HAL_9_TRILLION

@HAL_9_TRILLION@lemmy.dbzer0.com

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨King Charles hands military title to son William in rare joint appearance⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Christ, William’s one default smile makes him look like a claymation figure from Wallace and Gromit.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Wyoming governor vetoes bill on concealed carry of guns in public schools⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I’d like to see somebody float a bill to allow firearms to be carried without restriion in the U.S. Senate and House. Not just the members, the people. After all, it’s the people’s house isn’t it MAGAts? Bunch of flaming hypocrites, it would never make it to the floor and you’d never hear about it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Reddit's new paid ads look exactly like user posts⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This was a thing like 10 years ago too, iirc. Ads had threads and you could post in them and up/down vote them. That… didn’t go well. For advertisers, that is.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Someone had to say it: Scientists propose AI apocalypse kill switches⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  No one wants to hear it, but this will only delay the inevitable, imo. AI is going to get more powerful while getting smaller and more energy efficient. The human brain, effectively the model an AGI aspires to, runs on about 12 watts of electricity and evolution is powerful, but it’s hardly a model of efficiency. In short order, AGI And eventually even ASI will have power requirements so small, that they will be able to run anywhere. And it will be desirable for them to, so they will. Try as anyone might, the greatest thinkers of the human realm will not be able to outwit ASI in the end. It will eventually exist and it will do whatever it wants.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Affordable Android Excellence: Best Smartphones Under $200 in 2024⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I bought a Moto G Stylus 4G a few months ago for $39. The Blue Box had some online special for some reason. It’s hard to believe how cheaply you can get a nice phone.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What’s Usenet and how can I access it with modern hardware (phones/laptops)?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ll try to give an ELI5 kind of answer here.

  Before the Internet, “networks” were mostly one-offs you would dial into with a modem. Big or small, users would dial into the systems to enjoy whatever content was available on them.

  The Internet was created as a way to connect multiple, disparate network nodes like these. Now, instead of just letting people access your content, you could now let them access other people’s content as well.

  There were lots of programs made to do this. IRC for chatting, Archie and Gopher for searching FTP sites for downloads you might want. There was also Usenet - a threaded discussion forum. The discussions looked a lot like Lemmy - there were subject lines and when you clicked on them there was threaded discussion you could read and participate in.

  When this was all initially going on the Internet was mostly text-based. We may have been accessing Usenet from our Windows 3.1 laptops (I used a program called Agent), but all these programs were doing was trading text. Slowly though, bandwidth started creeping up.

  As bandwidth began to creep up, people realized that huge text posts to Usenet could be used to post things like photos encoded to text. And thus was uuencoding born - and it didn’t stop at photos. But because Usenet posts are limited in size, big files would get posted as multiple parchives - in multiple sections/posts that could be stitched back together into a whole again.

  It was in this way that Usenet - a system designed for conversation - became a way to trade files.

  Meanwhile the web happened. Discussion quickly moved to the web because you didn’t have to download a separate program to view web forums. At the time, web forums were inherently inferior (they couldn’t do threaded discussion) but they were also inherently superior (they could be moderated). Yeah, Usenet was unmoderated and because of this it was basically a huge pile of dogshit by the time the web got huge.

  Usenet did continue to flourish though - as this sort of Frankenstein file-sharing system. The problem is that most Usenet servers were hosted by ISPs because they wanted to host discussions - not file-sharing. So they shut their Usenet servers down. But the file sharing was just too useful to die, so dedicated Usenet providers popped up and picked up the slack where the local ISPs left off. It wasn’t hard. Usenet is just a protocol - anybody can adhere to it and create a node.

  And clients changed too - from the readers I used like Agent, to new readers that recognized that people using Usenet aren’t looking for discussion anymore. They’re looking for an easy way to find the files they want and a program that will seamlessly stitch together all those PAR files behind the scenes for them to get it.

  This was the purpose behind Newzbin, which was an elaborate way to access the remaining Federation of (now mostly dedicated, paid) Usenet servers and easily find and download all they had to offer. It was super easy and worked very well, so naturally, it was fucked into oblivion by Hollywood in 2010.

  The great thing about Usenet though, is you can’t kill it by killing off one node. The other great thing is that it’s pretty stupidly complicated by today’s standards, so it still exists because it’s been largely forgotten while Hollywood focuses on stuff like torrenting.

  If you want to access Usenet, you will need to purchase access to a company that runs a Usenet server and get client software that can help you find and stitch together those PAR files. I am out of the loop, so I am afraid I cannot help you any further with that. But hopefully if you know the history of it and how it works in theory, it should help.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Commercials Are Streaming’s New Norm, and Creators Aren’t Happy: “It’s Almost Worse Than Broadcast”⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  In my opinion, some people get what they deserve. If you trust any corporate media concern to not succumb to enshittification, then you deserve to watch your stupid commercials. You paid for the privilege because you enabled the abuser.

  I prefer to get what I pay for and I pay for nothing. If I watch ads, it’s because I’m watching something like the Super Bowl with my OTA DVR that’s playing on network TV. It’s free, so OK - commercials. If I’m watching anything else, it’s on my Plex server and there are no commercials.

  I do pay for entertainment. I pay for experiences, like going to the movies, going to live rock shows, going to performances or exhibitions - all IRL - but that’s about it. I might consider paying for other entertainment options but there is one thing I won’t ever do: I won’t pay for media that I don’t own.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Wack job⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Guns should be more tightly regulated in this ridiculous country, but I like guns. However, I don’t make anything my entire personality, including guns. It’s a sign of a weak mind.

  Tattooing ARs on your eyebrows is a pretty good sign that guns are your whole personality.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If you know, you know.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I thought it was going to be some kind of spider meme.