logicbomb

@logicbomb@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are 'micro-apartments' converted from offices the answer to the housing crisis?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This idea in particular seems inconvenient to me, but there may be people who would prefer something like this.

  I had a very small apartment when I lived in Japan, and honestly, I really liked it for the most part. It was a bit bigger than what I think they’re saying in this article, though.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨hard to argue with⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If she really believes those breasts, ovaries, and wombs are so important, why was she telling women to think about things? You don’t think with breasts, ovaries, or wombs.

  And what will she do when she hits menopause? How will that affect her beliefs?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Treegasmic⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Boy it really makes those pictures of bees covered in pollen seem slightly less cute.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is the safest way for a partially disabled person in the USA to use prison for food and shelter as an alternative to dying homeless in a gutter on a cold rainy night?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I generally disagree with the entire plan, but if you’re going to do anything like this, there is a large difference between getting caught with a weapon and not. Maybe even a squirt gun. You do not need to have a weapon to get convicted of robbing a bank.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Gloves should be a requirement to keep in a glove box.⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Passenger compartment is even more wrong than glove box, though, isn’t it?

  That compartment is used by the driver. I’ve never seen a passenger use it. And obviously, the driver doesn’t keep passengers in that compartment.

  It’s got nothing to do with passengers, other than being on the passenger’s side. And if it’s really just because it’s on the passenger’s side, “passenger compartment” is an unusual way to say that in English. It sounds like what you’d call the main cabin.

  On the other hand, if you have gloves that you keep in the car, at least it’s possible to keep them in that compartment.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A German state is ditching Windows and Microsoft Office for Linux and LibreOffice on the 30,000 PCs it uses for local government functions⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The idea that a state government is unnecessarily at the mercy of any corporation is hard to comprehend. Especially, as in this case, a foreign corporation.

  Open source shouldn’t only be the standard for governments. It should be the minimum requirement.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Cory Doctorow gets scammed⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Another thing is that I feel like the era of the private phone number has passed. I see the use case for phone numbers for businesses, but people just don’t use them very much anymore otherwise.

  Like, we don’t memorize them. We don’t dial them. They’re just entries in our contacts.

  At this point, we could create an alternative way of contacting private phones. Something based on whitelisting instead of blacklisting. Something that can be easily shared but not easily guessed. Something that would be easy to trace who called you.

  All of these phone scams rely on the idea that a stranger can just up and contact you without any effort. It’s ridiculous. If we got rid of that, we’d save people from untold billions of dollars of scams almost instantly.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Someone help me make a 'transition metals' joke here...⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Also what’s with the circle around women vs. the triangle around men? Is this some meaningful gender related symbolism that I’m unaware of?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft revives aggressive Windows 11 upgrade campaign with intrusive popups for Windows 10 users⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  My computer is good enough to run any games I want to play, even recently released FPS types of games at reasonably high settings. Still not good enough for Win11. My weak-ass tablet, though, was upgraded straight away.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Someone get working on this, right away!⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Vampires can’t cross running water, and they don’t seem to do well on the ocean, either. Their options for meeting dolphins are relatively limited.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Get to work, crackheads⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes, the intended target audience is desperate addicts who can be tricked into committing a crime that doesn’t actually benefit them at all.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Every time I'm trying to decide what new show I should check out⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I love character-driven narratives, so DS9 is easily the best Star Trek for me that I’ve seen. I think the only series that I haven’t seen is Lower Decks.

  I would claim that Voyager is objectively worse than DS9, though. A big part of it is how many terrible episodes come from each series. With DS9, there are only a few episodes sprinkled here and there that are terrible. With Voyager, it had to be at least 1 out of every 3 episodes that were terrible.

  Of course, these two series have completely different standards. Both standards are about whether they deliver an episode that is fulfilling and makes sense.

  DS9 is completely serial. A good show has character development and progresses the main plot due to some event or other intrigue that happens. If you don’t like Star Treks where they “boldly stay home”, then all of the Vic Fontaine episodes would be terrible, but Vic was like this perfect tool to try to round out all of the character development at the series end.

  On the other hand, a good Voyager episode is a sort of alien of the week. That’s what would make sense, because they were traveling in a straight line home. Yet they nonsensically had all sorts of recurring characters that they came across. Recurring races is fine. In fact, you’d almost expect to have like one or two major races that are the villains per season… but recurring characters? Really??

  Voyager could have been the perfection of Roddenberry’s ideal Star Trek. Almost purely episodic. Heroic cast solving problems every episode. They even have the best excuse for taking the ship into the most stupidly dangerous situations. They were desperate for supplies to get home. I don’t know that any Star Trek had such an easy set up. How did they have so many bad episodes??

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Every time I'm trying to decide what new show I should check out⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  TNG’s first season can just be skipped IMO. The first time I watched TNG on streaming, I was… surprised… at the quality of season 1.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Every time I'm trying to decide what new show I should check out⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  So you’ve never seen DS9, then.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft is adding a new key to PC keyboards for the first time since 1994⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Do you remember a few years ago, it came out that some company was working on a new idea that, when you were given an advertisement on a TV, it could require you to say the product name aloud or it wouldn’t continue?

  I try not to concede anything related to advertising because everything they want seems so dystopian.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why a kilobyte is 1000 and not 1024 bytes⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I read relatively slowly, but I have the ability to read much faster. I simply like reading more slowly. I have this weird suspicion that people who read very quickly are getting information more quickly, but that they’re either not absorbing it fully, or they’re not enjoying it as much as I do. But that’s obviously a biased perspective.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why a kilobyte is 1000 and not 1024 bytes⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Every part of your comment has something factually wrong or fallacious.

  I don’t get feedback just because you read it.

