bloup

@bloup@lemmy.sdf.org

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Commodore 64 Ultimate computer is the company's first hardware release in over 30 years — pre-orders start at $299⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I would not, if the “someone” was Gucci itself, and the materials were only different in how they were made.

  This is literally an official commodore product. There are original Commodore engineers involved with this latest iteration of the business. And when they put a 6510 core on the FPGA, that fpga has in a very physical sense become a bona fide 6510.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Commodore 64 Ultimate computer is the company's first hardware release in over 30 years — pre-orders start at $299⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I guess I just don’t understand what it having an AMD chip has to do with anything

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Commodore 64 Ultimate computer is the company's first hardware release in over 30 years — pre-orders start at $299⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  You know that an AMD FPGA is not the same thing as an AMD CPU right?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Commodore 64 Ultimate computer is the company's first hardware release in over 30 years — pre-orders start at $299⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  It might not be a “first edition” but it’s definitely not a “knockoff”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Against AI: An Open Letter From Writers to Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan, and all other publishers of America⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Print on demand is more expensive because you’re paying a premium for never having to actually spend your own money. This is why these get rich quick types use it, because again literally anybody can do this with basically no money and all of the “expenses” only happen when people actually buy the stuff. Once that happens, the printer takes its cut directly from the sale and then passes on the rest to you without you having to do literally anything or spending any money out of your own pocket.

  As for the quality, there’s literally no reason that a book that is printed on demand has to be low quality or use low quality materials. It quite literally only seems like that because the only people who are doing this right now are rich quick types who don’t actually care about what they’re selling and are just trying to minimize the cut the printer takes because that means more money for them.

  And all of this is honestly moot anyway because you wouldn’t do this with the intention of using on-demand printing long-term. You would do it just to get started and then as the business grows, it will eventually be able to take advantage of more economical, but high capital investment opportunities like bulk publishing. I only brought it up because it’s literally never been easier to boot strap a business and the proof is the fact that Amazon is filled with AI generated garbage books. So like I’m just not willing to entertain the idea that an individual who literally has fans and clout should have a more difficult time selling books this way than a literal nobody scam artist pushing garbage.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Against AI: An Open Letter From Writers to Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan, and all other publishers of America⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It means that today pretty much anybody can start a book publishing company, because just-in-time print shops will handle literally all of the expensive overhead that is associated with running a publishing company and just print whatever you hire them to print on demand for you once customers actually place orders, sometimes even on a commission basis so you don’t even have to pay the money unless people are actually buying the books you are publishing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Against AI: An Open Letter From Writers to Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan, and all other publishers of America⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s actually wild how with the just-in-time economy, it has never required less capital investment to start a business like a book publisher. And yet it seems like the only people that take advantage of it are average schmo “grindset grifters” selling junk while all of the people with the real economic power literally beg the institutions out of abused them since the very beginning of their industry to please do the right thing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨We need to stop pretending AI is intelligent⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Ever since the 20th century, there has been a diminishing expectation placed upon scientists to engage in philosophical thinking. My background is primarily in mathematics, physics, and philosophy. I can tell you from personal experience that many professional theoretical physicists spend a tremendous amount of time debating metaphysics while knowing almost nothing about it, often being totally unaware that they are even doing it. If cognitive neuroscience works anything like physics then it’s quite possible that the total exposure that this professor has had to scholarship on the philosophy of the mind was limited to one or two courses during his undergraduate.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨We need to stop pretending AI is intelligent⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The thing is, because Excel is Turing Complete, you can say this about literally anything that’s capable of running on a computer.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Scientists discover promising new way to filter microplastics out of human body: 'The dose makes the poison'⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think it’s definitely worth doing some serious math first before publicly writing it off. Even if its a marginal benefit, as long as its just a tiny bit greater than the marginal benefit you get from intentionally avoiding exposures as much as reasonably possible, then over time the PFAS levels will come down slowly but steadily

  Secondly, no its not okay to give people contaminated blood. But the blood is contaminated with something basically everyone is contaminated with already, and the person who needs transfusion will likely die without it, so it is kind of moot.

  But after only a few more moments of thought, if we were really concerned about it, we could just perform the dialysis on all the donated blood and plasma after it has been taken where we have economies of scale and nobody needs to be hooked up to a machine for it

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Scientists discover promising new way to filter microplastics out of human body: 'The dose makes the poison'⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Once the plasma is collected, I wonder if you can perform dialysis on it at an enormous scale to protect future recipients while still keeping things economical.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Scientists discover promising new way to filter microplastics out of human body: 'The dose makes the poison'⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Describing donating a pint of blood every several weeks as “regular bloodletting” is really something. I mean I guess in a literal sense that is what is happening, but they literally will not take your blood if it is not safe to do so, including donating too recently.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Top-down modded Morrowind lets you experience Vvardenfell like it's Baldur's Gate⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I actually think this is a great idea. It really smooths out a lot of the graphical jank that makes the game really hard for me to play in 2025

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If I cut up pictures to arrange things in a way that when traced over create something "new," is that a copyright violation?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m just curious, but why do you think it’s a definition that “sprung up recently”?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tesla bait-and-switch: Cybertruck owners won't get Autosteer feature they paid for⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Tesla is the Fyre Festival of automotive manufacturers, except in this case Billy has managed to keep the kite in the air for an astonishingly long time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #3085: About 20 Pounds⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This is a funny comic, but it really does disturb me how certain most theoretical physicists are about the nature of dark matter, despite there not really being any good philosophical reason for us to expect these anomalies to be caused by a particle that interacts non-gravitationally.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Fire Emblem on a TI-84⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  No it’s a tactics game where you and your opponent each command a bunch of combat units on a grid. Each of you has some kind of combat objective and you take turns moving your units around and engaging with each other. There is a little bit of a Pokémon/rock-paper-scissors element in that unit will be more effective against certain units than others but once a unit engages, the outcome is basically just RNG weighted according to where the engagement is happening, and which units are engaging

