FarraigePlaisteach
@FarraigePlaisteach@lemmy.world
- Comment on "Very dramatic shift" - Linus Tech Tips opens up about the channel's declining viewership 1 week ago:
Some pretty serious things going on in the world today that need our support and therefore attention. I consume less entertainment as a byproduct.
- Comment on Yes, you can store data on a bird — enthusiast converts PNG to bird-shaped waveform, teaches young starling to recall file at up to 2MB/s 2 weeks ago:
I would have understood this quicker if the picture wasn’t of a bird.
- Comment on If Lemmy disappeared tomorrow, what would you use instead ? 3 weeks ago:
Mastodon or Tildes.net
- Comment on Germany's Ecosia, a nonprofit search engine, said on Thursday it has submitted a proposal to assume a 10-year stewardship of Google Chrome 3 weeks ago:
Thanks. Yeah I think if a company like Ecosia is involved it could be win-win. But if it’s another purely capitalist outfit then it’ll probably be business as usual.
- Comment on Top 50 news websites in the US in July: BBC drops five places as paywall introduced; Most report traffic declines. 3 weeks ago:
I forgot about the paywall and assumed this was due to their international reputational damage, over things like their pro-Israel “reporting” of the occupations in Palestine.
- Comment on Germany's Ecosia, a nonprofit search engine, said on Thursday it has submitted a proposal to assume a 10-year stewardship of Google Chrome 3 weeks ago:
That sounds clever. With a stewardship, a company without the obscene wealth that Google has could actually adopt a project normally out of their reach and influence it for good.
I wish the article went into more detail though.
- Comment on In a first, Google has released data on how much energy an AI prompt uses 3 weeks ago:
Microwaves are very energy heavy. This isn’t very reassuring at all.
- Comment on Jimmy Wales Says Wikipedia Could Use AI. Editors Call It the 'Antithesis of Wikipedia' 3 weeks ago:
As long as billionaires are campaigning to destroy it, there is no place for that comment you made.
- Comment on [Video] Cops not sure whether to arrest man with "Plasticine Action" shirt for supporting terrorism 4 weeks ago:
The ‘tism can be a great asset for seeing through BS, along with education.
- Comment on Taylor Swift’s new album comes in cassette. Who is buying those? 4 weeks ago:
I don’t like touch screens, or screens in general. I miss Minidisc so much. It was and is the absolute best for me.
The iPod with the click wheel would be my next choice but they’re too expensive now. CD cases were cumbersome, and when lined up it’s hard to read the spines. They skip too when I’m walking.
I’d go back to cassettes again if they were released to the same standard as back in the day (Dolby NR, etc). I like handling the cases and they look better lined up on a shelf.
- Comment on MIT report: 95% of generative AI pilots at companies are failing 4 weeks ago:
I want to start using your “PBBM” instead of “LLM”.
- Comment on [Video] Cops not sure whether to arrest man with "Plasticine Action" shirt for supporting terrorism 4 weeks ago:
I can’t argue with anything you’ve said. Indoctrination is very hard to break out of, and it starts at a young age in the USA (if the people I followed when I was on TikTok are accurate). Singing the anthem at school, hanging the flag (we never saw flags at school here until St. Patrick’s Day), being told USA is the greatest and that other countries want to be like the USA, that it’s the land of the free … all indoctrination. I’d go as far as to call it brainwashing.
We’re fragile creatures (Fragile, by Sting, since we have a musical theme going!). It’s hard to content with such an onslaught. I don’t blame people for that. I’m curious, what did it for you? How did you begin to see the wood from the trees?
- Comment on [Video] Cops not sure whether to arrest man with "Plasticine Action" shirt for supporting terrorism 4 weeks ago:
I know (and like) the David Bowie one partly for that line. Thanks for the Rammstein recommendation, I hadn’t heard it. It feels apt for Europe, which seems increasingly Americanised.
When I was growing up there was a song called “In American” by British band Red Box. But looking back, I think it’s hypocritical to criticise America if we don’t also acknowledge our own comparable problems here. We’re not dealing with the same scale of predators you have there because - at least in Ireland - there was less for the ambitious and power-craving individuals to aspire to. Those people usually left for America for that reason, where they could be their unbridled, exploitative selves and make more money than they ever would have here.
