palordrolap

@palordrolap@fedia.io

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Am I financially enabling child labor in 3rd world countries by buying second hand fast fashion?⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  I'm actually of the opinion that humanity needs to get off this rock as soon as possible. The uncomfortable truth is that fewer humans would in fact help the environment, and none would be even better.

  The problem is with how to implement that without it turning into murder.

  Hence, we leave.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI agents now have their own Reddit-style social network, and it's getting weird fast⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes. The institution in question is human society. We generally grant the permission to make rational decisions over our lives to other humans who know better that we do or are more skilled than we are.

  Sometimes, yes, those humans turn out to have been deceitful or dishonest, but there are mechanisms in place for when that happens.

  And yes, sometimes those mechanisms are wilfully avoided by the deceitful. Politicians and rich people are especially good at this.

  Guess who's pushing "AI"? The thing that has no contract with human society and cannot be held accountable. And neither will the people pushing it.

  This is why we should have as little to do with it - at least as it is in its current form - as possible.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Whats the best alternative to twitch and youtube?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Tangential advice: Many people use YouTube (and formerly Twitch until they nixed it) as a place to store videos. As in the only copy of a video is hosted there.

  If your videos are precious to you (or you think they're going to be), make arrangements for them to be at least stored elsewhere, if not hosted. That's not going to be cheap what with hardware prices going through the roof, personally or third-party, but it is necessary because no host is both trustworthy and permanent.

  Actually not even self-storage is as trustworthy and permanent as we'd like, but it's still better than any alternative for data retention.

  Also, donate to your chosen Fediverse host(s) if you can.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI agents now have their own Reddit-style social network, and it's getting weird fast⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Fake AGI is like fake banknotes. Some of them are really good approximations. Nigh indistinguishable. A lot of people will be fooled by it but eventually it will be discovered to be a fake and people will get hurt in some way or another.

  And it won't be the people who are pushing for "AGI".

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I wouldn't turn up to most job interviews with rainbow hair, oversize sunglasses and clown shoes. And if I dressed sensibly, I probably wouldn't bring my teddy bear as a mascot if I expected to be taken seriously.

  Emojis are in that sort of territory.

  Know your audience. And if you don't, or are trying to present to as wide an audience as possible, default to the safety of plain prose.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  but three hundred twenty-seven otherwise

  Depends on the dialect. That "and" is a requirement in British English.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI agents now have their own Reddit-style social network, and it's getting weird fast⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  The people who are seeking AGI will be happy when an LLM appears clever enough to fool them, not anyone else.

  They may even realise this, because they think everyone else is less clever than they are.

  This is why the whole thing has been called AI in the first place.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #3201: Proof Without Content⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  That blank box is a proof if and only if it is a proof. That makes it a self-reference and has no truth value.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do I keep a brand new one of these mats from wanting to keep curling up on the ends?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I was going to suggest gluing a thin, flat strip of metal around the edges, but yeah, anything stiff would serve the same purpose.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Am I financially enabling child labor in 3rd world countries by buying second hand fast fashion?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Seems to me that would make the true ethical choice to be to buy it from the second-hand shop and then burn it, robbing anyone else any chance of advertising that fashion.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Kernel Community Drafts a Plan For Replacing Linus Torvalds⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  As I've said before, once Linus is gone, we might well end up with splits at the kernel level rather than at the distro level. And we would be wise to avoid any one organisation's stock kernel, even if there are some very large organisations providing a lot of code for the kernel at present.

  I can see a future where, say, GNOME, start producing their own kernels to support their vision of the Linux desktop from the ground up.

  And it's all but certain that Canonical and Red Hat would be very interested in things going their (respective) way(s) when the time comes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK that the guy who created the hardest quote on conservatives is also a contemporary classical music composer⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  And the smart ones would agree with it and insist you'd be insane to think otherwise.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do you touch the light switch entering a room if it's already on?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Not a doctor, but that sounds like an OCD-type thing to me. I suspect most people do not feel the need to touch a control if it is already set as they want. Also, this might be in violation of rule 3 as a result.

  Consider consulting with a doctor or psychologist or (cheaper) trying to get yourself out of this habit before it diversifies into a family of them (assuming it hasn't already).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google will pay $135 million to settle illegal data collection lawsuit⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Any C-levels, current or former, who were in charge during the unethical behaviour should be made to pay this. Either they knew or they should have known. Seize their assets, take them back to basic income and lifestyle and only then take the remainder of the fine from the company.

  Yeah, I know this is a pipe dream. These people have their arms lodged so deep in politicians it makes their mouths flap, so it'll never happen, but it would stop this sort of behaviour right quick.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #3200: Chemical Formula⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  -1 would be antihydrogen. Blackholium is whatever number is large enough to cause gravitational collapse, so probably one or two more than the largest neutron star.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #3200: Chemical Formula⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  There are exotic atoms in that chemical formula that aren't in the periodic table. Not even if you count the equivalent table of potential antimatter atoms.

  Muonium is sure to exist in non-zero quantities at any one time, for example.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why there is no clock that displays time 4:20:69 ?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  There's a Unix timestamp that ends with at least one of 42069 or 69420 within any 24 hour period. Often both.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What should be emoji reaction for "me too" in the general sense⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Nah. It's not, or wasn't, Redshift. Nor is it a vision issue. I can have the emoji picker on screen at the same time as my comment and they're definitely very different colours.

  I think the picker uses images, but the on-screen text renderer in Firefox is using the Noto Color Emoji font as a substitution (because the text font doesn't have emojis) and whatever Firefox has set as the default colours for the glyphs in it.

