VirtualOdour
@VirtualOdour@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on Beep beep 2 days ago:
Anyone wondering t’s because he was using a portable radio with a rubber duckie antenna instead of the straight metal whip antenna fixed to trucks.
Could be where the jeep gets its association too if they used to have an antenna fixing point marked on user manuals.
- Comment on Using Ubuntu may give off a hipster vibes to the average PC user, but within the Linux community its has the opposite effect. 4 days ago:
I started on Debian potato and used pretty much every distribution at sone point, often three at a time. I’ve used Ubuntu for the last five years because it’s easy, stable and upto date. I know people get very minmax about their choice of os and I love that but yeah we need to remember when we say it’s ‘fine’ or ‘good enough’ that yeah it’s not race tuned or weaponised or whatever special builds people are making but ita still much much better than windows.
- Comment on Reddit locks down its public data in new content policy, says use now requires a contract 4 days ago:
Freeing people from the effects of poverty is good regardless of it coming about in a system which is often exploitative. Beyond capitalism bad you have no argument yet you shrug off that complaint with literally everything else you do - if you really thought capitalism is evil then the concept of copyright would be disgusting to you, but you love it when it allows you to rent seek or gate keep.
You are here on the internet despite every bit of it being run by private companies. You play video games and whatever else without the slightest concern but a tech that could allow poor people access to education angers you simply because you feel it devalues the privilege your global affluence and education have brought you.
I hope you realize that this isn’t going to look good for you in retrospect, when the global south isn’t being exploited to benefit western nations becauae we have ai tools able to supply the vital service required to improve things people will shake their heads remember people once tried to disrupt and defeat such a useful and important technology.
- Comment on Elon Musk’s Neuralink reports trouble with first human brain chip 4 days ago:
Science isn’t magic, nothing gets invented in a single iteration. Don’t let your hate for a single person blind you to reality, allowing someone who can’t control a mouse to do so is breathtaking. it’s not the first time it’s happened but it’s a big step forward and once testing and improvement stages have been completed we’ll hopefully see more fluid links to other movement tools and technologies such as llms which will allow people totally dependent on help to live their own lives.
- Comment on Reddit locks down its public data in new content policy, says use now requires a contract 5 days ago:
This is another delusional fantasy from people who don’t understand how the models work or the basics of statistics.
Ai isn’t going to collapse due to bad data and adding noise won’t have any effect because it’s statically irrelevant. Newer approaches also have various checks built in for veracity so gpt5 going forward it’ll have even less effect.
That doesn’t change the fact trying to destroy a technology which will disproportionately benefit the most impoverished people on the planet by allowing them to access vital services such as education in their first language is a frankly evil act. And that’s only one of the thousands of positive use cases for natural language computing and ai.
- Comment on Elon Musk’s Neuralink reports trouble with first human brain chip 6 days ago:
Watching his videos he’s a clever snd self aware guy more than capable of thinking for himself. Hate Elon but you don’t need to shit on the disabled by acting like being in a wheelchair means you can’t think for yourself
- Comment on Stack Overflow bans users en masse for rebelling against OpenAI partnership — users banned for deleting answers to prevent them being used to train ChatGPT 6 days ago:
Meta and Google have done more for open source ai than anyone else, I think a lot of antis don’t really understand how computer science works so you imagine it’s like them collecting up physical iron and taking it into a secret room never to be seen again.
The actual tools and math is what’s important, research on best methods is complex and slow but so far all these developments are being written up in papers which anyone can use to learn from - if people on the left weren’t so performative and lazy we could have our own ai too
- Comment on Stack Overflow bans users en masse for rebelling against OpenAI partnership — users banned for deleting answers to prevent them being used to train ChatGPT 6 days ago:
Why do people roll coal? Why do vandalize electric car chargers? Why do people tie ropes across bike lanes?
Because a changing world is scary and people lash out at new things.
The coal rollers think they’re fighting a vallient fight against evil corporations too, they invested their effort into being a car guy and it doesn’t feel fair that things are changing so they want to hurt people benefitting from the new tech.
