maegul
@maegul@lemmy.ml
A little bit of neuroscience and a little bit of computing
- Comment on Active communities promotion thread 2 hours ago:
!learningrustandlemmy@lemmy.ml
It’s for learning rust (the programming language) and the lemmy code base itself as a sort of “reading club”. If you’re the type of person who might be interested there’s a good chance you’ve heard of it already. We’re currently working through The Book (conventional learning resource) through a couple of Twitch streams and regular posts/discussions.
More collaborative learning activity is plenty welcome!
- Comment on !vegan@vegantheoryclub.org The online space to discuss veganism fully managed by vegans 3 days ago:
I believe you … gate-keeping types are all over the place really.
But vegans or the “vegan-curious” aren’t one thing or one kind of person, at least not any more. I personally have only ever had positive conversations with vegan types.
This instance, in being insistent on not entertaining any “harm reduction” or “compromises”, makes sense though … because it’s a space for people to talk about that sort of dedicated approach.
- Comment on !vegan@vegantheoryclub.org The online space to discuss veganism fully managed by vegans 3 days ago:
they drive away potential allies because the concept of harm reduction is anathema to their binary thinking. If you’re not ALL in, you’re the enemy.
I can resonate with that. But I come back to … “it’s totally ok for people to create their own spaces, especially on federated social media and especially for minority groups/ideas”.
There are likely plenty of other spaces for “potential allies” to engage and talk about veganism if they want to, or plenty they, or you, could make on their own.
Tacitly admitting that vegans are usually antisocial zealots. “It’s right in the name!”
Well, they’re running their own social media platform, so I’m not sure how anti-social they are.
- Comment on !vegan@vegantheoryclub.org The online space to discuss veganism fully managed by vegans 3 days ago:
Right. Well, I think the instance name “vegantheory.org” was doing that already, and I’m betting you drew your conclusion from the public description of the place too (and aren’t in the modlog or anything for challenging their ideas).
- Comment on !vegan@vegantheoryclub.org The online space to discuss veganism fully managed by vegans 3 days ago:
And what would a non-vegan want to do in there?
What’s wrong with minority views and practices creating their own spaces?
On which, is there any non-vegan/anti-vegan thought or idea that a vegan is likely to have not heard already? How many haven’t they heard relative to the amount of decent “pro-vegan” ideas they also haven’t heard of?
Maybe a specialised space, echo chamber even, makes sense in order to balance against the gravity of the mainstream?
- Comment on Elsevier 1 week ago:
The problems are wider than that. Besides, relying “individuals just doing the right thing and going a little further to do so” is, IMO, a trap. Fix the system instead. The little thing everyone can do is think about the system and realise it needs fixing.
- Comment on Elsevier 1 week ago:
I’m sympathetic, but to a limit.
There are a lot of academics out there with a good amount of clout and who are relatively safe. I don’t think I’ve heard of anything remotely worthy on these topics from any researcher with clout, publicly at least. Even privately (I used to be in academia), my feeling was most don’t even know how to think and talk about it, in large part because I don’t think they do think and talk about it all.
And that’s because most academics are frankly shit at thinking and engaging on collective and systematic issues. Many just do not want to, and instead want to embrace the whole “I live and work in an ideal white tower disconnected from society because what I do is bigger than society”. Many get their dopamine kicks from the publication system and don’t think about how that’s not a good thing. Seriously, they don’t deserve as much sympathy as you might think … academia can be a surprisingly childish place. That the publication system came to be at all is proof of that frankly, where they were all duped by someone feeding them ego-dopamine hits. It’s honestly kinda sad.
- Comment on Elsevier 1 week ago:
Yep. But that is all a part of the problem. If academics can’t organise themselves enough to have some influence over something which is basically owned and run them already (they write the papers and then review the papers and then are the ones reading and citing the papers and caring the most about the quality and popularity of the papers) … then they can’t be trusted to ensure the quality of their practice and institutions going forward, especially under the ever increasing encroachment of capitalistic forces.
Modern day academics are damn well lucky that they inherited a system and culture that developed some old aristocratic ideals into a set of conventions and practices!
- Comment on Elsevier 1 week ago:
Yea, academics need to just shut the publication system down. The more they keep pandering to it the more they look like fools.