So I don’t see Americans as the problem, but the systems and the difficulty in changing them. Many problematic people have simply been exposed to unimaginable amounts of disinformation and cults. It’s a difficult problem but if anyone can overcome it I think you can.
There are more decent people in the USA than the news cycle and online grift-fluencers make it seem.
I think we’re all the same. I despair too, but each population grows up in its own Petri dish. Depending on what attention your resources have attracted and how corrupt the news cycle is, different traits will be evoked in society. So while it’s bad, and seemingly getting worse, I have a bit more hope in people wherever they’re from.
I feel for you. I’m not even based in the USA and I find it impossible to avoid US news of the latest political vulgarity. So I follow the good people who lift my heart - whether that’s Project Pink!, Mumdani in NY or anybody who gives me hope. We can’t let the despair get us, because that’s the real war that’s going on here. Once we let despair reign inside us, they’ve won. Keep the faith!
- Comment on Why do i tip my bartender $2 per drink and per bar food order but 20% when I order food from a waitress? Am I tipping wrong? 4 weeks ago:
For anyone who mightn’t know, tipping culture is rooted in slavery and exploitation. It existed in Europe to an extent but really spread its wings - like many awful European things - in the USA.
I support workers rights, but I don’t tip. The way I see it, if the place requires tips for their staff to get by, then the staff are being financially abused and I would be propping up a system of exploitation. Prioritise places that pay their staff above the minimum wage.
- Comment on Matrix out of context, for screenshots of funny matrix messages. 4 weeks ago:
Subscribed!
- Comment on [Video] Cops not sure whether to arrest man with "Plasticine Action" shirt for supporting terrorism 4 weeks ago:
I didn’t realise how high the prison population numbers are. I first became aware of the issue when System of a Down released “Prison song”.
Those numbers you shared are really abhorrent, and explains why my lawyer acquaintance finds the prison system there shocking (he visited the US a few times). He absolutely would not want to see something “so inhumane” here.
I wonder how to interpret the 82% non-conviction in the context of over-conviction.
We have people in prison that are as much victims of poverty and undiagnosed problems like ADHD / autism. So if we have people imprisoned who would be better served (including society) elsewhere, I can imagine it’s pretty bad there in the U.S. Ifs a genuine tragedy, but an injustice against human rights too.
- Comment on [Video] Cops not sure whether to arrest man with "Plasticine Action" shirt for supporting terrorism 4 weeks ago:
Counter-nitpick accepted 😄
If you’re in the US, yes, you’re famed for all the policing issues you mentioned. I can only go off of conversations with my friends dotted around the EU but the perception we have is that police here are different because of circumstances rather than innate qualities. They’re generally not armed, they’re slightly better educated and at least on paper, there are institutions providing oversight.
But the same problems exist here to one degree or another, especially racism. But also excessive force, using their position as an officer to protect themselves from accountability around issues including domestic violence … and while lie detectors are rarely used they are starting to use AI at border control to detect if people might be lying: peopleofcolorintech.com/…/ai-lie-detectors-at-bor…
So I don’t know how we really compare. I see some crazy videos from the USA of people’s interactions with police. It seems like another world completely compared to here in Ireland. And ICE seem like domestic terrorists rather than law enforcement.
But we also have institutional corruption so bad that the force tried to frame a whistleblower (Maurice McCabe) for child abuse. The most senior people were replaced with someone who wasn’t Irish (Drew Harris), essentially given the job of draining the swamp / reforming the institution.
- Comment on [Video] Cops not sure whether to arrest man with "Plasticine Action" shirt for supporting terrorism 4 weeks ago:
Apologies if I sounded like I was lecturing there. I got very into the numbers.
I see the 82% figure you mention too. But I feel out of my depth now. An arrest requires probable cause (a low threshold), whereas courts require reasonable doubt (a high threshold). The gap between these two seems to be what should let police work function. Eg: attorneys examine or challenge the charges, plea deals, case dismissal / acquittal etc. But I’m skimming articles I don’t understand at this point.
82% does seem high to me too. But I also see too many cut-and-dry cases on TV. I don’t know what to think.
- Comment on [Video] Cops not sure whether to arrest man with "Plasticine Action" shirt for supporting terrorism 4 weeks ago:
That figure is a little misleading, but I understand how you picked it up because it’s everywhere.
