AnAmericanPotato

@AnAmericanPotato@programming.dev

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨does the quality of downloaded youtube video increase after being downloaded?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  yt-dlp requests a specific format and downloads that in its entirety. When you use the YouTube web site, it dynamically adjusts based on your internet connection. If there’s lag, then it’ll drop you to a lower bitrate. So that’s one possible explanation.

  There’s a little gear button on the YouTube page that lets you manually select the quality you want. If you specifically select e.g. 1080p then it won’t drop you down, it’ll just lag if your internet is too slow. I’m not 100% sure if that also applies to audio.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it true that the natural lifespan of humans is only 38 years old and we only live past that because of loads of modern medicines/technology?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  If by “modern” you mean anything developed in the last 10,000 years, then no. We know humans lived to roughly the same maximum ages back then as today.

  If you extend that to 100,000 years, then…maybe? It’s hard to say but it’s plausible at least.

  The fossil record is not so detailed. It’s hard to estimate the age of fossils, and it’s hard to draw far-reaching conclusions from the limited number of well-preserved fossils that have been discovered. Most research doesn’t say anything more than “adult” or “child”.

  There are some techniques used to estimate more precise ages, and the estimates of the age at the time of death for fossils from the Upper Paleolithic period (12k-50k years ago) or older is rather young.

  The Smithsonian Institution has this to say about “Nandy”, a Neanderthal fossil from around 40,000 years ago:

  scientists estimate he lived until 35–45 years of age. He would have been considered old to another Neandertal, and he would probably not have been able to survive without the care of his social group.

  It’s similar for early Homo Sapiens fossils. At the Dolní Věstonice site, there was a ceremonially buried woman who’s estimated to be in her 40s, from about 30,000 years ago. She is thought to be one of the elders.

  I’m not aware of any others that are generally believed to have been much older than that. That doesn’t mean that humans couldn’t or didn’t survive for longer, but it was surely more rare. That doesn’t really support wild claims of what’s “hardcoded” or what a “natural” lifespan is. There were certainly more things that could kill you 50,000 years ago than there are today, and most of them have nothing to do with DNA and have little bearing on the maximum lifespan.

  The article is written very strangely, to the point where I honestly don’t know what they’re trying to say. They keep referring to the “natural” lifespan but never explain what exactly they mean by that, then they slide right into talking about “maximum” lifespan.

  If you ignore every time they say “maximum” and assume by “natural” they mean “general life expectancy of an adult human”, then it seems fair enough. But statements like “Neanderthals and Denisovans…had a maximum lifespan of 37.8 years” are utter bullshit. I honestly think they were trying to say something completely different, but then decided “maximum” sounded cooler. Probably because of the X.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Marketing Doesn't Work on Nerds⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  As I think more about this, I have a new theory:

  • Advertising is mostly aimed at the “average” for maximum coverage.
  • Neurodivergent people are not average.
  • Neurodiversity in tech is higher than in the general population.
  • Therefore, lots of tech people are accustomed to advertising that is at best aimed elsewhere and at worst hostile toward them.

  So perhaps the real story is simply “lots of tech marketers don’t understand their audience”. Which I think is true. When companies put their spec sheets and feature lists front and center, I’m definitely more likely to pay attention than if I have to dig through screen after screen of meaningless fluff to get any relevant details. So that’s something marketers could (but generally don’t) do to influence me.

  And I’m comfortable with that. Yes, please make better shit, out of greed if nothing else. Stand out by not being an infuriating weasel, and I will reward you with my time and perhaps money.

  But do you have a favourite coffee place, or restaurant? How about a favourite hotel chain?

  I’d say I have three favorite coffee shops. One place in particular has the tastiest coffee to drink black, another has better flavored drinks and a generally cooler vibe (local art on display, community bulletin board, that kind of thing), and a third is a better environment to sit and work on my laptop. I consider those my three favorites. None of them are big chains, and none of them advertise, as far as I know.

  For restaurants, I have a bunch of favorites for different foods. I have a favorite Indian place, favorite pizza place, favorite sandwich shop, etc. Again, nothing I consider a “favorite” is a chain. I guess if I had to pick a favorite chain, it would be…Chipotle? But I don’t feel like marketing draws me there beyond the fact that if they didn’t have successful marketing, they wouldn’t be anywhere I go in the first place. And still, if I see a small independent burrito place in walking distance, I’m probably going there first. Chipotle isn’t so much a “favorite” as it is a serviceable oasis when I’m in a food desert.

  For hotel chains…nope, not even a little. I couldn’t tell you a single real difference between Marriot and Hilton. If their marketing departments have tried to instill in me any kind of emotional connection with their brands, they have utterly failed.

