations are still a huge wildcard that no one knows how to deal with, which is rare. The headline is dumb, but because of how skeptical and distrustful I am of this massive AI bubble, I’m glad there are still researchers putting in the work to figure this shit out.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Snapchat Reserves the Right to Use AI-Generated Images of Your Face in Ads⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Wait, I never used snapchat, so I could be totally off base, but don’t Snapchat messages get automatically deleted? Isn’t that the whole point? Haven’t they already been caught deceiving users into thinking their deleted photos are actually gone? This just seems so gross.