Cricket
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- Comment on 'Microslop' is heading for Edge – major browser redesign is inspired by Copilot, and it's already seriously unpopular 1 week ago:
No worries, thanks!
- Comment on "Microslop" trends in backlash to Microsoft's AI obsession 1 week ago:
True! :)
- Comment on 'Microslop' is heading for Edge – major browser redesign is inspired by Copilot, and it's already seriously unpopular 1 week ago:
My biggest fear, and one that is not talked about in the article, is that we won’t have any asbestos removers in the future. Generative AI is being fed it’s own excrement and that’s being leveraged as working code to new coders. When this really becomes a liability we won’t have many left that can fix or figure out the fix cause it will have obfuscated all the usable info.
I think it’s going to be a complete shit show. Here’s the confluence of factors:
- From what little I’ve seen of AI code, it seems to write code that’s even more shit than human devs. I’m not in software dev, but I’m in IT operations and also studying CS. What I’ve seen of AI code in IT (PowerShell scripts) looked like it wrote 10+ lines where one or two would have done the job. In other words, it’s a form of obfuscation like you said.
- I strongly expect that fewer people are studying CS because they’re getting the message that AI is taking all the dev jobs. That’s true for the moment.
- Fewer coders are being hired, so there will be even fewer experienced devs in the future.
I think that this will all add up to a “dark ages” of software development in the not too distant future. There just won’t be enough people to fix all the AI junk, and the AI junk will essentially need to be ripped out altogether. Software quality and security will go down the drain, and it will take forever to fix it, if it even gets fixed at all. I think it really will be equivalent to the “dark ages” (I know that this term is not considered accurate nowadays, but I think it applies even more to this situation).
I’m hopeful for one thing though: that this phenomenon will strengthen free open source software relative to commercial software. If there are a bunch of devs who can’t get dev jobs, hopefully they will spend at least some of their time contributing to open source. On top of that, it appears to me that open source projects have been more resistant to accepting AI code. Let’s hope that this is a silver lining here.
- Comment on 'Microslop' is heading for Edge – major browser redesign is inspired by Copilot, and it's already seriously unpopular 1 week ago:
Thanks! I saw this linked on Mastodon but haven’t read it yet.
- Comment on Vienam Bans Unskippable Ads, Requires Skip Button to Appear After 5 Seconds - Saigoneer 1 week ago:
Winetnam
- Comment on 'Microslop' is heading for Edge – major browser redesign is inspired by Copilot, and it's already seriously unpopular 1 week ago:
Honest question, is the ActiveDirectory PowerShell module available for Linux PowerShell? I can’t seem to find a clear answer from a brief search.
- Comment on 'Microslop' is heading for Edge – major browser redesign is inspired by Copilot, and it's already seriously unpopular 1 week ago:
Discord does work, but i remember that maintaining it updated was a pain in the ass.
It may be better to run it as a Flatpak. There’s not only an official Flatpak for it, but also various third-party clients available too: flathub.org/en/apps/search?q=discord
- Comment on 'Microslop' is heading for Edge – major browser redesign is inspired by Copilot, and it's already seriously unpopular 1 week ago:
Were you using the Flatpak version? You may have better luck with that. There are also a variety of third-party Discord clients for Linux. I’ve been using GoofCord without issues so far, but it’s early days.
- Comment on 'Microslop' is heading for Edge – major browser redesign is inspired by Copilot, and it's already seriously unpopular 1 week ago:
My chief concern is that this wave of enshitifiation will eventually make it to Microsoft’s security support.
That and their general quality control. It’s already been happening. Their updates and new products have been having some serious issues with a lot more frequency over the last year. At least that’s the strong impression I have. Oh, here’s an article also calling this out: theregister.com/…/microsoft_lacks_quality_control… - apparently they may have started going down this path over a decade ago, but it seems to have accelerated since they started using Gen AI.
- Comment on "Microslop" trends in backlash to Microsoft's AI obsession 1 week ago:
The rdp client was renamed “Windows App”, remember?
Wait, let me say that this is not accurate without defending Microsoft (fuck them). The rdp client hasn’t been renamed, to my knowledge. What was renamed to Windows app was the other product very confusingly named “remote desktop client”, which was a Microsoft Store app meant to access things like Azure Virtual Desktop, their cloud Windows service, etc. Yes, incredibly confusing product naming from Microsoft, as usual.
- Comment on What's it going to take to truly stop the US? 2 weeks ago:
The us has the largest military by far even when combining the contenders militaries.
If you’re speaking of personnel numbers, what you claim is far from accurate. You may be thinking of military expenditures, where you may possibly have a point. However, consider that the US military wastes tons of money on very expensive gear (much of the navy and air force, for instance) that wouldn’t help much in modern warfare (drones, etc.).
