TeddE
@TeddE@lemmy.world
- Comment on GitHub CEO delivers stark message to developers: Embrace AI or get out. 1 day ago:
Honestly I’ve been recommending setting up a personal git store and cloning any project you like, I imagine the next phase of this is Microsoft making a claim that if Copilot ‘assisted’ all these projects, Microsoft is a part owner of all these projects - in a gambit to swallow and own open source.
- Comment on It's time to boycott U.S. digital services! Here's a chart to help you do so: 3 days ago:
Just a quick reminder, if you give yourself some time and a small budget (or upcycle older tech), there are good (sometimes great) alternatives to everything listed here that you can build yourself (often pretty quickly, thanks to docker)
- Comment on Judge Accused of Using AI to Issue Garbled Ruling 6 days ago:
This made me laugh. Not wrong though!
- Comment on YSK: Bandcamp is waiving its fees today and all money is passed to the artist (until 12 a.m. PST) 6 days ago:
That is a decent advertising model. Feels like it’s been a while since I’ve seen one of those
- Comment on Be nice 1 week ago:
🥶
- Comment on Hertz' AI System That Scans for "Damage" on Rental Cars Is Turning Into an Epic Disaster 1 week ago:
I should have remembered that. I had to lend my card out to my friend who was in a credit lock at the time they needed a rental. Still, I don’t think my advice is invalid, just irrelevant here.
- Comment on Hertz' AI System That Scans for "Damage" on Rental Cars Is Turning Into an Epic Disaster 1 week ago:
Yes. I agree - on paper all three have a chargeback process that appear similar enough. However, assuming you aren’t a financial expert who never needs help, I’m discussing the behind the front politics at play and each group’s motivations to go above and beyond.
- Comment on Hertz' AI System That Scans for "Damage" on Rental Cars Is Turning Into an Epic Disaster 1 week ago:
It’s about who’s lawyers you can rally to your defense in a dispute.
With a credit card you’re spending the bank’s money. If you can convince the bank you’re in the right, it’s you and the bank’s lawyers recovering the bank’s money.
As a debit card user, the banks will support your legal rights, because it’s good business for your clients to prosper. While the bank’s lawyers won’t go to bat for you, many will be willing to give you quasi-legal and quasi-financial tidbits or point you in the right direction.
As the bank’s client’s employee, you’re basically on your own. Good luck.
- Comment on Hertz' AI System That Scans for "Damage" on Rental Cars Is Turning Into an Epic Disaster 1 week ago:
Too many people these days don’t use or have access to credit cards for services like this. Many people I know only use bank debit cards, or worse, use the debit preloaded cash cards issued by their employers’ payroll service provider.
Credit cards motivate banks to help you, because if you won’t pay, and the business doesn’t pay, the bank has to take the hit.
Debit cards will work as well if your bank values it’s reputation - but not all banks do.
And I would not trust a preloaded card provider to assist. You are neither their business partner nor their customer and that puts your interests at the bottom of a very long list. You have to hope some law is on your side or that your issue is so trivial that resolving it is more cost effective then dealing with you.
- Comment on OpenAI’s ChatGPT Agent casually clicks through “I am not a robot” verification test 1 week ago:
Oh. Well, I was worried for a bit but you’ve put my heart at ease.
Now that we’ve made our problems go away by redefining them, I’m ready to tackle
cancer, a natural body resource management issue.</s> [and assuming parent comment is also </s> in spite of
Poe’s LawNathan’s astute online parody observations] - Comment on Steam Users Rally Behind Anti-Censorship Petition 1 week ago:
That’s the problem.
Valve already had a process to flag titles as illegal in specific jurisdictions, and as far as anyone can tell, was doing an okay job at that (not perfect, obviously), but they were forced to add an extra clause of, ‘oh, plus anything visa et al. don’t like’ the extra layer is adding minimal protection and is rife for abuse.
Additionally, let’s talk about what makes porn. Does “yakuza.fandom.com/wiki/Be_My_Baby” of Yakuza 2 count? Or does it get a free pass because it’s a large publisher?
What if players take the elements of the game to create something the developers didn’t prevent? Like if a map contains a baby on one side of a map and an orgy (in another office) on the other side of the map, is it CP if a player picks up the baby and brings it into the orgy room? Is this something you want the banks deciding? Couldn’t we - have therapists or other behavioral health development experts make this call?
