efstajas

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efstajas ,

This is a bit unnecessarily tough on independent content creators... what exactly do you expect them to do? Make no money from their content? How would they be able to make a living?

efstajas ,

Would you put blame on doctors for contributing to the opioid?

I'm gonna assume by "contributing to the opioid" you mean over-prescribing pain medication for the commission? If so, that comparison is so far-fetched that it's completely meaningless. You're really going to compare that with independent creators having skippable ad reads that have to be clearly marked as such on content you get for free?

efstajas ,

Sure, Patreon is great, but Patreon alone is not enough for most creators to make a living, considering how hard it is to get people to commit to monthly subscriptions.

efstajas ,

Honestly, I've worked with a few teams that use conventional commits, some even enforcing it through CI, and I don't think I've ever thought "damn, I'm glad we're doing this". Granted, all the teams I've been on were working on user facing products with rolling release where main always = prod, and there was zero need for auto-generating changelogs, or analyzing the git history in any way. In my experience, trying to roughly follow 1 feature / change per PR and then just squash-merging PRs to main is really just ... totally fine, if that's what you're doing.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that while conv commits are neat and all, the overhead really isn't really always worth it. If you're developing an SDK or OSS package and you need changelogs, sure. Other than that, really, what's the point?

Q: “Are we doomed?” A: “We would be, if not for the amazing developments in renewable energy.” ( powering-the-planet.ghost.io )

I wasn't aware just how good the news is on the green energy front until reading this. We still have a tough road in the short/medium term, but we are more or less irreversibly headed in the right direction.

efstajas ,

Doomerism like this is fucking stupid and definitely leads to the wrong thing, which is to do nothing. If we're already fucked, why even try? The truth is that IF we try, we very well might be able to avoid the worst. Which is worth fighting for.

efstajas , (edited )

The "Internet" and many foundations of networking originated in the US, but the Web, which is what I'd wager many think of when you say "the Internet", was invented in Switzerland by a British man.

efstajas ,

So what does it say about us diverting from purely server-side scripted message boards with pure HTML and tables, and not a line of JS? Yes, let's get back there please.

Ironically, proper SSR that has the server render the page as pure HTML & CSS is becoming more and more popular lately thanks to full-stack meta frameworks that make it super easy. Of course, wanting to go back to having no JS is crazy — websites would lose almost all ability to make pages interactive, and that would be a huge step backwards, no matter how much nostalgia you feel for a time before widespread JS. Also tables for layout fucking sucked in every possible way; for the dev, for the user, and for accessibility.

people want nice, dynamic, usable websites with lots of cool new features, people are social

That's right, they do and they are.

By the way, we already had that with Flash and Java applets, some things of what I remember were still cooler than modern websites of the "web application" paradigm are now.

Flash and Java Applets were a disaster and a horrible attempt at interactivity, and everything we have today is miles ahead of them. I don't even want to get into making arguments as to why because it's so widely documented.

And we had personal webpages with real names and contacts and photos. And there were tools allowing to make them easily.

There are vastly more usable and simple tools for making your own personal websites today!

efstajas , (edited )

I know. Just the "full-stack meta frameworks" part alone makes any ADHD person feel nausea.

But why? What's bad about this?

I disagree. Geminispace is very usable without scripts

That's great, I'm not saying that it's impossible to make usable apps without JS. I'm saying that the capabilities of websites would be greatly reduced without JS being a thing. Sure, a forum can be served as fully static pages. But the web can support many more advanced use-cases than that.

If only one paradigm must remain, then naturally I pick mine. If not, then there's no problem and I still shouldn't care.

So you can see that other people have different needs to yours, but you think those shouldn't be considered? We're arguing about the internet. It's a pretty diverse space.

For me it's obvious that embeddable cross-platform applications as content inside hypertext are much better than turning a hypertext system into some overengineered crappy mess of a cross-platform application system.

Look, I'm not saying that the web is the most coherent platform to develop for or use, but it's just where we're at after decades of evolving needs needing to be met.

That said, embedded interactive content is absolutely not better than what we have now. For one, both Flash and Java Applets were mostly proprietary technologies, placing far too much trust in the corpos developing them. There were massive cross-platform compatibility problems, and neither were in any way designed for or even ready for a responsive web that displays well on different screen sizes. Accessibility was a big problem as well, given an entirely different accessibility paradigm was necessary within vs. the HTML+CSS shell around the embedded content.

Today, the web can do everything Flash + Java Applets could do and more, except in a way that's not proprietary but based on shared standards, one that's backwards-compatible, builds on top of foundational technologies like HTML rather than around, and can actually keep up with the plethora of different client devices we have today. And speaking of security — sure, maybe web browsers were pretty insecure back then generally, but I don't see how you can argue that a system requiring third-party browser plug-ins that have to be updated separately from the browser can ever be a better basis for security than just relying entirely on the (open-source!) JS engine of the browser for all interactivity.

