lvxferre

@lvxferre@mander.xyz

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bluesky, the Fediverse, and the future of social media⁩ ⁨⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  I get what you say, and I agree; but when it comes to the average user I wonder if they’ll even get it. They don’t think on the grounds of a “protocol” or a “platform”, it used to be “site” and now “app”. They do it even with email, of all things, even if it’s one of the oldest cross-platform protocols out there!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bluesky, the Fediverse, and the future of social media⁩ ⁨⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  They tolerate each other enough to get each into a corner and not interact much.

  And yet that is not what we see in the Fediverse. Those “corners” don’t exist here.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bluesky, the Fediverse, and the future of social media⁩ ⁨⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  The people here and their attitude towards people who don’t agree with them are the problem.

  And that’s a structural problem. The ActivityPub was supposed to allow both the “average person” and the “nerd” to coexist in the same platform, without one getting too much in the way of the other; it doesn’t.

  I’m not sure on a good solution for that.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bluesky, the Fediverse, and the future of social media⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s all fun and games until venture capital kicks in, and exploit that central user data store to further centralise the rest of the network. Even then yes, I think that Mastodon has a lot to learn with Bluesky, on how to make user experience smoother.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨City-building on a massive creature, The Wandering Village - Research & Economy update is live⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Stray Fawn Studio is the same studio that developed Niche; Niche is a good teaching tool, but it’s about as entertaining as a game as mopping the floor.

  Based on that I’d advise caution against buying this game while it’s still in early access, unless you’re satisfied with its current gameplay.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Final update on my pineapple plant journey. Time to eat this little guy and replant the top to do it all over again hopefully!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Dude, that’s some amazing job, specially given the conditions.

  Don’t feel discouraged by the size - the next generation will be probably larger, since you got a really large crown. I think that they try to reduce crown size for commercially grown ones, dunno, but the second gen is typically better.

  Fertilisation also plays a huge role on fruit size - as the plant is young you want to give it lots of nitrogen, but as it starts blooming shift the focus to potassium and phosphor. (I do this all the time with peppers.)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I got tired of killing my cactus so now I plant mint⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  it is a wonderful adventure to start gathering all the plastic that has a minimum depth and make holes with a wire and get intoxicated by the smell of burning plastic

  This is one of those joys of gardening that books and online tutorials definitively do not talk about.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I got tired of killing my cactus so now I plant mint⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s a damn great choice if you killed a cactus. You probably overwatered it, but mint loves water. Water 2~4 times a week and you should be good.

  It will quickly overgrow your pot, but resist the temptation to plant it on the ground. It isn’t like mint doesn’t thrive on soil, it does a bit too well… killing everything in its path.

  I used the peanut butter pot, support the extreme cheapskates.

  I know that feeling. Apple trees in margarine pot:
  Image

  Mandarin oranges in coke bottle:
  Image

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What do you think objectivity is, and what do you think of it?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The volume of a mixture cannot be described by a simple sum of the volume of its components. As such, this does not make the statement “1+1=2” false in this situation; it’s still true but irrelevant, there’s no “+” here on first place.

  Additionally, let us suppose for a moment that the reasoning above is invalid. Even then, it’s still an objective matter - because then the truth value of “1+1=2” would vary depending on the object (are we dealing with apples, or liquid mixtures?), not on the subject (who’s mixing the liquids - you or me?).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What do you think objectivity is, and what do you think of it?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I disagree that this is subjective. Even if someone hypothetically doesn’t accept the ZF[C], the statement still accurately describes reality, in a way that doesn’t depend on the subject. For example, you can’t start with two apples and two oranges and have five or tree fruits.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What do you think objectivity is, and what do you think of it?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  My definition of “objectivity” is “the approach towards a philosophical matter that seeks to minimise the role of the subject in said matter”.

  For example:

  • If I say “two plus two equals four”, I’m being objective. My statement should be true regardless of who is saying it, who’s doing the maths, etc.
  • If I say “In my opinion, green apples are great”, I’m not being objective. I’m being subjective: I’m acknowledging that the statement “green apples are great” is true for one subject (me), but it might not be true for other subjects (perhaps you don’t like green apples).

  what do you think of it?

  Truth is objective and should be handled objectively. Gravity doesn’t stop working because you’re in a bad mood; 2+2 doesn’t fluctuate between 3 and 5 depending on the observer; either a past event happened, or it didn’t.