Most importantly is the recorded history of how these systems are routinely shown to be used against smaller publishers, and assorted minorities (including LGBT people) have a woman show a boob, it’s polite adult fun, but if their twin brother shows a pre-op trans boob, now it’s magically porn.
- Comment on Just received an email from feddit.online saying they've geoblocked UK IPs due to the Online Safety Act 1 week ago:
Just a reminder. Self-hosting is a hobby that is both useful and satisfying, and the skills you pick up will change how you see computers that are increasingly part of everything.
You probably won’t be going off-grid overnight, but the tech industry has spent 30 years promoting propaganda that ‘only skilled engineers should worry about what goes on under the hood’ and have conditioned us to expect tech to just be magic.
Fighting back means educating yourself, and that means grabbing an old laptop, learning how to install Linux on it, fire up a few Docker projects, and exploring all the options that opens up.
It will take a few weekends to get started, and it will require some upkeep. But for that price you will gain some sovereignty back over your digital life.
For extra credit and when ready you can pay $15 /year for a vanity domain (you’d only need one, as you can freely create an unrestricted number of subdomains), once done you move from being a serf to a digital landlord.
- Comment on Rule34 blocked the UK entirely rather than comply due to the new law. 1 week ago:
Perhaps? But you can get extradited from the US to the UK, and there’s all sorts of dumb agreements for international evidence and standing precedent. I don’t expect the current administration to forge new ground here, but navigating the waters of international law is byzantine at the best of times.
- Comment on "Pilot had to dive aggressively to avoid midair collision over Burbank airport." 1 week ago:
You’re right, but I don’t think The Internet cares.
- Comment on Rule34 blocked the UK entirely rather than comply due to the new law. 1 week ago:
Or have your site taken down by your own country because of its international obligations. You still have to abide by your own country’s interpretation (and political alignment to) of foreign laws.
- Comment on Two major AI coding tools wiped out user data after making cascading mistakes 1 week ago:
On one hand, it’s very clear the tools are the core of the problem.
On the other hand, I don’t think I’ll be calling any vibe coders good craftsman any time soon.
- Comment on ‘If I switch it off, my girlfriend might think I’m cheating’: inside the rise of couples location sharing 1 week ago:
I’m 40 and have done this with partners.
But also, they and I have an open relationship. If they found me in the bed of another, the reaction would an excited inquiry of if I had fun.
- Comment on White House unveils sweeping plan to “win” global AI race through deregulation 1 week ago:
Hell is too kind and polite for the timeline we live in. We’ll probably wash up in superhell or something.
- Comment on “You can't be expected to have a successful AI program when every single article, book or anything else that you've read or studied, you're supposed to pay for” Donald Trump said 1 week ago:
I’ll setup a JellAIfin server immediately. It’s just the regular Jellyfin code, but I am compiling my own version - it has “AI” added as a comment to every line of code before I compiled.
- Comment on First they came for steam, then they came for itch.io . 2 weeks ago:
Against banks? I love the enthusiasm but this is not the way. Banks as a whole have many of the best lawyers in the game on retainer (possession is 9/10ths of the law, and this industry banks on that and make bank.) The best crowdfunding campaign in history* is 800 million. The banks would be willing to spend at least that in their own defence.
*not including investments (nor blockchain)
Plus, a progressive lawsuit in this environment? Might backfire spectacularly - right now banks are cautiously picking on ‘safe’ targets. But with a green light from the supreme court the banks could go full Nazi. Yeah - there’s nothing good I can reasonably expect here.
- Comment on Surprising no one, new research says AI Overviews cause massive drop in search clicks 2 weeks ago:
The original Google algorithm was powered by establishing ‘reputation’ by the number of links to that page. Would be cool to see an algorithm that started with that analysis, but also weighed pages by their Erdős distance to your Fediverse account(think 6° of Kevin Bacon) - basically much higher scores for links from you, higher score for links by your friends, moderate boost for friends of friends, etc.
- Comment on Why doesn't the US fill in the area in the Pacific to connect Alaska, Hawaii, and the mainland? Are they stupid? 2 weeks ago:
A construction plan of epic proportions. They’re calling it a freeway.
Eight lanes of shimmering cement running from here to Pasadena. Smooth, safe, fast. Traffic jams will be a thing of the past.
