GenderNeutralBro

@GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org

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GenderNeutralBro ,

Sounds like an excellent class. Probably should be a requirement rather than an elective tbh.

GenderNeutralBro ,

Laziness is NOT an existential threat.

Rings of Power is a Disappointment, Here’s why | An Overdue Critique ( youtu.be )

Come for the two hour review of Rings of Power by a guy who has elvish on his wedding ring, stay for the Hbomberguy style twist into discussion of the way the far right uses the appearance of media criticism to radicalize vunrable young men and draw them into the manosphere.

GenderNeutralBro ,

if you are looking for something that just looks nice

Honestly, the show can get by on looks alone for me. IMHO, it is the best-looking TV show ever made, by a significant margin.

Which is not to say I didn't enjoy other parts of the show. The music was good, the acting was good, I loved the Harfoots (Harfeet?) in general, I loved Elrond and Durin. A lot of the side characters were charming. The opening sequence was inspired.

I think they missed the mark a bit with the "mystery" elements, though, and if they want me to give a shit about Kemen and Eärien, they're going to need to try harder in S2. But I thoroughly enjoyed season 1 and I hope they stay the course in general.

GenderNeutralBro ,

This is why one might theoretically prefer to download videos through unofficial channels, even if they are already paying for them through official channels.

Totally theoretical, of course. Just a little thought exercise.

GenderNeutralBro ,

If you don't already, consider using an ad-blocking DNS server. That blocks ad domains systemwide, not just in your web browser. Mullvad, Adguard, and some others have public DNS servers with adblocking. You can use them on both iOS and Android.

GenderNeutralBro ,

A DNS server is what converts a domain name, like google.com, into a numeric IP address, which is required for Internet traffic. Think of it like the mail room in an office building. They get mail for Bob in accounting, but the mail only has the name and the building's address. The mail room staff (DNS) knows what floor and desk Bob sits at.

Since many ads are hosted on their own domains, like doubleclick.net, you can block them at the DNS level so your device never actually connects to the ad server.

By default you're probably using your ISP's DNS server, but you can customize it.

GenderNeutralBro ,

This is functionally similar to what Apple and Google do with their app stores. They don't explicitly ban certain devices, but they mandate minimum API targets, which means they stop allowing apps that support older OSes. This effectively blocks old devices as well once they stop getting OS updates.

See: https://developer.android.com/google/play/requirements/target-sdk

This is part of the problem with walled gardens. There is inherently a conflict of interest when the same company operates the marketplace, creates the OS, and even sells devices that run that OS. If the marketplace were independent, they would not have the incentive to block new games for old devices.

GenderNeutralBro ,

Agreed. We're getting some traction on this but it is absolutely not possible for this year's presidential election. This is a long-term goal that should not affect your voting this year.

GenderNeutralBro ,

I mean...yeah? If 2028 rolls around and we don't have ranked-choice voting (or similar) for federal elections, I will say the same thing. And I will be objectively right.

Don't stop pushing for ranked choice. What you can do today is write to your representative about the Fair Representation Act, which includes provisions to require ranked choice voting (for congressional elections). That is a the natural next step. This is not an overnight process.

But let's be real: politics does not move fast enough for anything we do today to affect this year's presidential election. Honestly, if anyone tries to fundamentally change the election system this close to a presidential election, they are surely corrupt. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. If you wait for the whole world to change before taking a step, you're going to be waiting your whole life.

GenderNeutralBro ,

Do you seriously think that NOT voting is somehow going to accelerate change?

I'm glad you're angry. You should be. But there are ways to channel that that are NOT self-destructive. You don't have to choose between voting and advocating. That makes no fucking sense.

GenderNeutralBro ,

You can also use Bluetooth sharing right out of the box, like with any android device.

Not to mention you can install cloud storage apps on it too. I haven't set up FolderSync on mine yet but that's my plan to keep all my eBooks available across devices.

GenderNeutralBro ,

It's an Apple logo. It only exists on Apple devices. https://emojipedia.org/apple-logo

Probably better to use the generic red apple if you want to use an emoji: https://emojipedia.org/red-apple

GenderNeutralBro ,

Weird that they act like the 1.7B model is too big for a laptop, in contrast to a...4060 with the same amount of memory as that laptop. A 1.7B model is well within range of what you can run on a MacBook Air.