  Other philosophical matters are better handled subjectively. For example, morality; something can be good or bad depending on the subject, and there’s no way to handle this objectively.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Zuckerberg: The AI Slop Will Continue Until Morale Improves⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  For real. Companies being extra pushy with their product always makes me picture their decision makers saying:

  “What do you mean, «we’re being too pushy»? Those are customers! They are not human beings, nor deserve to be treated as such! This filth is stupid and un-human-like, it can’t even follow simple orders like «consume our product»! Here we don’t appeal to its reason, we smear advertisement on its snout until it needs to open the mouth to breath, and then we shove the product down its throat!”

  Is this accurate? Probably not. But it does feel like this, specially when they’re trying to force a product with limited use cases into everyone’s throats. Such as machine text and image generation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Typing monkey would be unable to produce 'Hamlet' within the lifetime of the universe, study finds⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The insertion of an all knowing checker who could have written it himself anyway

  The checker does make all the difference, but he doesn’t need to be able to write it by himself. It could be even a brainless process, such as natural selection.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Typing monkey would be unable to produce 'Hamlet' within the lifetime of the universe, study finds⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think the point is less about any kind of route to Hamlet, and more about the absurdity of infinite tries in a finite space(time).

  I know. It’s just that creationists misuse that metaphor so often that I couldn’t help but share my brainfart here.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Indiana Jones doesn't "endorse" Nazis, Bethesda assure, just in case you were confused by him repeatedly murdering them⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not. We’re talking about different things.

  Backtrack to Miles O’Brien’s comment. They’re clearly talking about individual depictions, and my comment focuses on that. To assume that people with shitty worldviews must be necessarily incompetent is wishful thinking.

  The reason why the Nazi worldview is invalid has jack shit to do with efficiency or competence, it’s as simple as “that worldview oppresses the lives of innocent people into living hells”.

  In the meantime you’re talking about the social impact of continuous, somewhat consistent-ish depictions of the Nazi in media, not individual depictions. What you’re saying is valid but another can of worms.

  Even just repeating things like “At least Mussolini made the trains run on time” plays into it, especially when it’s a lie, just like the Wunderwaffe programs or the Nazi “miraculous economic recovery” which was just making people work longer hours and deficit spending.

  Note that, if people are less eager to play along that fallacy, this sort of argument doesn’t roll any more. Suddenly if Merdolini made the trains run on time or not doesn’t matter, and can be safely called out as a distraction. Just like the Nazi economic recovery.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Typing monkey would be unable to produce 'Hamlet' within the lifetime of the universe, study finds⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Perhaps even worse: Wobblesticke, Jiggleweapone, stuff like this.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Typing monkey would be unable to produce 'Hamlet' within the lifetime of the universe, study finds⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I have a way to make it work.

  Have the monkey write down a single character. Just one. 29/30 of the time, it won’t be the same character as the first one in Shakespeare’s complete works; discard that sheet of paper, then try again. 1/30 of the time the monkey will type out the right character; when they do it, keep that sheet of paper and make copies out of it.

  Now, instead of giving a completely blank sheet to the monkey, give them one of those copies. And let them type the second character. If different from the actual second character in Shakespeare’s works, discard that sheet and give him a new copy (with the right 1st char still there - the monkey did type it out!). Do this until the monkey types the correct second character. Keep that sheet with 2 correct chars, make copies out of it, and repeat the process for the third character.

  And then the fourth, the fifth, so goes on.

  Since swapping sheets all the time takes more time than letting the monkey go wild, let’s increase the time per typed character (right or wrong), from 1 second to… let’s say, 60 times more. A whole minute. And since the monkey will type junk 29/30 of the time, it’ll take around 30min to type the right character.

  …not really. Shakespeare’s complete works have around 5 million characters, so the process should take 5*10⁶ * 30min = 2.5 million hours, or 285 years.

  But we could do it even better. This approach has a single monkey doing all the work; the paper has 200k of them. We could split Shakespeare’s complete works into 200k strings of 25 chars each, and assign each string to a monkey. Each monkey would complete their assignment, on average, after 12h30min; some will take a bit longer, but now we aren’t talking about the thermal death of the universe or even centuries, it’ll take at most a few days.

