Arghblarg
@Arghblarg@lemmy.ca
-credit to nedroid for strange art
- Comment on Microsoft Says Its New AI Diagnosed Patients 4 Times More Accurately Than Human Doctors 6 days ago:
AI for pattern recognition (statistical stuff) IMHO is fine, it’s different than expecting thought, reasoning or understanding, which the new ‘AI’ does not do, despite the constant hype.
- Comment on Google releases Magenta RealTime, an open source AI model for live music creation 2 weeks ago:
Good god, it’s Microsoft Songsmith all over again.
- Comment on Palantir Is Going on Defense 4 weeks ago:
Data analytics firm doesn’t like … data on itself being analyzed. huh.
- Comment on Your Philips Commodore 1084 monitor might have a serious flaw (and it has twins!?) [1:06:11] | Adrian's Digital Basement 4 weeks ago:
I had the Magnavox 8CM515 which was basically the same, and the front power switch burnt out – repair guy just shorted it, saying it was next to impossible ti find a replacement… used that monitor on a CoCo-III, Atari STfm and an MM/1, wonderful RGB monitor for its time.
- Comment on Windows 95 chime composer Brian Eno denounces Microsoft for its ties to Israeli government 1 month ago:
Agreed. I got to see him speak once years ago, wonderful lecture on the nature of creativity, lateral thinking, and just… stuff. Hard to describe, but just excellent.
- Comment on The Windows Subsystem for Linux is now open source. 1 month ago:
- Comment on Bill Gates to give away 99% of his wealth in the next 20 years 1 month ago:
Beat me to it. Anand Giridharadas has spoken on the general scam of billionaires white-washing their legacies like this… their philanthropy seldom approaches, much less exceeds, the harm they did in getting so rich in the first place.
- Comment on I installed Linux on this 8-inch mini laptop, and it's my new favorite way of computing 1 month ago:
Still love my Acer Aspire v151, core i5. 11" is a great size, just big enough for a standard keyboard. I wish they would have updated models like that. A Ryzen 9 version would kick ass.
- Comment on The Evertop: A Low-Power, Off-Grid Solar Gem 2 months ago:
Damn, I wish someone would make a 68k based version of this.
- Comment on Elon Musk Cuts Funding for Internet Archive 2 months ago:
The IA needs to relocate out of the US, now. The EU and Canada should be convinced to fund them.
I’ve donated to them and am willing to do so again, but I’d like it to be after they show they have a concrete exit plan.
- Comment on Florida draft law mandating encryption backdoors for social media accounts billed 'dangerous and dumb' | TechCrunch 2 months ago:
It may become the duty of every software engineer at this time to offer their services to those who need security, to make custom solutions for those who require it.
Cypherpunks, arise!
- Comment on My Easter decorations include a self portrait (oc) 2 months ago:
You’re such a cute chocolate bunny!
Now who’s that glum one on the left?
- Comment on How to harden against SSH brute-forcing? 2 months ago:
There’s a dedicated tool named sshguard which works nicely.
- Comment on In the latest Windows 11 preview build, Microsoft removed the “bypassnro” command, which let users skip signing into a Microsoft Account when installing Windows. 3 months ago:
Just be sure to check support before buying any newish laptop. I really like my ASUS Duo Pro 2024, but ASUS adamantly refuses to lift a finger for proper Linux support for special features. Even the audio chipset which is standard somehow doesn’t work with default kernels due to something they’ve done. Dual screen can be made to work with some scripting-fu, but the keyboard’s multimedia keys just don’t work at all.
Vote with your wallets and be noisy to those brands who don’t support Linux well. Let them know if lack of Linux support was why you didn’t buy.
- Comment on Why are Google's Assistant(s) so bad nowadays? 3 months ago:
The Assistan/Nest devices have gone to shit as well. When I first bought one about 5 years ago, it could:
- play many games (voice-controlled text adventures, multi-player gameshow-style trivia and party games, etc.);
- play music from my Google Music Library library with no commercials;
- play podcasts from 3rd party podcast providers;
- play almost any radio station that also had livestream feeds
Now all the games are gone, and ‘podcasts’ are just the small subset of podcasters who also upload their episodes to Youtube (whatever feed they used to use had almost every podcaster there was, even obscure ones); asking for specific episodes by episode number or date is totally broken. Playing radio stations is hit or miss, the voice recognition often picks a stream completely unrelated to the one I ask for; it is waaay worse at matching the callsign/city I ask for.