I ask you for links and how many clicks and fucks it would take to make one with these, as opposed to back then. These are measurable, scientific things. Ergonomics is not a religion.

The idea that any old website builder back in the day was more "ergonomic" while even approaching the result quality and capabilities of any no-code homepage builder solution you can use today is just laughable. Sorry, but I don't really feel the burden of proof here. And I'm not even a fan of site builders, I would almost prefer building my own site, but I recognize that they're the only (viable) solution for the majority of people just looking for a casual website.

Besides — there's nothing really preventing those old-school solutions from working today. If they're so much better than modern offerings, why didn't they survive?

efstajas ,

I think it's mostly just that phones by themselves absolutely suck as a form factor for pretty much everything but casual games.

efstajas ,

I do think it's a problem when 100% of people seeing "made with AI" will assume the entire thing is AI-generated, even if all you did was use AI for a minor touch-up. If it's really that trigger happy right now, I think it'd make sense for it to be dialled down a bit.

efstajas ,

Yeah, it's a feature on stock android. Should be in most android flavors

efstajas ,

Lol that's ridiculous. There's nothing about ipv6 that'd make it any slower

efstajas ,

Tbf that analyzing was happening on-device... But yeah

efstajas ,

Maybe I'm out of the loop, but afaik they always said that none of the data would ever leave the device.

efstajas , (edited )

There's a massive difference between what "usage data" refers to in this context and the kind of data stored and analyzed by Recall locally.

HP bricks ProBook laptops with bad BIOS delivered via automatic updates — many users face black screen after Windows pushes new firmware ( www.tomshardware.com )

On May 26, a user on HP's support forums reported that a forced, automatic BIOS update had bricked their HP ProBook 455 G7 into an unusable state. Subsequently, other users have joined the thread to sound off about experiencing the same issue....

efstajas ,

It was most likely HP, through Windows Update (which handles device-specific driver etc. updates that OEMs are in control of). Microsoft doesn't concern itself with pushing BIOS updates to some random 4-year old HP model

efstajas ,

I mean... It's 100% the same here on Lemmy as well

efstajas ,

Tbh I find it hard to believe that it's actually better, knowing how many resources Google probably poured into getting the summaries right already. If the same amount of scrutiny were applied to Kagi's summaries, people would probably find similarly embarrassing answers.

efstajas , (edited )

Tibber even does it super easily for normies — you connect your EV account to it and it takes control of the charging rate such that your car is ready to go the next morning, but charges it during the cheapest periods (which generally are the greenest ones, when there's a sudden influx of solar or wind). AFAIK this even works if you're not on a dynamic pricing contract, you just obviously wouldn't get the price benefit.

Personally, I also got Home Assistant set up to remote start my large appliances in exactly the best moment to make use of the most green energy. Probably doesn't make a massive impact, but it doesn't cost me much either.

efstajas ,

I see this point a lot and I don't get it at all. You can do something awesome, free and open-source but use tools that aren't, especially when we're talking about community building. Sure, you can do your outreach exclusively on Mastodon or Farcaster, but the most eyes just happen to be on closed platforms, so it'd just be self-sabotage. Doing the only thing that makes sense doesn't make you a hypocrite.

efstajas , (edited )

You can't just "update" models to not say a certain thing with pinpoint accuracy like that. Which one of the reasons why it's so challenging to make AI not misbehave.

efstajas , (edited )

I'm so fucking concerned about climate change... But I can't vote Green because of their stupid, anti-scientific stances on two issues: GMOs and nuclear power. For context, I'm in Germany, where there's very public hysteria about both. The general public still holds absurdly distorted and misinformed views, so none of the green-aligned parties are ballsy enough to hold positions on them that are in any way nuanced. It's super frustrating.

efstajas ,

Exactly! The fact that we're shutting down our reactors all the while still burning coal is so backwards.

ChatGPT Answers Programming Questions Incorrectly 52% of the Time: Study ( gizmodo.com )

The research from Purdue University, first spotted by news outlet Futurism, was presented earlier this month at the Computer-Human Interaction Conference in Hawaii and looked at 517 programming questions on Stack Overflow that were then fed to ChatGPT....

efstajas ,

Yeah it's wrong a lot but as a developer, damn it's useful. I use Gemini for asking questions and Copilot in my IDE personally, and it's really good at doing mundane text editing bullshit quickly and writing boilerplate, which is a massive time saver. Gemini has at least pointed me in the right direction with quite obscure issues or helped pinpoint the cause of hidden bugs many times. I treat it like an intelligent rubber duck rather than expecting it to just solve everything for me outright.

efstajas ,

Hey, at least we can rest easy knowing that human devs will be needed to write regex for quite a while longer.