- Comment on Linux Inventor Says He Doesn’t Believe in Crypto 5 weeks ago:
It’s interesting to see Torvalds emerge as a kind of based tech hero. I’m thinking here also of his rant not long ago on social.kernel.org (a kernel devs microblog instance) that was essentially a pretty good anti-anti-leftism tirade in true Torvalds fashion.
- Comment on The Toilet Theory of the Internet: Google is serving an audience that wants quick and easy results. That may lead to disaster. 1 month ago:
Fantastic framing! Not just of the internet, but the whole economic sector including big tech, various publishers, of course the ads industry and now all of the push for winning the AI platform wars.
It’s a toilet economy! Fueled by the attention, tastes, inclinations and urges of people taking a shit! And now, as AI “learns” from the internet, also fed by and literally made of the writings and thoughts of people … taking a shit.
It’s also a nice litmus test for what kind of internet space somewhere online is based on where people are when they comment or post: “Is this a toilet or desk space”. Depending on what you’re after, you will probably want to know if you’re in the right kind of place.
- Comment on Google now offers ‘web’ search — and an AI opt-out button 1 month ago:
a mutated form of free TV.
Fantastic description!
Similarly, Casey Newton described it as “Managed decline”, on which I riffed “big tech is moving on from the internet”.
But yea, something relatively drastic is happening here. The big-tech end of the internet is no longer the internet we used to have. As you say: Mutated Broadcast TV.
- Comment on Australia's housing crisis in 10 graphs, from the federal budget 1 month ago:
The pandemic is an obvious inflection point in many of these graphs.
What exactly is that mechanism or process? That rents have gone up makes sense as passing on interest rate increases. But vacancy rates going down? There aren’t more people all of a sudden (it was a pandemic not a baby boom).
- Comment on ‘My whole library is wiped out’: what it means to own movies and TV in the age of streaming services 1 month ago:
Oh for sure. All of this is clearly a situation where the law is slow to catch up.
- Comment on ‘My whole library is wiped out’: what it means to own movies and TV in the age of streaming services 1 month ago:
There are obvious responses here along the lines of embracing piracy and (re-)embracing hard copy ownership.
All that aside though, this feels like a fairly obvious point for legal intervention. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are already existing grounds for legal action, it’s just that the stakes are likely small enough and costs of legal action high enough to be prohibitive. Which is where the government should come in on the advice of a consumer body.
Some reasonable things that could be done:
- Money back requirements
- Clear warnings to consumers about “ownership” being temporary
- Requiring tracking statistics of how long “ownership” tends to be and that such is presented to consumers before they purchase
- If there are structural issues that increase the chances of “withdrawn” ownership (such as complex distribution deals etc), a requirement to notify the consumer of this prior to purchase.
These are basic things based on transparency that tend to already exist in consumer regulation (depending on your jurisdiction of course). Streaming companies will likely whinge (and probably have already to prevent any regulation around this), but that’s the point … to force them to clean up their act.
As far as the relations between streaming services and the studios (or whoever owns the distribution rights), it makes perfect sense for all contracts to have embedded in them that any digital purchase must be respected for the life of the purchaser even if the item cannot be purchased any more. It’s not hard, it’s just the price of doing business.
All of this is likely the result of the studios being the dicks they truly are and still being used to pushing everyone around (and of course the tech world being narcissistic liars).
- Comment on iPad Pro with M4 chip boasts impressive performance jump compared to just-released M3 MacBook Air 1 month ago:
Market segregation is worth it for them and the chips will be used in plenty of other hardware anyway, so dumping them in iPads doesn’t hurt, even if it’s mostly just marketing fit the products, nor does it necessitate a product change.
- Comment on Rubén Baler, neuroscientist: ‘We are guinea pigs. Our attention has become a profitable commodity’ 1 month ago:
Yea wow. As a 90s kid I’d never thought of comparing smart phones to consoles. Great point. Gaming together on the couch or a truly fun and social activity and way more wholesome than doom scrolling
- Comment on Jack Dorsey departs Bluesky board | TechCrunch 1 month ago:
Seems like people were politely dancing around the fact that he was both an essentially absentee board member and a problematic one in openly criticising bsky and poisoning its well in terms of reputation. Seems that push finally came to shove and that he really needed to go and was happy to leave.
- Comment on A community for posting Cool Guides 1 month ago:
I’m thinking that things are getting to the point of maturity that it’d make sense to have a general rule about this.
