stickly

@stickly@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨This was a real thing and it "makes smoking easy"⁩ ⁨⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Wait until they discover the hookah water cooled robot smoker

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Here’s What Happened When I Made My College Students Put Away Their Phones⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s a lot of comments about how digital devices are viable/helpful for note-taking and just as good as a pen. I think that’s missing the crucial point: virtually every device we own today is designed as a distraction machine.

  A pen + paper isn’t going have any notifications or reminders or updates or emails or texts or alarms or alerts. If there’s any device without those that’s as reliable and as cheap as a notebook, I’ve never heard of it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK There's a campaign to replace the distorted Mercator world map with the fairer Equal-Earth projection⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  This looks like when you see a weird, unflattering picture of a celebrity. Earth just woke up and hasn’t put its makeup on and you put it on blast like this

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Study: Social media probably can’t be fixed⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  But it’s not possible to get unbiased content on the internet. Everything exists with an agenda behind it, for the sole reason that putting anything on it is going to constantly cost money.

  This wasn’t a huge deal when individuals were paying to host and share content to a small audience, it was a small amount of money and you could see their motives clearly (a forum for a hobby, a passion project, an online store, etc…).

  Social media is different because it presents itself as a public forum where anything can be shared and hosted (for free) to as many people as you want. But they’re still footing a very large bill and the wide net of content makes their motives completely opaque. Nobody cares that much about the headaches of maintaining a free and open public forum, and any profit motive is just another way to sell manipulation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Man carrying home his gardening tools arrested by armed police in Manchester⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  So what I’m hearing is if you want to commit a violent crime just wear a hard hat/hi-vis vest and say you’re going to hammer things at work? Or put on a funny chef hat and walk around freely with your knives? Seems like the regulation only exists as fig leaf for minority profiling and harassing young people.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Too bad we can't have good public transportation⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  So long as the workers’ pockets are being filled, being the number one producer of literal trash, propping up global consumerism and burning the planet is irrelevant.

  After all, it’s those dirty capitalists that forced us to pillage our own country and disregard our worker’s health and safety. But at the same time don’t forget that we’re the #1 shining world leader and those capitalist pigs can’t boss us around! 🇨🇳💪🇨🇳

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Too bad we can't have good public transportation⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  American: “We invested another trillion dollars in VR that hosts an AI that makes bitcoins.”

  China: “Sounds great, we’ll gladly make and supply 90% of all bitcoin hardware to make a quick buck off of your global ecological crisis machine (100% not capitalism I promise)”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  This seems like wishcasting. More likely, they’re watching their own back by getting orders in writing when possible. If the noose ever starts to close, all truly incriminating official records will be destroyed just like Berlin in 1945. It will be their word against anyone else’s.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK that apart from not having a car, the single greatest thing you can do for the climate is simply eating less red meat⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I wonder how chicory (and optional caffeine pill?) emissions stack up against the coffee equivalent. It’s close enough to coffee for me 🤷

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK that 158 families made up 50% of all US Presidential Campaign Spending⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s not uncommon for a donor to support both candidates because whoever wins will have a debt. Like you said this is peanuts to them.

  The other factor is non-monetary support. A $1 billion check to a candidate’s campaign fund isn’t as effecient as a $100 million donation and $900 million spent blasting propaganda across your personal media empire.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK that 158 families made up 50% of all US Presidential Campaign Spending⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  This is bad because it means if you want to run for office, your campaign is mostly floated by this tiny group of people. $5.5 billion sounds small until you realize that breaks out into millions of dollars for any individual. Unless you’re rich enough to ante up (and repeat that every election cycle), you’ll never play the game.

  More isn’t spent because it doesn’t need to be, not because it isn’t effective. The policy goals of the 0.01% are basically in lock step, why would they bid against each other? Regardless of the raw number, the average politician has to equally weigh their representation between the needs of the 0.01% and the 99.99%.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Apple just proved AI "reasoning" models like Claude, DeepSeek-R1, and o3-mini don't actually reason at all.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  How many trillions of neuron firings and chemical reactions are taking place for my machine to produce an output? Where are these taking place and how do these regions interact? What are the rules for storing and reshaping memory in response to stimulus? How many bytes of information would it take to describe and simulate all of these systems together?

  The human brain alone has the capacity for about 2.5PB of data. Our sensory systems feed data at a rate of about 10^9^ bits/s. The entire English language, compressed, is about 30MB. I can download and run an LLM with just a few GB. Even the largest context windows are still well under 1GB of data.