  ---

  Why am I sharing this? I’m not invalidating the paper, mind you, it’s cool maths.

  I’ve found this metaphor of monkeys typing Shakespeare quite a bit in my teen years, when I still arsed myself to discuss with creationists. You know, the sort of people who thinks that complex life can’t appear due to random mutations, just like a monkey can’t type the full works of Shakespeare.

  Complex life is not the result of a single “big” mutation, like a monkey typing the full thing out of the blue; it involves selection and inheritance, as the sheets of paper being copied or discarded.

  And just like assigning tasks to different monkeys, multiple mutations can pop up independently and get recombined. Not just among sexual beings; even bacteria can transmit genes horizontally.

  Already back then (inb4 yes, I was a weird teen…) I developed the skeleton of this reasoning. Now I just plopped the numbers that the paper uses, and here we go.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Typing monkey would be unable to produce 'Hamlet' within the lifetime of the universe, study finds⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  And we need more of them!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What do you like/dislike about lemmy?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I know, the maturity standard isn’t too high, but I still think that Lemmy is going rather well given where the userbase is from.

  By “witch hunting” I mean “to claim that someone, a group, or a piece of content belongs to a socially undesirable group, without rational grounds to do so.”

  Here’s a made up example. Let’s say that Bob uses a picture of Richard Stallman as his avatar. Alice sees it, and…

  • [Alice] Bob! Why do you use that sick fuck as your avatar? You must be a paedophile!
  • [Bob] Nah. I use this avatar because I agree with Stallman’s views on software freedom, and nothing else. I don’t agree with his opinions on sex and sexuality, specially not about children.
  • [Alice] That’s bullshit, I bet that you abuse little children! MOOOODS!
  • [Bob] No, Alice, I don’t. Stop lying.
  • [Charlie] Alice, please, stop making shit up. Pleeeease.
  • [Alice] CHARLIE YOU DISGUSTING PIECE OF SHIT WHY ARE YOU DEFENDING A PEDO???

  Alice here is witch hunting. Alice has no grounds to claim that Bob is a paedophile, but she’s still doing it.

  The “witches” often do exist, mind you - they’re racists, bigots, sexual offenders, paedophiles, incels, transphobes, fascists, so goes on. They are socially undesirable, and need to be kicked out. Even then, witch hunting should not be tolerated in online communities: what they do is intrinsically unjust, it makes their target feel like shit, it makes the whole community walk on eggs (because anything that they say or do might get distorted into “witch behaviour”), and it numbs people against the issue with the actual witches (just like the boy who cried wolves unwillingly protected the wolves, witch hunters unwillingly protect the actual “witches”).

  I saw this plenty, plenty times in Reddit. But here in Lemmy it’s surprisingly more common, given the smaller userbase.

  But I would argue that it is as true now as it was then: people don’t enjoy being on the receiving end of intolerance, hence tend to be intolerant right back, and yet that is as it should be.

  Fighting back is good. Punching random people isn’t. Witch hunters do the later, not the former.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Indiana Jones doesn't "endorse" Nazis, Bethesda assure, just in case you were confused by him repeatedly murdering them⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve had one idiot tell me ANY media that paints them as competent or successful is glorifying them. And setting anything in a world where they succeeded and progressed technologically instead of collapsing is basically saying Hitler’s world view is valid.

  And people still wonder why I pick so much on the wishful thinking fallacy… I mean, that’s basically it, right? “Nazi are morally bad, I hate them, thus they must be incompetent”. And if you correctly highlight that this is fucking stupid, you’ll get some kid saying stuff like “I dun understand, why are you defending Nazi?”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What do you like/dislike about lemmy?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The problem with no voting system whatsoever is that content then surfaces by recency and/or replies, so people generate a lot of noise to make stuff they agree more visible.

  That said the current system is by no means perfect, and I agree with you that people should judge content by themselves.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What do you like/dislike about lemmy?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The userbase is overall more mature and can actually discuss complex topics. Different instances have completely different feels, vibes, cultures and userbases, and that’s amazing. Some admin teams are spez wannabees but the federated structure limits the damage that they can cause.