Police “clear” crimes to be progressed for prosecution.
Prosecutors “prosecute” crimes. It’s this that the 2% figure is aimed at. The clearance rates (the job done by the police) is higher.
According to this article[1], 22% of reported serious crimes led to arrests. 4% (of reported serious crimes) led to convictions. They then halve both of those numbers to account for unreported crimes. The article still uses the 2% figure in the headline despite the nuance in the article.
That might sound academic given the overall point you make still stands. I just thought it was worth mentioning.
- Comment on I made a Firefox fork with Fediverse integration 4 weeks ago:
I actually support telemetry for Mozilla, especially the way they’ve implemented it. But the other features look great and I don’t want anything to do with GitHub projects. Starred on Codeberg!
- Comment on AI Is Power-Hungry and consumers are paying the price 4 weeks ago:
That is a profound and true statement.
- Comment on I made a Firefox fork with Fediverse integration 4 weeks ago:
Apparently not.
“How does Bridge compare to other privacy browsers?
Bridge goes beyond configuration changes by modifying Firefox at the source code level. This provides deeper privacy protections than browsers that only change settings.”
- Comment on Techrights — GitHub Won't Last Much Longer 4 weeks ago:
Codeberg is my homepage for the time being. I’m finding substitutes there.
I’ll check out Forgejo too, thanks for the recommendation!
- Comment on Techrights — GitHub Won't Last Much Longer 4 weeks ago:
Most of the applications I use host their code on GitHub. I’m actively looking for replacements for as many of them as possible, because it’s just immoral to participate with Microsoft, IMO.
But that’s a poor article. A more accurate headline might be “Concerns about GitHub’s parent company, Microsoft”. But that wouldn’t generate the same attention.
- Comment on YSK that despite being outside of US jurisdiction, Lego has dropped diversity and inclusion terminology from its annual report 4 weeks ago:
That’s a great article. I didn’t know there were so many alternatives (eight in that article).
- Comment on Neil Young Leaves Facebook & Instagram Over “Unconscionable” Policies for AI Chatbot Conversations With Children 4 weeks ago:
I think that attitude is a trap, and what got us into this mess in the first place. If more people did what Young did, these platforms wouldn’t have the power (which we give them) to unleash as much harm on the world. Your suggestion implies that we should all wait for others to move first. That’s the definition of paralysis.
And with a net worth the size of Young’s, it’s simply not true to say he “needs” to use those platforms, except in the more privileged misuse of the word. They’re luxury items for him.
- Comment on YSK that despite being outside of US jurisdiction, Lego has dropped diversity and inclusion terminology from its annual report 5 weeks ago:
And I think a big part of the problem is the psychology of group behaviour compared to individual behaviour. We can be far less moral in groups, by compartmentalising morality onto “someone else” in the group. I’m not sure that any other system can help us address that aspect of group psychology.
- Comment on YSK that despite being outside of US jurisdiction, Lego has dropped diversity and inclusion terminology from its annual report 5 weeks ago:
The problem with France s approach (as I understand it) is that by not recording ethnicity data, employers have free rein to discriminate if the persons background becomes known to them during the hiring process. Discrimination is rife because of this and they lack sufficient data and regulations to tackle it.
Studies have been carried out which send crafted resumes of different ethnicities to employers to assess callback rates. povertyactionlab.org/…/discrimination-hiring-and-…
I hope you’re right about US fascism. But while the U.S. President is an impulsive man child, his puppeteers are a lot smarter and more committed. We also have greater wealth inequality compared to WWII giving these guys a bigger advantage this time.
- Comment on YSK that despite being outside of US jurisdiction, Lego has dropped diversity and inclusion terminology from its annual report 5 weeks ago:
You’re right: diversity.com/post/accenture-dei-rollback-2025
It’s a similar timeline too (~2025). I honestly think it’s very pathetic of them to stoop so low for the “Yankee dollar” (or any other trade relationship).
- Comment on YSK: This recent war on adult content was mostly started by a single law in 2018, pushed by a few evangelical groups pretending to fight sexual exploitation 5 weeks ago:
Agreed, but religion is only one manifestation of the problem. We need to evolve beyond uncritical devotion regardless of the form. Sports, celebrities, personalities, technology, cosmetics, etc - all have pretty unhinged devotees. Causing similar problems.