- Comment on What's it going to take to truly stop the US? 2 weeks ago:
The other half is almost completely oblivious or just doesn’t care what the US does abroad. They only start caring when American soldiers start dying in significant numbers, like in Iraq and Afghanistan. I definitely agree with the other poster who said WW 3 would be a more likely scenario than US revolution because of actions like this.
- Comment on The huge Project Zomboid build 42 finally gets multiplayer just in time for the holidays 5 weeks ago:
Thanks, I had not heard of the forks!
- Comment on The crusade against Lemmy devs, lemmy.ml, and so-called "tankies" 5 weeks ago:
Sorry for the delay. I needed to take a break from online drama, and hope to continue avoiding getting sucked into it if possible. :)
I mean, Russia’s trying to make far-right takeovers happen pretty hard.
If they are, it doesn’t seem like they’re trying as hard as the US has in the past. Social media manipulation is in no way equivalent to supporting or initiating coups. Even if they have done some similar things, it’s been on a much smaller scale, at least an order of magnitude less.
The thing in question at this point, I think, is if it’s a reason why we should support anybody (or almost anybody) who opposes the US. Just saying that the US should chill wouldn’t be out there enough to argue with.
I’m not sure I understand your second point here, but I think that the first question could be turned right around: why should anyone support the US or any of its closest partners? I think the answer lies in the fact that most countries in the world (the so-called “Global South”) have not supported the US/West position in either Ukraine or Palestine.
Hmm. That would include the end of the actual colonial era. There was a lot of what you could describe as “high-pressure tactics” used by Europe against the various independence movements.
I would still have to see any evidence that what I said (essentially that the US has been the biggest bully in the world for the last 80 years) is way off the mark.
During the Cold War the reason given was usually “to stop communism”, since then it’s more like “for democracy” or “to stop atrocities”.
The claim that it was to “stop communism” seemed to have been sincere.
The more recent claims that it’s to “stop atrocities” has some weight, but not a ton. How many times has the US used heavy foreign policy tactics purely for that purpose?
The claims that it’s “for democracy” is very weak when there are examples in the recent past of the US either supporting or not opposing coups against democratically-elected foreign leaders. The first example that comes to mind is the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt after the Arab Spring. From what I recall, there was hardly a squeak from the US when that happened, because it benefited the US.
That may or may not be drinking the kool-aid. If you are yourself a non-communist democracy, those can overlap with national interest, which is definitely a slippery slope. That’s not the same as it being purely propaganda, though (which looking back through the thread is where this tangent started).
I don’t know if I said “purely propaganda”, but if I did, I probably meant “mostly propaganda”.
Thanks.
- Comment on The crusade against Lemmy devs, lemmy.ml, and so-called "tankies" 5 weeks ago:
Those are two or more separate concepts (freedom of thought vs. the government being for the people) and don’t necessarily have to go together.
Also, authoritarianism occurs in a spectrum. Most of the countries that Westerners accuse of being authoritarian are only partially so, and only in certain aspects. On the other hand, there are legitimate arguments to be made that many Western powers are also partially authoritarian. So then the argument becomes about how much authoritarianism is acceptable. I think that this is too deep of a philosophical discussion to have in an online forum. At least I wouldn’t have the patience or energy to stick with it.
- Comment on The huge Project Zomboid build 42 finally gets multiplayer just in time for the holidays 5 weeks ago:
Sounds great, thanks! I’ll definitely check it out. Oh, interesting, there are tilesets for it.
Haha, I had never heard of Caves of Qud before. That looks super old-school. Brings back memories of 8-bit games. I’ll take a look at that too. Thanks!
- Comment on The huge Project Zomboid build 42 finally gets multiplayer just in time for the holidays 5 weeks ago:
Oh, I see. I don’t think I remembered that CDDA was turn-based. It seems like making that work in a multiplayer scenario would be an interesting programming problem to resolve.
The multiplayer aspect is one of the big attractions of Zomboid for me. I’ve barely ever played it alone because I feel it’s too disconcerting of a game to be played that way. The multiplayer does offer some pretty cool an unique experiences too.
I’ll check CDDA one of these days to see what all the hype is about. :)
- Comment on The huge Project Zomboid build 42 finally gets multiplayer just in time for the holidays 5 weeks ago:
Cool, thanks for your detailed reply! I can totally imagine that the less graphical approach would have that effect on the imagination. Is it multiplayer too, or single player?
It’s interesting that I think of Zomboid as having super-deep mechanics, although the impression that I have of CDDA just from hearing about it before is that it’s even more so. However, the example you used about curtains and cloth is pretty well-resolved in Zomboid too. You can craft out of curtains and you can make cloth (and thread) from the clothes of any zombie corpse.