  Relative lack of niche communities. Witch hunting is becoming a worse problem here than in Reddit.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there ever a situation where a doctor can legally refuse to render aid to someone?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  [Warning: I’m no lawyer, nor doctor] It depends on the country. At least in Brazil this wouldn’t roll:

  • Article 135 of the Penal Code - demands you to render aid to people under grave danger, as long as it won’t incur in risk for you. That applies to everyone, not just doctors, but if you’re a doctor it becomes really hard to explain why you didn’t render aid.
  • Article 33 of the Medical Ethics Code - forces the doctor to render aid to someone seeking urgent or emergent professional care, when there’s no other doctor in a position to do so. This code of ethics is a big deal because failure to follow can make you unable to exert the profession.
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sugar vs baking soda to neutralize acid in canned tomatoes?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Sugar - it doesn’t neutralise but mask the sourness, so the resulting taste is a bit more interesting. Bicarbonate will truly neutralise it but the result is a boring sauce.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'It even breaks my heart a bit': Denuvo pushes back on its haters, says Steam forums are a 'very toxic, very hostile environment'⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s fair - and it’s clear that your moral premises are, like, diametrically opposed to mine (I completely disregard intent - for me responsibility takes the job).

  I was aware that you weren’t contradicting me but this sort of discussion is fun, sorry!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'It even breaks my heart a bit': Denuvo pushes back on its haters, says Steam forums are a 'very toxic, very hostile environment'⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  A person is good or bad depending on their impact on the people around them; as such I don’t consider “misguided” a valid defence.

  And while someone can be overall a good person while writing socially harmful and user-hostile software, because they have other qualities that compensate it, writing said software still makes them a worse person.

  It’s hard to get someone to understand something when their salary depends on not understanding it

  So it’s hard to be good when your salary depends on you being bad.

  ---

  Don’t get me wrong. I’m analysing this through my moral views, but I don’t think that they’re the only valid ones. Your mileage may vary.

  My other comment was mostly on how idiotic the whole defence is, not about morality (as this one).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Should I or should I not use/bother with using Linux? (READ THE WHOLE POST)⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The reason why people talk so much about the terminal is:

  1. It’s easier to tell newbies “input this command” than to guide them through a GUI.
  2. The terminal gives you a lot of flexibility to customise stuff.

  You’ll probably want to learn the terminal for any serious customisation. However, you don’t need to deal with it in your everyday usage.

  I’d suggest you to use a Live USB, like other users recommended. Linux Mint, plus plenty other distros, can run straight from the USB. It’ll be better for you to judge if you could/should be using Linux this way.

  About the thousand distros, most of them don’t matter. And if you’re a newbie, stick to Mint and you’ll probably not regret it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Cable companies ask 5th Circuit to block FTC’s click-to-cancel rule | Cable companies worry rule will make it hard to talk customers out of canceling⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Just for reference: in my State (somewhere in Latin America), since 2007, we have a law that TL;DRs to “if you offer a service through a certain mean, you must offer the cancellation method through the same mean; plus by phone, or internet, or snail mail”.

  It works like a charm because, contrariwise to what Michael Powell is claiming, customers aren’t such disgustingly stupid trash that will “accidentally” hit the cancel button, nor they deserve to be punished by making cancellation a fucking pain in the arse. (There’s probably similar laws elsewhere.)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨'It even breaks my heart a bit': Denuvo pushes back on its haters, says Steam forums are a 'very toxic, very hostile environment'⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh look, Denuvo playing the victim.

  And it exemplifies rather well why I hate the word “toxic”: bad reputation? Toxic! Criticism? Toxic!

  Bullshitting like «it’s in part because it “simply works” and would-be pirates are trying to make it unattractive to game publishers by disparaging it.»? Noooo that is not toxic because it aligns with the discourse that Denuvo wants to spread, right?

  “I’m with the company for such a long time,” said Ullmann. “The guys here are like my family, because a lot of the others here are also here for ages. It just hurts to see what’s posted out there about us, even though it has been claimed wrong for hundreds of times.”

  "Insert personal story to make it look like you aren’t criticising software; no, you’re criticising a family. You monster~

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If you find any German words, you can keep them⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Pets and language learning are some amazing combo. They don’t judge your pronunciation, they’re happy to stare at you while you speak with them no matter language, and you can still train language usage.

  Probably because yelling at pets is my favorite use of it, it makes the neighbors nervous

  My neighbours, in the meantime, gave up pronouncing her name. She’s locally known as “a alemãozinha” (the little German).