JasSmith
@JasSmith@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on xkcd #3090: Sail Physics 3 weeks ago:
Well that doesn’t look right but I’m not a boat physicist so I’ll just accept it at face value.
- Comment on Netflix will show generative AI ads midway through streams in 2026 3 weeks ago:
I’m convinced there’s almost nothing they could do to lose net subscribers.
- Comment on The YouTube Alternative Nobody's Talking About ! Peertube 5 weeks ago:
Ironically, I think Fediverse suffers from a high amount of tech expertise and not enough project managers, lol.
I 1,000% agree. FOSS projects are dominated by skilled developers who have to work under the direction of managers in their day jobs and FUCKING HATE IT. They dream about breaking the shackles of idiotic managers who are suppressing their talent and creativity, so they work on FOSS projects. Only to learn that developers without clear direction is like herding angry cats at a Metallica concert. The end result is a patchwork of features each developer would personally like, but normal people hate.
I am probably biased here because I am one of those managers. The reason we don’t work on FOSS projects is because 1) they don’t want us working on them, and 2) we fucking hate our jobs as-is, and don’t want to spend one more minute than necessary herding angry cats.
- Comment on The YouTube Alternative Nobody's Talking About ! Peertube 1 month ago:
Lots of people have opinions, not many people want to organize their thoughts into, eg. an effective advertising campaign, a github pull request, or basically anything other than meaningless musing.
This is the nature of free work. Any donation of time is sparse and intermittent. People have bills to pay. The best and brightest want to be paid well for their time. This requires a business model of some kind, and monetising that work. This is antithetical to FOSS projects, and is the reason they will almost always be inferior to projects with large budgets with teams of UX designers. /obligatory COME AT ME BRO
- Comment on The best thing *you* can do for the fediverse is *just be kind* 2 months ago:
I’ve had exactly the same experience. Lemmy has been far more hostile than I ever experienced on Reddit. Any opinions which aren’t far left are called “Nazi,” and users are very quick to justify violence against “Nazis.”
- Comment on The best thing *you* can do for the fediverse is *just be kind* 2 months ago:
The “tolerance paradox” is a handy tool with which to justify violence by those on both sides. If I’m just fighting intolerance, then my actions are justified. It’s a common rally cry used by authoritarians to stamp out diversity and democracy. To really hammer the point home, the Nazis were the first to employ it. By blaming their issues on the “intolerance” of foreign states, they justified a global war. It is obviously the inspiration for Popper’s 1945 work, The Open Society and Its Enemies. Russia is currently using this fallacy to justify the war in Ukraine, claiming that the West is “intolerant” of Russia, and they need to defend themselves against this intolerance.
Here is a full quote from Popper on the subject if anyone is interested.
I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise.
But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.
Popper’s argument is laid bare here. Tolerate up to the point of violence. That is, if one physically attacks us, we no longer have the burden of tolerance. Popper is commonly misquoted and intentionally misused to justify violence, suppresion, and censorship against disagreement, and that is clearly not his argument.
- Comment on The best thing *you* can do for the fediverse is *just be kind* 2 months ago:
disagree, if political discourse can’t survive public debate, then it isn’t a very good political ideology.
They made it clear they’re talking about spaces and topics not about politics. People who feel entitled and compelled to make everything a political culture war are insufferable. Made worse when they call everyone who disagrees with them a Nazi. The word has lost all meaning now.
- Comment on Plex is locking remote streaming behind a subscription in April 2 months ago:
Docker isn’t hard if you use a compose file. It’s easy to read syntax.
This is giving me “yaml isn’t hard to use if you use a compose file!” It is, actually. It’s easy for you because you understand the technology. The vast majority of people do not.
- Comment on Plex is locking remote streaming behind a subscription in April 2 months ago:
One does not need an internet connection for offline use. Check this if you’re having issues.
One does not need to pay for multiple user accounts. As per this update, they are actually removing the one-time fee for non family member mobile apps. Now it’s all free, provided the server owner has a Plex Pass.
Plex has been supporting hardware transcoding since 2017.
- Comment on Plex is locking remote streaming behind a subscription in April 2 months ago:
I feel like I’m getting more than what I paid for. I understand it was a legal contractual exchange. I’m merely commenting on the value I’ve received relative to what I paid. Especially given the continued improvements over time.
- Comment on Plex is locking remote streaming behind a subscription in April 2 months ago:
I’m seeing a lot of negativity but I think they offer a great service and deserve to be paid for their work. I bought a lifetime pass many years ago and I almost feel guilty how much value I have received over that time.
- Comment on Plex is locking remote streaming behind a subscription in April 2 months ago:
It’s the setup which doesn’t pass the “wife” test. The more setup friction, the lower the likelihood that average users will bother. It requires a very easy setup experience to retain the average user. Even us technical people have limited time in the day. If I get a similar experience out of both Plex and Jellyfin, I’m going with the software which is easier to set up. Most of us are at that point in our lives where we’ll pay for convenience.
- Comment on Reddit tracking upvotes for mod actions 2 months ago:
The operative word there is “entirely.” We have philosophy going back thousands of years playing with the subjective nature of reality. There is some truth to this. However most of society has been an exercise in “might makes right,” and truth was whatever the person with the biggest club said it was. Then the Enlightenment happened and it was suddenly considered virtuous to observe, document, and publish objective reality. See the early days of the conflicts with the Church to understand how uncomfortable it can make those who enjoy subjective reality suddenly being confronted with the concept of objective reality.