- Comment on Stack Overflow bans users en masse for rebelling against OpenAI partnership — users banned for deleting answers to prevent them being used to train ChatGPT 6 days ago:
Yeah but didn’t you see the sovereign citizens who think licenses are magic posting giant copyright notices after their posts? Lol
It’s so childish, ai tools will help billions of the poorest people access life saving knowledge and services, help open source devs like myself create tools that free people from the clutches of capitalism, but they like living in a world of inequity because their generational wealth earned from centuries of exploitation of the impoverished allows them a better education, better healthcare, and better living standards than the billions of impoverished people on the planet so they’ll fight to maintain their privilege even if they’re fighting against their own life getting better too. The most pathetic thing is they pretend to be fighting a moral crusade, as if using the answers they freely posted and never expected anything in return for is a real injustice!
And yes I know people are going to pretend that they think tech bros won’t allow poor people to use their tech and they base this on assuming how everything always works will suddenly just flip Into reverse at some point or something? Like how mobile phones are only for rich people and only rich people can sell via the internet and only rich people can start a YouTube channel…
- Comment on Stack Overflow bans users en masse for rebelling against OpenAI partnership — users banned for deleting answers to prevent them being used to train ChatGPT 6 days ago:
Yeah, it’s an obvious sign they’re either not coders at all or don’t understand the tech at all.
Asking it direct questions or to construct functions with given inputs and outputs can save hours, especially with things that disrupt the main flow of coding - I don’t want to empty the structure of what I’m working on from my head just so I can remember everything needed to do something somewhat trivial like calculate the overlapping volume of two tetrahedrons. Of course I could solve it myself but just reading through the suggestion it offers and getting back to solving the real task is so much nicer.
- Comment on Stack Overflow bans users en masse for rebelling against OpenAI partnership — users banned for deleting answers to prevent them being used to train ChatGPT 6 days ago:
I use it all the time and it’s brilliant when you put in the basic effort to learn how to use it effectively.
It’s allowing me and other open source devs to increase the scope and speed of our contributions, just talking through problems is invaluable. Greedy selfish people wanting to destroy things that help so many is exactly the rolling coal mentality - fuck everyone else I don’t want the world to change around me! Makes me so despondent about the future of humanity.
- Comment on Stack Overflow bans users en masse for rebelling against OpenAI partnership — users banned for deleting answers to prevent them being used to train ChatGPT 6 days ago:
You are literally the same mentality as the coal rollers
Tech that could improve life for everyone and instead of using it to make open source software or coding solutions to problems you attack it like a crab in a bucket simply because you fear change.
- Comment on Mona: Australia women's-only museum files appeal to keep men out 1 week ago:
In some cultures letting a gay or trans person live is unconscionable, there is no link between how random cultures feel and morality. There is no reason to base a progressive and modern society on cruel social traditions.
If you want to change your gender at this exhibit in Australia then you are free to do so, if your cultural baggage makes the idea disgusting to you then either work on that or choose to miss out on this art and many other beautiful things because maintaining hurtful traditions is more important to you.
- Comment on How do you handle family requests that you disagree with? 1 week ago:
I bet you’d get upset if someone pruned your trashy videogsme collection.
Is it really so hard just to let people enjoy what they enjoy without being a dick about it?
- Comment on Mona: Australia women's-only museum files appeal to keep men out 1 week ago:
I feel that many things are important to me which I could choose to change at any time for any reason, I could choose to never speak to my parents if I choose to and many do but they’re still important to me.
- Comment on Mona: Australia women's-only museum files appeal to keep men out 1 week ago:
The artist said she wants to demonstrate that gender is meaningless, I think a lot of people are painting their opinions over the artists because they assume because they’re sure their opinion is right that all right thinking people will agree. It’s similar with science, people assume the thing that feels scientific is right even when actual science disagrees.
men can just choose to identify as women if they want to go in because gender, according to the artist, is a meaningless construct. It’s a fairly common idea, people can choose to identify as any gender for any reason for any amount of time.
- Comment on Mona: Australia women's-only museum files appeal to keep men out 1 week ago:
All it takes is to dentify as a woman then you can go In, I don’t get why people are complaining just tell them you’re a woman and go in.
I kinda assumed the point was to demonstrate gender is meaningless, or are they excluding trans people and basing it on sex?
- Comment on Meta AI is obsessed with turbans when generating images of Indian men 1 week ago:
Articles like this kill me because the nudge it’s kinda sorta racist to draw images like the ones they show which look exactly like the cover of half the bollywood movies ever made.
