rottingleaf
@rottingleaf@lemmy.world
- Comment on Windows NT vs. Unix: A design comparison 6 days ago:
I haven’t yet read the article, but it may well be a comparison for which Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris can be united under the Unix umbrella as systems with monolithic kernels and similar conventions. Of course FreeBSD is much cooler than Linux and Solaris is much cooler than FreeBSD, but we get what we get.
- Comment on Windows NT vs. Unix: A design comparison 6 days ago:
Also ndisgen under FreeBSD. MS could have been nice for a difference and not broken compatibility.
- Comment on Ford Patents In-Car System That Eavesdrops So It Can Play You Ads 6 days ago:
Ban any advertising unasked for, even better.
- Comment on Ford Patents In-Car System That Eavesdrops So It Can Play You Ads 6 days ago:
Things were better because people would “go to a different brand” and sue morons more often. They’d also be more confident of their own knowledge in various technical things.
Things becoming more complex was used to gaslight a lot of people into questioning their own knowledge about what they need. Such gaslighting first and foremost works via people being ashamed to be stupid and pretending they know it all.
Most (even technical) people are like this - they feel that they don’t understand the world around them, it’s stressing, spying, rigged, chaotic in the wrong places and ordered in the wrong places, - but they are ashamed and pretend. And what they pretend to think specifically and what they try to follow is communicated to them via ads, via movies, via corporate bullshit. Because they have nothing else to turn to.
It’s a bit similar to the way some autistic people do imitation - they too imitate ads and movies more than people around them (well, maybe also imitate people they are romantically attracted to, or those they consider cool).
Or to the way state propaganda works in atomized societies - people don’t have good horizontal ties, but pretend to have them, while taking the material from what they hear on TV.
20 years ago would you use something like an Android phone with no buttons or would you crush it with a hammer? Would you use something like Windows 10 or would you ignore that crap? Would you buy a car that spies after you?
- Comment on Google is facing another crucial court case in the US – and it could have major consequences for online advertising. 1 week ago:
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You’d open one only when you wanted it.
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A database with various characteristics being the main component and the advertising text not being that is better, yes.
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- Comment on Google is facing another crucial court case in the US – and it could have major consequences for online advertising. 1 week ago:
No, advertising is not necessary when a user can search a catalogue with multiple optional constraints, as we did in the olden days of printed catalogues.
Advertising is harmful - it’s somebody trying to persuade you that you need to buy a thing. First, you’ll usually know when you need something. Second, the salesman is not someone you’d believe normally.
It’s an interaction which normally should be initiated by you, not by sellers. Which makes advertising utterly useless immediately.
- Comment on Despite tech-savvy reputation, Gen Z falls behind in keyboard typing skills 1 week ago:
In the days of Apple II and similar machines a person who operated a computer knew it, because computers were simpler and because there was no other way and because you’d generally buy a cheaper toy if you didn’t want to learn it.
Also techno-optimism of the 70s viewed the future as something where computers make the average person more powerful in general - through knowing how to use a computer in general, that is, knowing how to write programs (or at least “create” something, like in HyperCard).
That was the narrative consistent with the rest of technology and society of that time, where any complex device would come with schematics and maintenance instructions.
Then something happened - most humans couldn’t keep up with the growing complexity. Something like that happened with me when I went to uni with undiagnosed AuDHD. There was a general path in the future before me - going there and learning there - but I didn’t know how I’m going to do that, and I just tried to persuade myself that I must, it should happen somehow if I do same things others do with more effort. Despite pretense and self-persuasion, I failed then.
It’s similar to our reality. The majority stopped understanding what happens around them, but kept pretending and persuading itself that it’s just them, that the new generation is fine with it all, that they don’t need those things they fail to understand, etc. Like when in class you don’t understand something, but pretend to. All the older generation does that. The younger generation does another thing - they try to ignore parts of the world they don’t understand, like hiding their heads in the sand. Or like a bullied kid just tries not to think about bullies. Or like a person living in a traditionally oppressive state just avoids talking about politics and society.
That narrative has outlived its reality not only with computers.
People are eager to believe in magic. Do you need to know how to cook if you have dinner and breakfast trees (thank you, LF Baum)? So they think we have such trees. It’s an illusion, of course. Very convenient, isn’t it, to make so many industries inaccessible to amateurs.
It’s very simple. There’s such a thing as “too complex”. The tower of Babel is one fitting metaphor.
