AnarchistArtificer

@AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Lenovo’s New ThinkPads Score 10/10 for Repairability— Repair goes mega mainstream with the launch of Lenovo's new T-series laptops⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  I didn’t know that about Framework HiDPI displays

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Lenovo’s New ThinkPads Score 10/10 for Repairability— Repair goes mega mainstream with the launch of Lenovo's new T-series laptops⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  I agree, but like others have said, it bodes well that they’re open about this in the article

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Hole⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I’d rather see multiple comments giving the same safety advice if it means people are more likely to be able to see it.

  Telling kids “you’re only allowed to dig a hole that’s at least as wide as it is deep” is likely to go over a lot better than “you’re not allowed to dig a deep hole because it’s unsafe”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Just one more square bro⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Basically just to see if they can. We can think of the problem from multiple angles. The general problem is: “if we have a larger square with side length of a, what’s the maximum number of smaller squares (with side length of b) that we can fit into that larger square?”. If we have a larger square with side length of 4, then we can fit 16 squares in. If the larger square had a side length of 5, then we can fit 25 squares in. So this means that if we want a neat packing solution, and we can control how large the outer square is (in relation to the inner squares), then we want each side of the larger square to be a whole number multiple of the smaller square’s side length.

  But what if that isn’t our goal? The fact that packing 25 squares into a 5x5 square is an optimal packing solution with no spare space means that it will be impossible to fit 25 smaller squares into a square that’s less than 5x5 large. But what about if we do have awkward constraints, and the number of smaller squares we have to pack isn’t a square number? The fact that this weird packing solution in the OP has 17 squares isn’t because 17 is prime, but rather that 17 is 1 more than 16 (it’s just that 17 happens to be prime).

  This is a long way of saying that because packing 16 squares into a square is easy, the natural next question is “how large does the larger square need to be to be able to pack 17 squares into it?”. If this were a problem in real life where I had to pack 17 squares into a physical box, most people would just get a box that’s at least 5x5 large, and put extra packing material into all the spare space. But asking this question in terms of “what’s the smallest possible box we could use to pack 17 squares in?” is basically just an interesting puzzle, precisely because it’s a bit nonsensical to try to pack 17 squares into the larger square. We know for certain we need a box that’s larger than 4x4, and we also know that we can do it in a 5x5 box (with a heckton of spare space), so that gives us an upper and lower bound for the problem — but what’s the smallest we could use, hypothetically?

  As a fellow autistic person, I relate to your confusion. But I’d actually wager that there were a non-zero number of autistic people who were involved in this research. It sort of feels like “extreme sports” for autistic people — doing something that’s objectively baffling, precisely because it feels so unnatural and wrong

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Just one more square bro⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  The optimisation objective is to fit n smaller squares (in this case, n=17) into the larger square, whilst minimising the size of the outer square. So that means that in this problem, the dimensions of the outer square isn’t a thing that we’re choosing the dimensions of, but rather discovering its dimensions (given the objective of "minimise the dimensions of the outer square whilst fitting 17 smaller squares inside it)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Just one more square bro⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh my God, I fucking love this. I mean, I absolutely hate that this is the optimal way to pack 17 squares into a larger square such that the size of the larger square is minimised. However, I love that someone went to the effort of making a waffle iron plate for this. High effort shitposts like this give me life

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Polish Train Maker Is Suing the Hackers Who Exposed Its Anti-Repair Tricks⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Thanks for sharing that talk, it’s pretty good.

  I always find his talks interesting, because it often feels like it’s the same core talk each time, but changed through iterative refining of his ideas and rhetoric due to how often he gets the chance to talk about these issues.

  Even though I’ve seen many of his talks before, I am surprised at how skillfully he is able to weave in new angles and themes. I mean, he has been doing this stuff for literal decades, but still, it’s impressive.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What do you think might happen if Luigi Mangione isnt found guilty?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  For his sake, I really hope he did do it. I mean, being imprisoned as he is would suck regardless, but it would suck extra hard if he didn’t do it

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Good content⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I hope you have an excellent week; you deserve it

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨You have to appreciate the artist's attention to detail.⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Maybe they were working from a reference photo that had the balls be visible, and they felt it’d be weirder to not include them

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is thus true?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Thanks for sharing this info, because you’ve given me some interesting ideas to ponder. My personal craft domain is garment making, and in recent years, I’ve been having a lot of fun exploring stuff that exists in the space between “clothing” and “costume”. I don’t have much experience in 3D printing, so the stuff about 3D printing flexible materials like TPU is new to me. I should explore this more, because I bet I could make some awesome stuff with this method (such as in corsetry)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is thus true?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  This is a big part of why I love being in community with furries, despite not being one myself.