  It’s kind of the same with airlines. They’re all the same in almost every meaningful way. Every time I fly, I consult my shitlist and try to avoid what’s on it, but at this point pretty much every airline has earned a spot on my shitlist. The only emotions I feel toward any airlines are bitterness, frustration, and anger.

  I guess this is why hotels and airlines push their reward points so hard; they know they’re all the same and cannot possibly earn “loyalty” otherwise. If I were a different kind of nerd, perhaps I’d spend the time to optimize corporate reward points, but at a glance it seems like a sucker’s game to me so I mostly ignore it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Marketing Doesn't Work on Nerds⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Incidentally, who do you think bought all that gamer girl bathwater?

  Honestly, I have no idea. Did people actually buy it? I thought the whole thing was a joke.

  I’m not about to no-true-scotsman nerdhood here, but I will say that I don’t relate to whatever group bought into that. I’m just not that kind of nerd, I guess.

  Which raises another point: there are no monolithic demographics of any significant size. Anytime you generalize about “nerds” (or any other group), nothing you say will be 100% correct across the board. Generalizations are still useful when viewed in terms of trends and distribution curves. It’s fair to say that men are taller than women even though there are short men and tall women. It would be more precise to say that the height distribution for men skews taller than for women, but I think most people intuitively understand the truth behind the simple, plain English generalization anyway, even if they don’t think of it in precise terms.

  But would you choose, say, a computer acse without caring about the way it looks or makes you feel?

  The way it looks: yes, absolutely. My current box is metallic black with a window. If I could’ve bought a functionally equivalent one with no window at the same price, I would have. If I could’ve bought a functionally equivalent one in hot pink for cheaper, I probably would have. (There is a functional aspect to appearance as well, since it’s in my field of vision and bright colors could be distracting, so I’d have to think about the pink. “Black” and “no window” are on my wanted-features list for this reason, but other factors can override those wants.)

  The way it makes me feel: well, cramped space, bad cable management options, and poor airflow will make me feel bad, so…arguably? But I’d consider that a matter of functionality more than feeling.

  I feel like at this point we should talk about the oft-neglected difference between marketing and advertising. There is an aspect of marketing that directs product development down a path toward what they understand people actually want. When done well, this is good. It should be the marketing department’s job to learn what problems people have with products in the field, and make sure those problems are addressed in future products. Advertising is a subset of marketing that tries to directly influence consumer behavior to buy whatever they’re trying to sell.

  For example, there was probably a marketer involved in the location and design of my favorite coffee shop, and if they did their job well then they deserve credit for helping make the kind of place I enjoy sitting in. Cheers to them for that.

  But I’m no more likely to go into Dunkin or Starbucks just because they are advertised incessantly. You might find that hard to believe, and I wouldn’t blame you! I can’t prove it to you. And I understand that among the general population, repeated exposure affects perception, and by extension behavior, in subtle and deeply-rooted ways. I don’t imagine that I am immune to the effects that, for example, cause preschool children to prefer the same food from McDonalds bags vs unbranded bags (see pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17679662/). But we are more than our base nature, and these effects can be negated in practice. I suspect tech nerds in general have internalized stronger countermeasures than the general population. Not full immunity, because reality is too messy, but a notable resistance.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Marketing Doesn't Work on Nerds⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, there was a time when that was true, but Reddit’s been heavily compromised for…I dunno, at least a decade now. Pretty much every public forum becomes compromised after it reaches a certain size, and now with The Power of AI, it’s economical to compromise smaller and smaller forums, too, and it’s harder and harder to properly calibrate your bullshit detector. yayy…

  There are still some great specialized nerd forums out there though. Relevant XKCD: xkcd.com/1603/

  Image

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Marketing Doesn't Work on Nerds⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s a mistake to attribute purchases to marketing just because a marketer breathed the same air at some point. First-degree advertising influence and umpteenth-degree influence are very very different.

  I mean, I probably wouldn’t buy a car from a company I’d never heard of, but that’s mainly because there are none. If I happened to buy a car from <insert company here> after researching what was available, I wouldn’t attribute that to <insert company here>'s marketing department. At least, not unless they bribed the independent reviewers, ratings boards, etc.

  Same deal with most of my tech purchases, except that in that space there often are brands I’ve never heard of. And I’m (usually) savvy enough to tell when they’re legit and when they’re not. (I know more than I ever wanted to know about SSD controllers and I’m kind of angry about it.)