You don’t need this complexity in an AK rifle. Just like that, you don’t need it in an analog TV. And in a digital TV you need much less complexity too. We don’t have it in our boots - generally. We don’t have it in our shirts. Why would we have it in things with main functionality closer to them in complexity than to SW combat droids?
I think Stanislaw Lem called this a “combinatoric explosion” when predicting it in one of his essays.
- Comment on Despite tech-savvy reputation, Gen Z falls behind in keyboard typing skills 1 week ago:
Oh, I remember my childhood and how everybody (and sadly myself) considered us so knowledgeable because we sit chatting via ICQ, writing stupid shit in forum text RPGs, playing WarCraft III, Perfect World, IL2, KotOR and X-Wing Alliance all day.
- Comment on Inaccuracies 1 week ago:
Oh. People from English-speaking countries don’t sink you with downvotes immediately for criticizing that show anymore. Nice.
Even the broad strokes are, eh, how do you say it, eh … worse than Tom Clancy and that’s an achievement I’m not sure everyone is capable of measuring.
It’s funny though how such series about “USSR” talk in fact about something American. Reminiscent of the “17 moments of spring” series which were about a Soviet spy in Berlin in the last months of WWII, but mostly explored Soviet ideology and morality issues.
- Comment on The air begins to leak out of the overinflated AI bubble 1 week ago:
I regularly think and post conspiracy theory thoughts about why the “AI” is such a hype. And in line with them a certain kind of people seem to think that reality doesn’t matter, because those who control the present control the past and the future. That is, they think that controlling the discourse can replace controlling the reality. The issue with that is that whether a bomb is set, whether a boat is sea-worthy, whether a bridge will fall is not defined by discourse.
- Comment on The air begins to leak out of the overinflated AI bubble 1 week ago:
I’ve written something vague in another place in this thread which seemed a good enough argument. But I didn’t expect that someone is going to link a literal scientific publication in the same very direction. Thank you, sometimes arguing in the Web is not a waste of time.
- Comment on The air begins to leak out of the overinflated AI bubble 1 week ago:
It’s not about stages. It’s about the Achilles and tortoise problem.
There’s extrapolation inside the same level of abstraction as the data given and there’s extrapolation of new levels of abstraction.
But frankly far smarter people than me are working on all that. Maybe they’ll deliver.
- Comment on The air begins to leak out of the overinflated AI bubble 1 week ago:
So close, but not there.
OK, you’ll know that I’m right when you somewhat expand your expertise to neighboring areas. Should happen naturally.
- Comment on The air begins to leak out of the overinflated AI bubble 1 week ago:
Are you a software developer? Or a hardware developer?
- Comment on The air begins to leak out of the overinflated AI bubble 1 week ago:
I don’t think I’ve heard a lot of actual research in the AI area not connected to machine learning (which may be just one component, not really necessary at that).
- Comment on The air begins to leak out of the overinflated AI bubble 1 week ago:
He knows what this hype is, so I don’t think he’d be upset. Still filthy rich when the bubble bursts, and that won’t be soon.
- Comment on The air begins to leak out of the overinflated AI bubble 1 week ago:
you can put out an idea in plain language, and get back code that just “does” it
No you can’t. Simplifying it grossly:
They can’t do the most low-level, dumbest detail, splitting hairs, “there’s no spoon”, “this is just correct no matter how much you blabber in the opposite direction, this is just wrong no matter how much you blabber to support it” kind of solutions.
And that happens to be main requirement that makes a task worth software developer’s time.
We need software developers to write computer programs, because “a general idea” even in a formalized language is not sufficient, you need to address details of actual reality. That is the bottleneck.
That technology widens the passage in the places which were not the bottleneck in the first place.
- Comment on After seeing Wi-Fi network named “STINKY,” Navy found hidden Starlink dish on US warship 1 week ago:
If only they didn’t make them speak broken Russian (I suppose they used a dictionary with simplified transcriptions and maybe even a phrasebook). All the effort to do it with the less than satisfactory result could have been avoided. Even SG-1 aliens speak English.
As a Russian speaker, I wonder if there’s a version with only those parts dubbed to Russian.
- Comment on After seeing Wi-Fi network named “STINKY,” Navy found hidden Starlink dish on US warship 1 week ago:
It’s a very subjective question. Arguably some people do. That’s why we make bullets and the devices for sending them.
- Comment on After seeing Wi-Fi network named “STINKY,” Navy found hidden Starlink dish on US warship 1 week ago:
That movie is not very realistic.