I don't think a 170M model is even useful for the same class of applications. Could be good for real-time applications though.

Looking forward to testing these, if they are ever made publicly available.

GenderNeutralBro ,

It means it's only one generation behind Apple in ML performance instead of two or three.

Serious answer: it means it has intel's latest generation of laptop chips with better ML acceleration, and — better sit down for this cuz it'll blow your mind — a Copilot key on the keyboard, which nobody outside of Microsoft's branding department ever asked for.

I'll be interested to see the benchmarks. Intel should be tripping over themselves to catch up.

It's Not Safe to Click Links on X ( lifehacker.com )

As noted by security researcher Will Dormann, some posts on X purport to lead to a legitimate website, but actually redirect somewhere else. In Dormann's example, an advertisement posted by a verified X user claims to lead to forbes.com. When Dormann clicks the link, however, it takes him to a different link to open a Telegram...

GenderNeutralBro ,

For a long time Twitter and Facebook were what you made them. When it was mostly personal acquaintances, and later tight communities, you had pretty good control over your experience. That was a long time ago at this point, but I wouldn't say it was always a dumpster fire.

GenderNeutralBro ,

Honestly, ANY platform that obscures links through redirection should be considered unsafe. If you can't verify the target URL before you click the link, then you are asking trouble. Twitter and similar platforms do this so they can track you more effectively. (In the past it also served the purpose of shortening links to SMS-friendly lengths, but that ship sailed like 10 years ago.)

Not that visibility automatically would make it safe, but it is the bare minimum required as a starting point.

GenderNeutralBro ,

That's true. I was referring specifically to Twitter's SMS integration. I forget exactly when they increased the tweet size limit beyond what could be sent via SMS, but it was a long time ago. At first, SMS was a big part of Twitter's success. People used Twitter on flip phones with no browser or apps. It was basically an SMS broadcast service.

GenderNeutralBro ,

Another issue is that image storage is a huge resource burden, to the point where instance admins will simply purge images periodically to keep their database at a reasonable size. It seems like every time I look at Lemmy posts older than a couple months, the images are broken.

I'm not convinced image support should be built into Lemmy in the first place. Back on Reddit, people relied on external image hosts like imgur for many years, and those worked a lot better than the image system Reddit eventually built in (which is covered in wall-to-wall anti-features like the inability to load a goddamn image directly).

GenderNeutralBro ,

Yeah, that was certainly not ideal. This is a problem with centralization more than it is with integration. I'd rather see a separate decentralized image hosting service. I feel like an image host and a link aggregation/discussion forum require different skills to develop and run, and it would probably be best to have something more specialized.

GenderNeutralBro ,

The headline said 1BTC, so I take it to mean "until the price of 1BTC is too high to buy with real money". They're not saying they'll buy $66000 worth of bitcoin per day indefinitely, just 1 whole bitcoin per day, regardless of how the price fluctuates, for as long as that's viable.

El Salvador doesn't have its own currency; they use USD and recently bitcoin. I don't know enough to say whether this makes sense.

Convincing: How do you convince the unconvincable?

Often we dig our own grave making people "defend" their opinion. Instead of winning them over, we push them to become more and more entrenched in their opinion as they build larger mental defenses against the challenges we present. So I want to hear from you:...

GenderNeutralBro ,

I think the idea of trying to convince the other is flawed in itself.

In recent years I've come to this conclusion as well. For me it's a matter of treating people the way I want to be treated — like an intelligent adult who can make their own decisions. I'm all too happy to discuss my opinions, but I'm generally not interested in persuading anyone, nor do I want to be persuaded. I am interested in information that is relevant, so that's what I try to offer as well. If that information makes someone consider an idea they had not considered before, great! If not, that's honestly fine, too.

In movies you can change someone's whole worldview with a rousing 2-minute speech, but in reality I think real change takes months or years. I don't expect to reach a consensus with someone I fundamentally disagree with in the course of a single conversation.

That said, I will admit that in my personal life this approach has its drawbacks. I have been criticized for being too passive and conflict-averse. I won't pretend I have all problems of social dynamics figured out.