  I’ve done a lot of bespoke clothing making — mostly for myself, but occasionally I’ve done things on commission. People are often astounded at how much high quality craftsmanship costs when the skilled labour is properly compensated.

  I once wore a €20,000 dress (it was rented for me by a girlfriend so I could attend a swanky event with her). Before we went out, I was poring over all the construction details, desperate to learn all I could from this absurd scenario I had found myself in. I remember feeling weirdly dismayed to learn that there wasn’t a single thing in that dress that would be beyond my own skill level. Instead, it was just countless little hand finished details that must’ve taken an inordinate amount of time and care to do. For example, all the seam allowances catch stitched down (whenever they weren’t fully enclosed in a french seam or similar). Truly high quality items take time, and can’t be easily automated. Sure, there are components that can be optimised with computers or machines, but it requires a skilled human to actually integrate all this into the completed piece.

  I have a friend who uses to draw furry porn, and she said she found the experience to be super artistically liberating, because for the first time in her artistic career, she had people haggling her prices up, because she was way underpricing her works. On average, furries seem to have a greater level of respect for the time and skill that goes into making custom things, which I love. My friend is now making art in a domain that’s closer to her own personal artistic interests, but she says that she will always cherish the time she spent in the furry community, because it gave her the confidence she needed to advocate for the value of her art and her skills when she was chasing her dreams.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is thus true?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  This is so cool. Shit like this is why I love being in community with furries, despite not being one myself. I’m always awed by the creativity

  (Plus furries always throw the best parties)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Liminal Space⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  That problem is very much one that’s beyond the domain of scientists. That’s like saying “All I want literature to do is decipher the genetic basis of cancer”. Trust me, if science were able to cure billionaires, it would.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨High IQ men tend to be less conservative than their average peers, study finds⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Are you able to give examples of what beliefs/values you hold that make you consider yourself conservative? Your comment made me curious, because I would like to believe that conservative people who aren’t repugnant people exist, but as time goes on, it feels like “conservative” is becoming synonymous with “reprehensible bigot”. I sympathise with your desire to distance yourself from them, and I’d be interested to hear more about your perspective.

  Feel free to reply by DM if you don’t want to be interrogated on your beliefs if you answer my question. My intention isn’t to try to change your mind or anything, but to learn enough that I’m able to imagine a world in which people like me and conservatives like you could collaborate on solving problems, and use our inevitable points of disagreement as steps towards a more robust solution.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨When DinoCon is doing more than the US Gov⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  “Science without morals and ethics leads to amazing developments, but often misguided or twisted understanding, and unbridled human suffering.”

  Exactly this. I see way too many scientists who may not be actively bad people, but they convince themselves that it’s possible to do science in an apolitical manner.

  I believe that science is able to get as close to objectivity as is possible to achieve. However, individual scientists can never be objective, and the more they think of themselves in that way, the less objective the resulting science is.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨People always want their ideal conversation to sound like movie characters, but in reality most people talk as if they're in an interrogation room or how people sound like on police bodycam footage.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Movie dialogue tries to be verisimilitudinous, rather than realistic.

  I’m mostly making this comment because “verisimilitudinous” is an excellent word that I love getting the opportunity to use.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Epstein Files: X Users Are Asking Grok to 'Unblur' Photos of Children⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The datasets they are trained on do in fact include CSAM. These datasets are so huge that it easily slips through the cracks. It’s usually removed whenever it’s found, but I don’t know how this actually affects the AI models that have already been trained on that data — to my knowledge, it’s not possible to selectively “untrain” models, and they would need to be retrained from scratch. Plus I occasionally see it crop up in the news about how new CSAM keeps being found in the training data.

  It’s one of the many, many problems with generative AI

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨This whistle fights fascists | How thousands of 3D-printed whistles are derailing ICE.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Thanks for sharing this. This bolstered my spirit.

  I liked the bit where it discusses how, regardless of the effectiveness of whistles in deterring ICE, they have proven to be helpful in regular people feeling less alone.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Save as PDF⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Next time someone asks me what PDF stands for, this is what I will tell them

  (I’m reflecting on how many times I’ve been asked what PDF stands for, because my comment would suggest it is a thing that happens often.

  Doofensmirtz_meme.jpeg: “if I had a nickel for every time someone asked me what PDF stood for, I’d have two nickels. — which isn’t much, but it’s weird that it happened twice”

  I think I’m just most people’s token techy friend. Or more specifically, I’m the techy friend who also knows loads of random shit and really enjoys answering random questions)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Save as PDF⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s sort of like saying “I’m overheating because my apartment is 32ᵒC, let’s turn on the heating and see how we feel once it’s 45ᵒC”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Taste the flavor⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I love the fact that you wrote this in a science meme sub. I like getting learning alongside my memes

  (I’m a biochemist, so I didn’t learn anything in this particular instance, but I frequently find my day brightened by helpful people like yourself, who take the time to explain stuff)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Even their fish are fucked up⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I have a friend who uses snuff tobacco, and occasionally she’ll add some cocaine to it — she calls it “spicy snuff”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI Didn't Break Copyright Law, It Just Exposed How Broken It Already Was⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The idea of copyright is to protect the financial rights of creatives, thus incentivising people to make more stuff, right?