  You’re right that nobody is truly “immune” to marketing, but as a matter of degrees, there’s a big difference across groups. There are people out there who look at ads and register them as useful information. There are people who intentionally click on ad banners on Instagram, rather than treating them like digital leprosy. There are people who click on the first Amazon referral listicle they find on Google and then treat it like independent journalism. There are people who use GoDaddy, when the only possible reason anyone would is because that racecar driver is hot. These are not behaviors you should expect among the kind of nerds this article is talking about.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Meta is now a defense contractor⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Lots of recommendations for groups, recommendations of random people to follow, and things like that. If these are paid ads, they are not clearly presented as such.

  Though I just logged in (first time in a while) and I didn’t see that, so…maybe it changed, or maybe my ad blocker is doing better than it used to? Not sure.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Meta is now a defense contractor⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I honestly don’t know how I could use Facebook that way. Seriously. I log in once in a blue moon, and half the stuff I see scrolling through the main feed has nothing to do with any of my friends as far as I can tell. And that’s with an ad blocker.

  I don’t understand how anybody can stand it. Maybe it’s a “boiling frog” situation, or maybe they’ve developed better counter-strategies than I am familiar with? I quit Facebook about 10 years ago and when I poke my head in now, it’s completely different. It is terrible in ways I wouldn’t have believed 10 years ago.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨T-Mobile secretly records iPhone screens and claims it's being helpful.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not well versed enough in Android app development to answer whether or not one userspace app can even access the screen contents of another app without root or special permissions

  This requires special permissions and explicit user approval every time an app starts screen recording, plus it shows a red notification whenever screen recording is active.

  I think you could get by with a one-time user approval as a device administration or assistive app permission, which you’d need to manually grant in Settings. Unlikely anyone would do that by accident.

  That might be different for system-level apps. I haven’t bought a carrier-branded phone in 10+ years so I’m not sure what that’s like these days.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Prototype of RTX 5090 Appears With Four 16-Pin Power Connectors, Capable of Delivering 2,400W⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh! I knew European outlets operated at higher voltage, but I didn’t know the standard circuits supported such high current. Jealous!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Prototype of RTX 5090 Appears With Four 16-Pin Power Connectors, Capable of Delivering 2,400W⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Almost has to be. 2400W would put it completely outside the consumer market. Consumer PSUs don’t go that high. Home power outlets don’t go that high unless you have special electrical work done. I can hardly imagine what a cooling system for a nearly 3KW system would look like.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It means that when they go to KFC, they bring their own tactical spork.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk would like to ‘delete all IP law’ | TechCrunch⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Removing copyright entirely is a bridge too far.

  Just roll it back to a reasonable time limit (I dunno, 7 years?), and categorically reject all further lobbying attempts from Disney and the like.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Black Mirror’s pessimism porn won’t lead us to a better future | Louis Anslow⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes, I loved classic Trek for showing a better a future, where humans have moved beyond our greed, prejudice, and self-destructive tendencies. That was the through line in TOS and TNG, even if it wasn’t always 100% on-point and didn’t always age well (you need to view TOS in its historical context to get past the baked-in 1960s sexism, for example).

  There’s a place for cautionary tales, and there’s a place for aspirational tales.

  I liked Discovery well enough for what it was, but I hated its picture of a future where good humans are the exception rather than the rule.

  Nowadays, I think solarpunk is where its at.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is this picture idea immature?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Dating website: probably way too soon to share, just looks cringe

  You might be right in this case, but I also want to point out that most dating profile fucking suck, and it’s not because they are too “cringe” or immature; it’s because they are all the same generic pictures. Wedding, gym, hiking, dead-fish, bar, dog.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is this picture idea immature?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This is the kind of thing I call a “loser filter”. It stops the kind of people you don’t want to deal with from entering your life in the first place.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why does tea taste different when I drink it outside?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Likely this. Temperature and humidity also affect your sense of taste and smell, plus they can affect a hot drink’s evaporation rate.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Another 122.88TB SSD just launched and this one comes from an obscure Chinese startup you've probably never encountered⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Buy a dozen and you could fit a good chunk of LibGen.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Short attention span⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  After working for many years in a “fast pace environment” I can’t help but notice that I have increasing difficulties to do simple tasks.

  How many years are we talking?

  A lot of what you describe sounds like you’re starting to have “senior moments”. If you’re past 50, that’s pretty normal. Which is not to say it’s good. “Normal” does not mean good. It just means common. I don’t think you should look for anything exotic if the mundane explanation fits your observations.

  Low-tech suggestion: Keep a notepad in your pocket. Make to-do lists. Cross items off it when you’re done. Maybe put the time in when you cross it off.

  • Put water on stove
  • Turn off stove
  • Make tea
  • Drink tea
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨You should know there's a font designed to make reading easier, especially for people with low vision. It's called Atkinson Hyperlegible Next. It's free for personal and commercial use.⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The Hyperlegible web site makes no mention of dyslexia, only visual impairment. Those are two totally different issues.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Migi says not to buy a pebble if you expect it to last >5 years⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve never replaced a watch (smart or otherwise) in less than 5 years.