It’s only relatively recently (post Enlightenment) that large portions of society decided it was a good idea to disregard objective reality in journalism, science, and politics, in favour of subjective or “lived” realities. We can in part thank postmodernism for escaping academic containment, but I think that’s only part of the slide. Whatever the cause, I think it behooves all of us to attempt to steer into objectivism as frequently and clearly as possible. Depending on the metric, Western society has arguably never been this polarised. If we can’t agree on the definition of words, we aren’t even speaking the same language anymore. Our North Star needs to be shared language so at the very least we can have valid arguments with each other. That is how we progress.
- Comment on Reddit tracking upvotes for mod actions 2 months ago:
I’ll preface this by saying I am/was a Reddit user since its first year operating in 2005/2006.
The notion that reality is entirely subjective is relatively new and I believe has led to a myriad of consequences across society from social media to journalism to politics. Even if we will never arrive at a future in which we can all acknowledge what a spade is, we should absolutely continue to strive for that. Common understanding is the bedrock of liberal societies. We need it for science and democracy to function.
The “Redditquette” the user above explained was the notion that disagreement isn’t invalid. By this I am referring to the philosophical distinction between valid and invalid arguments. For example:
- Every dog is a reptile.
- Every reptile is cold-blooded.
- Therefore, every dog is cold-blooded.
This argument is silly and easily disproved, but valid. Flat Earthers often make valid but easily disproved arguments, and there is much to gain in the world by people having valid discussions with one another. Especially from a curious and open position.
On the other hand, invalid arguments are those in whose conclusion is not proven by its premises. That is, even if all the premises are true, the conclusion could still be false. For example:
- Being friendly is the easiest way to make friends quickly.
- Alana has a lot of friends.
- Therefore, Alana must be very friendly.
The argument tells us that being friendly is one way to make friends, but is that the only way? And does having a lot of friends necessarily mean that you are very friendly? Although Alana might be very friendly, the author hasn’t proven that she is. There is nothing to gain by engaging with this, other than to potentially educate someone about valid and invalid arguments. However this rarely works out well over the internet. This is an opinion masquerading as reason or fact. Trolling uses some variation of this.
Reddiquette was intended to encourage healthy discussion without immediately devolving into insults and death threats. It actually worked really fucking well, for many years. In the early days, the administrators would enforce Rediquette, as crazy as that sounds. They would give out warnings for people downvoting earnest comments and submissions. Some of the better moderated subreddits still maintain a shadow of this, but they don’t have the tools to see who is up/downvoting what.
Unfortunately there is some game theory in this. If the rules are “downvote what you don’t like,” then both sides of any debate must use this rule, or their comments will be permanently hidden, and their ideas will never propagate. The evidence is that this rule is quite devastating for online discourse, and I miss old Reddit.
- Comment on Make your complaints heard about bad games, says Dragon Age veteran Mark Darrah, but "your $70 doesn't buy you cruelty" 3 months ago:
Skill Up’s review perfectly summarised all the criticisms. One of the most damning indictments was the feeling that HR was always in the room. He brings receipts for all his complaints. Some of the most unbelievably stupid, juvenile, and ham-fisted writing I’ve ever seen in any video game. This would be a failure if it came from any other studio, but to see BioWare fall this far is really difficult to see.
- Comment on Something like Sonarr but for Youtube? 3 months ago:
I agree. I am forced to use dockers with Unraid and I really don’t like them. For me, the benefits are very limited compared to the extra hassle.
- Comment on Bad UX is keeping the majority of people away from Lemmy 3 months ago:
Especially because most users respond to this with “good.”
good.
Your comedic timing is impeccable.
- Comment on Bad UX is keeping the majority of people away from Lemmy 3 months ago:
IMHO, the UX is bad, but the user base is also repellant. It’s further left than Reddit so most people who jump in bounce right off. That’s going to be difficult to change organically. Especially because most users respond to this with “good.” So there’s definitely no appetite to appeal to a wider audience. I predict Lemmy will become increasingly ideologically partisan and isolated.
- Comment on Nvidia loses $500 bn in value as Chinese AI firm jolts tech shares 4 months ago:
This assumes some kind of eureka innovation, right? A 96% reduction in compute demands per “token” is revolutionary. I haven’t seen anyone yet explain what that innovation is, exactly. There is also mixed reporting on how “open source” DeekSeek is, with many claiming it’s only “open weight,” meaning people are having difficulty reproducing the creation of the model. It wouldn’t be the first time that a claim out of China were false, and I think it wise to reproduce any such claims before running around with our arms in the air.
- Comment on Nvidia loses $500 bn in value as Chinese AI firm jolts tech shares 4 months ago:
Because the parent comment by Womble is about using the Chinese hosted DeepSeek app, not hosting the model themselves. The user above who responded either didn’t read the original comment carefully enough, or provided a very snarky response. Neither is particularly endearing.
- Comment on Nvidia loses $500 bn in value as Chinese AI firm jolts tech shares 4 months ago:
Okay but one is about puritanical Western cultural standards about sex, and one is about government censorship to maintain totalitarian power. One of these things is not like the other.