... Wait, I'm horrible at Regex. Oh well.

efstajas ,

Acquiring a company just for the brand or even just to make it disappear is pretty common in all of the corporate world.

efstajas ,

you could add a random number to the encrypted data on the card and require it to always be the same or larger than the last time that card was seen, and then increment it every time the card is used.

efstajas ,

You could store a counter for every machine used on the card, realistically, given few Laundromats would have over 50 or so machines. That'd mean that as you say, restoring the cards initial state would break it for every machine you previously used.

Going way too far now for what would make sense for a Laundromat, but just to entertain the idea...

You could also use an OTP encryption scheme on the card, where the exchange encryption key is based on the laundry machine ID, card ID, and a current timestamp, and thus changes every time the card is used. It would then be quite hard to "restore" the initial state of the card without having the laundry machine's hidden ID. Everything you read off the card would be useless a second later.

efstajas ,

Pretty funny that it took that long. Expertly executed rebrand.

efstajas ,

I don't see anyone claiming they have "working full self driving"

... They're literally calling it "Full self driving".

efstajas ,

Wait, so in your mind products need to have "working" in their name in order to be held to the standard of ... working? I don't understand what you're trying to argue at all. They're calling and selling this product as "full self driving". It's not full self driving. It doesn't need to be called "working full self driving" in order for it to be misleading.

efstajas ,

No, the other user is claiming that they don't have a "working" full self driving but is being vague about what they mean by "working".

I don't think the other commenter is being is vague at all. "Full self driving" quite literally means Level 5, maybe level 4. That's just what those words mean. There's no argument here.

Full Self Driving is just the name of the software

Yes, which is the problem.

The end goal of it is to eventually be capable of level 5 self driving so that's why it's named like that even though it has been a work in progress all of it's existence.

Which is exactly why calling it "full self driving" now doesn't make any sense. It's false advertising at best, and a super dangerous overpromise at worst.

Wouldn't make much sense to call it "partial self driving under supervision" because Full Self Driving is a better marketing term.

Of course it's a "better marketing term", because "full self driving" is the pinnacle of self driving tech, what Tesla and everyone else in the race is trying to achieve. The problem is that what they have is not full self driving, and in fact whether it can ever be achieved with current Tesla hardware is far from proven. I'm not confused as to why they call it that, I'm arguing the point that they shouldn't call it that.

Misleading? Well yeah perhaps but that's what marketing teams do. Nothing new there.

Not at all. This is not typically what marketing teams do at all. It's pretty damn unusual for a major corporation to sell a product under the technical term for what it may be at some point. Or do you have any other examples of this?

Not a single Tesla owner is under the illusion that you can just enable the system and take a nap.

Maybe not, but do you really think no-one bought a Tesla based on Elon's promise that it'd be fully self driving by 2019? Or that you could monetize it by having it run as a robotaxi at night by 2020?

Doesn't mean people don't do that but they know that they shouldn't.

Tesla and Musk not constantly overpromising and misrepresenting their product with false confidence might help with preventing people from placing undue trust in the system.

Personally I don't see a huge issue with that name. It's level 2

As you say, it's level 2. "Full self driving" is level 5. You still don't see the problem with the name?

it does what the name implies: drives itself

It quite literally does not drive itself given that a driver needs to be around and alert to take over at any moment.

efstajas , (edited )

How does this work? Like you sometimes can't control your inner voice, it just says things to you on its own accord?

efstajas , (edited )

I think that's pretty normal to some extent, I remember reading that you can kinda see people's inner monologue on a head MRI based on tiny movements of speech organs. Take this with a massive grain of salt, no idea where I read that and too lazy to find it right now lol.

Personally I definitely notice every now and then that when I activate my inner voice I also slightly move my tongue etc. as if I was saying what it says.

efstajas ,

Wait, what does this have to do with outsourcing abroad?

efstajas ,

It's a stupid meme, don't take it seriously...

efstajas , (edited )

Right, because non-technical people would be expected to understand what an "out of memory" error means

efstajas ,

As opposed to "sacrifice child" which sounds ... Good?

efstajas , (edited )

I've found that I dream a lot, I just forget quickly, which can feel like not dreaming. For a while I kept a very light dream journal, just writing down whatever small thing I remember, even if it's just a feeling or something super vague. Don't worry if you don't remember anything initially — just being in the mindset was enough to boost my recall. Key is to do it right after waking up, while you're almost still half asleep. Write on paper with a pen, not your phone — it's too distracting.

