adespoton

@adespoton@lemmy.ca

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTube's Latest Update Shows That Online Monoculture Is Dead⁩ ⁨⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t miss spending hours trying to get a slot on the modem pool.

  But I’m still happy to while away a few hours on mume.org or some random Diku server.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTube's Latest Update Shows That Online Monoculture Is Dead⁩ ⁨⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Facebook was never fine; it just wasn’t a silo effect at first—but it was still a privacy and security nightmare.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTube's Latest Update Shows That Online Monoculture Is Dead⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  I remember cliques and a lack of online monoculture on Usenet and IRC before the World Wide Web even existed; the web exploded things even further, as did the privatization of DNS and takeover of funding by VCs and ad conglomerates. All that had happened by 1998.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why doesn’t Apple/Samsung/Google use new tech like every other phone maker?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve been using Apple products since 1979. I’d definitely say that the statement is true; Apple rarely leads the charge. That doesn’t mean they never do, but they tend to, in most cases, wait for a trustworthy tech to come along, and then push forward with it, dragging the rest of the market along behind them. There’s always innovations and synergies, many of which wouldn’t happen naturally in the market, but the stuff they integrate is generally already well tested and proved.

  Counter examples include the original Macintosh, the Newton MessagePad and kinda-sorta the iPhone. More common behavior is related to things like PowerPC/ARM, USB, Firewire/Thunderbolt, nVME, trackpads, wireless peripherals, and the like.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTube's Latest Update Shows That Online Monoculture Is Dead⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  When was this?

  Asking as someone who’s been on the Internet since 1989.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Computer Scientists Figure Out How To Prove Lies: An attack on a fundamental proof technique reveals a glaring security issue for blockchains and other digital encryption schemes.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  For decades, many computer scientists have presumed that for practical purposes, the outputs of good hash functions are generally indistinguishable from genuine randomness — an assumption they call the random oracle model.

  Er, no. The falsity of this is taught in virtually all first year CS courses.

  Computer programmers and other IT workers? Sure… but hash functions have never been considered a substitute fore pure randomness.

  That’s why we have a random generator in each computer based on thermal variance, I/O input, and other actually random features. And even then, we have to be careful not to hash the randomness out of the source data.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Trump calls for MAGA base to end 'Epstein Files' obsession⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  See the thing is, all those regulations about conflict of interest were in place for a reason. If there’s no way you could have interfered with an investigation, nobody will claim you did for long.

  But because of how Trump has restructured government, there is absolutely no way to clear up the Epstein investigation. Too much could have been tampered with, with no way to prove it wasn’t. And the video of Trump and Epstein was public knowledge before he gained power, so that’s going to be virtually impossible to gaslight.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI slows down some experienced software developers, study finds⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  And those status reports will be generated by AI, because that’s where the real savings is.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI slows down some experienced software developers, study finds⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  So you treated it like a junior developer and did a thorough review of its output.

  I think the only disagreement here is on the semantics.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI slows down some experienced software developers, study finds⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve had success with:

  • dumping email threads into it to generate user stories,
  • generating requirements documentation templates so that everyone has to fill out the exact details needed to make the project a success
  • generating quick one-off scripts
  • suggesting a consistent way to refactor a block of code (I’m not crazy enough to let it actually do all the refactoring)
  • summarize the work done for a slide deck and generate appropriate infographics

  Essentially, all the stuff that I’d need to review anyway, but use of AI means that actually generating the content can be done in a consistent manner that I don’t have to think about. I don’t let it create anything, just transform things in blocks that I can quickly review for correctness and appropriateness. Kind of like getting a junior programmer to do something for me.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do you like the centralized wen of today?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, browse Google below the SEO dreck. Then follow the links.

  Or, find some niche hobby site and follow its links.

  Branch out from the world wide web… I still visit Hotline sites, the odd Gopher server, and other protocols of yesteryear.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do you like the centralized wen of today?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  That means you need to get out more.

  The old Internet is still out there; it’s just that it is as flaky and hard to navigate as it always has been.

  The “modern” Internet is just a select number of services that send each other traffic and run by the algorithm.

  Most of the Internet I use in my spare time is stuff that’s been around since the 90s and still has about the same number of users it had then. Some of it is even indexed by search engines.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is wrong with being "Black Pilled"?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I wholeheartedly agree.

  There are better emotions to feed, and they don’t tend to result in rejection.

  “Black pill” is a different thing from not dating.

