JohnEdwa

@JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google fined EUR 3 billion by EU for blocking competition in online ad sales⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  You don’t believe that the anticompetitive ad stuff Google has been doing for 11 years approached 2.5% of their one year profit?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google fined EUR 3 billion by EU for blocking competition in online ad sales⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Sadly it doesn’t, Google is currently the most profitable company on the planet, with them making 120 billion in pure profit 2024 and estimated to make even more this year, so this fine, for anticompetitive stuff going back to 2014, is less than 2.5% of their one year profit.
  And there’s absolutely zero chance that they gained less than 3 billion from that anticompetitive stuff, so this fine is just part of the cost of doing business.

  That’s like the median income family in the US ($84k) getting hit with a $2.5k fine because they didn’t pay their taxes for over a decade, with no requirement of actually paying any of those taxes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What would stop you from switching to a flip phone (or dumbphone) in 2025?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Without the lens, exactly.
  Realistically, cameras can be put into two categories - they either effortlessly fit in your pocket, or don’t, and any that don’t tend to get left home unless you intend to specifically go take photos.

  And if you have a high end smartphone, you probably can’t get a camera that fits in your pocket that would be significantly better.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What would stop you from switching to a flip phone (or dumbphone) in 2025?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I simply wouldn’t. A dumbphone does mostly the things I don’t use a phone for.

  And I don’t mean fortnite and tickytocks, I’ve grown up through (most) of the history of mobile phones, I started with my mothers old Nokia 2110 back in like… 1998? I remember how awesome it was to finally have a phone, then to be able to get the bus schedules with the painfully slow WAP connection so I didn’t have to call home, then to have navigation, replace the mp3 player, camera, and eventually even mostly my laptop.

  I want to have a datapad with access to all the devices and information in my pocket at all times. If I need it to do something, I know there’s an app for it probably. It’s awesome.

  I’d really prefer that the datapad wouldn’t then leech all of my information in return, though.

  Oh, and bring back physical keyboards. I’d give my left nut for an HTC Desire Z with 2025 hardware.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Need help with printer recommendations⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  For your PETG trials, few things to know: it likes to bond with glass buildsheets permanently, so if you use one, always use a layer of gluestick. And it absorbs moisture - though really slowly compared to actually moisture critical materials like nylon or tpu - and prints really stringy when wet, so getting a food dehydrator or a filament dryer is probably a good idea.

  And the “replacement” for ABS is ASA - similar material properties (actually superior UV resistance) while being easier to print.

  Each material has specific strengths and weaknesses, but a good start is to have PLA, PETG, ASA and TPU. That way you can print most of anything reasonable, except living hinges (nylon) or really strong parts (PLA+, and filaments with carbon fibre).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bye Intel, hi AMD! I’m done after 2 dead Intels⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s not really that different, the exact temperatures are slightly higher but most intel processors will boost up to 105C, then start pulling the boost back and throttling to maintain that 105C as a maximum, and if that’s not possible they’ll halt at 110C.

  AMD does the same, just the temps are (for the one specific CPU I remember them for) 80-85C for dialing down the boost, 90C for throttling below the normal freq, and 95C for TjMax which either halts the system or just drops the power usage so low it doesn’t matter - I’m not about to take a heatgun to my CPU to see what it does as it isn’t capable of hitting that on its own.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google's plan to restrict sideloading on Android has a potential escape hatch for users⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  There are plenty of people developing apps that require root, and users who run those are already jumpung through a million hoops of cat and mouse to keep their fucking mcdonalds app detecting it.

  Like seriously, wtf McDonalds, your app is like the ultimate root/safetynet/device id detection tool, I don’t think there exists even a banking app that is as hard to fool.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google's plan to restrict sideloading on Android has a potential escape hatch for users⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s the technical term that defines the process of transferring files not from an external networked device - downloading - or to an external networked device - uploading - but between two local devices - sideloading.