  Well even before AI, it wasn’t doing its job very well on that front. The only ones with the power and money to be able to leverage copyright to protect their rights are those who are already so powerful that they don’t need those protections — big music labels and the like. Individual creatives were already being fucked over by the system long before AI.

  If you haven’t read the article, I’d encourage you to give it a try. Or perhaps this one, which goes into depth on the intrinsic tensions within copyright law.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Add some artistic flair, ffs!⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Taking nudes is really difficult. I’ve never taken nudes per se, but recently I was trying to take some photos that included my body, whilst wearing some sexy clothing. That shit takes some skill.

  One tip that I discovered is that using your phone’s regular camera rather than your front facing camera makes a big difference. To get this right, you ideally need to use a mirror so that you can see what’s on your screen as you’re getting the angles right. I found that positioning my phone higher and pointing it slightly downwards was best. Finding a way to securely position my phone to make this work was a bitch.

  If you’re using your backward facing camera, then you’ll probably need to set your phone to take the image on a timer. Alternatively some smart watches can be used to trigger the photograph without you having to get up from your sexy pose to press the button on your phone (which risks knocking your phone out of position). Alternatively, once you’ve found the right angle and pose, you can try taking a video of you posing and then extracting frames from that video later.

  The experience left me with a greater level of respect for people who take good nudes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨There are a lot of siblings that hate each other, simultaneously there are only children that feel lonely really want siblings to play with.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I remember seeing a post of yours elsewhere where you mentioned about difficulty mustering the energy and mental strength to go out beyond your home (possibly linked to your parents being quite overprotective? I may be remembering wrong). Regardless of the specifics, I think that factors like that can worsen relations between family members. My brother and I don’t get on well when we’re living in the same house, for instance. That’s made worse by my mom being a difficult person to live with.

  But I think you’re right also, that there is a significant component of the grass being greener on the other side. I know plenty of people who are only children, who wish they had siblings, and people with siblings who wish they were an only child.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Y'all got one, right?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Impressive dedication. Do you have an important task to do that you’re currently procrastinating? Whenever I show similar levels of commitment to answering trivial questions, that’s what is usually driving me.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft lost $357 billion in market cap as stock plunged most since 2020⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Something that I’m super chuffed with is that a few years back, one of my most cheapskate friends asked me for advice on buying a new laptop. When I presented their options to them, they were reluctant to cheap out and get a mediocre laptop that wouldn’t last them very long, but they also balked at the price of even the midrange laptops (they weren’t keen on spending more than £250 on a laptop, which wasn’t enough to get anything that they’d consider to be decent and worth the effort/cost).

  As a long shot offer, I told them that I could always try installing Linux on their laptop if they wanted to wring another couple of years out of their existing laptop. I was a tad surprised when they opted for this, and even more surprised at how well they took to it; I jokingly call them one of my “normie” friends, because they’re one of the people whose perspective I ask for when I’m trying to calibrate for what non-techie people know/think. I only had limited experience with Linux myself at that point, having only played around with things on live USBs before. I had heard that Linux could give new life to slow computers, but I was surprised at just how effectively it did this.

  (A small amusing aspect to this anecdote is that when I was installing it, I said that one of the side benefits of running Linux is that it could boost nerd cred amongst folk like me. They laughed and said that they didn’t expect that this would be a thing that would ever end up being relevant. Later that year, they got a girlfriend who saw that my friend was running Linux, and expressed approval, which is quite funny to me)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft lost $357 billion in market cap as stock plunged most since 2020⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s sad. Regardless of whether it’s one of the reasons for Microsoft’s nosedive, it does make me feel some unexpected sympathy for Satya Nadella. I also feel pity, because most high up CEOs do not seem happy with their lives — Many of them spend an absurd amount of time at work, even if they never seem to actually do much work, and I can’t imagine how hard it must be to weather grief under such conditions. No amount of money can buy you more time with a lost loved one.

  It really seems like a hollow existence.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mamdani to kill the NYC AI chatbot caught telling businesses to break the law— New York mayor says terminating the ‘unusable’ bot will help close a budget gap⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Being anti-capitalist is entirely fair, but I think being opposed to all businesses is a less justifiable position to hold.