I see a place where people get on and off the freeway. On and off. Off and on. All day, all night. Soon where the Pacific once was will be a string of gas stations, inexpensive motels, restaurants that serve rapidly prepared food, tire salons, automobile dealerships, and wonderful, wonderful billboards reaching as far as the eye can see! My god… It’ll be beautiful.
- Comment on People Are Being Involuntarily Committed, Jailed After Spiraling Into "ChatGPT Psychosis" 2 weeks ago:
You’re saying people with underdeveloped mental and social skills are somehow never analagous in any way at all to children? There are full grown neurotypical and clinically healthy adults that are irresponsible enough to be analagous to children, but a literal case of someone trusting an untrustworthy authority due to a lapse of critical thinking skills … bears no resembalance at all to child-like behavior, at all?
Wow. That’s kind of some ivory tower stuff right there.
- Comment on People Are Being Involuntarily Committed, Jailed After Spiraling Into "ChatGPT Psychosis" 2 weeks ago:
Agreed, for sure.
But if Costco modified their in-store sample booth policy and had their associates start offering free samples of bleach to children - when kids start drinking bleach we wouldn’t blame the children; we wouldn’t blame the bleach; we’d be mad at Costco.
- Comment on People Are Being Involuntarily Committed, Jailed After Spiraling Into "ChatGPT Psychosis" 2 weeks ago:
Counterpoint: it is NOT an unhealthy relationship. A relationship has more than one person in it. It might be considered an unhealthy behavior.
I don’t think the problem is solvable if we keep treating the Speak’n’spell like it’s participating in this.
Corporations are putting dangerous tools in the hands of vulnerable people. By pretending the tool is a person, we’re already playing their shell game.
But yes, the tool seems primed for enabling self-harm.
- Comment on Gallium 2 weeks ago:
Excellent point. There’s a certain ‘sacrificial lamb’ vibe to this. With everything going on right now, how is this worth anyone’s time?
I’m not the biggest Coldplay fan, so let me extrapolate: if tomorrow we learned Weird Al Yankovic’s mother liked to kick puppies that would certainly be odd, definitely not good news. But I’d still think having Trump not releasing the Epstein files is a matter far more worth our attention.
- Comment on Netflix uses AI effects for first time to cut costs 2 weeks ago:
We already murder some babies. Why not murder all babies?
How about “because if bad stuff is bad, more bad stuff is worse”?
- Comment on I was wrong about robots.txt 2 weeks ago:
Kinda, but also not really. Any major tech player that has billions to lose will make a show of respecting robots.txt when presenting that information to third parties, lest they be exposed by basic journalism.
However, they also have separate networks in R&D that sweep the net all the time and do not care about such restrictions. It’s theatre.
And they’re still happy to punish people that have the gall to publicly decline their crawlers. Basically they can eat their cake and have it too.
- Comment on The good old days 2 weeks ago:
Shall I bring the amyl nitrates for after the kiss?
- Comment on Is there any Middleware that performs similar functions to Cloudflare, just... selfhosted? 2 weeks ago:
If you want DDoS protection you’re gonna need to work with someone who can swallow and filter a whole botnet’s worth of traffic and keep running. That takes some serious infrastructure.
I recommend Cloudflare for small businesses because their terms of service are actually decent, and blending their traffic into that stream makes their website indistinguishable from larger competition.
The next closest things are Pangolin (digpangolin.com) and WireGuard. You’ll need to rent a server somewhere with a public-facing IP to run the server-side software (and DDoS protection is based on the services provided by your datacenter host). Pangolin has a UI similar to Cloudflare, but under the hood, it’s just Wireguard, so if you prefer more direct control, you can just set up a Wireguard tunnel by hand.
For myself, and my own needs, I don’t need all that. I just use DDNS* to point my DNS records to my home’s public ip address & use port forwarding to connect ports 80 & 443 to Nginx Proxy Manager. (When I add Anubis, I’ll port forward to Anubis and then have Anubis redirect valid traffic to Nginx Proxy Manager) This setup offers no protection against DDoS, but for what I use it for, I think it’s an acceptable risk (I’d either have to get someone’s attention and ire or just be cosmically unlucky)
*the server has a cron job to curl the DDNS refresh URL every hour.
