ilinamorato

@ilinamorato@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'Borderlands 4 is a premium game made for premium gamers' is Randy Pitchford's tone deaf retort to the performance backlash: 'If you're trying to drive a monster truck with a leaf blower's motor, you're going to be disappointed'⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Probably not if you lived on Pandora.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'Borderlands 4 is a premium game made for premium gamers' is Randy Pitchford's tone deaf retort to the performance backlash: 'If you're trying to drive a monster truck with a leaf blower's motor, you're going to be disappointed'⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  I think he thinks he’s Jack in The Pre-Sequel, but really he’s Jack in Borderlands 2.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What would stop you from switching to a flip phone (or dumbphone) in 2025?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Honestly, for me, it’s the one-two-three punch of easy notes taken anywhere + podcasts + camera.

  • notes : before smartphones I carried a notebook in my pocket. And sometimes I still do; writing longhand is still pleasant for me, and being able to sketch and doodle with my notes is still clunky with a touchscreen, amazingly. But the experience of losing my notebook, or not having the right one with me when I need it, is disproportionately frustrating to me.

  • podcasts : this is one of the few ways my ADHD brain truly focuses. Listening to a podcast while walking, biking, running, driving, doing dishes, cleaning a room, mowing the lawn, etc. is almost foolproof in getting me to pay attention to the content. I have to be in the right mood to read, and videos are background noise to me after having the Discovery Channel or Scifi Channel on 24/7 in my apartment in college. Before smartphones I had a trusty RCA Lyra that went everywhere with me; and while the form factor and experience were fantastic, I now have a backlog of over 800 podcast episodes that would not fit on that device’s 512MB internal storage. (Also, I just got a pair of noise canceling earbuds, and I have to admit I really like them)

  • camera : I’ve chosen my last four smartphones based on the camera quality. I’ve got kids, and being able to take adorable pictures of them at the drop of a hat is very useful to me. I don’t need all the computational nonsense, but I do need it to be good enough and ever-present. Before smartphones, I would occasionally bring a digital camera around with me, but I can’t afford one that would give me the quality I want, and it wouldn’t fit in my pocket anyway.

  Messaging, fitness tracking, and work stuff is also easier, though not in a way that I don’t think I could backfill with other things if needed.

  Nostalgia aside, the experience of these big three use cases is indisputably better with a smartphone than it was in 2005. Could I live without them? Yes! Absolutely. But I’d prefer not to, and since I shook my social media addiction I don’t really feel the need to.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK about 15 bean soup.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh hey Hurst! They package these in my city. Back in college I used to make a pot of these and a huge batch of cornbread regularly all winter. Good memories.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft still can't convince folks to upgrade to Windows 11⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  The weird thing is that Windows 10 broke that model. It always used to be that the even-numbered Windows versions were worse (after, let’s say, Windows 2000): ME (#4)? Bad. XP (#5)? Good! Vista (#6)? Bad. 7? Good! 8? Bad. 8.1 (#9)? Good! But then Windows 10 came out and threw the whole rhythm off.

  You could pretty reasonably argue that 8.1 wasn’t a true version, and thus Windows 10 was the 9th version of Windows, but that just means that 8 was the combo breaker by becoming good eventually. In either case, Windows 11 being bad restores the bad version/good version rhythm.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mastodon is bringing quote posts to the fediverse⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Not on Mastodon. Some of the other fedi microblog platforms have had it, though.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft still can't convince folks to upgrade to Windows 11⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  They want us to upgrade to 11 so they can do that when they release Windows 12.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft still can't convince folks to upgrade to Windows 11⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Great point. Their strategy at this point is holding a gun up to your hard drive and saying “upgrade now or your data gets it.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  You just described most of my post history.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  ✅ Colorado

  ✅ Connedicut

  ✅ Delaware

  ❌ District of Columbia (on a technicality)

  ✅ Florida

  But not

  ❌ I’aho

  ❌ Iniana

  ❌ Marylan

  ❌ Nevaa

  ❌ North Akota

  ❌ Rhoe Islan

  ❌ South Akota

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I would assume it uses a different random seed for every query. Probably fixed sometimes, not fixed other times.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Android’s most beloved launcher may be done for good⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh, this is great news. I have Nova tweaked to work almost exactly like this. Excellent, thank you.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is a federated alternative to Wikipedia?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Facebook (centralized) is ground for fake and hateful news, while the Fediverse (decentralized) brings meaningful diversity and insightfulness.

