balsoft
@balsoft@lemmy.ml
- Comment on purely basedbon vibes 3 days ago:
Given this is all going to be stolen and slightly modified code anyways, I don’t see why not. 64 sessions sounds like a lot.
- Comment on [meme] choochoo 4 days ago:
comprehensive public transport is impractical or next to impossible
That’s how we used to do transit before cars were invented. The US had a railway line to even the most remote farms. USSR had amazing railways that interconnected almost everything despite being the biggest country on earth by a wide margin.
If you can build an asphalt road wider than 2 lanes, chances are you can also build a small commuter railway there eventually. It would also be cheaper overall, if you consider externalities like everyone having to own a car, car crashes being a lot more common than rail crashes, and of course CO₂ emissions and the climate change that comes along with them. And that’s besides the socioeconomic benefits of letting everyone have a way to travel, rather than only those with financial means to maintain a car and the ability to drive.
Cars are sometimes necessary, but it’s like 1% of what they are used for currently.
- Comment on [meme] choochoo 4 days ago:
This one is actually a pretty good idea. Eventually we get rid of the parking garages too and cover everything with railways.
- Comment on US would reach 100% renewable energy by 2148 at current pace 5 days ago:
I meant it more as a statement of fact, “most of the world is leaving the US behind”. You are 100% correct on the “why”.
- Comment on US would reach 100% renewable energy by 2148 at current pace 5 days ago:
How do they compare with China in terms of energy use per capita? China is the world’s factory, this level of industrial output requires a lot of energy.
- Comment on After Micron's greedy decision, SK Hynix could also exit consumer DRAM and NAND business 5 days ago:
Eh, it’s a continuation of the same idea. Remove the ability to do arbitrary compute from the hands of the people, let the corpos decide what you can and can’t do (and they have decided that the only thing you should be able to do is give hallucinating chatbots your medical history in exchange for predatory ads). Whether it is restricting what you can do with your own computer, or just restricting you from buying your own computer in the first place, the outcome is the same.
- Comment on After Micron's greedy decision, SK Hynix could also exit consumer DRAM and NAND business 5 days ago:
This sounds like they are joining the war on general-purpose computing, and not on our side. Fuck em.
- Comment on US would reach 100% renewable energy by 2148 at current pace 5 days ago:
These graphs is not how it works, progress (in China and other sane-ish parts of the world) will probably speed up in the near future and then slow down as we run out of low-hanging fruit. You can’t project the behavior of extremely complex systems like this. See also:
But yeah in general US is clearly getting left behind on things that will matter this century. Hopefully it won’t manage to drag the rest of us down with them.
- Comment on Linus Torvalds: "The AI Slop Issue Is *NOT* Going To Be Solved With Documentation" 1 week ago:
Documentation will always have to be actually written by the author(s) of the code, because only the author understands the intent behind a certain function or API endpoint, and that’s what the documentation is for.
LLMs don’t understand shit (sorry AI bros), they will sometimes produce accurate descriptions of the function code as written, but never the intent. Even if the LLM “wrote” the code, it doesn’t understand the real intent behind it, because it is just a poor mashup of code taken/stolen from someone else, which statistically fits the prompt.
What LLMs could help with is generating short, human-readable descriptions of what is happening in a given function. This can potentially be helpful for debugging/modifying projects with poor documentation, naming, and function separation, so that instead of gleaning through multiple 2000-line C functions in a 100k SLOC file, you can kind of understand what it does quickly. I’ve used deepseek for this before, with mixed-to-positive results.
But again, this would just be to speed up surface-level digging and not a replacement for actual documentation or good practices.
- Comment on Apple will let iPhone users in Brazil get apps and services outside of the App Store 3 weeks ago:
- This is not a problem that needs solving, it’s an artificial barrier to prevent you from using the device which reduces profit for the manufacturer. Being able to install and run whatever software you want (apart from actual hardware limitations) has been part of personal computers since the invention of personal computers.
- Google is trying its best to do this as well, if you’ve missed the news.
- Comment on Apple will let iPhone users in Brazil get apps and services outside of the App Store 3 weeks ago:
I think the actual headline is “Apple forced to remove illegal barriers to app installation for users in Brazil”
- Comment on xkcd #3186: Truly Universal Outlet 3 weeks ago:
Ground is always there just for safety. It is supposed to be connected to any metal bits on the outside of any device, so that if a live wire touches the outside it just shorts and some fuse blows or circuit breaker trips, rather than providing an unpleasant surprise to anyone who touches it.
Most modern electronics is “double-insulated”, meaning there are at least two layers of reinforced insulating material between any mains-carrying conductors and the user. This is deemed to be safe enough so that those devices don’t need to be grounded, and if the case is plastic then they will almost never be. So if you’re only connecting plastic-cased electronics to the socket, a ground would be superfluous in almost all cases. There might be some exceptions, like power supplies connecting one of the low-voltage pins to ground, but it is quite rare to see.
- Comment on Scheduling is hard 5 weeks ago:
Most jobs on the planet can’t be done with WFH, because they require doing stuff with your hands.
The actual solution to traffic is: viable alternatives to driving, such as rapid, comfortable, accessible transit and cycling infrastructure. (once that’s done, let’s ban private cars in cities altogether, they’re the worst thing to ever happen to cities).