  It’s over two decades old, you downloaded an mp3 from napster, and then sideloaded it to your player.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google quietly removes net-zero carbon goal from website amid rapid power-hungry AI data center buildout — industry-first sustainability pledge moved to background amidst AI energy crisis⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Image

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"Very dramatic shift" - Linus Tech Tips opens up about the channel's declining viewership⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  We do, but in the last decade youtube has doubled its active user count to something like 2.5 billion. That’s a lot of more people-hours to spend as well.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nepal bans social media(Facebook, X, Reddit, Mastodon, Discord, Signal, YouTube and more) for failing to register with the government; Only 7 to be open(Viber, TikTok, Telegram and more)⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Because that works so well with the pirate bay.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Huawei unveils new trifold smartphone before Apple’s iPhone 17 reveal⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Thorn.

  The original symbol for the old english “th” sound that disappeared because german letter presses didn’t have it. Which is also where the “ye old” comes from - it’s actually “the old”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Ooni Volt 2 - they put "AI" in a pizza oven⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  A simple line of code that goes “if moisture < 0.25 then loaddone” of “water = weight * 0.43” isn’t AI, true.
  But when you start stacking enough of them with the goal and results being “We could get a chef to check how the pizza is doing every few seconds and, and control all of the different temperatures of this oven until it’s perfectly done, but we have made a computer algorithm that manages to do that instead”, then it’s quite hard to argue it isn’t software that is “performing a task typically associated with human intelligence, such as … perception, and decision-making.”

  Especially if that algorithm was (I have no idea if it was in this case btw) not done by just stacking those if clauses and testing stuff manually until it works, but by using machine learning to analyze a mountain of baking data to create a neural network that does it itself. Because at that point, it definitely is artificial intelligence - it’s not an artificial general intelligence, which many people think is the only type of “true AI”, but it is an AI.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Ooni Volt 2 - they put "AI" in a pizza oven⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s AI in the actual wide technological definition, not AI in the current marketing hype bubble way.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI Killed My Job: Translators⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve had to translate a whole bunch of letters from English to Finnish for my grandparents, and doing it using a translator saves a ton of time as I don’t have to actually produce the text, I can just read both sides afterwards and as long as every sentence matches in meaning, I can move to the next one.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The entire Social Security database was uploaded on a random cloud server, Whistle-Blower Says⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  More of the first, but not exactly. It’s “Other people should see and know about this too” and “This isn’t worth anybody’s time and shouldn’t have been posted.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tesla said it didn’t have key data in a fatal crash. Then a hacker found it.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Want to fine Twitter 10% for something horrible they did in 2020 using their net profit? You now owe Twitter 113 million.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨OpenAI Says It's Scanning Users' ChatGPT Conversations and Reporting Content to the Police⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That is one of the fundamental flaws of machine learning like this, the way they are trained means they end up always trying to agree with the user, because not doing so is taken as being a “wrong” answer. That is why they hallucinate answers too - because “I don’t know” is not an acceptable answer, but generating something plausible that the user takes as truth works.
  You then have to manually try to reign them in and prevent them from talking about things you don’t want them to, but they are trivially easy to fool. IIRC, in one of these suicide cases the LLM did refuse to talk about suicide, until the user told it it was all just for a fictional story. And you can’t really “fix” that without completely banning it from talking about those things in every single occasion, because someone will find a way around it eventually.

  And yeah, they don’t care, because they are essentially just predictive text algorithms turned up to 11. Chatbots like ChatGPT and other LLMS are an excellent application of both meanings of the word “Artificial Intelligence” - they emulate human intelligence by faking being intelligent, when they in reality are not.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨4chan and Kiwi Farms Sue the UK Over its Age Verification Law⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Hiroyuki Nishimura, founder of 2channel and current owner of 2ch.sc

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Jimmy Wales Says Wikipedia Could Use AI. Editors Call It the 'Antithesis of Wikipedia'⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh, you mean the fallout.wiki/wiki/Caesar's_Legion ?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Jimmy Wales Says Wikipedia Could Use AI. Editors Call It the 'Antithesis of Wikipedia'⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s an addon for that, Indie Wiki Buddy.
  It tries to redirect you to non fandom/fextralife wikis if they exist, and if not, it proxies fandom wikis through BreezeWiki which just displays the content.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft Still Can't Say How Much the ROG Xbox Ally X Will Cost Due to "Macro-Economic" Conditions, Despite Announcing Release Date and Availability Details(Leaked prices $549.99/$899 for Ally/Ally )⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Also who the hell thought Predator was an appropriate name for any commercial product, it’s pretty yikes.