  That’s because Facebook has discovered that fake and hateful news gets lots of clicks and engagement, and boosts their bottom line. Wikipedia has no such profit motive, nor does federated social media. It’s the economics that make them different, not the server paradigm.

  More information also means quicker double-checking for what is true, regardless of political spectrum

  Is…this your first day on the Internet? That is almost never how it works. You get one side posting sourced, verifiable, provable information at best. At worst, both sides are posting cherry-picked half-stories that agree with their preconceived ideas. In the end, no one changes their minds, but the people who are willing to stay and post about it for longer are the ones who are seen later on as the “winners.”

  Truth is a constructed entity.

  I’m reminded of a line from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: “Archaeology is the search for fact, not truth. If it’s truth you’re interested in, Dr. Tyree’s philosophy class is right down the hall.”

  Similarly, encyclopedias are not where to go for truth. They’re where to go for fact, and fact isn’t decided by consensus.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is a federated alternative to Wikipedia?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s not two different opinions, though. You just posted two accurate facts. An accurate Wikipedia will post both of them, and it has nothing to do with any individual’s opinion on Process A being a ploy by Big Pharma or Process B being a liberal psyop. An accurate Wikipedia will also not post about either being the “best.” That’s not its job.

  Your bamboo scaffolding example is actually a good one, but not in your favor. Bamboo scaffolding is a great option in places where bamboo grows naturally. In other parts of the world where bamboo is less common, metal scaffolding is usually a more economic choice. Neither is “better,” and encyclopedias should not suggest that one or the other is.

  This whole thing is why the Wikipedia “opinion” editor tag exists. Its whole point is to mark places where an article needs editing because the content is subjective or not supported by verifiable fact.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Framework unveils a second-generation Framework Laptop 16 with a swappable Nvidia RTX 5070 GPU, an industry first, shipping in November 2025⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, I bet someone would do it for Youtube views, but you’re right, that’s too much.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Framework unveils a second-generation Framework Laptop 16 with a swappable Nvidia RTX 5070 GPU, an industry first, shipping in November 2025⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I get it. In my opinion being made of plastic isn’t as bad as feeling plastic-y, but I realize that’s a personal thing

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Framework unveils a second-generation Framework Laptop 16 with a swappable Nvidia RTX 5070 GPU, an industry first, shipping in November 2025⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  My experience with Framework is exactly one unit, but I would disagree with this. The Thinkpads I’ve used all felt more plastic-y and less sturdy than my Framework. The keyboard did feel cheaper until I wore the powdery feel off of the keycaps, at which point it felt amazing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Framework unveils a second-generation Framework Laptop 16 with a swappable Nvidia RTX 5070 GPU, an industry first, shipping in November 2025⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  They’ve had AMD for a few years now. No Intel one, but they do sell empty GPU module shells, so maybe someone could cut down a desktop Intel card to fit in one?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨THE NEXT CLANKER BETTER DO MY GODDAMN DISHES⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Not entirely sure why that doesn’t feel like a robot to me. Hm.

  Maybe it’s because washing machines existed before electricity. I don’t think there are any gas-powered dishwashers.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨THE NEXT CLANKER BETTER DO MY GODDAMN DISHES⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  AI’s water usage is a pretty well-known problem with the industry.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨THE NEXT CLANKER BETTER DO MY GODDAMN DISHES⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  They chose literally the only widely-available home robot. 😆

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is This Social Media?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Interesting question on the fediverse. I tend to think that redditlikes aren’t, while twitterlikes are; so what does it mean if they’re federated? Does it depend on how you access the content?