GenderNeutralBro ,

I can't confirm right now, but as I recall, macOS's Spotlight search defaults to giving results from the Internet as well as applications, files, emails, contacts, and all sorts of things. It prioritizes local applications though, at least in my experience, and it returns those results quickly. On my work Mac, I've disabled most other options since that's my primary use case for it. On my test Macs, there's typically very little on them besides applications so I'm not totally sure how the defaults play out in practice these days.

I'm a few steps removed from desktop support at this point in my career, so I might be a little mixed up or out of date in my understanding.

I think there's a lot to be said for having a single point of entry for search. Beginners might not distinguish between searching the web and searching local files. That's a weird idea to me, but I formed my habits in an era before "web apps" and "cloud storage". To me there's a bold broad line between local resources and network resources, but for a new user I can see how this distinction would be confusing.

I've found KDE's system for search confusing, since it has two different system search bars as well as the folder search bar in Dolphin. I frequently find myself opening the app search and typing in some simple arithmetic, forgetting that the calculator function is in the other search field, unlike on Mac or Windows. This isn't necessarily "wrong", but I do appreciate having one less thing to hold in my brain when I'm working on Mac or Windows, and I think the unified approach greatly improves discoverability.

GenderNeutralBro ,

This is all great advice, but I do want to add that it's mainly for beginners in one-on-one contexts, and not always appropriate when dealing with technical users in a group setting. For example:

Find out what they're really trying to do. Is there another way to go about it?

It's frustrating in online communities when someone asks a technical question and is met with an interrogation instead of an answer, on the assumption that they don't know what they want to do. Not just for the person asking the question, but also for future people arriving at the thread with the same question. In some cases it really derails the conversation.

Hierarchical threads like on Lemmy or Reddit tend to be better for this than flat threads or chat channels, since it's easier to isolate and ignore red herrings. One reason I hate Discord and Slack for tech support.

GenderNeutralBro ,

Excellent point. I often find myself torn between providing all relevant context to get ahead of this, and keeping my posts short enough that people will actually read them.

GenderNeutralBro ,

Oh great, another round of nonsense about the limits of human vision peddled by A) companies trying to trick you into thinking their products are great, and B) fools trying to cope with their buyer's remorse and envy, and C) people with not-so-great eyesight who, for some reason, think that's inconceivable.

We are nowhere near the limits of human visual acuity. It is trivial to prove this by experiment.

GenderNeutralBro ,

I think it's significantly higher than the Quest 3, but it's kind of ridiculous to compare a $3500 productivity headset to a $500 gaming headset in the first place.

It's hard to get totally accurate numbers without independent standardized evaluation. Calculating pixel density isn't as straightforward with headsets as it is with regular displays.

There's an interesting analysis of a bunch of different headsets on Reddit. They put a comparison column for equivalent viewing distance with different common monitor sizes/resolutions. e.g. they calculate that the density of the Apple Vision Pro is similar to a 32" 4K display at a mere 15"/38cm distance, which is definitely close enough to see pixels. These are only estimates, since we don't know the per-eye FOV, or how exactly it's warped from center to edge.

Reddit link: https://www.reddit.com/r/virtualreality/comments/18sfi3i/ppdfocused_table_of_various_headmounted_displays/

Direct spreadsheet link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_Af6j8Qxzl3MSHf0qfpjHM9PA-NdxAzxujZesZUyBs0/edit?usp=sharing

I mean, it's still really good, don't get me wrong. But there's a giant chasm between "really good" and "the eye's resolution limits".

GenderNeutralBro ,

Spoiler alert if you haven't read the story yet.

I first read this as a teenager, and I remember this one line threw me off:

spoiler

“Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children!”

At the time I thought she meant it literally, and this was a big reveal that she was his mother. Which made me wonder if I had misread the entire story up to that point. It wasn't until years later that the story came up in conversation and someone told me no, that was just a figure of speech. It was not, in fact, history's dumbest twist ending.

To this day I don't think I've ever seen this turn of phrase anywhere else, though. I've re-read it in adulthood and still found it odd. I mean, I get the intention and feel a little silly for misunderstanding it originally, but at the same time, it still seems awkward and abrupt any way I read it. Perhaps I'm just not in tune with Christian symbolism enough to appreciate it.

On a random note, did you ever watch Firefly? One episode features a psychopathic bounty hunter who speaks very calmly and disaffectedly about existential philosophy. It's a creepy episode, and the character always reminds me of The Misfit.