  Just because two things both find and reproduce patterns does not mean they are equivalent. Saying language and biological organisms both use “bytes” is just about as useful as saying the entire universe is “bytes”; it doesn’t really mean anything.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Apple just proved AI "reasoning" models like Claude, DeepSeek-R1, and o3-mini don't actually reason at all.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  You are either vastly overestimating the Language part of an LLM or simplifying human physiology back to the Greek’s Four Humours theory.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Apple just proved AI "reasoning" models like Claude, DeepSeek-R1, and o3-mini don't actually reason at all.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  If you want to boil down human reasoning to pattern recognition, the sheer amount of stimuli and associations built off of that input absolutely dwarfs anything an LLM will ever be able to handle. It’s like comparing PhD reasoning to a dog’s reasoning.

  While a dog can learn some interesting tricks and the smartest dogs can solve simple novel problems, there are hard limits. They simply lack a strong metacognition and the ability to make simple logical inferences (eg: why they fail at the shell game).

  Now we make that chasm even larger by cutting the stimuli to a fixed token limit. An LLM can do some clever tricks within that limit, but it’s designed to do exactly those tricks and nothing more. To get anything resembling human ability you would have to design something to match human complexity, and we don’t have the tech to make a synthetic human.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Here’s a wrench for you: the Luddites were 100% right

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Panic! on the trade floor⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Side rant: I fucking hate the phrase “unseasonably warm/cold”.

  We haven’t had a normal season in decades, maybe we should just admit we broke the seasons instead of tiptoeing around it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are some old games that are hard to revisit, because a more modern and superior version exists?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Old Sierra games do suck as actual games. But the satisfaction of beating them is unrivaled, I’d put them above any Souls like.

  They played best when you had other people to commiserate with. Hot seat multi-player getting more and more frustrated until someone realized you have to walk completely around the police car to check it before driving… 🤬

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Musk’s X suspends opposition accounts in Turkey amid civil unrest⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Someone needs to an anti-xwitter platform. You’re only allowed to tweet if you prove you’ve been banned on X.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Parents turn to smartwatches for their children amid global phone screen-time pushback⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m sure, but a watch is 1000% more convenient if you don’t need any normal smart phone functionality (social media, games, internet access, media player, etc…). Its simpler to not have the option to use those features at all than to blacklist everything.

  On top of that, it’s less likely to get lost or dropped/damaged like a flip phone. Probably has better battery life too. For small form-factor messaging + GPS its the most functional package.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why aren't there mass protests in the USA?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Any that are widely in use or accessible?

  Signal is based in San Francisco and, last I checked, runs on AWS/Azure. Bsky is similar, US based and operated. Google/Apple could be ordered to delist anything from their stores preventing wide adoption of other apps.

  Best I can think of is something very decentralized like Briar or Matrix/fediverse/i2p alternatives. As of right now, adoption of those is limited. If you pulled the lever tomorrow and cut the major platforms, most people wouldn’t even know where to go as a fallback.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why aren't there mass protests in the USA?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The Arab Spring is a great case study on why that type of resistance will never happen in the USA. The proliferation of social media was a key spark in those movements. Let’s take a look at what stance those platforms take today:

  Image

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why aren't there mass protests in the USA?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Eh, I feel like every day there’s a new story of Tesla’s being torched. That’s a pretty directed and forceful form of protest that gets no credit.

  Also, it’s not like America never has large scale protests. Hundreds of thousands of people fill the National Mall pretty regularly, skimming Wikipedia I counted 14+ since 1950 of over 200,000.

  Just 5 years ago 15m-26m people participated in some especially roudy protests across all 50 states, but no credit for that either.

  Large protests that get even slightly out of line in the USA usually end with:

  • well armed, paramilitary police violently dispersing everyone
  • the CIA assassinating protest leaders
  • and/or the 6 media conglomerates suppressing coverage at the behest of the ~15 people that own them

  If you’re criticizing Americans for anything, it should be for their response to that and not their ability to organize and orchestrate protests.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Researchers surprised to find less-educated areas adopting AI writing tools faster⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  One bad thing doesn’t make a different but also bad thing ok. And in my opinion it is worse, imagine if their world view could only come from 5 second videos. Throw those history books away.

  And I don’t know that it’s overstated and it’s not at all perpetual. Look at… everything these days. People “disagree” with fundamental facts and are blindly allowing our planet to be burnt to the ground.