  As in not prey. A line of gaming stuff so superior that it exploits the market and eats the competition, competition like the Alienware line. Alien vs Predator, and all that?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨"I support it only if it's open source" should be a more common viewpoint⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  In some “ecosystems” everything being free is kinda how you are compensated, instead of money. You spend time making your app for free, but so does everyone else so you don’t have to pay for those things either. The two main examples I’ve personally been involved with are game modding and 3d printing models, I use the free stuff other people make all the time, releasing the things I make for free is how I pay it back.

  But yeah, if you use something you really like, throw them a buck or two for the work.
  …although I’ve donated about as much as I’ve received as donations myself. Eh. No matter.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Pebble Time 2 Design Reveal⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Time uses a normal display connector, it doesn’t suffer from the pebble screen tear as it’s known.
  You can still damage the display, either by force or with moisture ingress, but it’s not at all the same type of an issue - zebra connectors require pressure to stay connected, and over time they lose their squishiness and the connection gets unreliable.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Pebble Time 2 Design Reveal⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  They fixed the screen tearing over a decade ago, it was only present on the original and Pebble Steel because they used zebra strips for the display connection. And unless you had the very first kickstarter edition, which was glued shut and didn’t have screws, the fix for the screen tear was to put a piece of paper inside the case to add just a bit of thickness, it took less than 5 minutes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Pebble Time 2 Design Reveal⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Adjusted for inflation, $199 in 2016 would be $267.85 today.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Billionaire Elon Musk is threatening to sue Apple and escalating his feud with Sam Altman⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  One user asked X’s native AI, Grok, who was right in the feud. The chatbot replied: “Based on verified evidence, Sam Altman is right.”

  Man I love reading about Grok throwing shade at elon, never stops being funny.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨As electric bills rise, evidence mounts that data centers share blame. States feel pressure to act⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  From what little I’ve researched about privately producing back to the grid here in Finland, it really didn’t make much sense. You get terrible rates and as you said have to pay the transfer fees too. It’s priced in a way that they clearly would rather you didn’t do it at all.

  But the NordPool isn’t really a system designed with tiny private producers in mind. Price goes to zero, or sometimes even negative, exactly to try to prevent having to pull electricity production down as that’s expensive and complicated. It’s clear to see that it isn’t a sustainable model in the long run, but hopefully it incentivises companies to build the solution - storage - to make use of all that “wasted” energy and stabilize the price and market.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨As electric bills rise, evidence mounts that data centers share blame. States feel pressure to act⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It depends and varies wildly based on your area and how the electricity is actually sold.
  If they are using an energy stock exchange, as many places are, then increased capacity, especially increased renewable capacity, greatly reduces the price per kWh because the price depends on the most expensive method of generation.
  And because renewables always offer their electricity for free to the exchange, as they don’t have any fuel etc costs, you sometimes end up in the peculiar situation like here in Finland (and in the entire NordPool area) tomorrow between 13:00 and 16:00, where electricity is literally priced at 0€/kWh, as there is enough renewables to cover it all.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Intel CPU Temperature Monitoring Driver For Linux Now Unmaintained After Layoffs⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, wouldn’t it be amazing if for example Apple has the monopoly on the smartphone market, so your purchasing decision would be to buy an iPhone, or a slightly larger iPhone, or fuck all? And they would have no competition - which is the definition of a monopoly - so they could price them at whatever they wanted to. They could even make the American iPhone a reality, because let’s be real, it’s kinda hard to function without a phone these days.

  Aren’t monopolies such a great thing for consumers :))))