GenderNeutralBro ,

IIRC it was the last episode of the season/series so that'd be a weird place to start for sure. Definitely worth a watch! The movie is also great.

GenderNeutralBro ,

Same IP address(es), same OS/browser/app, same configuration? Easy match.

I mean, they got me, that's for sure. I used to cycle accounts pretty frequently to dodge stalkers, but even a dedicated user could've figured me out just by matching the different subs I posted to. I eventually stopped posting in my local subreddits because of this, but even so, I talked about a lot of seemingly-common things that in aggregate could identify me pretty accurately. And that's even without the data that only Reddit admins would have access to, like browser fingerprinting and whatever tracking mechanisms I wasn't able to block (or the mere fact that I did block them).

For example, millions of people use the same phone model as I do, but how many of those also share my hobbies? How many of those play the same types of games? And how many of those use my same general writing style? How many times did I throw in an idle comment referring to a city I'd traveled to, or hinted at where I grew up? Oh my god, did I call Coke "soda"?! Information is leaking everywhere!

Heck, I wouldn't be shocked if someone could match my Lemmy account to my Reddit account(s). It'd take a crazy stalker with a lot of time and skill, but with the ever-increasing power of AI, it'll probably be easy for any schmuck to do within a couple years, never mind major governments and corporations. There's a ton of information that's hidden in plain sight, and it won't stay hidden forever.

GenderNeutralBro ,

To be fair, some voting adults were also misled by Weekly World News' "photos" of 800-pound babies and aliens back in the 90s. It's a pretty low bar.

GenderNeutralBro ,

Honestly: most series.

Sayonara Zetsubou-sensei comes to mind as a somewhat recent example (which shows my age even more than being in this sub, since the anime is almost old enough to vote at this point). It was very funny and even thought-provoking at times, but as the series went on it leaned further and further into ecchi/moe territory. They even broke the fourth wall and commented on it in the show at one point. What a shame.

GenderNeutralBro ,

A maximum line length of 80 characters is RECOMMENDED.

This is a terrible recommendation. It defeats the purpose of semantic line breaks if you insert them for non-semantic reasons as well. It also makes editing much more difficult. Let client software handle soft line wrapping, so the user can customize it as it makes sense for them. If your client software doesn't handle soft line wrapping in a sensible way, find better software.

GenderNeutralBro ,

That should be out of scope for a spec which "MUST NOT alter the final rendered output of the document."

It's not the place of a markup language/spec to influence writing style.

GenderNeutralBro ,

This is a human problem, not an AI problem.

Maybe if we hadn't neglected it for the past century.....

GenderNeutralBro ,

For a long time I thought the double-space convention was strictly limited to school, since I had never seen a professionally printed book, magazine, or newspaper that used it. I just took a look at my bookshelf and pulled out the oldest book I own (from 1909), and it does indeed use double-spaces.

I just looked it up, and it seems like double-spacing fell out of use in the early-mid 20th century. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sentence_spacing :

Before the First World War virtually all English-language books were printed following standard typesetters' spacing rules. By the end of the Second World War most American books and an increasing proportion of English books were printed following the typewriter's English spacing approximation rules.[17] Around this time, the practice of single spacing became more prevalent. There were various circumstances which could have contributed to the change. For example, there was an increase in high-volume low-cost mass-produced printing (e.g., newspapers, pulp novels, magazines). Also, a significant innovation in the typewriter was the breaking of the typewriter "grid" in 1941.

Fun fact: HTML rendering explicitly squashes multiple spaces into one, so if you try to double-space your sentences, it won't display as such in a web browser. This sentence uses double-spaced words, and I'll bet it doesn't look that way to you.

GenderNeutralBro ,

Ah, that makes sense. I just checked my app and it shows the double-spaces too. The web client doesn't, since it's converted to HTML.

GenderNeutralBro ,

double space was seemingly still very much in fashion even after Y2K

I think this is because it was still promoted by teachers for schoolwork long after it was the norm in professional printing.

I've seen a handful of people in my career write emails in this style, even recently, so it's not totally dead.

GenderNeutralBro ,

To err is human.

