unmagical
@unmagical@lemmy.ml
- Comment on Grab your pitchforks 1 week ago:
Would
- Comment on Why does the GOP think “ANTIFA” is bad? 1 week ago:
The people in charge dislike Antifa because people who align under that label oppose those in power.
I hesitate to use the argument “‘Antifa’ means ‘anti-fascist’ therefore if you don’t like Antifa you are necessarily fascist”–not because I don’t believe it’s true, but because I believe it’s more correlation. The “National Socialist” party was not as its name purports, nor do many of the “Protect the children” laws actually do what they say on the tin; therefore a deeper inspection on acts, means, motives, and results is warranted over a mere “literal definition of the name.”
- Comment on soda 2 weeks ago:
“Shoes” - Yum!
- Comment on Do boycotts work? 2 weeks ago:
Disney allegedly lost 1.7 million customers after suspending Jimmy Kimmel. He was very quickly reinstated.
It’s not that boycotts don’t work, it’s more that they require a critical mass to work and that can be hard to achieve.
- Comment on I think the reason we evolved 5 fingers is so we can carry hot serving dishes farther by alternating which one is in contact with the hot thing. 3 weeks ago:
I learned in bible school that the reason we have 3 segments on our fingers is that with the palm they align perfectly with the panels on a banana. This is evidence of the perfect creator–the Christian God, and why humans can only hold bananas.
This is an actual thing an apologist said. He later backpedaled, but not before it became a trope to teach in Christian schools as evidence against evolution.
- Comment on Lead 3 weeks ago:
I don’t know if I’d classify any gun death as “worth it” in the manner of necessary to secure the “right” to bear arms. “Welcome” on the other hand…
- Comment on So...how the fuck do I trust *anything*? 4 weeks ago:
I don’t know if you’re involved in activism at all, but I heard some advice from an old Food Not Bombs head. Don’t trust the person that is always available, always has a car, or is down for anything. This is especially true if they are new or always wear bland or name brand clothing.
I guess more generally, don’t trust people that seem like they really want to be trusted.
Regarding surveillance online, yeah, there’s absolutely no privacy anywhere and there’s nothing you can do, so just be boring.
- Comment on Say it slowly 4 weeks ago:
I 👏 never 👏 said 👏 he 👏 licked 👏 my 👏 asshole.
- Comment on Lead 4 weeks ago:
He died as he lived, dismissing gun violence and lying about trans people. 😔
- Comment on The McDonald's employee who called on Luigi has never received their "reward", folks chasing the 100k for Kirk may not either... 1 month ago:
He also used an AI video to hide his location.
- Comment on Choosing my first printer is driving me mad. 1 month ago:
I had to put my Prusa i3 mk3s+ in storage for about a year when I was looking for a bigger place. I tucked it under the couch’s cushions when I moved from the east coast to the Rockies, and literally only had to blow the dust off the build plate before I was able to print again.
I can’t imagine most other printers going through that without needing at least a recalibration or leveling.
That reason alone will have me strongly considering Prusa when looking for my next printer.
- Comment on How to poop outdoors in a way that won’t harm the environment and other hikers 1 month ago:
A 15cm (6 inch) deep hole 30m (100 feet) from the trail or water.
- Comment on In a first, Google has released data on how much energy an AI prompt uses 2 months ago:
On a “respond to an individual query” level, yeah it’s not that much. But prior to response the data center had to be constructed, the entire web had to be scraped, the models trained, the servers continually ran regardless of load. There’s also way too many “hidden” queries across the web in general from companies trying to summarize every email or product.
All of that adds to the energy costs. This equivocation is meant to make people feel less bad about the energy impact of using AI, when so much of the cost is in building AI.
Furthermore, that’s the median value–the one that falls right in the middle of the quantity of queries. There’s a limit to how much less energy a query to the left of the median can use; there’s a significantly higher runway to the right of the median for excess energy use. This also only accounted for text queries; images and video generation efforts are gonna use a lot more.
- Comment on In a first, Google has released data on how much energy an AI prompt uses 2 months ago:
There are zero downsides when mentally associating an energy hog with “1 second of use time of the device that is routinely used for minutes at a time.”
- Comment on monthly challenge 2 months ago:
More than, 500 steps a day!? What do you think I am–active?
- Comment on YouTube just quietly blocked Adblock Plus — the internet hasn't noticed yet, but I've found a workaround 2 months ago:
- I ask a website for content.
- The website gives me content and a side of shit.
- I instruct my intelligent butler to discard the shit and only give me the content I requested.
- I get only the content I requested.
If a website wants to run ads that’s fine, I’ll just remove them. If they want to gate their content behind a paywall that’s fine, I’ll just make a determination about whether or not what they offer is worth it.
Removing ads is not “breaking a website” if anything it’s the exact opposite–restoring a cleaner layout, faster loading, less privacy invasion, and a reduced chance of malware.
