pupbiru
@pupbiru@aussie.zone
- Comment on Now I finally get it 6 days ago:
that tracks with my lived experience
- Comment on It's on your blood! 1 week ago:
ie if you already have a teflon thing, that teflon is non-toxic and there’s no point to just throw it out… avoid new things if possible because they byproducts are harmful, but disposing of existing product is unhelpful
- Comment on It's on your blood! 1 week ago:
ie if you already have a teflon thing, that teflon is non-toxic and there’s no point to just throw it out… avoid new things if possible because they byproducts are harmful, but disposing of existing product is unhelpful
- Comment on It's on your blood! 1 week ago:
add from crayfish
- Comment on AI experts return from China stunned: The U.S. grid is so weak, the race may already be over 1 week ago:
6 is the “one of the good ones” clause
- Comment on Microsoft's Windows lead says the next version of Windows will be "more ambient, pervasive, and multi-modal" as AI redefines the desktop interface 1 week ago:
The thought of relying on Microsoft services for something sends shivers down my spine.
government (including most chillingly, international governments) and hospitals pretty much all use microsoft tools - outlook, sharepoint, etc - to run huge parts of their organisations
that’s the truly scary part
- Comment on Microsoft's Windows lead says the next version of Windows will be "more ambient, pervasive, and multi-modal" as AI redefines the desktop interface 1 week ago:
ambient: we will do things without asking
pervasive: we want to be everywhere in your life
multi-modal: and by everywhere we mean FUCKING EVERYWHERE
- Comment on Begun the kernel wars have 1 week ago:
that is wildly inaccurate. do you have a source?
- Comment on Begun the kernel wars have 1 week ago:
“needs” might be debatable… i’m just don’t think the trade-off is worth it (and thus don’t play games that require kernel-level access)
- Comment on Begun the kernel wars have 1 week ago:
code running in kernel space is hugely privileged… it can open up enormous security vulnerabilities because when you’re in the kernel you can bypass a LOT of security checks and restrictions… windows code is generally pretty well tested, so is unlikely to have particularly bad bugs like RCEs etc… but these kernel mode apps aren’t nearly as rigorously tested - things like this is what lead to the crowdstrike outage
things running in the kernel can also cause a lot more damage than user space apps, because the kernel doesn’t do a lot of the error checking and validation that stops things like kernel panics
- Comment on Begun the kernel wars have 1 week ago:
load on boot INTO THE KERNEL is the main issue… this isn’t “just another executable”
- Comment on GitHub is no longer independent at Microsoft after CEO resignation 1 week ago:
github.com/go-gitea/gitea/tree/main/…/workflows
github.com/go-gitea/gitea/actions
they do in fact make extensive use of github actions
- Comment on Lemmy be like 1 week ago:
things like the “patch x out of an image” allows people to express themselves with their own creative works more fully
text-based genai has myriad purposes that don’t involve wholesale generation of entirely new creative works:
using it as a natural language parser in low-stakes situation (think like you’re browsing a webpage and want to add an event to the calendar but it just has a paragraph of text that says “next wednesday at xyz”)
the generative part makes it generically more useful that specialist models (and certainly less accurate most of the time), and people can use them to build novel things on top of rather than be limited to the original intent of the model creator
everything genai should be used for should be low-stakes: things that humans can check quickly, or doesn’t matter if it’s wrong… because it will be wrong some of the time
- Comment on Lemmy be like 1 week ago:
i’m pro-AI (with huuuuge caveats) but i disagree with this… AI reduces certain jobs in a similar way, but it also enables large scale manipulation and fucks with our thought processes on a large scale
i’d say it’s like if a mechanised weaving loom also invented the concept of disinformation and propaganda
- Comment on Lemmy be like 1 week ago:
you’re absolutely right!
the ban on guns in australia has been disastrous! the number of good guys with guns has dropped dramatically and … well, so has the number of bad guys … but that’s a mirage! ignore our near 0 gun deaths… that’s a statistical anomaly!
- Comment on Lemmy be like 1 week ago:
as an aussie, yeah, then you should stop people from having guns
i honestly wouldn’t be surprised if the total number of gun deaths in australia since we banned guns (1996) was less than the number of gun deaths in the US THIS WEEK
- Comment on Lemmy be like 1 week ago:
then you have little understanding of how genai works… the social impact of genai is horrific, but to argue the tool is wholly bad conveys a complete or purposeful misunderstanding of context
- Comment on HELP HIM. 1 week ago:
yeah! animal testing only exists to cause harm! outcomes are irrelevant - science gets off on beating up animals and THATS why animal testing exists… those sadistic pricks
- Comment on Have you encountered this? 1 week ago:
the restaurant pays for their staff… should you pay for having a table and chair too? staff is a basic requirement of a restaurant
- Comment on Mozilla under fire for Firefox AI "bloat" that blows up CPU and drains battery 2 weeks ago:
it’s even worse than that tho: donations are for the mozilla foundation which is doing all the nonsense everyone hates… firefox is the mozilla corporation, which is a distinct entity
IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO DONATE TO FIREFOX
- Comment on I bought a £16 smartwatch just because it used USB-C 2 weeks ago:
right… i think that’s less of a problem with PD chargers and more of a problem with non-compliant A chargers (and the device itself being non-compliant): wattage/amperage at these has nothing to do with the protocol (other than auto shutoff under a given current draw, but that’s not instantaneous)
i believe that the USB spec says there needs to be a resistor bridging one of the pins to receive power? i can see USB-A chargers just dumping 5v through the cable no matter what and USB-PD more reliably implementing the spec because it’s more complex, so less reason to cut corners
- Comment on YSK that Gerrymandering allows politicians to choose their own voters. In many countries, it's illegal. Gerrymandering is common in the United States 2 weeks ago:
I’ve heard a lot of Australians complain about politics there. Maybe that’s just because people complain about politics everywhere.