Something like:
- You’re expected to do a little research to see if your new community is very closely aligned with an existing one, and if so, provide at least some statement as to why you’re making yours or what’s different about it.
It’s not to prevent people from making their own communities at all, it’s just that it actually helps clarify the promotion of a new community while also helping the community ecosystem.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
So is kbin unofficially dead now?
- Comment on It's time for a hard fork of Mastodon (DRAFT, REVISION IN PROGRESS) 1 month ago:
You’re not wrong, but I think you’re missing the bigger picture.
The problems and associated solutions aren’t just about being a heroic lead dev. They’re organisational now. And so “grandstanding” has its place, especially when it comes to informing people about why they should consider organising together. You may be sick of their articles but many haven’t read any of them and I’m not sure there are others out there trying to solve these problems at a system level.
- Comment on It's time for a hard fork of Mastodon (DRAFT, REVISION IN PROGRESS) 1 month ago:
Sorry … downvoted.
The statement in the article had a footnote that provided a link to a 2022 Verge article in which Rochko said on the “BDFL model”:
That’s what I would prefer to stick with, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think there’s better ways to involve other people and have better communication.
Moreover his behaviour in maintaining Mastodon is very much inline with this model. It wasn’t name calling, it is literally what he is and happy to be described as.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
Nebula.
- Comment on Are there any innovative platforms in the Fediverse? 2 months ago:
If Ghost fulfil their wish to get payments and subscriptions working over the protocol then that would count. They said they think they can in their recent announcement. But then it seems they may have crypto in mind for it.
- Comment on Is Lemmy growing or shrinking? 2 months ago:
fediverse had a strong european presence before the reddit migration too. The Mastodon lead-dev/founder, for instance, is German. And European governments have been far more interested in running their own instances on the fediverse than any other country AFAICT (to the point that I’ve seen it confuse North-American admins).
- Comment on Bruce Lehrmann raped Brittany Higgins in Parliament House, judge finds on balance of probabilities 2 months ago:
And it seems they’ve clarified it even more now:
Bruce Emery Lehrmann is a former political staffer who was found in a civil court trial at the Federal Court of Australia, on the balance of probabilities, to have raped a colleague at Parliament House, Canberra.
Still a banger of an opening line on one’s wikipedia page!
- Comment on Bruce Lehrmann raped Brittany Higgins in Parliament House, judge finds on balance of probabilities 2 months ago:
Streisand effect turned up to 11 … Lehrmann’s wikipedia page now opens with:
Bruce Lehrmann is a former political staffer who raped a colleague at Parliament House, Canberra.
emphasis mine
- Comment on Bruce Lehrmann raped Brittany Higgins in Parliament House, judge finds on balance of probabilities 2 months ago:
It’s a civil case. There is no “guilt” here. No one is going to jail or gaining a criminal record. There is no criminality.
Instead, there’s a judgment as to whether one has executed their civil responsibilities. And for such cases, the burden is “on the balance”. IE, what is more likely.
Here, AFAIU (I haven’t followed the case), someone in the media stated that Lehrmann raped someone, Lehrmann sued them for defamation, to which the basic/obvious defence, and the one employed by the media person, is that the statement in question is true. It was found, on the balance of probabilities, that the statement was true (or more likely true than not).
The line from the judge “Having escaped the lion’s den, Mr Lehrmann made the mistake of going back for his hat", AFAICT, is a reference to how Lehrmann escaped being criminally convicted (and luckily so IIRC) but then found it necessary to bring this defamation case.
Now we know he probably did it and most people if they saw all the evidence would probably conclude the same. Maybe no certainly enough to through him in jail (though we don’t know that) but certainly enough to say “fuck off with this defamation shit”.
- Comment on I want to be among those who deeply thoroughly understands & can accurately predict the path of future eclipses because this is amazing. 2 months ago:
Oh yea I’ve used it and from memory it’s awesome as you say. I was more talking about getting into the technical details of running a model and calculating various things of personal interest.
Thanks for the recommendation though!
- Comment on I want to be among those who deeply thoroughly understands & can accurately predict the path of future eclipses because this is amazing. 2 months ago:
Me too! Always wanted to get into, thinking it worthwhile to have a running solar system or celestial model on your own machine that you know how to operate etc. Just never really tried sadly!