pinball_wizard
@pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip
- Comment on Son received an expensive gift from his new best friend, should I ask him to return it? 7 hours ago:
Me too. Is this the line for the unhealthy dynamic? Haha.
I guess I actually have had some friends like that - folks with access to tools or a boat or just a really helpful skill that they felt shared. They’re the best and I try to pay it forward.
- Comment on Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week? 8 hours ago:
I’m starting to get decent at Mindustry. If I’m not back in a month, send out a search party for me, because I’m probably lost in a tangle of slag refinement pipelines.
- Comment on Wikimedia Foundation's plans to introduce AI-generated summaries to Wikipedia 14 hours ago:
The big issue I see here isn’t the proposed solution, it’s the public image of doing something the tech bro billionaires are pushing hard right now.
It looks a bit like choosing the other side of the class war from their contributors.
Wikipedia, in particular, may not be able to afford that negatvie image, right now.
I could welcome this kind of tool later, but their timing sucks.
- Comment on Meta and Yandex are de-anonymizing Android users’ web browsing identifiers - Ars Technica 1 day ago:
So you got all your friends, family and coworkers and acquaintances using Signal?
Only the ones I like.
- Comment on Meta and Yandex are de-anonymizing Android users’ web browsing identifiers - Ars Technica 1 day ago:
I’m so quick to install a custom ROM, I forgot the spyware comes pre-installed. Ugh.
- Comment on Meta and Yandex are de-anonymizing Android users’ web browsing identifiers - Ars Technica 1 day ago:
If it’s a Pixel anyway, GrapheneOS has a few nice security and privacy features that LineageOS doesn’t have yet.
I think both are pretty great and much better than most alternates.
- Comment on Covert Web-to-App Tracking via Localhost on Android 1 day ago:
That update though: “… completely removed…”
I assume this is because someone at Meta realized this was a huge breach of trust, and likely quite illegal.
- Comment on X launches E2E encrypted Chat 3 days ago:
It’s not hard to implement.
Oh sweet summer child.
- Comment on X launches E2E encrypted Chat 3 days ago:
When has X under Musk had anything happen to doubt their encryption?
Musk routinely hires young unqualified technicians, and abused, laid off, or otherwise alienated much of the top talent at Twitter, in the name of cost savings.
There’s plenty of other stories out there of Musk’s ego interfering with his staff’s ability to do their jobs properly.
Most recently, the new DOGE has suffered substantial security lapses, associated with under-hiring and under-provisioning against cyber security threats, under Musk’s leadership.
Even before Twitter was aquired, Twitter had an embarrassing memorable history with public figures suffering from security incidents caused by Twitter’s own staff, training, technology or processes. This was arguably not a huge problem for an almost fully public messaging platform, but could be disasterous for anyone relying on this new E2EE solution, if it is incorrectly implemented.
The talent needed to correctly implement secure end to end encryption is rare, on a good day, for a good employer with a strong history of loyalty to their staff. X arguably has little to none of that going for it, today.
There’s very little reason to assume that X, under Musk’s current leadership, has correctly securely implemented end-to-end encryption, and there are reasonable reasons for people to fear that E2EE developed at X may have serious security flaws.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 days ago:
Oh, that’s cool! And yeah, sounds kind of cursed, too.
- Comment on Java at 30: How a language designed for a failed gadget became a global powerhouse 3 days ago:
Yes. JavaDoc was/is good.
There, I said something nice about Java. I’m giving myself a gold star, and going to stop typingm
- Comment on [deleted] 3 days ago:
Idk that Chromebooks count as being super locked down when most of them can run Linux apps.
I mean…sort of? I used some advanced computer knowledge last time I ran anything interesting on a Chromebook. I was manually installing basic missing shell utilities, just to get other stuff to run.
Maybe they have opened ChromeOS up more, since?
But you make a good point. ChromeOs is more intentionally minimalist than intentionally locked down.
- Comment on A fake Facebook event disguised as a math problem has been one of its top posts for 6 months 4 days ago:
What, gratuitous, comma?
- Comment on [deleted] 5 days ago:
Flash and Silverlight follow what I said. They were ubiquitous until the costs, being a bloated platform that couldn’t be ported to smartphones, caused the industry to shift to an open model.
I feel like we’re trying to find something to disagree about now…?
And messaging is a very old use of the Internet. IRC was created in 1988; Discord shouldn’t be a thing based on what you’ve said.
Discord does substantially more than IRC can do.
It’s wild to me that “people eventually move to the free thing, once it is feature complete” is a controversial take.
Yes, it can take multiple lifetimes. Yes, there’s plenty of examples where the closed thing persists long after an informed public would have switched.
But the shift to an open public standard eventually happens.
Nobody keeps a monopoly forever.
Monopolies based on restrictive agreements and secret code are unnatural, and they require constant upkeep. They eventually succumb.
In some cases, the standard even persists, but as an open one. Microsoft has figured this out, and now strategically open sources things they know they cannot keep alive, otherwise.
- Comment on [deleted] 5 days ago:
You’ve picked relatively new things. And I cannot predict the future. You might be right. Those could be lost causes. Experience tells me they are not.
I feel an obligation to point out the past to the younger folks who think “Microsoft and Adobe always win”. I feel this obligation,l because I was one of them.
Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silver light were inevitable. They were further closing down of existing dominant closed solutions. Now both are forgotten, replaced by open standards.
Microsoft now pretends they always intended to play nice. Adobe now pretends they never even tried to build a walled garden around the Internet.
We can perhaps agree at least that closed standards do frequently win, for awhile. No disagreement from me, on that point.
We might also agree that closed standards only fail when corporations get too greedy?