During that period I remembered multiple dreams each night in full, and the memories were incredibly vivid, sometimes almost lucid. It was honestly crazy — some of those dreams had elaborate storylines, often super interesting scenery, and sometimes even almost video game-like "mechanics". I can only recommend keeping a dream journal... you learn a lot about yourself.

Secret Hamas Files Show How It Spied on Everyday Palestinians ( www.nytimes.com )

The Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has for years overseen a secret police force in Gaza that conducted surveillance on everyday Palestinians and built files on young people, journalists and those who questioned the government, according to intelligence officials and a trove of internal documents reviewed by The New York Times....

efstajas ,

Please. Of course the NYT are far from infallible, but "no more journalistic credibility than the Enquirer" is just a ridiculous statement. There's a lot to criticize about their reporting on Gaza, but at the same time they've published some of the rawest and most eye-opening coverage of the situation in Gaza I've come across.

efstajas ,

What are you talking about? The article includes new information that has been uncovered, it's far from "Hamas is also still bad". Do you think they shouldn't report new information on Hamas?

efstajas ,

Just an anecdote but I find this doesn't align at all with what I've personally read from the NYT. I've been following their Gaza coverage pretty closely, and I really feel like it's been highlighting the injustice of what's going on quite well. Some of those articles describing the things happening to Palestinians literally brought tears to my eyes.

Their comment sections are pretty consistently full of genocide apologists flaming them for supposedly spreading Hamas propaganda too.

To be honest, I can somewhat understand that a major news outlet would want to avoid words like "genocide" even though I personally think there's no doubt that it's the right word to use. The debate around using these words is too toxic, and using them would quickly tip discourse even further into bullshit semantic arguments, in turn distracting from what's being reported.

r/The_Donald helped radicalize users into far-right identities and discourse – Active users on r/The_Donald increasingly used white nationalist vocabularies in their comments within three months. ( journals.sagepub.com )

I know most people that were on reddit at the time are fully aware of this and won't be surprised but don't dismiss the findings out of hand. It's important that studies are being conducted and the fact that the finding match our lived experience is still noteworthy.

efstajas ,

Please read the link! It's a study of that time on Reddit when the Donald was growing rapidly.

efstajas ,

It's probably a bit more complicated than that.. a city that relies so much on tourism economically can't just start banning one of the main ways tourists stay there.

efstajas ,

Idk. I guess I'm not offended, the ad just made me sad haha. I definitely understand that some creative professionals would be offended by the implication that a goddamn iPad could somehow replace a trumpet or a piano or literally any of those things shown in the ad. It's definitely lacking taste.

efstajas ,

I'm really close to getting a new iPad but this ad actually made me want it a lot less. It made me consider whether I actually need another piece of tech in my life. Thanks Apple for saving me a thousand bucks haha

‘We will fight with our fingernails’ says Netanyahu after US threat to curb arms ( www.theguardian.com )

Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed that Israel will stand alone and “fight with our fingernails” in defiance of US threats to further restrict arms deliveries if Israeli forces proceeded with an offensive on the southern Gazan city of Rafah....

efstajas ,

You keep making this argument but I just don't get. How does the supposed presence of Hamas in / under / around a target full of innocent civilians and children in any way justify bombing the area with what can only be described as full disregard for innocent casualties? Would you be ok with the IDF carpet bombing a hospital full of Israeli citizens based on intelligence that a bunch of Hamas are holed up in the basement? If not, why is it okay if it's innocent Palestinians instead?

Yes, Hamas strategy of endangering citizens is horrible. Does it give Israel blanket permission to just bomb densely populated civilian areas? Absolutely fucking not!

efstajas , (edited )

telling civilians to evacuate

My dude, where the hell do you think these people can just go to? There is barely any land not under attack these days, and even if there is somewhere safe to go to, not everyone can just leave either because they physically can't or just don't have the means. Especially true when we're talking about goddamn hospitals...

many are coerced into staying by Hamas

Again, a great reason not to bomb the area if that's known to be the case.

So no, I wouldn’t be ok with blanket bombing any hospital full of innocent people.

Then why aren't you condemning Israel's conduct? This is exactly what's happening.

I would be ok with bombing a hospital where innocents have been told to leave and where terrorists and their weapons are located.

So, let me rephrase the question: in a hypothetical situation where hundreds of Israelis were kept in a location with a bunch of Hamas in the basement and coerced to stay there by hamas, do you think the IDF would be justified in bombing it?

Tell me where are all the protests against Hamas?

I don't even want to engage with this point because it's not relevant in this discussion whatsoever. Unless you think innocent people deserve being bombed because they don't demonstrate against a violent regime within an active warzone while trying to survive.

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