Playing music is intolerable. There’s a stupid commercial for Youtube Music Premium after nearly every track. NO, I will not upgrade to your freaking Youtube Premium.
Enshittification, thy name is Google.
- Comment on i’m not religious. stop trying to force me to be. 3 months ago:
Stay true to your principles. There are many, many others out there who agree with you. One’s religion should NEVER motivate one to force it upon others.
In fact I think there is no true “freedom of religion” without “freedom FROM religion”. If only our governments would codify this explicitly into law.
- Comment on Open Source Github Repositories in Danger of being Deleted 3 months ago:
Dunno about docker setup, but I mirror github repos I worry may disappear automatically using my self-hosted gogs instance. (Gitea/Forgejo likely also can do it). It’s point-and-click, you just specify the github URL and check a box “this is a mirror”.
- Comment on put that in your pipe and smoke it 4 months ago:
It is a plant, just of a sort that has turned to parasitism I suppose for its nutrients. I believe they are part of a larger family of plants named saprophytes.
- Comment on fireflies 4 months ago:
Same for ladybird beetles (ladybugs)! They love undisturbed autumn leaves and are natural pest control, so you should give them any opportunity possible to over-winter their eggs in your yard :)
- Comment on Google Chrome disables uBlock Origin for some in Manifest v3 rollout 4 months ago:
Vivaldi on Linux and Windows is still good in my experience, and so far uBlock Origin for manifest v2 still works. I hope they keep v2 support forever, forking completely if they must.
- Comment on So, is the USA screwed? 4 months ago:
“He who saves his country has committed no crime.” -Donald Trump (reading a post-it note handed to him by Felon Musk, quoting Napoleon, or something)
- Comment on Larry Ellison wants to put all America's data, including DNA, in one big Oracle system for AI to study 4 months ago:
I’ll let you know once I receive mine, fate willing :)
- Comment on Microsoft Study Finds AI Makes Human Cognition “Atrophied and Unprepared” 4 months ago:
Heh
- Comment on Microsoft Study Finds AI Makes Human Cognition “Atrophied and Unprepared” 4 months ago:
…but a properly functioning calculator doesn’t confidently state the square root of -1 is pi… all current AIs make shit up when they don’t actually find a factual answer, or parrot back wrong answers from whatever crap they trained on. Until the problems of recursive ingestion decay and lack of ability to introspect on the correctness or provenance of data is solved, they cannot be trusted and they give a false sense of confidence.
- Comment on Kindle Is Making It Harder to Switch to Rival eReader Brands. 4 months ago:
…and for those on Linux there is ‘DeGouru’, a tool for de-DRMing internet archive books that are lending-restricted.
A bit annoying in that it is somewhat sensitive to the Python version one has installed but there are ways to manage that which I am not qualified to advise on.
- Comment on Home - YaCy - P2P search engine 4 months ago:
Neat, will try it out.
Has anyone written an android desktop search widget for it? A quick search only foumd one veeery old experimental project.
- Comment on Working below minimum wage to save the planet 4 months ago:
Absolutely – I hate how we’ve been raised to think of time in monetary terms; I have to remind myself on days off that “No, I do not need to do anything it’s my day off! I can sleep in… no need to be productive …”
- Comment on Working below minimum wage to save the planet 4 months ago:
Imagine the reduction in e-waste if everyone in high school took a short course in how to use a soldering iron, solder-sucker/braid and heat-gun to replace common bits in consumer electronics. So many things could be saved that get thrown out only due to a bad microswitch or cracked solder joint to a USB or headphone connector …
- Comment on Working below minimum wage to save the planet 4 months ago:
True. It isn’t always about a cost/labour analysis. Sometimes I want to repair something to learn how to do it. Sometimes I want to repair something because even though ‘my time is valuable’, I hate the idea of throwing out something I know will rot in the landfill for a thousand years. Sometimes I’m just attached to the thing and afraid I won’t find a replacement that is as good (which is often the case).
I hate our throwaway culture, it’s good to know how to fix things even if it isn’t technically ‘cost effective’ to do so.
- Comment on Larry Ellison wants to put all America's data, including DNA, in one big Oracle system for AI to study 4 months ago: