Sunsofold

@Sunsofold@lemmings.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Ad blocking is alive and well, despite Chrome's attempts to make it harder⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago⁩:

  There are ads on Lemmy? I’ve never seen one.

  But, like so many things in this world, if you ask ‘why is this a thing?’ the answer is almost always ‘idiots exist.’ A handful of idiots DO click on ads and buy the products, download the malware, etc. It’s not much but the 30 real people lend legitimacy to the 970 ‘totally real people’ who ‘totally clicked on the ad but just didn’t buy anything’ according to the metrics, and it’s seemingly impossible to sell anything without paying rent to the marketers because it’s essentially analogous to nuclear arms; if no one had it, everyone would be happier, healthier, and safer, but if they have it and you don’t, you lose.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sending someone LLM output in response to a question they ask is the intellectual equivalent of sending an unsolicited dick pic.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  No love for LLMs from me but, flatly, no. Asking a question is soliciting a response. Their response is not the one you wanted, but it is solicited. It would be like you asking for a dick pic from someone, the penis of whom you were interested in seeing, and them responding with a generated image from one of the unfiltered image generators.
  The intellectual equivalent to an unsolicited dick pic is probably spam advertising. A piece of media is being sent to someone who did not request it, by someone who does not care if the recipient does not want to receive it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Ad blocking is alive and well, despite Chrome's attempts to make it harder⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Ads need to be banned. They are inherently harmful, inherently deceptive, and only valuable in competition with other advertising. There is a direct line between the advertising model and the malignant politics that are destroying our world. Ban them all.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What powers does the Secret Service have and exhibit to protect the POTUS?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  So, not so much ‘powers’ as technologies and strategies. ‘Powers’ in this space would suggest things like ‘power to arrest’ or ‘jurisdiction’ rather than the physical systems and strategies.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is the best way to drop 50lbs in two months without spending alot and no fad diets?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Lipo.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why are americans taking health advice from a former heroin addict ?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  That swings too close to conspiracy theory territory. Hanlon’s razor still applies. The powerful didn’t say ‘I want them dumb, so I will defund the schools.’ They said ‘I don’t get anything out of paying for other people’s schooling, so I won’t.’ Then it was ‘just world’ bias combined with PR to bring it into the mainstream.

  Defeating the just world bias at scale is probably one of the greatest hurdles to achieving anything really great on a societal level. How do you achieve a sane middle ground between ‘I deserve everything I experience. Luck had nothing to do with it,’ and ‘I have no agency whatsoever.’?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why are americans taking health advice from a former heroin addict ?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Apathy comes from depression and grasping at things that don’t make sense can be read as anxiety. America failed to develop an educational system and now has no clue how to cope with stresses being applied to it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's barely a science.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  No. Economics is the child of math, not a sibling. It’s only half math. The other parent is philosophy/creative writing. That’s how you end up with the myth of barter and trickle-down, the stuff based on speculative storytelling, that refuse to listen to math.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨r/Silksong joins Lemmy⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Not my favorite indie game but glad to have a place for them on the verse.

  Bompanada! (Am I doing that right? I don’t actually speak your language.)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If the color of the Sun was orange, wouldn't the clouds and everything white also be orange? My friend is adamant that 30 years ago the "real" Sun was orange but got replaced with a white LED.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s not a friend. Friendship is between approximate equals and requires respect and trust. He does not trust or respect you. He looks down on you for your age and ignores your valid arguments because of it. If you have any choice in the matter, get away from this person and find people who, even if they disagree, will do so from a place of reason and respect. Do not be fooled into thinking someone is a ‘friend’ just because you interact with them regularly.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  There is no escape from Spelunky.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How can we convince Trump voters to NOT vote for Trump (or Vance) in the 2026 midterms and the 2028 election?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I have to wonder how many quiet trump voters there are and why they voted the way they did. Trump got 49.8% of the pop vote but it does not seem like 49.8% of Americans are MAGA flag-wavers. The die-hards are zealots, so basically unreachable. But there have to have been a large number who really thought of the Trump/Harris vote as selecting ‘the lesser of two evils.’ If there had been a real alternative, not even a particular affirmative position but some kind of ‘none of the above, find new candidates’ option, I have to wonder what the results could have looked like.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If you're a parent, how do you prevent your kid from watching AI slop?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If you want to control what your child sees you have to control what your child sees. There is no shortcut. You either shut off the methods for the companies to feed slop to your child or you curate the things that come in via those methods. You cannot automate it.