  My reading the part I am giving feedback on is a prerequisite for actually giving feedback. I am obviously a person who graciously responded to your request, not somebody that you somehow ordered to give feedback. I don’t know what you think you gain from viewing it this way.

  I’m thankful for feedback but my sentence was accurate.

  I didn’t say it was inaccurate, but that it didn’t tell people why to read the article. You didn’t ask me to tell you inaccuracies. You asked for “feedback”. You also don’t seem to be thankful, because if you were thankful, you’d simply accept the feedback instead of throwing up straw-man arguments.

  I don’t benefit if you read it.

  You have exactly repeated your previous statement that I already proved wrong.

  I will offer you one last piece of feedback. Just stop arguing. You can never look gracious pursuing an argument where you ask for advice and then argue with people who took time out of their day to help you.

  Upvotes and downvotes don’t determine whether people are factually right, but they do help you gauge what people think when they read your comments, and what I’m seeing is that you’re not ingratiating yourself to the people who you are asking to read your article. Even if you could win this argument, and you can’t, you wouldn’t want to, because you’d look bad in doing so. When you ask for feedback, and feedback is given, just graciously accept it. If it’s bad feedback, then just ignore it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why a kilobyte is 1000 and not 1024 bytes⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t benefit if you read it.

  You don’t benefit financially, but there are other benefits. For example, you specifically asked for feedback, and you have received some.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why a kilobyte is 1000 and not 1024 bytes⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s true that the actual “story” is very short. 1 kB is 1000 bytes and 1 KiB is 1024 bytes. But the post is not about this, but about why calling 1024 a kilobyte always was wrong even in a historical context and even though almost everybody did that.

  Yes. But it does raise the question of why you didn’t say that in either your title:

  Why a kilobyte is 1000 and not 1024 bytes

  or your description:

  I often find myself explaining the same things in real life and online, so I recently started writing technical blog posts.

  This one is about why it was a mistake to call 1024 bytes a kilobyte. It’s about a 20min read so thank you very much in advance if you find the time to read it.

  Feedback is very much welcome. Thank you.

  The title and description were your two chances to convince people to read your article. But what they say is that it’s a 20 minute read for 10 seconds of information. There is nothing that says there will be historical context.

  I get that you might want to make the title more clickbaitey, but why write a description out if you’re not going to tell what’s actually in the article?

  So, that’s my feedback. I hope this helps.

  One other bit of closely-related feedback, for your writing, in general. Always start with the most important part. Assume that people will stop reading unless you convince them otherwise. Your title should convince people to read the article, or at least to read the description. The very first part of your description is your chance to convince people to click through to the article, but you used it to tell an anecdote about why you wrote the article.

  I’m the kind of person who often reads articles all the way through, but I have discovered that most people lose interest quickly and will stop reading.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨MRW hologram Barclay is trying to rizz up Seven in "Inside Man"⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Still, you’d expect someone who saw it happen to Picard to phrase it better. That’s assuming it’s a direct quote.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why a kilobyte is 1000 and not 1024 bytes⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I also assume that people are answering that way because they thought it was a question.

  However, it’s also possible that they saw it described as a 20 minute read, and knew that the answer actually takes about 10 seconds to read, and figured that they’d save people 19 minutes and 50 seconds.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How AI works is often a mystery — that's a problem⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I did say that people and AI would have similar poor results at explaining themselves. So we agree on that.

  The one thing I’ll add is that certain people performing certain tasks can be excellent at explaining themselves, and if a specific LLM AI exists that can do that, then I’m not aware of it. I added LLM into there because I want to ensure that it’s an AI with some ability for generalized knowledge. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are very specific AIs that have been trained only to explain a very narrow thing.

  I guess I’m in a mood to be reminded of old Science Fiction stories, because I’m reminded of a story where they had people who were trained to memorize situations to testify later. For some reason, I initially think it’s a hugely famous novel like Stranger in a Strange Land, but I might easily be wrong. But anyways, the example they gave in the book was that the person described a house, let’s say the house was white, then they described it as being white on the side that was facing them. The point being that they’d be explaining something as closely to right as was possible, to the point that there was no way that they’d be even partially wrong.

  Anyways, that seems tangentially related at best, but the underlying connection is that people, with the right training and motivation, can be very mentally disciplined, which is unlike any AI that I know, and also probably very unlike this comment.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How AI works is often a mystery — that's a problem⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  People are able to explain themselves, and some AI also can, with similar poor results.

  I’m reminded of one of Azimov’s stories about a robot whose job was to aim an energy beam at a collector on Earth.

  Upon talking to the robot, they realized that it was less of a job to the robot and more of a religion.

  The inspector freaked out because this meant that the robot wasn’t performing to specs.

  Spoilers: Eventually they realized that the robot was doing the job either way, and they just let it do it for whatever reason.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Dropbox removed ability to opt your files out of AI training⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Password manager is one of the few “free” services that I pay for. Still feeling pretty good about 1password.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨You can never be sure⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That seems like a serious gambit. After all you might be part of the program. Much safer to ask for the arch.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Suspects can refuse to provide phone passcodes to police, court rules⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This is a complicated situation, but in my opinion, probably the correct decision.

  Given this is the ruling, if you do believe your phone is about to be confiscated, and you don’t want its contents to be public, it might be a good idea to turn off your phone. Although the police cannot compel a password, a biometric unlock is not a password. If you turn off your phone, it will generally require a password to enable biometric unlock.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mentally Deranged Behaviour⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  When I read your comment, my monocle popped right off!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mentally Deranged Behaviour⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  How about 4D Venn diagrams?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Garak's time off⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This is unlike Garak at all. He would never close for the week. What about all his customers?!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's been a stressful week in Engineering⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Nobody says giraffe like that.