What you described about the long survival game seems like it could have some added risks from a graphical approach. The example I have in mind is that I’ve heard of people dying after being in a fully setup base for a while because they had a misstep and fell off the roof of their base. Another example is someone walking a little too close to an open fire they had started and their clothes catching on fire. I think they even ended up burning their base down because they walked into it trying to put their clothes fire out. :)
This 42 update is also supposed to add a lot more depth to some of the crafting mechanics and allow for thinks like hunting and animal farming (vegetable farming has been around for a long time). I hadn’t tried it yet though because I mostly play multiplayer with friends.
- Comment on The huge Project Zomboid build 42 finally gets multiplayer just in time for the holidays 5 weeks ago:
I’ve kept hearing about CDDA over the years, often in discussions about PZ. Apparently it was also one of the inspirations for PZ.
I find PZ to be very immersive, so I’m curious what makes CDDA even more immersive for you? Could it not having much graphics perhaps help your imagination in a way similar to how books can sometimes immerse us more than movies can?
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
Yeah, it looks like they misread what the “17” and “30” in the OP title were referring to.
- Comment on Israel’s IDF Bans Android Phones—iPhones Now ‘Mandatory’ 1 month ago:
Thanks for your answer.
- Comment on The crusade against Lemmy devs, lemmy.ml, and so-called "tankies" 1 month ago:
My sense of the Cold War examples is that they happened in places that were on a kind of knife’s edge already. Like Chile - there was an existing underfunded, previously influential and endogamous military that didn’t need to much encouragement to take down Allende, electoral mandate be damned. They managed to gain influence across a lot of Latin America at the time, but there’s no comparable place now. In modern areas with unstable governments, the US has been losing ground this decade, as opposed to running the show.
If the US was secretly replacing otherwise-stable governments all over the world, it would take vast numbers of people all over and be much too hard to perfectly to cover up. France’s program in north Africa ended up an open secret, for example. You don’t need it to explain anything either; so, it’s not supported by Occam’s razor. And obviously, how could I falsify that idea? This is when it starts feeling like arguing against a conspiracy theory. Every thing you can say against it gets twisted into evidence for a successful coverup.
Sure, I agree that there were already internal elements that helped those regime change operations, but the way I see it, that’s true of most countries around the world. Look at the rise of the right in Europe and the US in the last few years. I think the main difference between those examples and the regime changes in the past is that there’s no “accelerant”, (i.e., something like the type of involvement the US’ CIA had in those countries). I’m not saying that the US is secretly controlling the entire world. I’m saying the US has a knee-jerk reaction to deeply meddle in order to promote regimes that advantage them and depose regimes that disadvantage them. I don’t see why this point should be controversial or feel like a conspiracy theory. The US has demonstrably engaged in more covert and overt regime change operations and high-pressure tactics around the world than the entire rest of the world combined, since the end of World War II.
My point there was just that a lot of the decision makers believe they’re doing something noble (and the rest just want to get re-elected). At least in my country, which is culturally very close to the US, foreign policy isn’t a deliberately self-serving enterprise. (Although the fascist/“far-right populist” movement obviously goes in exactly that direction, and claims it’s a virtue)
I think that if you look at their actions, the majority of these people that believe they’re doing something noble have drunk massive amounts of kool-aid. I can’t speak for Canada because I don’t know enough about their foreign policy, but I think claiming that US foreign policy isn’t a deliberately self-serving enterprise is pretty far out there and would need to some major evidence to the contrary, like perhaps demonstrating what was the actual noble purpose of all the regime change operations of the past. I’m sure that there are some people who get into foreign policy to help the world and not just the US, but I fear that’s a small minority.
The first example I was thinking of there is Venezuela. Conditions in the nation are really bad, there’s been mass migration out of it, and it’s not hard to find a Venezuelan that hates Maduro and friends. He can say it’s the CIA planting people, but even if you agree that none of the situation is actually his fault, it’s not the CIA - people do blame the current government. Same story during the Arab Spring. Really, dictators will usually say an enemy manufactured any civil unrest, and the US is the obvious choice for some of them. Others blame local rivals, and historically Jews were popular.
Do you not believe that the CIA has been deeply involved in Venezuela since the time that Hugo Chavez came to power there? If you really don’t think that’s the case, I don’t know what to tell you. If you do believe that’s the case, why should the US be involved in the domestic affairs of other countries (this particular country having the largest known oil reserves in the world, I might add)?
Interesting, I might have to read that. In my head the banana republic coups worked like half the time, but maybe that’s just because nobody talks about the failed ones.
Yeah, I thought that was interesting too, but I haven’t read the citation. I was surprised by it too.