But of course, I’ll share my faith: corporations always, eventually, get too greedy.
- Comment on [deleted] 5 days ago:
I mean, I can help you can pick things that haven’t won yet all day. Gimp is free, Adobe works hard making a more compelling expensive product.
Adobe will someday stop innovating. Gimp will not. Gimp’s source code is the more resilient, thanks to it’s license. We (old people) have seen this play out many times.
Unix, DSD, and a dozen variants used to be the compelling options. Today, use Unix variants outside of Linux is vanishingly rare. Closed source browsers are rare today, and even those are built on the open source browser cores. Everyone is trying to enshitify Android, not iOS, because it’s the resilient licensed software.
It takes time. Everyone who can make a dollar fighting it, does so. But open standards win.
- Comment on [deleted] 5 days ago:
We already saw closed computers - Chromebooks. They’re still around, but they didn’t really catch on.
We are seeing more open phones, over time.
But to answer your question about Microsoft, specifically, oh yes. Hardware produced specifically for Windows is going to get locked down much harder, soon. How else will they continue to ship spyware into people’s homes?
People who want privacy are going to need to choose their PC hardware much more carefully, in the near future.
- Comment on [deleted] 5 days ago:
Yes. Open standards always win, given time. No one keeps paying for a closed standard, once the open one is just as good.
- Comment on Proof that Patrick Stewart exists in the Star Trek universe 1 week ago:
This is delightful!
- Comment on VCs are starting to partner with private equity to buy up call centers, accounting firms and other "mature companies" to replace their operations with AI 1 week ago:
I’m quite aware that it’s less likely to yessir technically hallucinate in these cases.
But that doesn’t address the core issue that the query was written by the LLM, without expert oversight, which still leads to situations that are effectively halucinations.
Technically, it is returning a “correct” direct answer to a question that no rational actor would ever have asked.
The meaningless, correct-looking and wrong result for the end user is still just going to be called a halucination, by common folks.
For common usage, it’s important not to promise end users that these scenarios are free of halucination.
You and I understand that technically, they’re not getting back a halucination, just an answer to a bad question.
But for the end user to understand how to use the tool safely, they still need to know that a meaningless correct looking and wrong answer is still possible (and today, still also likely).
- Comment on VCs are starting to partner with private equity to buy up call centers, accounting firms and other "mature companies" to replace their operations with AI 1 week ago:
They have been for awhile. Early adopter communities like the fediverse used to argue about the good and harm done by the big four.
For about the last five years, I haven’t heard an early adopter defend the big four.
I saw/heard the same things around, for example, SEARS, back when it was week known that SEARS was too big and successful to fail.
- Comment on VCs are starting to partner with private equity to buy up call centers, accounting firms and other "mature companies" to replace their operations with AI 1 week ago:
Some would call it effortless, even.
- Comment on VCs are starting to partner with private equity to buy up call centers, accounting firms and other "mature companies" to replace their operations with AI 1 week ago:
The LLM would make queries to the rigid, non-hallucinating accounting system.
And then sometimes adds a halucination before returning an answer - particularly when it encournters anything it wasn’t trained on, like important moments when business leaders should be taking a closer look.
There’s not enough popcorn in the world for the shitshow that is coming.
- Comment on VCs are starting to partner with private equity to buy up call centers, accounting firms and other "mature companies" to replace their operations with AI 1 week ago:
Or would you want to voluntarily waive parts of your salary?
I already have. I could make so much more money with my skillset doing incredibly antisocial things…I choose not to.
- Comment on how did you and your partner change after having a baby? 1 week ago:
My guess is that some powerful hormones must be released or something after having a child to make people think that they are enjoying their life even though an outside observer can view their immense suffering.
It’s partly that, and partly that the brain needs sleep too form memories and to think things through to conclusion, so we’re all a little delusional and don’t really remember how hard the early part was.
(I adore my kids!)
Pro tip: smell their heads as often as possible. There’s all kinds of healthy chemical bonding that comes from that delightful fresh baby head smell.
- Comment on Besides money/capitalism, why are tech companies trying to push AI text generators over search engines? 2 weeks ago:
AI hype is also Collusion among the ultra wealthy to artificially prop up their investments.
- Comment on Stack Overflow seeks rebrand as traffic continues to plummet – which is bad news for developers 2 weeks ago:
It does feel like they’re going that way. But that’s okay. Everyone needs an Expert Sex Change every now and then.
- Comment on YSK that in 16 States in the USA has banned Ranked-Choice voting, including 5 that has just banned it in 2025, and 6 of those bans happened in 2024. 2 weeks ago:
I’m just like… Why??? Why do y’all vote like this?
Looks awkwardly at the voting history of every politician they have voted for…
Yeah. Those Republicans sure look silly rallying behind people who immediately betray them once in office.
Awkward cough.
- Comment on Is it weird to sometimes wonder wether everything you know is wrong? 2 weeks ago:
For sure. Each “truth” we hold dear might be the next one we drop as we learn a new more accurate truth to replace it.
We can only hold so much knowledge, so there will always be room to improve.
And I’m even still thankful for all of the half-truths that served me well along my journey.
- Comment on The small scale of Lemmy's active user base is never more evident than in the absence of active members in all the sports related communities. 2 weeks ago:
ESPNs fees and blackouts exhausted me.
If folks want to gather around and cheer for a sport again, I’m in.
But I’m waiting for a DRM free, non-geo-locked, consistent, reliable Livestream URL. It can be paid, but there probably needs to be free tier to get me interested.
I get that I’m asking a lot, since streaming isn’t cheap. But I refuse to believe it’s as burdensome as ESPN makes it.