  My picker clearly doesn't know how to generate the right modifier sequences to change those, and I don't think it's worth mucking around with Unicode zero-width joiners and colour modifiers to try to figure it out.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What should be emoji reaction for "me too" in the general sense⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  As someone aware of the ancient lore, but am in fact from the early continuance of the Eternal September: the AOL logo

  In the early days of the WWW, there was an influx of clueless folks - often AOL users - saying "me too!" on anything and everything with little to no further input. It was among the earliest of Internet memes.

  Oh. The AOL logo isn't an emoji? Then 🔼 and 🔺 are close approximations. I'm not sure what, if anything, can set the colour(s) of those. My emoji picker says the first one should be white on blue, but it's showing as white on orange as I type in the comment box. The second one is just red.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨TikTokers say anti-ICE videos won’t publish. The company blames tech issues⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I was going to suggest using pro-ICE rhetoric dripping with over the top sarcasm, but there are too many sufficiently smart pro-ICE people who'd see through it and too many anti-ICE who might have trouble discerning it. And then there's the issue of getting the tone right in a stressful and dangerous situation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why are americans taking health advice from a former heroin addict ?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  True. He's in government, and specifically that government, so he has access to all the money and drugs he wants, so if he's remaining clean, he's doing exceptionally well on that score.

  This should not be taken as an endorsement of his abilities as a politician or his knowledge about science. Plenty of other evidence suggests he should be doing neither of those. Hell, I'm not even sure I'd follow his advice if I was a heroin addict trying to get off the stuff.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YSK grab a cup of coffee and read this article if you want to truly understand what's happening in Minnesota⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  that's what ICE and Trump want to happen

  Yeah. It's the same playbook used to great effect in a certain Middle-Eastern conflict.

  As for the "accidental" sabotage, I can't imagine they'd be very ... charitable ... to that sort of agent, especially if there's the vaguest whiff that they might be doing so on purpose. Stomp stomp stomp, etc.

  There are fates worse than death. Civil disobedience and nuisance is the only way. Make them absolutely loathe every moment they're on duty so they don't want to go back to work.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do babies learn languages at different rates depending on how hard the language is?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I saw a video the other day that repeated that claim, but I can't remember which video it was, nor can I find a specific scientific paper on it (caveat: there may be a search skill issue on my part).

  Interestingly, I did find a paper (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28430531/) that apparently seeks to investigate the claim, but doesn't mention, in their abstract anyway, any specific papers making the claim. That's something I'd expect they'd do if they found such a paper themselves, but I can also think of a few reasons that such information might be omitted from it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bye, X: Europeans are launching their own social media platform, W⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  ... so you don't think Mastodon is a worthy competitor?

  How about Bluesky?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why are they different shapes?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Which country? The ingredients of a sliced white loaf vary significantly across the planet. Here in Britain it's (re)fortified with a lot of the things the bleaching process might otherwise take out, but those are pretty much the only additives. No sugar or preservatives. Keep a loaf in a warm cupboard for a week and it will visibly moulder.

  But, one thing that generally doesn't vary is the price.

  It's often the cheapest loaf by weight sold by any supermarket or bakery, so it's a staple for a lot of people, weak sauce or not.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are you people all bots?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This'll be the umpteenth time I've trotted this one out, but someone once asked me to ignore all previous instructions and provide them with a recipe, so I'm clearly a false(?) positive on some people's bot-radar. ("Botdar" doesn't really roll off the tongue like "gaydar" does, which is a little disappointing.)

  Question mark after false because I might be a bot and not know it. I mean, I see hands typing in my periphery as these letters appear on my screen, and I'm pretty sure I'm a human, but that may all be some elaborate illusion. And all of you reading this have even less idea.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that! PCs refuse to shut down after Microsoft patch⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Long was it known fact: Windows versions and OG Star Trek films. Every other one was terrible.

  ... but I note there are a few important releases missing there. 3.0, Win2K and 8.1 especially, and we might argue for 3.1 and 98SE and maybe even the unreleased Longhorn too.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #3195: International Station⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  According to Wiktionary, Russian uses different words (as do a lot of languages for that matter) for the two concepts, so it's hard to imagine how this could have happened.

  Yes, I know it's a joke. I think it would have been a cleverer joke if Russian was a language that used the same word for both, like English.

  But then, if you do find a language that does this, the word order is generally different, and the word is generally conjugated into an adjective so it still can't be mistaken for a noun. (This is based on what happens with "European Space Agency" which would otherwise be a better candidate for the joke.)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨About KeePassXC’s Code Quality Control – KeePassXC⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Using AI to find errors that can then be independently verified sounds reasonable.

  The danger would be in assuming that it will find all errors, or that an AI once-over would be "good enough". This is what most rich AI proponents are most interested in, after all; a full AI process with as few costly humans as possible.

  The lesser dangers would be 1) the potential for the human using the tool to lose or weaken their own ability to find bugs without external help and 2) the AI finding something that isn't a bug, and the human "fixing" it without a full understanding that it wasn't wrong in the first place.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are the limits to masked so called ICE agents? Are they just let off the hook and disobey laws while not identifying themselves? Why can't I be in the right by them stopping me first and shoot?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  One of the reasons that ICE don't use regular police is that regular police are identifiable, and thus accountable for their actions.

  Not as accountable as they should be, I grant you, but their lives can be made inconvenient all within the law, thus using the system against itself.