GenderNeutralBro ,

Valiant effort, but the top minds of the world, whether human or machine, are no match for Charmin's obfuscation techniques. https://bangyourbuck.com/search/charmin%20ultra%20strong/Count/US/table

Looks okay until you realize that the "count" field refers to different things across different listings. Some count rolls, some count sheets, some count packages.

Comparing prices of toilet paper and papers towels is 100x harder than it needs to be.

GenderNeutralBro ,

Good stuff! I'm bookmarking this for future reference.

I particularly liked this point:

Thus, impulsivity can be understood as an adaptive response to the contingencies present in an unstable environment rather than a moral failure in which animalistic drives overwhelm human rationality.

I hate the false dichotomy of "animalistic" vs "rational", because animals are highly rational. They are even better than humans at some high-level tasks! For example: https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/surprising-results-game-theory-studies-42926

That said, I don't think the lack of a physical basis should dissuade anyone from thinking of psychology in terms of evolution. Regardless of the physical structure of the brain, I think it is reasonable to consider that high-level human behavior has origins going far back in our evolutionary chain, and that we share much of that with our animal cousins. In any case, this idea should be supported by behavioral research, not by an appeal to neurology — and particularly not by an appeal to fake neurology.

GenderNeutralBro ,

AGI is not a new term. It's been in use since the 90s and the concept has been around for much longer.

I agree that we should use more specific terms whenever possible. I call LLMs "LLMs" or "language models". Not that it's inaccurate to call them AI, but it's not useful either. AI is an extraordinarily broad term. Pac-Man had AI. And there's a large portion of the population who thinks it means something much, much more lofty and specific than it ever really has. At this point, the term should probably be abandoned. Any attempt to reclaim it is bound to fail.

I see this as yet another example of a technical term being bastardized by mainstream press who do not understand the field. It happens all the time with tech. I remember when "virus" actually meant something; the industry eventually abandoned the term because it was bastardized to the point of uselessness; now we just say "malware" and if we need to refer to viruses specifically...well we just don't for the most part.

This is a linguistic problem more than a technical problem.

GenderNeutralBro ,

When I was younger, I was denied housing because I had no credit rating. Not a bad rating mind you, but no rating at all, because I did not use credit cards or anything else that would get me in Experian's system. I was penalized for never accruing debt. The system is absurd.

GenderNeutralBro ,

It was published online Tuesday in the journal Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology.

Hmmmm. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontiers_Media#Controversies

I'm not really familiar with this journal, but it sounds like they've had low standards for quite a long time now. There are some interesting comments about them under the Ars article, as well.

andrew , to Technology
@andrew@andrew.masto.host avatar

Walmart in Talks to Buy TV Maker Vizio

https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/13/24072191/walmart-vizio-smart-tv-acquisition-rumor

@technology

GenderNeutralBro ,

It's been a while since I was in touch with the TV market. Is Vizio still good? 10 years ago, Vizio made excellent budget TVs. They were my go-to recommendation for people who weren't looking to spend $1000 or more on a TV.

Walmart's current store brand for TVs is Onn. Perhaps they're looking to replace their lineup, or add some high-end offerings?

GenderNeutralBro ,

How does it work exactly? From a quick look at the docs, it sounds like everything through the bridge would appear as coming from @web.brid.gy. Is that right? If so, that kind of mucks up the standard behavior of Lemmy. Lemmy allows both users and admins to block entire instances, so aggregating instances into one "mega-instance" effectively breaks that functionality. That's not good from a UX perspective.

I tried searching for some bridges instances but didn't have any luck. I guess I'm doing it wrong. Does anyone have a real example of something that works?

GenderNeutralBro ,

Doesn't that mean we'd have a proliferation of duplicate content, if multiple bridges connect to the same external services?

I love this idea in theory, but I don't think it makes sense in the context of Lemmy. Maybe it makes more sense in Mastodon? Or maybe I just misunderstand something.

GenderNeutralBro ,

Those benchmarks are impressive indeed. I certainly care much more about having extra VRAM than a little extra speed, comparing the 7900 XT or 7900 XTX to the RTX 4080.

I'd love to see some benchmarks for various LLMs and image generators.

GenderNeutralBro ,

Is there a list of credit unions that are affected by this, or who are partners with CU Solutions Group? I couldn't find any information on their web site.

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