  Wat.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Pebble Has Been Brought Back⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  How’s navigation with Pebbles? If I start bike navigation in Google Maps on my phone, can I get turn-by-turn directions on the watch, and does it not suck?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Kopi: Track Your Coffee Brewing & Consumption⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This is really cool! I like the idea of pen and paper as a supported UI. I’ve never found handwriting on a touchscreen to be an effective or enjoyable experience, across the myriad devices I’ve tried it on (including an iPad with an Apple Pencil). And app-based form entry is often a drag. By the time I’ve even opened the app and clicked the “new entry” button, I often could’ve been done already with a simple pen and paper.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is the minimum number of words needed to communicate⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I affect a British accent

  Lower-effort life hack: wear a Canadian maple leaf prominently. Put a patch on your bags, get a baseball cap, wear a t-shirt. Project “Canadian” any way you can.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Cloudflare blocking Pale Moon and other browsers with smaller user bases⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Disgusting and unsurprising.

  Most web admins do not care. I’ve lost count of how many sites make me jump through CAPTCHAS or outright block me in private browsing or on VPN. Most of these sites have no sensitive information, or already know exactly who I am because I am already authenticating with my username and password. It’s not something the actual site admins even think about. They click the button, say “it works on my machine!” and will happily blame any user whose client is not dead-center average.

  Enter username, but first pass this CAPTCHA.

  Enter password, but first pass this second CAPTCHA.

  Here’s another CAPTCHA because lol why not?

  Some sites even have their RSS feed behind Cloudflare. And guess what that means? It means you can’t fucking load it in a typical RSS reader. Good job!

  The web is broken. JavaScript was a mistake. Return to monke gopher.

  Fuck Cloudflare.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Lots of recent (meaning past 20 years or so) research shows that our gut bacteria play quite a large role in our mental functions, too.

  The concept of “the self” as a single, indivisible, unchanging thing is simply not compatible with observed reality. To be alive is to be in a constant state of flux.

  Is there such a thing as an eternal soul? Uh, maybe…but if there is, it’s not going to be responsible for the things we typically associate with individual living people. It’s not going to have your sense of humor, or your memories, or your opinions, or your math skills. We enough about all of those things to confidently say they are not eternal.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is anyone else getting a bit of schadenfreude from the news each day?⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  If someone was uninformed and misinformed enough to think voting for Trump was even remotely in their own self-interest in the first place, then there is almost no disaster Trump can cause that will not be instantly reframed as “just imagine how much worse it would be under Dems!”

  Dying of COVID? Well at least you’re not dying from forced vaccination!

  Layoffs due to tariffs? LOL what’s a tariff?

  Can’t get benefits you need to survive? Well clearly the Welfare Queens left him no choice! It’s their fault!

  It’s no coincidence that Trump in particular and Republicans in general relentlessly attack education and free information. They’ve already brainwashed enough of the population to win elections, and they want to make sure the general population has no way out of that hole. This is why they’re attacking Wikipedia and Internet Archive. This is why Project 2025’s first order of business is to eliminate the Department of Education. This is why Musk bought fucking Twitter in the first place, most likely. This is why they’re now trying to repeal Section 230 (with the help of some Judas Dems), so they can bully any web site into taking down any information they don’t like.

  The information apocalypse is upon us.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Obsidian is now free for work - Obsidian⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Neat, I didn’t know that. I currently use Joplin this way, synced across my devices with Syncthing. Joplin also supports directly syncing to Google Drive or Dropbox (with optional encryption).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Italy to require VPN and DNS providers to block pirated content⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m sure there will be workarounds.

  I think there are plenty of people who would be pirates if it were more convenient, but I suspect the point of diminishing returns for legislation has already been passed. If you’re savvy and dedicated enough to use a VPN in the first place, then this probably won’t stop you. Non-tech-savvy people are already turned off of torrents for half a dozen different reasons.

  DNS, though? That will block a lot of people from accessing things like Z-library, which is currently easy enough to access for anyone who knows how to use Google.

  China’s measures have been largely successful, unfortunately. It’s still possible to VPN out, but it’s a risk a lot of people are unwilling to take since it could realistically get them in trouble. I’ve lost contact with some friends in China because we have no shared platforms and the increasing blocking measures over the past 10 years finally passed their tolerance threshold.

  I guess I could figure out how to use iMessage, which AFAIK is the only end-to-end encrypted messaging service that still works (or at least the only moderately popular one). Makes me wonder how secure it really is if China hasn’t banned it…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is thinly-veiled political whinging really a question just because you used a question mark?⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  www.dictionary.com/browse/whinge