  Personally, I’d shut off basically any social media or algorithmic feeds for the kid. They don’t need that corporate reality-distortion during the years in which you are trying to develop them into a functional human.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Wats the legal test for consumation?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  A doctor can arrange a sputum test. Basically, you spit into a container and they check it for active tuberculosis. Oh, wait… consumMAtion.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do people actually believe those "gurus" on the internet that supposedly "give advice"? These seems very sussy and feel scam-adjacent, isn't it?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If you are smart enough to be suspicious, you are not their target audience. They feed on the fact many modern societies expect the mentally ill/handicapped to take care of themselves.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do you preorder games?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s the sneaky thing about IP based projects. Even if it was a small indie team, even if they were in love with the original book, even if they had incredible respect for the original author and their work, a book and a game, or a movie, or an episodic show, are so inherently different as to make any IP deal simply a lie. They use different techniques, methodologies, and structures such that they can’t produce anything like the same experience, even with the same plotline. It’s a mask to trick people into buying the product, and the wildest part is that the mask can work so well that even the makers don’t realise it’s a mask.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is it wiser to store one savings in Gold as superior to the average bank/savings accounts nominal interest?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  The fullest widom is knowing it all depends on your goals and risks. This is not a universal binary.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do you preorder games?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Never, ever buy anything based on IP. That is pure familiarity bias, a trick to make you think it will be good. In the particularly susceptible, it can even create self-delusion and confusion. (X is good, therefore this other thing that licensed the name ‘X’ must be good. It doesn’t feel good, though. No, clearly it is my feelings that are wrong. X is good so ‘X’ must be good. It uses the same mouth sounds. How could it not be?)

  A change in medium is inherently a different product and can never be the same as the original. As anyone who has seen a movie based on a book can tell you, there is zero guarantee the movie will have anything more than a passing resemblance to the book *coughEarthseacough* and maybe not even that. *coughWorldWarZcough* Oof, pardon my coughing. The bullshit fumes coming out of the marketing and licensing departments are making it hard to see.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How does internet advertising work? Where is all the money coming from? More...⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I just saw something about this the other day. Internet advertising has apparently begun the process of swallowing its own tail. Cory Doctorow was talking to someone about it. I can’t remember who it was though.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Stardew Valley Creator Says 1.7 Update Will Contain 'More Character/Social Stuff' and a New Farm Type⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  He’s still going. This is the kind of person we need in every field.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is this colour?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Bile

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Freedombox but with more modern and popular apps? I was just thinking about this kind of thing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ideas for deadspace behind fridge⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  It’d need a bit of reinforcement, but maybe a lazy Susan?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If you want to get into handheld gaming, but don't want to spend a lot, buy one of these.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I have a similar one but these days I’m wanting something smaller. The spring slide on this style means the minimum size is rather large.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do you ever feel like your life is "scripted"? Like everything is written by some entity controlling your life? Like you live in a fictional universe? Is this feeling normal/common?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Do you mean ‘life feels scripted’ in the sense of you feel like there is a narrative structure to life, like your actions and words are decided by an external writer? Or do you mean in the sense of life has a narrative economy, like someone could have ‘plot armor?’ Or is it the sense that life should have more structure, like it goes against some unwritten law of writing that some things could happen at all?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why isint lemmy more popular?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  People aren’t here for Lemmy in particular. They’re here to avoid the others. If all you want is content, you’ll just go to Reddit. If you are here, it’s because you recognized something of the awfulness in corporate reddit but liked the format. Lemmy is Reddit for people who pay attention and care.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Scheduling is hard⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  capitalism was pretty OK when we had unions

  That’s kind of the trick. People who collected loads of capital then spent loads on developing an ecosystem of media, ‘academics,’ and political manipulation that has steadily chipped away at those unions, and the ideas and circumstances that make them possible. The glut of overpriced degrees with distorted prospects, the idea that schooling is for getting a job rather than advancing knowledge, the union busting activity, the system of HR, the mergers on top of mergers that build monopoly, all paid for by capitalists who already had more money than they could use.

  ‘Just quit’ is pithy, but misses out on the fact that survival without a job is not an easy prospect. It doesn’t even punish the management who are making their workplace awful. It all gets displaced onto the other employees and the company machinery. Hell, it can serve as a reward in some places. If they throw work at someone until they quit, the employee has been doing all that work until then, so no worries there, the work can be shoved off onto the other employees on the team, and most people aren’t going to quit over a small extra ask when the alternative is months of job searching with no unemployment. And for however long that manager can spin that out, they’re just adding to their bonus. And then, ironically, they can do exactly what you are talking about and quit, going over to the next company saying ‘look at this, I cut costs at my old job by XX%.’ and getting the job-switch payraise with a premium for doing things that harm their former team and employer.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the best way to answer someone who accuses you of being a bot because they don't like what you have to say?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  ‘I’m 40% Markov chain.’

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨🔔 SHAME⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  ‘I’ve been alive for like five minutes. WTF?’

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Settings you believe ANY game should have? (This is me advocating for a restart/reboot button on ALL games)⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Alright, I gave you the knowledge and you don’t want to integrate it, so it’s on you now. Have fun lying to yourself.