  Maybe it’s a spectrum. Bulletin board forums are on one side, then Stack Overflow, then redditlikes, then twitterlikes, then Instagram-like image sharing, then Facebook on the far other side.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do I beat the roaches in this house?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  So, I think this story has two parts to it: one from years ago, wherein he moved into a place with his girlfriend and his best friend; and another from today, wherein he moved into a place with his wife. Unclear if it’s the same person as the girlfriend from before.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are your favorite Star Trek books?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I really like the Department of Temporal Investigations book “Watching the Clock.” Very clever time travel story.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨95% of Companies See ‘Zero Return’ on $30 Billion Generative AI Spend, MIT Report Finds⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Who said anything about foresight? This is entirely historical. Thanks for actually reading anything I’ve said.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨95% of Companies See ‘Zero Return’ on $30 Billion Generative AI Spend, MIT Report Finds⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m saying they can only do it because the big innovation was “throw more money at it.” Yes, given a functionally infinite amount of hardware, electricity, legal free reign, and publicity, I could invent a machine that does at least one (1) impressive thing, too.

  Remember, these models weren’t created to identify cancer in patients. They were created to do everything. And the fact that they are mediocre at everything except identifying cancer in patients (and a handful of other things) means that they’re failing at 99.997% of their goal.

  That doesn’t mean that it’s innovative, or a breakthrough technology that deserves time to mature. It just means that you get more swings at the law of averages if you have a lot of money.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨95% of Companies See ‘Zero Return’ on $30 Billion Generative AI Spend, MIT Report Finds⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  First of all, because it doesn’t matter whether it’s actually real or not, investment doesn’t actually follow innovation. The actual value of a company or idea has almost nothing to do with its valuation.

  But more importantly, why do you think that’s the important part of this conversation? I’m not talking about its long term viability. Neither were you. You were just saying that it was a new innovation and still had to mature. I was saying that it was actually a much older technology that already matured, and which is being given an artificial new round of funding because of good marketing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨95% of Companies See ‘Zero Return’ on $30 Billion Generative AI Spend, MIT Report Finds⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Are you trying to claim that the fact that there’s lots of money flowing to these AI companies is proof that AI isn’t just a bubble caused by money flowing to these AI companies?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨95% of Companies See ‘Zero Return’ on $30 Billion Generative AI Spend, MIT Report Finds⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Please let me know what major breakthrough has happened recently in the machine leaning field, since you’re such an expert. Throwing more GPUs at it? Throwing even more GPUs at it? About the best thing I can come up with is “using approximately the full text of the Internet as training data,” but that’s not a technical advancement, it’s a financial one.

  Applying tensors to ML happened in 2001. Switching to GPUs for deep learning happened in 2004. RNNs/CNNs was 2010-ish. Seq2seq and GAN were in 2014. “Attention is All You Need” came out in 2017; that’s the absolute closest to a breakthrough that I can think of, but even that was just an architecture from 2014 with some comparatively minor tweaks.

  No, the only major new breakthrough I can see over the past decade or so has been the influx of money.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨95% of Companies See ‘Zero Return’ on $30 Billion Generative AI Spend, MIT Report Finds⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  AI isn’t “emerging.” The industry is new, but we’ve had neural networks for decades. They’ve been regularly in use for things like autocorrect and image classification since before the iPhone. Google upgraded Google Translate to use a GPT in 2016 (9 years ago). What’s “emerging” now is just marketing and branding, and trying to shove it into form factors and workloads that it’s not well suited to. Maybe some slightly quicker iteration due to the unreasonable amount of money being thrown at it.

  It’s kind of like if a band made a huge deal out of their new album and the crazy new sound it had, but then you listened to it and it was just, like…disco? And disco is fine, but…by itself it’s definitely not anything to write home about in 2025. And then a whole bunch of other bands were like, “yeah, we do disco too!” And some of them were ok at it, and most were definitely not, but they were all trying to fit disco into songs that really shouldn’t have been disco. And every time someone was like, “I kinda don’t want to listen to disco right now,” a band manager said “shut up yes you do.”