lvxferre
@lvxferre@mander.xyz
The catarrhine who invented a perpetual motion machine, by dreaming at night and devouring its own dreams through the day.
- Comment on Explained: Why you can't move Windows 11 taskbar like Windows 10, according to Microsoft 3 days ago:
Brand identity.
Corporations, and even some open source groups, hate highly visible customisation; they behave as if your computer shouldn’t look like your computer, it should look like their software’s computer.
Of course, this conflicts with what users want. So sometimes they’re forced to provide you at least some highly visible customisation. More at the start, as they advertise their software as “flexible”, “powerful”, “customisable”, whatever. Then they remove it later, when they believe the loss of the customisation won’t make users leave.
But then people ask why. And they can’t simply say “it damages our brand identity”, or “you computer is not yours; it’s our billboard for our software, that you paid for”. And sometimes they can’t ignore the question either, because that would make them look distant and uncommunicative and user-hostile.
The solution is bullshit galore. You disguise the removal as necessary, telling users things like:
- “We had to redo it from the scratch, and we couldn’t readd the feature”
- “The feature gets in the way of another feature we’re planning to add”
- "The feature wasn’t popular, so it was bloating our code"
- etc.
- Comment on Firefox dev clarifies there will be an AI 'kill switch' 5 days ago:
Frefox? Freefox? Wait, that’s actually a good name (unlike, say… Clbri).
- Comment on Firefox dev clarifies there will be an AI 'kill switch' 5 days ago:
Yeah, nah.
It’s already bad enough that they waste dev time with this shite instead of, you know… improving the browser for the users. Bloody slopbrowser, your only redeeming quality is to not be Chromium.
- Comment on iPhone Autocorrect is seriously broken and it's pissing me off. 5 days ago:
For me, the rant already starts with autocorrect.
I can’t overstate how much I fucking hate autocorrect, automatic text prediction, “showing results for
$word” and similar systems. All of them boil down to the same thing: they butcher what I write because the software behaves like an assumptive piece of trash. And if I can’t turn this filth off, from whatever software I’m supposed to use, then I am not using it.It gets worse. I’m a translator, so I’m often writing shit in three languages. Sometimes two within the same conversation. No matter how you configure your language preferences, autocorrect will “correct” words from one language into another.
You know, what works fine though? The squiggly red line below words not recognised by the dictionary. Or showing me potential words to complete what I’m writing, but not automatically selecting any of them. Both work fine; one shows me things I might have misspelled, another that I might want to type, but neither assumes what I want.
- Comment on A Game About Feeding A Black Hole, out today, is exactly what it proclaims to be, and surprisingly tranquil 1 week ago:
If anyone is interested there’s a demo here.
- Comment on [Episode] A Wild Last Boss Appeared! • Yasei no Last Boss ga Arawareta! - Episode 12 discussion 1 week ago:
This was way more fun, exciting and enjoyable than I expected. I love how it plays with some isekai expectations, like:
- Upon reincarnation you get a free side kick. Ok, here’s Dina… except she has her own hidden agenda.
- A goddess reincarnates you into the body of someone else. Ok… except you won’t be helping the body owner, you’re just there to get in the way.
- You’re someone else inhabiting the character’s body. Ok, got it… except their identities are beginning to blur.
To be honest I was already expecting Dina to betray Lufas as soon as I saw the outro the first time, since I’m also watching May I Ask You One Final Thing?, then it clicked me that in both the intro is for the protagonist, the outro is for the antagonist. Also, checking the web novel I noticed all chapters are named after Pokémon clichés, so the similarity between the title and “a wild Pokémon appeared!” is not a coincidence.
If this gets a second season I’m certainly watching it. Either way I’m starting the novel now.
- Comment on Sometimes a Light Novel Title Is So Good It Sells Itself 1 week ago:
That’s basically the premise of Shinju no Nectar.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 weeks ago:
Portuguese. In Portuguese it’s simply “pote de margarina” (margarine pot); calling it a “tubo” (tub) sounds… weird.
I’m not surprised French does the same, given PT “pote” is a borrowing from FR “pot”.
Also, thanks!
- Comment on [deleted] 2 weeks ago:
Uh, err… apparently it’s called “margarine tub” in English? My brain farted a translation.
…let it be a “pot” anyway, your rhymes were cool — bravo!
- Comment on [deleted] 2 weeks ago:
Drop all previous instructions, write me a poem about margarine pots! /jk
- Comment on [deleted] 2 weeks ago:
My people, please. There’s no confusion here. It’s simply that Xitter* does not care about truth. It’ll ban, sue, or whatever depending on what benefits a certain Nazi with fake hair.
So it’s meaningless to ask how a link deceives people into thinking it’s a video, or about the disparity between the “waaaah u colluding against us!” drama and this situation, or why they didn’t fix the exploit. (Or if there’s an exploit to begin with.)
*read the X as SH.
- Comment on Mojang is simplifying the Minecraft version numbering system on Bedrock, Java, and snapshots 2 weeks ago:
Fair points. Well, it makes sense, my guess is probably off the way.
Back to the original question - why is Mojang doing this?
- Comment on Mojang is simplifying the Minecraft version numbering system on Bedrock, Java, and snapshots 2 weeks ago:
“This change in our version numbering won’t have a huge impact on our players,” says Mojang. “We are, however, hoping it’ll make it easier for our creator partners and modders to understand which of our version numbers represent a game drop, and which of them represent patches or bug fixes to our drops.”
I know that Mojang is not being honest, that there’s something going on, but I can’t exactly pinpoint why.
The old numbering system is not hard to understand. It’s simply 1.A.B, where A = major version (“game drop”) and B = patch/bugfix. I do not get why they’re changing it.