- Comment on Israel’s IDF Bans Android Phones—iPhones Now ‘Mandatory’ 1 month ago:
I would be interested to know what definition of fascism you are using that includes the USSR and North Korea. Fascism is not the same thing as authoritarianism, if that’s the definition you’re going by.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism
A significant number of scholars agree that a “fascist regime” is foremost an authoritarian form of government; however, the general academic consensus also holds that not all authoritarian regimes are fascist, and more distinguishing traits are required for a regime to be characterized as such.[2][3]
- Comment on What would you want to see this site do differently from Reddit? 1 month ago:
I can understand that. I didn’t realize that Reddit had that feature. I totally hear you that defaults stay defaults.
I may not have been very clear, but what I meant was that users would be able to create and share their own structures without approval or interaction from admins or mods, then admins would be able to pick and choose from those structures that users created and shared, and then the admins would have the option to make those structures the defaults for their instances if they wished.
However, I can see that having this kind of sharing structure could get pretty messy with tons of different structures around. I can also see that the structures could get outdated quickly. I also agree with you that it would probably be better for community creators/mods to self-organize with other communities to structure this.
I think you’re probably right in your approach, but like I said before, it would benefit from being as simple as possible. Perhaps it would be the best to break down your ideas into smaller sets of features so they can be implemented in phases, or maybe even eliminate some features?
Like, for instance, why have permissions, hiding, or cross-community moderation? Why not simplify it to its most basic level: allow two communities to be linked with each other (at the request of either and agreement from the other for them to be in a specific hierarchy) and allow either community to rescind that linkage at any time? This link would make it so that users who subscribe to the “supercommunity” would also get all posts from any “subcommunities” (unless the same user has blocked any particular “subcommunity”, in which case they would still not see that sub’s posts). I think that just these two features would implement most of what I think we would both like to see, while being straight-forward. This could even be thought of as similar to a type of inter-community federation.
I’m thinking out loud too. :)
- Comment on What would you want to see this site do differently from Reddit? 1 month ago:
Those are all good questions. I’m inclined to think that keeping this as simple as possible and following similar principles to the existing moderation environment would help make this useful while not creating too much extra work for moderators or admins, as both groups already seem overworked. I think this will already be complicated enough to begin with (for instance, how will communities in other instances be handled?) and fraught with potential for conflicts (for instance, include or not include communities of certain political slants?), so care should be taken to keep this somewhat minimalistic.
With that in mind, here are some possible concepts to consider:
Moderation: following the principle that Lemmy/Piefed allows moderation by users (through blocking users, communities, and instances), community mods (through removing posts and banning users), and instance admins (through overseeing mods and defederating or default blocking other instances), in that order, how about if the users themselves were the first (and perhaps only) ones to decide and control which lower-level communities they want to see structured in their feed and how? It seems to me that community mods should only be able to moderate their own community at each level, and not be able to moderate posts from levels below.
Creation and use of taxonomies: should the creation of the taxonomy be the job of users, community mods, or instance admins? I’m inclined to think that this should also ultimately be left to users to determine, but there could be a mechanism that allows anyone to share/publish a taxonomy that they find useful (or perhaps branches of a taxonomy, like Gaming), and allow other users to either import or subscribe the taxonomy or branches that they like, from a list of different available ones that have been shared/published. Admins could then have the option of setting entire taxonomies or a group of branches as defaults for users of their instances. This would allow users the freedom to create the structure that they would like to see while also allowing others to benefit from that work and not have to duplicate it, and finally also allowing for different competing structures to exist. Community mods could informally ask creators/maintainers of taxonomies or branches to include their communities in that structure. To add communities to a structure, there could be a simple button in each community that said something like “add to structure”.
I think that doing things this way would allow the most freedom, flexibility, and utility, while also minimizing additional work for mods and admins, as well as any potential for conflicts. Another factor to consider would be how much impact would this kind of thing have on resource utilization of instances?
I hope this all makes sense and helps provide some ideas for how this could work.
- Comment on Screw it, I’m installing Linux 1 month ago:
Interesting, thanks. I wasn’t aware of any of that. Yes, it sounds complicated, and I hope that Linux can eventually improve these issues you mentioned.
- Comment on What would you want to see this site do differently from Reddit? 1 month ago:
Interesting, thanks!
- Comment on What would you want to see this site do differently from Reddit? 1 month ago:
Oh, haha, FR? I had no idea!
- Comment on Gmail can read your emails and attachments to train its AI, unless you opt out 1 month ago:
From what I’ve been hearing, AI has indeed been getting worse, not better. I think I read this in relation to ChatGPT 5 compared to previous models.
- Comment on What would you want to see this site do differently from Reddit? 1 month ago:
Ha, I hadn’t heard of any of this. What happened with the Reddit meetup?