astronaut_sloth
@astronaut_sloth@mander.xyz
- Comment on [Gamers Nexus] "Google is Getting Worse," ft. Wendell of Level1 Techs 4 days ago:
Yeah, I’m in the same boat.
- Comment on [Gamers Nexus] "Google is Getting Worse," ft. Wendell of Level1 Techs 5 days ago:
There’s also PeerTube, the Fediverse counterpart to YouTube. Unfortunately, while there’s some good stuff you can find (and some re-uploads of YouTube), there’s just not as much content. I’d imagine the userbase is pretty small, too.
- Comment on [Gamers Nexus] "Google is Getting Worse," ft. Wendell of Level1 Techs 5 days ago:
I use a cheap VPS to host my email server. It’s a bit easier than running it solely at home, but there’s a lot of annoying work to “verify” yourself. Once you get your DNS records good, you shouldn’t be blocked after that (unlike a home server). It only costs me $5/month plus the domain, which I think is money well spent. Doing the admin work to make sure I’m secure still needs to happen, but I don’t mind that work and find it fun.
- Comment on To buy no longer means anything :( 3 months ago:
You’re getting downvoted, but you’re right. And that is the reason that using proprietary software and SaaS is a problem. If I’m only buying the right to use a copy of something as a company sees fit, then I’m not really buying anything. I’m essentially paying a company a tribute to use their software in their way.
Decades ago, it was the same way, but it felt different. We got physical media, and we could do what we wished with the files: modify them, delete them, etc. Hell, the EULAs for some '90s and early '00s software even said you could use the software in perpetuity, and we could use software in anyway we saw fit. The biggest constraint was on selling copies. Back then, and even now, that seems pretty reasonable. (Though, as an aside, it would have been better to also get access to the source code, but I digress.)
Now, we have to use company’s software exactly how they want us to use it. Personally, I refuse to go along with this (as much as I can), so I have migrated most of my digital life to FLOSS.
- Comment on ‘Enshittification’ is coming for absolutely everything 4 months ago:
Not necessarily. The Free and Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) movement is a thing. Most of the Fediverse is FLOSS, and I doubt there’s anyone who can take Lemmy or Mastodon closed source and buy every instance and then stop pop-up instances. It does require quite a bit of work, though, so it is difficult.
I think the real challenging thing is that a great FLOSS service needs to attract attention and care. When I bring up Fediverse/FLOSS alternatives to software my friends complain about, I’m met with lukewarm-at-best reactions, generally due to networking effects (I think).
- Comment on TikTok Is Destroying Itself From the Inside Out 4 months ago:
Like @Crack0n7uesday@lemmy.world said, it’s on government phones. The thinking goes that TikTok, which is a Chinese company, is exporting too much data from US government devices. In other words, the government is worried the Chinese are spying. Given the amount of data that the TikTok app actually collects, the fear is probably not unreasonable. All corporate-owned social media collects way too much data, but TikTok really is next level from what I’ve read.
- Comment on TikTok Is Destroying Itself From the Inside Out 4 months ago:
I think a big difference, though, is that there is political force to ending TikTok. The US government has no major issues with Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc. existing. Remember, there’s actual legislation banning TikTok. Whether that makes a real difference or not, well, I guess we just wait and see. Personally, I think they all should go down in flames.
- Comment on The tech sector is pouring billions of dollars into AI. But it keeps laying off humans 5 months ago:
I work/study in AI, and it is completely over-hyped. For one thing, the C-suite can’t wrap it’s head around the fact that AI != LLM; they all seem to think all AI is just LLMs. On top of that, they are way too eager to throw humans out of the loop.
That said, I think LLM applications, even in their current form, are super useful in development and business practices. I myself use it to increase my productivity in coding. But, I use it as an augmentation rather than a replacement. One of my friends put it best the other day, “LLMs are like a junior dev to your senior dev. You need to be hyper-specific, and you need to check it’s output.” In other words, it’s great for off-loading some work, but it isn’t going to completely replace humans.
With that said, I’m a bit annoyed that other AI fields are being over-shadowed by LLMs. There’s a ton of other interesting work being done in those fields that is super useful and important. All of them, though, are not going to replace humans but rather augment and make humans more productive. I’ve found that an AI-Human team is most effective.
- Comment on A new Type of Mastodon Signup that gives people a sense of Agency 6 months ago:
Building a signup wizard to use that information to select a instance would seem to be the best approach.
That’s actually not a bad idea. I’m not on board with mining contacts, but I think there’s a simple, transparent way to do this that can actually be fun: a personality quiz. Sure, if someone knows what instance to join already, they can override this. But if they don’t, they get like five questions, and then they are matched to an instance.
- Comment on I think trump might win, and it's due to shitty memory and DND 6 months ago:
I think what they’re saying is that Americans don’t pay attention and forgot how terrible the Trump presidency was because it’s been a few years. Most people think that “we’re better now” and any major issues have abated without understanding that nothing has fundamentally changed. Because of all that, Trump will win the election. The DnD portion of the post is just what got OP to think about this.
Sad thing is that there’s merit to the argument. It’s the old trope of “Americans have short memories.”
- Comment on Bill Gates feels Generative AI has plateaued, says GPT-5 will not be any better 6 months ago:
Except that scaling alone won’t lead to AGI. It may generate better, more convincing text, but the core algorithm is the same. That “special juice” is almost certainly going to come from algorithmic development rather than just throwing more compute at the problem.