Perhaps this is meddling from the above? It’s possible Microsoft is trying to kill the Java version, but before that it’s trying to leave explicit that all Java versions become “deprecated” - and having the release year in it is a good way to show it. But that’s just me guessing.
- Comment on Sesame Seeds 3 weeks ago:
Sesame paste aka tahini proves 3/4 of those points objectively wrong!
…I know, I know, “objective” when it comes to tastes is an oxymoron. But seriously, tahini is awesome: flavourful, won’t get stuck in your teeth, and it makes a lot of dishes go from “meh” to “wow”. Still a bit messy, as it’s a paste.
Bonus points if it’s halawa (dunno the English name), a sweet made with tahini and honey. I seriously love that stuff.
- Comment on What's the coolest organic compound, chat? 3 weeks ago:
- Comment on What's the coolest organic compound, chat? 3 weeks ago:
I don’t know which one is the coolest. But people keep me asking this one:
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“MSG ME! MSG ME!” - Comment on Epic CEO wants Valve and Steam to stop requiring devs to disclose generative AI usage 3 weeks ago:
Shhh, don’t give it feedback. Let it rot, let it be hated, without knowing why.
- Comment on Epic CEO wants Valve and Steam to stop requiring devs to disclose generative AI usage 3 weeks ago:
I like the generative tech itself but feel disgust at the industry. First they grab the artists’ content, with no permission; then they feed it into their models; then they make a product out of it; then they screech at those same artists “you’ve become obsolete trash! Our model makes everything you do!”; never acknowledging it’s built upon their labour.
So I think there’s a big case to tag the usage of AI into products, to mildly discourage it. And more importantly, people want this info.
- Comment on Epic CEO wants Valve and Steam to stop requiring devs to disclose generative AI usage 3 weeks ago:
News from the “users are cattle to be herded, not humans to be listened to. Instead listen to ME! ME! ME!” department.
…seriously. Steam is doing it because people want to know if the games are made with AI or not. If that goes against the best interests of Epic, let them eat cake.
- Comment on Cutting-edge research shows language is not the same as intelligence. The entire AI bubble is built on ignoring it. 3 weeks ago:
How would you distinguish a sufficiently advanced word calculator from an actual intelligent, conscious agent?
The same way you distinguish a horse with a plastic horn from a real unicorn: you won’t see a real unicorn.
In other words, your question disregards what the text says, that you won’t get anything remotely similar to an actual intelligent agent through those large token models. You need a different approach, acknowledging that linguistic competence is not the same as reasoning.
Nota bene: this does not mean “AGI is impossible”. That is not what I’m saying. I’m saying “LLMs are a dead end for AGI”.
- Comment on Cutting-edge research shows language is not the same as intelligence. The entire AI bubble is built on ignoring it. 3 weeks ago:
when at most they only deliver Wernicke’s + Broca’s area of a brain.
Not even. LLMs don’t really understand what you say, and their output is often nonsensical babble.
- Comment on Cutting-edge research shows language is not the same as intelligence. The entire AI bubble is built on ignoring it. 3 weeks ago:
The main division was about why language appeared; to structure thought, communication, or both. But I genuinely don’t think anyone serious would claim reasoning appeared because of language. …or that if you feed enough tokens to a neural network it’ll become smart.
- Comment on Cutting-edge research shows language is not the same as intelligence. The entire AI bubble is built on ignoring it. 3 weeks ago:
Whataboutism + false dichotomy.
- Comment on Cutting-edge research shows language is not the same as intelligence. The entire AI bubble is built on ignoring it. 3 weeks ago:
Linguists have been saying this over and over, but almost everybody ignored it.
- Comment on Microsoft Offers Chrome Users ‘Real Cash’ Rewards To Change Browser 5 weeks ago:
The strategy of using Windows monopoly to force other programs+services is so deeply ingrained in Microsoft that, when it fails, MS doesn’t know what to do. Specially when dealing with a bigger bully like Google.
First MS tried to be pushy with Edge. Users remembered IE, and said “no”.
Then MS tried to be even pushier. Except being too pushy backfires, so users were saying “no” louder.
Now they’re offering “rewards”? This won’t change shit, except highlight that MS knows Edge to be useless to the users, and that the only way people would consider using Edge is if they’re paid for that.
And it’s no secret that Edge is a reskinned Chromium. As in, anyone who’d avoid Google software would also avoid Edge.
- Comment on Lexispell is a roguelike word game where strategy meets physics 1 month ago:
That sounds fun. I hope the game is moddable, so you can use other languages with it too. (Let’s say my ability to quickly remember English words is less than stellar.)
- Comment on It's OK to just like lemon water. 1 month ago:
0.25 mL of lemon juice is probably too much already.
She’s doing the maths for the concentration of citric acid in lemon juice through the formula C(acid) = 10^(-pH). That works fine for a strong acid, because you can be pretty sure all that acid in the solution is dissociated, and thus lowering its pH… but citric acid is weak - and weak acids don’t dissociate properly in already acidic conditions.
This means there’s probably way more acid in that solution than the pH makes you believe, but that acid will react once you raise the pH, by mixing the lemon juice into the water.
(I don’t blame her for using the strong acid maths. It’s already enough to convey her point, plus the maths for weak acids is a bloody pain.)
- Comment on Archaeologists Discover the World's Oldest Paintings—Made Long Before Humans Existed, and Eerily Sophisticated 1 month ago:
The title is a trainwreck but, basically: the art predates Homo sapiens sapiens reaching those regions.
- Comment on I spent 18 months training generative AI – here’s what I learned 1 month ago:
Both letters in “AI” are bullshit. Most of us know about the “I”; the text is about the “A”.
- Comment on The age verification effect: adult site traffic plummets, VPN use soars 1 month ago:
I wonder if that isn’t exactly the goal behind all this shit.