  I never dated, just spent time with people who shared my interests. Eventually, I and one of the people who I shared interests with realized that we were often doing so exclusive of other people.

  We essentially went from just living our lives to everyone seeing us as a couple, eventually us included.

  Pursuing dating for the emotional high will let you down every time. Being real about who you are and what drives you, and learning to have healthy give and take relationships that don’t involve unrealistic expectations means you’ll end up with a more fulfilling life.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How does AI use so much power?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Supercomputers once required large power plants to operate, and now we carry around computing devices in out pockets that are more powerful than those supercomputers.

  There’s plenty of room to further shrink the computers, simplify the training sets, formalize and optimize the training algorithms, and add optimized layers to the AI compute systems and the I/O systems.

  But at the end of the day, you can either simplify or throw lots of energy at a system when training.

  Just look at how much time and energy goes into training a child… and it’s using a training system that’s been optimized over hundreds of thousands of years (and is still being tweaked).

  AI as we see it today (as far as generative AI goes) is much simpler, just setting up and executing probability sieves with a fancy instruction parser to feed it its inputs. But it is using hardware that’s barely optimized at all for the task, and the task is far from the least optimal way to process data to determine an output.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨An AI That Promises to “Solve All Diseases” Is About to Test Its First Human Drugs⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s only one way to solve all diseases.

  Did they test this on Mars first?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Qatar says 'we will need time' for Gaza ceasefire⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  “Eventually the world will become uninhabitable and the ceasefire will hold.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨In languages which use complex written characters (such as Chinese's logographs), is there an equivalent to English's "text speak" shorthand?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Isn’t there also shorthand where you just write the base components and people understand what you mean because even though the radicals are missing, the core meaning of the glyph is still close enough?

  The difference is that the shorthand isn’t based on phonetics but on the core meaning of the calligraphic strokes.

  It’s why Japanese writers can communicate with Cantonese speakers through quick strokes on their palms. The radicals are all different but the base components are the same.

  Similar to a German person stripping back words to core syllables.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Adalytics finds 9,000+ pirated movies, including summer blockbusters, TV shows, and live sports on YouTube, amassing a collective 250M+ views from July to May⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Most major content producers have agreements with YouTube such that as their content is discovered, monetization all goes to the rights holders. In general, this seems like a pretty good idea, and better than copyright maximalism.

  However, I’ve had original works of my own “monetized by rights holder” because they used by work (with permission) in one of their products, and so now have co-opted all expressions of my work on YouTube. So the system isn’t perfect.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Those posts for little home gadgets that show up on social media, kinda like "as seen on tv" stuff but since it's tiktok/insta and other such sites, what would those be called?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Tchotchkes?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is the "dip"?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  To protect them from parasites, yes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is the "dip"?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I always assumed it was sheep dip.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨32, f. Are there any dating sites that are actually free and don't suddenly force me to pay to actually use the site?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  What differentiates a dating site from something like Lemmy? The secret matching algorithm?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  If asked in a vacuum, there’d be no audible answer.

  Unless non-verbal communication was used and the participants could hold their breath long enough.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Iranian Cyber Actors May Target Vulnerable US Networks and Entities of Interest⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  May??? They’ve been targeting them for years!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Bridge mode disables the router in the modem; if you have an admin account on the modem you should be able to enable it yourself; otherwise you need to get your ISP to enable it. It will turn off all the firewall and WiFi features on the modem.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You need to use their modem quite often, but you don’t need to use their router. They’re usually “all in one” modem/router things these days, but they’re legally required to provide you with a modem in bridge mode if you ask — at that point, an Ethernet cable attached to their modem is effectively attached to the Internet, and you can put your own hardware inside (firewall, Wifi router, etc.).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It doesn’t really matter… the data is managed by a third party in another country. I have no real control over who gets access to it, intentionally or otherwise. Better that the data just doesn’t exist in the first place.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Well yeah. That’s what their tech does. And it’s why I have my ISP’s WiFi offering disabled and the antennas removed and run their router in bridged mode, hooked up to equipment I own that doesn’t call out to the Internet.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is there something like a spreadsheet for hierarchical data structures?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ll second the SQL database here. Especially since most people who use a spreadsheet actually treat it as a database in the first place, and not as a way to lay out data in a 2D table.

  But if a hierarchical table is really what’s desired, any visual database interface should do the trick.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Website containing a list of names of abilities, characters, locations, etc. from video games?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Fandom.com?