- Comment on Bill Gates feels Generative AI has plateaued, says GPT-5 will not be any better 6 months ago:
I mean, that’s more-or-less what I said. We don’t know the theoretical limits of how good that text generation is when throwing more compute at it and adding parameters for the context window. Can it generate a whole book that is fairly convincing, write legal briefs off of the sum of human legal knowledge, etc.? Ultimately, the algorithm is the same, so like you said, the same problems persist, and the definition of “better” is wishy-washy.
- Comment on Bill Gates feels Generative AI has plateaued, says GPT-5 will not be any better 6 months ago:
Cool, Bill Gates has opinions. I think he’s being hasty and speaking out of turn and only partially correct. From my understanding, the “big innovation” of GPT-4 was adding more parameters and scaling up compute. The core algorithms are generally agreed to be mostly the same from earlier versions (not that we know for sure since OpenAI has only released a technical report). Based on that, the real limit on this technology is compute and number of parameters (as boring as that is), and so he’s right that the algorithm design may have plateaued. However, we really don’t know what will happen if truly monster rigs with tens-of-trillions of parameters are used when trained on the entirety of human written knowledge (morality of that notwithstanding), and that’s where he’s wrong.
- Comment on I figured this article might find interest here | Star Trek Opinion 7 months ago:
I found myself nodding along to a lot that was said in this article. I also would trace a lot of recent issues to JJ Abrams’ take. What I said then is still (I think) true today: “They are good movies, but they aren’t good Star Trek movies.” Discovery and Picard suffered for it, but I think that the ills are being corrected. My hope is that Paramount greenlights “Legacy” as the TNG-spiritually-successor as SNW is the TOS-spiritual-successor.
Where I will disagree, though, is that Star Trek isn’t broken. Five-ish years ago, I would have said that, but after SNW, Lower Decks, and Picard season 3, I think the powers that be have a better understanding of what is needed. We were in a bit of a “dark-ages” from 2006-2020, but I think we’re back on the upswing. We may not be quite at 1990s golden age Trek, but we can get close.
- Comment on HTML First 7 months ago:
I’m all about this. When I made my personal webpage, this is how I do it. I’m surprised it’s not more popular (at least for certain things) because it looks nice and clean, is fast, and crucially, is easy to put together. Most webpages don’t need a ton of JS to “accomplish the mission.” I get that not everything can do this, but there are soooooo many sites that can strip down to a more minimal site and have better functionality and a better experience. This is a case of less-is-more.
- Comment on It shouldn't matter if people work multiple jobs. The former VP of HR at Microsoft shares how to react to double dippers — 'get over it.' 7 months ago:
It depends on the terms of employment. If they are salaried, then there are no real work hours and just work to do. In general, if someone is salaried, they’re paid to do a job not when they do it.
- Comment on Admit it there are some bangers. 7 months ago:
I love both Star Trek and musicals, and when “Subspace Rhapsody” was announced, I wasn’t thrilled and thought it would be bad Star Trek and a bad musical. I was so wrong! I loved it so much!
The best song is “How Would That Feel,” La’an is the best, and I will fight anyone who says I’m wrong!
- Comment on The summer is over, schools are back, and the data is in: ChatGPT is mainly a tool for cheating on homework. 9 months ago:
It works well if you know how to prompt well. LLMs are able to do so much, but a user just needs to know how to use it correctly. The technology is still in its infancy, so it’s a bit difficult to use well.
- Comment on Finally some decent ad copy! 9 months ago:
Now this is the content I subscribe for! Thank you!
- Comment on Finally some decent ad copy! 9 months ago:
I took a stab at it. Transliterated, it says: “Qapla’. Qu’Dunvad ghunwl’ DlSam.” I ran it through Bing’s translator (since the only word I recognize is Qapla’), and I got “Success. Your baby better is done.” I think the translation is wrong. When I was playing with another translator, it gave me “Success. For the glorious battle has begun” which seems more fitting.
- Comment on They’ve grown up online. So why are our kids not better at detecting misinformation? 9 months ago:
I think it’s less that “media literacy is not taught” but that media literacy is not learned. Like @audiomodder said, everyone is graduated regardless. So, on one hand, there are students who either will not or cannot learn the material (for one reason or another, such as disability, stress, family, etc.) and teachers who get a laundry list of things to teach and not enough time or support to teach it.
Ultimately, the problem is a lack of focus on education as a society. Children are pulled in too many directions, and teachers aren’t given the resources needed, so we end up with a broken educational system.
- Comment on Have you noticed how your boobs have started to firm up since the exodus? 10 months ago:
That was not funny. (It was spontaneous though)
- Comment on A real tweet from Walter Koenig yesterday. Anyone planning on seeing him at GalaxyCon? 10 months ago:
No lie, he seems like such a cool dude. If I were in the area, I’d totally go to see him. And while I first knew him as Chekov, I grew to love him as Al Bester on Babylon 5, truly some of his best work!
- Comment on who among us would not ask the same questions 10 months ago:
And Number One in “The Cage”!
- Comment on MRW someone is claiming Star Trek should not do comedy episodes 10 months ago:
Hey, give it a chance. I love musicals, and I went in dubious that it would be pulled off. When it was announced, I didn’t think that they were up to the task, and I have to say that I was very pleasantly surprised that SNW did it an did it well. It’s different, and it’s a risk, but you know…“risk is part of the game.” At worst, you don’t re-watch it.
- Submitted 10 months ago to risa@startrek.website | 8 comments
- Comment on A Tribute to Bram Moolenaar, The Maestro Behind Vim Code Editor 10 months ago:
:wq Thanks Bram for a great editor! Vim is probably one of the most useful pieces of software ever written. I know that I use it literally every day.
- Submitted 11 months ago to risa@startrek.website | 0 comments