- Comment on California May Ban Lyft And Uber From AI Price Gouging Users With Low Phone Batteries 2 months ago:
How is that AI related at all and not just an if statement and a couple statistical regressions to find an economically optimal battery percentage to price multiplier?
- Comment on This boomer couple would be hit with $700,000 tax bill if they sold their mansion 2 months ago:
Make $3,500,000 in profit and you get upset that you have to pay taxes on your 3.5x return on “investment.”
If you can’t cover <$1M in taxes from the sale of your $4.5M home maybe you should live within your means or get a roommate to help cover the bills like a normal person or something.
- Comment on Yeah 2 months ago:
Naw, text layers in a .xcf is where it’s at.
- Comment on Developer survey shows trust in AI coding tools is falling as usage rises 2 months ago:
I mean “ought to be useful,” sure that would be nice. They ain’t, but perhaps “ought to be.”
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
My family always told me that I’d grow more conservative and want a family of my own as I grow older.
As I aged I went from ambivalence toward politics and kids to decidedly anti-conservative and anti-kid.
You know your own feelings on the matter more than your family does, and letting your family dictate how you live your life will lead to resentment and misery.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
Relying on a small child to stay on the ground in order to not accidentally kill themselves is a great way to end up with a dead kid.
Furniture should be anchored to a wall, guns locked in safes with the safety enabled and ammo removed, drugs in child resistant packaging locked in a cabinet, drawers and cabinets secured, etc.
Kids climb stuff, get into things, find things they shouldn’t, AND they emulate what they see their parents do. Putting something out of reach is nowhere near secure enough.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
Guns should also be left in the open for children to play with since we’re on the topic of easy things we can change to threaten the life of those that may not know better yet!
- Comment on Humans can be tracked with unique 'fingerprint' based on how their bodies block Wi-Fi signals 2 months ago:
WiFi uses a subset of the significantly wider microwave band. Ground Penetrating Radar also uses a subset of the microwave band. While there can be some overlap, the frequencies desired for GPR will very broadly based on what you are looking for, what you are looking in, and how deep you are looking for that thing. The wattage supplied can also differ.
WiFi and Microwaves in general are most definitely not the same thing and I will absolutely encourage you to not set up a 1kW 3GHz jamming antenna for your WiFi needs.
Could you use WiFi for search and rescue? Maybe for a narrow set of circumstances, but in almost all situations a dedicated GPR option will be better.
This also won’t identify a victim, only revealing that one exists.
- Comment on Humans can be tracked with unique 'fingerprint' based on how their bodies block Wi-Fi signals 2 months ago:
Microwave based ground penetrating radar is actually different from WiFi. Also the technology referenced in the link is a motion based body locator, not an identity recognition device.
This is different technology doing different things than what the original article was talking about.
- Comment on Cloudflare gets involved in the battle against piracy, blocking streaming websites in the UK — and VPNs won't help 2 months ago:
VPNs will help. The article is only talking about VPN servers based in a location with a geo ban, which, duh. But if you actually use your VPN to be in a different country and not just a different city it’ll work fine.
- Comment on Echelon kills smart home gym equipment offline capabilities with update 2 months ago:
It’s no longer the product you bought, eh? Seems like everyone who owns one should be doing whatever they can to get their money back.
- Comment on Humans can be tracked with unique 'fingerprint' based on how their bodies block Wi-Fi signals 2 months ago:
Why do you need to identify specific cats over merely the presence of movement or cats in general?
- Comment on Humans can be tracked with unique 'fingerprint' based on how their bodies block Wi-Fi signals 2 months ago:
If all you need is presence detection then a motion sensor would be vastly more efficient.
If you actually need identity detection, then maybe, but you’ll still have to have a camera or detailed access logs to associate the interference signature with a known entity and at that point you may as well just put an RFID reader under the bowl you throw your keys into or use facial or gait detection.
- Comment on Humans can be tracked with unique 'fingerprint' based on how their bodies block Wi-Fi signals 2 months ago:
Probably not.
This kind of thing relies on the fact that the emitter and environments are static, impacting the propagation of the signals in a predictable way and that each person, having a unique physique, consistently interferes with that propagation in the same way. It’s a tool that reports “the interference in this room looks like the same interference observed in these past cases.”
Search and rescue is a very dynamic environment, with no opportunity to establish a local baseline, and with a high likelihood that the physiological signal you are looking for has been altered (such as by broken or severed limbs).
There are some other WiFi sniffing technologies that might be more useful for S&R such as movement detection, but I’m not sure if that will work as well when the broadcaster is outside the environment (as the more rubble between the emitter and the target the weaker your signal from reflections against the rubble).
Don’t think of this as being able to see through walls like with a futuristic camera, think of this as AI assisted anomaly detection in signal processing (which is exactly what the researchers are doing).