- Comment on Holy Fu*k 1 month ago:
F**k. You added two, so I have to censor one to keep the world balanced.
- Comment on There should be a "last used combination" faucet handle for sinks so you don't have to balance hot and cold everytime during winter 1 month ago:
Actually, fuck yeah. My parents also have one of those bad boys:
It’s really nice to bathe in!
- Comment on There should be a "last used combination" faucet handle for sinks so you don't have to balance hot and cold everytime during winter 1 month ago:
Oh, yeah, that makes much more sense actually. Now I kinda want that setup, but I bet it’s expensive.
- Comment on There should be a "last used combination" faucet handle for sinks so you don't have to balance hot and cold everytime during winter 1 month ago:
That’s still confusing to me. My parents had the water heater tank in the bathroom, between the shower/bath and the sink. The kitchen sink had a separate small water heater.
- Comment on There should be a "last used combination" faucet handle for sinks so you don't have to balance hot and cold everytime during winter 1 month ago:
hot water circulation systems should be more common
That just sounds like a waste of energy. Why not have the water heater right next to your shower, so that there’s no wait? It’s how it was set up in my parents home. Really enjoyed that setup, never had to wait for hot water.
- Comment on Refrigerator ads are finally here! 2 months ago:
Yeah, true, but it certainly would add a lot of economic pressure on that industry.
- Comment on Refrigerator ads are finally here! 2 months ago:
Eh, I would say just ban all paid advertisements like ones you’re describing. Want to advertise your product? Send it over to some state-run hub, which then randomly distributes it to professional reviewers. They then publish their findings, and if your product is good and people are looking for your product category, they will find you.
Get rid of stupid ads where the only reason they are shown to you is because someone is paid to stuff it in your face. Ads should be something you actively seek out, not something being shoved in your face.
- Comment on Refrigerator ads are finally here! 2 months ago:
Banning “marketing” in general is impossible. In order for humans to survive, we need to acquire means of sustenance. With division of labor, you cannot acquire all the means of sustenance you need by yourself or within your local community. As such, a market is necessary to exchange commodities, including means of sustenance and means of production, and the mere act of bringing a commodity to a market is, by definition, marketing.
Banning advertising in general is more possible, but probably a bad idea. Imagine you want to buy bread. How would you go about that? Look for a “bakery” sign? Whoops, that’s advertising, can’t have that. Your best bet then is, like, going into every single open door on the street until you find a bakery, which doesn’t sound good at all.
What we should do is regulate advertising down to its minimum necessary function, which is helping people find what they are already looking for, plus maybe PSA type of ads (e.g. reminding you to get vaccinated and stuff). So yeah, most modern ads should be banned, but some should be kept because there is some actual use in them.
- Comment on Refrigerator ads are finally here! 2 months ago:
Certain groups will lobby really hard to make it illegal and punishable.
- Comment on Breaking: Google is easing up on Android's new sideloading restrictions! 2 months ago:
That feels too easy, no? It just adds like 12 taps to scammer’s instructions, 10 of which is the taps to show developer menu.
- Comment on Breaking: Google is easing up on Android's new sideloading restrictions! 2 months ago:
Ooh, cool! Might be my new phone when the current one cacks or Android becomes completely unusable.
- Comment on Breaking: Google is easing up on Android's new sideloading restrictions! 2 months ago:
My bet is that they will just remove the GUI settings for alternative APK installation sources, and require you to explicitly allow them via terminal (
adb shellor similar). This will probably scare 99% of regular users from doing it, while keeping devs relatively happy. - Comment on Breaking: Google is easing up on Android's new sideloading restrictions! 2 months ago:
That was the plan before this latest announcement. Presumably this will be something different, probably allowing F-Droid and friends to keep working on-device somehow.
- Comment on Breaking: Google is easing up on Android's new sideloading restrictions! 2 months ago:
Nothing wrong with it, if you just use it for music listening/youtube/light browsing/satnav/messaging, snapdragon845 is more than enough. Probably not too good for gaming and stuff.
- Comment on Breaking: Google is easing up on Android's new sideloading restrictions! 2 months ago:
Fairphones are probably not daily-able for now, sadly. E.g. on FP4 GPS doesn’t work at all and there are issues with charging/battery reporting AFAIR. OnePlus 6 is definitely more promising ATM, but there are camera issues and you need to do a weird reflashing dance to get GPS to work. Otherwise it’s… passable as a daily phone.
- Comment on xkcd #3167: Car Size 2 months ago:
I’m pretty sure Randall agrees
- Comment on xkcd #3167: Car Size 2 months ago:
I just think they should cost more, be taxed more, and be forbidden to park in certain areas.
This won’t help with rich assholes who want to drive around an F-950 or whatever, but will make groceries more expensive.
What really needs to happen is to mandate a special license to drive anything over like 2500 kg, and only be able to register it to a business with a valid use-case. To get a “small car” license (B-type), you have to pass an easy theory exam and drive around a tiny sedan around a city for 30 minutes (at least in europe). Trucks have different driving characteristics and are way more dangerous, so the driving tests should be way more difficult too.
Also, maybe this?
Oh, also, ban private cars in cities. Like, completely. Cars are so dangerous that their amount in populated areas needs to be kept to an absolute minimum.