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why aren't the Mediterranean, Black Sea, Red Sea, the Baltic etc. considered Gulfs?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  to me “sea” doesn’t mean anything except for “general water region, smaller than an ocean”. I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with considering those three to be “gulfs”, but I think that people don’t usually think of them that way because unless you studied the geography carefully, you might not even notice that they actually are connected to the rest of the ocean.

  by the way, fun fact: there is actually a sea that isn’t connected to the ocean and why we don’t call it a lake, I really don’t understand. but that’s the Caspian Sea.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The first folding e-reader is smaller than a paperback⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I read a lot of technical material that has lots of diagrams and it’s difficult with an E reader paging back-and-forth between the text and the diagram that I’m trying to understand

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The first folding e-reader is smaller than a paperback⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I never understood why nobody made an E reader that you could read “like a book” that just had two screens and a hinge

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Proton 2024 Lifetime account fundraiser for online freedom | Ends on January 5th⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The irony is, I like proton because I don’t think you should trust literally any business to behave altruistically, including proton. By structuring the business in the manner that they have, I don’t just have to trust them. I just have to trust that the people in charge don’t want to go to jail or get fined, which is literally not true for any business owned by private individuals.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Proton 2024 Lifetime account fundraiser for online freedom | Ends on January 5th⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  First of all, I did not say that proton is opposing capitalism. I said that to oppose capitalism does not mean you have to be opposed to free enterprise. As in, you can be opposed to an economy comprised primarily of capitalist institutions without being opposed to the concept of free enterprise. Proton is simply an example of such a business, which can be used as evidence for the fact that it is entirely possible to start businesses in a free market economy which are actually interested in solving problems as opposed to using the existence of problems as a vehicle to enrich a class of shareholders.

  Second of all, “it’s filling a niche created by other companies’ poor privacy policies” is essentially nothing more than a restatement of the second sentence I wrote, which I will repeat here: “I pointed out that as long as it’s a for-profit corporation, it would have not have any financial or legal incentive to continue pursuing its mission if it ever achieved a certain level of market share.”. You’re right that them adopting a nonprofit structure doesn’t change that, but it does change their ability to sell out their customers at the discretion of a class of shareholders, unlike any business which is owned by private individuals.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Proton 2024 Lifetime account fundraiser for online freedom | Ends on January 5th⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I remember one time I criticized proton for positioning itself as community oriented while still being a for-profit corporation. I pointed out that as long as it’s a for-profit corporation, it would have not have any financial or legal incentive to continue pursuing its mission if it ever achieved a certain level of market share. But then several months later, they actually announced that they were going to put their money where their mouth is, in transition to a nonprofit structure.

  I think that proton is perhaps the greatest example at the moment that to oppose capitalism does not mean you have to be opposed to free enterprise, and people should always think about this sort of thing when they listen to any kind of business leader try to convince them that it’s actually really important that they be allowed to cash out whenever they want.

  I can’t imagine that they’re set up is perfect, but I definitely am going to have to give this offer serious consideration.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Assassination is a Leaky Abstraction⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The most amazing part is not even that long ago, everyone agreed this is how it worked, even the business owners. I remember recently watching the 1923 silent film “Safety Last!” starring Harold Lloyd. I was very struck by a particular scene in the film where the owner of the store Harold Lloyd works at says:

  “I’d give $1000 for a new idea that would attract an enormous crowd to our store. Something is wrong with our exploitation! We simply are not getting the publicity that our position in the commercial world calls for.”

  This character is not presented as some kind of villain or saying something wrong. He’s just talking about how everyone understands business to work, by exploitation, which has always simply meant taking advantage of some kind of opportunity, even when people like Marx talked about it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Legal complications await if OpenAI tries to shake off control by the nonprofit that owns the rapidly growing tech company⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The public needs to understand that this is literally people trying to take away some thing that belongs to the public, without having to even pay you for it

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨This GameCube Mini Is Downright Adorable | Time Extension⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  “Nintendo take note”

  this person has no clue what they are asking for.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Gemini AI tells the user to die — the answer appeared out of nowhere when the user asked Google's Gemini for help with his homework⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t use it for writing directly, but I do like to use it for worldbuilding. Because I can think of a general concept that could be explored in so many different ways, it’s nice to be able to just give it to an LLM and ask it to consider all of the possible ways it could imagine such an idea playing out. it also kind of doubles as a test because I usually have some sort of idea for what I’d like, and if it comes up with something similar on its own that kind of makes me feel like it would be something which would easily resonate with people. Additionally, a lot of the times it will come up with things that I hadn’t considered that are totally worth exploring.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨An MSX Core Has Just Been Released For The Analogue Pocket | Time Extension⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Personally I don’t even think the price is unreasonable however I have no respect for businesses which engage in FOMO tactics, especially for premium products.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bluesky says it won’t train AI on your posts⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Better BlueSky than Twitter, but I hope everyone understands by now that there’s literally no reason to take a business’s word for anything unless they somehow have legally obligated themselves to be committed to doing that thing forever. Otherwise you can only trust them to keep doing it for as long as it’s worth it from an economic perspective. I’m not saying that it can’t ever happen that a business acts out of pure goodwill, but I would never count on it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨NES Platformer Micro Mages heading to PlayStation | Retro Gaming News 24/7⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Just to clarify to anybody who who might be confused. It’s going to be on PlayStation store not on the PlayStation console which came out almost 30 years ago