  It takes concentrated effort to build and maintain an educated populace. The wide availability of books and increased literacy directly caused the Renaissance, pulling down the status quo and giving us access to modern medicine and literally every right + luxury you enjoy today.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Researchers surprised to find less-educated areas adopting AI writing tools faster⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean it’s the same use; it’s all literacy. It’s about how much you depend on it and don’t use your own brain. It might be for a mindless email today, but in 20 years the next generation can’t read the news without running it through an LLM. They have no choice but to accept whatever it says because they never develop the skills to challenge it.

  The models can never be totally fixed, the underlying technology isn’t built for that. It doesn’t have “knowledge” or “reasoning” at all. It approximates it by weighing your input against a model of how those words connect together and choosing a slightly random extension of them. Depending on the initial conditions, it might even give you a different answer for each run.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Researchers surprised to find less-educated areas adopting AI writing tools faster⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It can’t ever accurately convey any more information than you give it, it just guesses details to fill in. If you’re doing something formulaic, then it guesses fairly accurately. But if you tell it “write a book report on Romeo and Juliet”, it can only fill in generic details on what people generally say about the play; it sounds genuine but can’t extract your thoughts.

  Not to get too deep into the politics of it but there’s no reason most people couldn’t get there if we invested in their core education. People just work with what they’re given, it’s not a personal failure if they weren’t taught these skills or have access to ways to improve them.

  And not everyone has to be hyper-literate, if daily life can be navigated at a 6th grade level that’s perfectly fine. Getting there isn’t an insurmountable task, especially if you flex those cognitive muscles more. The main issue is that current AI doesn’t improve these skills, it atrophies them.

  It doesn’t push back or use logical reasoning or seek context. Its specifically made to be quick and easy, the same as fast food. We’ll be having intellectual equivalent of the diabetes epidemic if it gets widespread use.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Researchers surprised to find less-educated areas adopting AI writing tools faster⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  LLMs work by extrapolation, they can’t output any better than the context you give them. They’re used in completely inappropriate situations because they’re dead easy and give very digestible content.

  Your brain is the only thing in the universe that knows the context of what you’re writing and why. At a sixth grade level, you could technically describe almost anything but it would be clunky and hard to read. But you don’t need an LLM to fix that.

  We’ve had tools for years that help with the technical details of writing (basic grammar, punctuation, and spelling). There are also already tools to help with phrasing and specifying a concept (“hey Google, define [X]” or “what’s the word for when…”).

  This is more time consuming than an LLM, but guarantees that what you write is exactly what you intend to communicate. As a bonus, your reading comprehension gets better. You might remember that definition of [X] when you read it.

  If you have access to those tools but can’t/won’t them then you’ll never be able to effectively write. There’s no magic substitute for literacy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Researchers surprised to find less-educated areas adopting AI writing tools faster⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The reason it feels like that is because it’s addressed to someone who you don’t know personally, even if you know them professionally. You never really know if a specific reference would offend them, if their dog just died, how “this email finds” them, etc…

  And in the context of both of you doing your jobs, you shouldn’t care. Its easier to get day-to-day stuff done with niceties even if it’s hollow.

  That’s just the tone tho. People trying to insist they give a shit when everyone knows they don’t is what bothers me. If you’re firing someone don’t sugar coat it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Researchers surprised to find less-educated areas adopting AI writing tools faster⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  This isn’t quite the same thing. If we were talking a tool like augmented audio to text I’d agree. I’d probably even agree if it was an AI-proofreader style model where you feed it what you have to make sure it’s generally comprehensible.

  Writing as a skill is about solidifying and conveying thoughts so they can be understood. The fact that it turns into text is kind of irrelevant. Hand waving that process is just rubber stamping something you kinda-sorta started the process of maybe thinking about.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Common Ground⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  …you are a detriment to this species, and your role has to be minimized.

  I’m not going to advocate for taking away the rights of people I don’t agree with…

  Lmao which is it?

  These people have a right to vote and live in the same society as you. What the fuck is your solution? Disenfranchisement? Balkanization? Ghettos?

  It’s hilarious because you could swap out a few talking points and the hillbilly voter would say the exact same thing

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Common Ground⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  What a fucked up view of the world. Its not about them being your “friends”, it’s not about trusting them.

  It’s about reaching out to your fellow man, educating as much as you can, focusing on their actual grievances (no matter how much propaganda they parrot) and convincing them that we can build a better future. Maybe that enthusiasm only lasts for one vote, maybe not. Winning support isn’t automatic, especially with the full weight of a propaganda machine purpose-built to crush critical thinking.

  If you don’t want to even try to overcome the systemic suppression of progressive politics then why are you even here? Take your own advice and suffer in silence.