Yes, if you want to get a certain type of person in your image you need to choose descriptive words, imagine gong to an artist snd saying ‘I need s picture and almost nothing matters beside the fact the look indian’ unless they’re bad at their job they’ll give you a bollywood movie cover with a guy from rajistan in a turbin - just like their official tourist website does
Ask for an business man in delhi or an urdu shop keeper with an Elvis quiff if that’s what you want.
- Comment on Meta AI is obsessed with turbans when generating images of Indian men 1 week ago:
Put in western or Texas and that’s what you get, the west is a huge area even just of America but the word is linked to a lot of movie tropes and stuff so that’s what you get.
This is also only when the language is English, ask in urdu or Bengali and you get totally different results, in fact just use urdu instead of Indian and get less turbans or put in Punjabi and you’ll get more turbuns.
Or just put turban in the negatives if you want
- Comment on May 13, 1985 1 week ago:
And you would rather the people in charge of Waco were in charge of the police?
Yes there were huge problems with the police response, pooly trained and gung-ho who clearly made it worse but also it was a difficult situation and it’s hard to see it resolved by anyone without issue.
- Comment on May 13, 1985 1 week ago:
Ah yes murder all the police with militaristic fanatics then we’ll never have to worry about crime or corruption again! It literally can’t go wrong!
- Comment on [Serious] Why do so many people seem to hate veganism? 1 week ago:
Because it’s the easiest way to avoid having to consider changing opinions and behaviors
- Comment on recruiting theocracy 1 week ago:
Sure, what’s a little heresy amoung friends!
If they actually believed in God then this sort of thing would matter to them, of course they don’t they just like the excuse of pretending because then they can avoid complex moral questions and having to take accountability for themselves
- Comment on Draw your own conculsions 1 week ago:
Not every study has to be about everything, there’s plenty of interesting things this tells us.
Lots of follow up studies too, are gen z women the same or do they all go for older guys or the same guy? Is this trend tied with sexual identity, how do men feel about it, do porn habits correlate, how does it split demographically and economically…
Doing a study on all these factors would be huge and expensive, getting a good data point to inform future study design is a vital step.
But yeah look up the paper I bet they asked more than one question and have a methodology based on sound principles trying to increase understanding of a complex subject.
- Comment on recruiting theocracy 1 week ago:
These people are so unserious about their religion it’s hilarious.
- Comment on Rabbit R1 AI box revealed to just be an Android app 1 week ago:
I defend a lot of misunderstood ai but this doesn’t have any good qualities even if it wasn’t a scam
- Comment on Dating app Bumble will no longer require women to make the first move | CNN Business 1 week ago:
Pickup lines are worse than just saying hey, like wow you copy pasted a cliche from a Google search! What is she supposed to do with that? How is that a conversation?
- Comment on Dating app Bumble will no longer require women to make the first move | CNN Business 1 week ago:
Ha big doenvotes from the incel faction.
It’s always so funny when people push these obvious self tells, like yeah you’re not going to be a good match with everyone so a lot of conversations die but as soon as someone starts blaming an entire gender for not being able to hold a conversation its a pretty clear sign they’re the problem.
- Comment on Thomas Edison was the Elon musk of his era 1 week ago:
Except in realityit seems he was against the elephant being killed but said electrocution would be more humane than the hanging which had happened to ‘murderous mary’ something the aspca also supported.
The assholes in this story are the themepark owners that upon being unable to sell Topsy decided to kill her as a spectacle to gain publicity, A previous attempt elsewhere to electrocute an elephant had failed so they also used other measures. They poisoned her. Electrocuted her and strangled her with a steam powered winch.
They did use locally supplied power from the Edson Co but this was because it was a decade after war of the currents and Edison was the main supplier of AC to NYC, they certainly weren’t trying to promote its danger. Plus he no longer owned that company, he’d sold to GE and it still used his name.
The Edison film company did film it but again no evidence the man himself was involved, they filmed short clips of specticals and news events which could be viewed in a slot machine. It’s upsetting but people were a lot less caring about animals back then, it wasn’t especially shocking that this happened or was recorded.
- Comment on People left seriously creeped out after woman shares how to find out everything Google knows about you 2 weeks ago:
Cancer you say? Like the star sign?
But seriously the campaigns are about spotting signs and importance of early treatment