i think this is true no matter what: nz and germany are both more proportional systems and similarly people dislike politics
it also seems like Australia has a lot of problems that aren’t getting solved (like housing cost).
absolutely… some problems are incredibly tricky: getting people to vote against their interests (eg with housing, any effort to reduce house prices directly decreases the value of peoples assets - perhaps not investments, but their primary home even)
how to achieve some societal good things is really tricky in any democracy i think
- Comment on I bought a £16 smartwatch just because it used USB-C 2 weeks ago:
too powerful? what do you mean? USB PD by default supplies 5v the same as USB A and increments from there
5v is pretty low - 3v is pretty common logic voltage, but i doubt anyone would use voltage that low for battery charging?
do you mean you don’t like to “waste” a perfectly good powerful USB C port? you can get some pretty low watt USB C plugs, but honestly i much prefer to just have a brick with 7 big ports
- Comment on YSK that Gerrymandering allows politicians to choose their own voters. In many countries, it's illegal. Gerrymandering is common in the United States 2 weeks ago:
We can still hope the playing field will tilt back to level.
they’ve been doing this for years… it ain’t gonna happen. it’s not a symptom of trump: texas used to be a muuuuch more purple state, but these days it’s only ever thought of as a republican stronghold not because of their vote, but because of gerrymandering… that’s how long it’s been going on. most people can’t even remember a time when it was any different
- Comment on YSK that Gerrymandering allows politicians to choose their own voters. In many countries, it's illegal. Gerrymandering is common in the United States 2 weeks ago:
For most of our history, Congress understood their highest priority was to pass a budget, and they did. Now that is no longer important.
yeah it’s pretty fucked… in australia, this is a sure way to trigger a dissolved parliament and an early election: there are only 3 things that can happen (and the government shutting down isn’t 1 of them)
- the government resigns and the governor general (technically “the crowns representative in australia”, but in actuality they do very little unless there’s a crisis) appoints (probably) the leader of the opposition
- of budget bills fail 3 times the government may request a double dissolution - early, full federal elections
- the governor general unilaterally dismisses the PM, because if they government can’t even maintain supply then they don’t have the power to do anything at all (this has only ever happened once and was australia’s largest ever constitutional crisis, but i do like that it’s a valid fall-back)
- Comment on YSK that Gerrymandering allows politicians to choose their own voters. In many countries, it's illegal. Gerrymandering is common in the United States 2 weeks ago:
yup, so it’s different with RCV and representative: in australia we have this, where we still have a mostly 2 party system that’s representative but we have RCV, so you can preference other parties first, and still have your vote eventually flow to the major party of your choice
in this case, perhaps enough votes are lost that they loose a seat (we’ve had at least 1 green rep in parliament for a few elections in a row)
also we track “primary vote” - the number of people who ranked you #1 - as an important election metric with real consequences… there are limits to private donations for elections, and a significant portion of funding for elections comes from the government itself. any party that gets over 4% of the primary vote is eligible to claim a proportional amount of financing for next election… so you can punish them in a way that really matters without actually putting anything real on the line
- Comment on YSK that Gerrymandering allows politicians to choose their own voters. In many countries, it's illegal. Gerrymandering is common in the United States 2 weeks ago:
playing by the rules only makes sense when the other side does too… a level playing field is more important than some unspoken rules
yes, everyone agrees it should be impossible to gerrymander… but given that it’s not, for an election to be anywhere near “fair” (and to be clear it can’t when you’re gerrymandering) then both sides must do it otherwise it’s the most unfair thing possible
- Comment on YSK that Gerrymandering allows politicians to choose their own voters. In many countries, it's illegal. Gerrymandering is common in the United States 2 weeks ago:
i did a big ol post here about this
generally what you’re talking about is proportional representation… systems like this tend to lead to a government comprised of a lot of minor parties, which sounds great!
but it has its down sides (and i’m not saying 2 party is much better, but it’s useful to be aware of the situations it creates): when there are a lot of minor parties with no clear “above 50%” majority, they have to form a coalition government and that can be extremely fragile
you can’t hold parties to election promises, because you just don’t know what they’re going to have to give up to form a coalition, and even if they do end up forming a coalition you really don’t know how stable that coalition is going to be!
i guess in the US there’s gridlock anyway, so what the hell right? may as well at least have gridlock with parties blocking legislation based on things you believe in… buuuuuuut that’s probably a bad example: first past the post is far more to blame in that case than proportional vs representative democracy
- Comment on YSK that Gerrymandering allows politicians to choose their own voters. In many countries, it's illegal. Gerrymandering is common in the United States 2 weeks ago:
this is proportional vs representative democracy
it’s a choice between which you value more: your ideals (proportional - lots of minor parties get elected who better represent your morals and what you want accomplished) or someone to represent the area you live in (representative - inevitably leads to, actually, MINORITY rule because the majority across most districts votes for the party that they hate least - partly because first past the post, but also because in individual districts parties need to get above 50% to win, and that’s just a hard ask do matter the area you live)
- Comment on YSK that Gerrymandering allows politicians to choose their own voters. In many countries, it's illegal. Gerrymandering is common in the United States 2 weeks ago:
there are voting systems that take representation into account… generally you have your representatives that you vote for, and another number to “fill the gaps”… so you have the people who represent your area, and then others who the parties put forward based on their proportional vote… they don’t represent a district/area, but the party… so the idea is that if a minority party gets 10% of the vote, they should have 10% of the representation - districts be damned… philosophy is more important than land