- Comment on After seeing Wi-Fi network named “STINKY,” Navy found hidden Starlink dish on US warship 1 week ago:
You can take your porn collection on a few USB sticks. And games. And movies. And books. And music.
- Comment on Why is Kamala Harris being held at such a higher standard than Trump this election? 2 weeks ago:
The whole of USA is something 300+mln people, now do Christianity, then do Islam, then do Hinduism, then do Communism, and then do Fascism.
- Comment on US: Alaska man busted with 10,000+ child sex abuse images despite his many encrypted apps 2 weeks ago:
All this is obvious.
Since nobody pressures Signal and Wire in Europe, it really seems to me that the pressure is mostly applied to those who do have the ability to spy upon their users.
That would be too optimistic about humanity, but maybe not. What if.
- Comment on US: Alaska man busted with 10,000+ child sex abuse images despite his many encrypted apps 2 weeks ago:
Telegram is not safe from governments. Maybe safe from Western ones.
It does not have E2EE for most things. Which means TG users are not safe from TG owners, and TG owners are not safe from those who are the force behind them.
Maybe it’s Israel, maybe it’s Russia, Durov’s female friend was spotted in Baku in a “cyber-security” center operated by Israelis, so maybe Azerbaijan. Maybe I don’t know.
You don’t have to know which exactly force that is. All you have to know is how TG works.
people who organize demonstrations
… can use Signal. Its usability has improved a lot since I last tried using it. I’ve just moved half of our family chats there, another half is waiting till a bit later, because they are on another continent. It’s as convenient as WhatsApp.
- Comment on Research shows more than 80% of AI projects fail, wasting billions of dollars in capital and resources: Report 2 weeks ago:
I think it would be more helpful if you directly learned that most other people live much richer inner lives than you give credit for.
It usually turns out to be less, because I tend to become overly excited about people. Anyway, you can’t know what I give them credit for, I’m only talking about one part of their inner lives.
And frankly, MOST of the human race falls into some of your categories at points, especially the ‘ignorant of details’.
All of it, it’s a relative thing. For, like I said, a medical professional I am an example of <word I’m looking for> often.
It’s better for your mental health not to stereotype too much or you’ll end up a misanthrope like me.
That’s true, but not always avoidable. We need sometimes to put our brain into a certain state to solve tasks. And we can’t switch it back for everything else immediately.
Alternatively: you could use the phrase ‘Knowlessman’, as it was a legit derogatory label back in the day, and is pretty clear about its meaning right on the face.
It doesn’t quite grasp the part about deceiving oneself that some profession is much simpler than it really is, or some area of life, and so on, and reinforcing that with some tribal feeling. But OK.
- Comment on Research shows more than 80% of AI projects fail, wasting billions of dollars in capital and resources: Report 2 weeks ago:
Oh. I see. I thought someone wanted to communicate that “no time to smile” and “you should respect other people” thing to me which, eh, causes the opposite reaction.
If that is really, honestly the emotion and context implied from the word, I am going to ask you, as a non-native speaker, what should I replace it to refer to somebody “obnoxious”+“more normal than you”+“more social than you”+“consciously ignorant of details and proud of that”+“watching TV news”+“thinking one can be morally correct while logically incorrect”+“oblivious of their discourse not being the only one”+“judgemental” and other unpleasant traits of many people, connected to arrogance, ignorance and lack of empathy, but with the implication of those traits being hardly avoidable due to lack of experiences those “less normal” of us had.
- Comment on Research shows more than 80% of AI projects fail, wasting billions of dollars in capital and resources: Report 2 weeks ago:
I stopped at “normies”.
There’s text after that sentence.
Lose the ego and grow up if you want people to listen to your opinions.
Not in your case, no
- Comment on Research shows more than 80% of AI projects fail, wasting billions of dollars in capital and resources: Report 2 weeks ago:
OK. I know that. So?
- Comment on Research shows more than 80% of AI projects fail, wasting billions of dollars in capital and resources: Report 2 weeks ago:
I use all kinds of language when it fits my meaning.
I don’t think anything of what you said makes sense in this situation.
- Comment on Research shows more than 80% of AI projects fail, wasting billions of dollars in capital and resources: Report 2 weeks ago:
What does the word “normie”, which is a derivative of “normal”, have to do with incels, who are a subculture of unlikable people calling themselves “involuntarily celibate” (which can’t be true if there are at least two incels near each other)?