I think this was the version right before WYSIWIG support was added. So you could still use fonts, and change font sizes but on screen it would show a strange notation but not the actual font. Complex layouts were tough 😅
More than 1,000 people died during this year’s Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabiaas the faithful faced extreme high temperatures at Islamic holy sites in the desert kingdom, officials said Sunday....
This seems like both a feature and a bug with the fediverse. Some topics just fit a lot of subs and then you multiply that by all the Lemmy instances. It seems like the discussions around big topics can really get spread around.
There's a pretty good chance that every employee facing this offer is in a position where Dell sees them as replaceable. They want people who follow orders and not much more, so if you want to look at it through that filter Dell got what they wanted.
Unless somebody over there at the top is crazy, Dell would have had individual deals with the true innovators, decision makers, movers and shakers internally who are viewed as top tier and irreplaceable.
The most effective method of protesting would be to find a way to get the masses to turn against the lawmakers in such a way that they convince the lawmakers to solve the problem that the protest is focused against.
But most of these protests just piss off the masses. They run their day with traffic, they destroy heritage sites that people care about, and while they do get in the news and get some publicity, people's memory is quite negative. And there are zero focus on anybody who could actually change the situation.
When I was young I remember that banks often had large drive-thrus with pneumatic tube systems at each car stall.
There would only be one teller but they could serve quite a few lanes.
If you wanted a cash withdrawal, you might put your ID and your withdrawal slip in the tube, and a few minutes later it would come back with cash in it.
It was pretty rad. But ATMs seem like a better bet overall.
I ran a single line BBS system in the Seattle area in my early teens which was early '90s. At the peak we were averaging about 20 calls a day and I kept the whole thing running for a few years. I had a four drive CD-ROM tower system loaded up with shareware CD archives and a connection to fidonet, so you could exchange email with anyone else who had a fidonet address around the world. It was freaking cool and the skills I learned building that prepared me to jump into IT during the .com boom which was a pretty lucky career break for a teen in Seattle.
That era was the tail end of the golden days of BBS systems because Prodigy and CompuServe followed quickly and what they had was professional content creators and some of the first integrations for buying airline tickets, stocks, reading the news, and functional email that reached a wider audience. At that time, you have to remember there was no other way to access those services in real time. Your only other source for this would have been TV or newspapers, or picking up the phone and calling a travel agent.
A lot of these services' business model was selling hours of access. So you might pay 30 bucks a month for 50 hours, and if you stayed online longer you'd pay more. Those numbers were fine because after you finished whatever you wanted to do, there was nothing left to look at so it was easy to log back off. Very few people were leaving anything resembling an instant messenger logged in all the time.
Those services were constantly updating so every time you logged in you'd see new games, photo libraries, user-generated content in their forums. But in the end they were essentially overgrown BBS's with funding.
All of them, including AOL, tried to stay relevant by adding the internet as soon as it became a little more mainstream to talk about. But within a fairly short period of time, maybe about a year, the content available on the wider internet from major sources outpaced whatever Prodigy, CompuServe and AOL could produce on their own, so most people logged in just to bypass and get to the internet.
The next generation of getting online after that was subscribing directly to a local ISP for a dial-up account.
As I think back to this, we knew the future was coming fast, but nobody seemed to really understand what that would entail. Absolutely nobody was envisioning services to come like cloud storage, social media, non-stop connectivity from your pocket etc. That was basically sci-fi movie stuff. Connectivity was simply too slow, and we didn't even have high-res pics or videos stored on our computers at the time. Photos were still taken on film, and video was stored on magnetic tape. It was still very analog and very few people could afford the hardware to digitize it. Early scanners were crappy, only black and white, and expensive.
The most incredible services to launch at the beginning were the chat systems and forums, and online shopping. Clicking on a picture of a cool thing, Entering a credit card number, and it showing up at your door a few days later was pretty cool, and I can distinctively remember the first Christmas where I did all of my shopping online and then bragged about not having to go to the mall. A pretty glorious experience for somebody who never really liked the mall.
Mail order systems existed but you had to call to place your order on the phone (during business hours), or physically mail your order slip with a handwritten credit card number or a check.
I think one of the most fascinating components of this that struck people was how fast you could communicate with people on the other side of the earth. A lot of people would exclaim "I just talked to a guy in Australia!" as the most eye-opening first experience. That's a real tell on how isolated we used to be.
In the early '90s, there was a very real sense that most people around you had not ever been online before. So if you started talking about your experiences most people would look at you like you're an alien, or at least some kind of super nerd. There was a period of time where it was decidedly uncool.
My best friend to this day is a guy I met in middle school and we quickly discovered that we both knew about BBS systems. By the time I graduated there were maybe only four or five guys in our BBS group of friends at our high school of 600 people.
Anyways, sorry for the essay. Having been born into the analog era and grown up as it became digital was a wild experience that those before and those after might not totally relate to.
Impressive, I don't think I'd heard of Ceefax. It seems like it was broadcast and then recorded, and then this set top box knew how to interpret and parse the data into this format.
A purported leak of 2,500 pages of internal documentation from Google sheds light on how Search, the most powerful arbiter of the internet, operates....
Well thought-out and articulated opinion, thanks for sharing.
If even the most skilled hyper-realistic painters were out there painting depictions of CSAM, we'd probably still label it as free speech because we "know" it to be fiction.
When a computer rolls the dice against a model and imagines a novel composition of children's images combined with what it knows about adult material, it does seem more difficult to label it as entirely fictional. That may be partly because the source material may have actually been real, even if the final composition is imagined. I don't intend to suggest models trained on CSAM either, I'm thinking of models trained to know what both mature and immature body shapes look like, as well as adult content, and letting the algorithm figure out the rest.
Nevertheless, as you brought up, nobody is harmed in this scenario, even though many people in our culture and society find this behavior and content to be repulsive.
To a high degree, I think we can still label an individual who consumes this type of AI content to be a pedophile, and although being a pedophile is not in and of itself an illegal adjective to posses, it comes with societal consequences. Additionally, pedophilia is a DSM-5 psychiatric disorder, which could be a pathway to some sort of consequences for those who partake.
I don't know much about the internal politics of Taiwan but I think playing the diplomatic game strategically is pretty crucial here. If the world has to take sides, I'm afraid for Taiwan.
Well stated and explained. I'm not an AI researcher but I develop with LLMs quite a lot right now.
Hallucination is a huge problem we face when we're trying to use LLMs for non-fiction. It's a little bit like having a friend who can lie straight-faced and convincingly. You cannot distinguish whether they are telling you the truth or they're lying until you rely on the output.
I think one of the nearest solutions to this may be the addition of extra layers or observer engines that are very deterministic and trained on only extremely reputable sources, perhaps only peer reviewed trade journals, for example, or sources we deem trustworthy. Unfortunately this could only serve to improve our confidence in the facts, not remove hallucination entirely.
It's even feasible that we could have multiple observers with different domains of expertise (i.e. training sources) and voting capability to fact check and subjectively rate the LLMs output trustworthiness.
But all this will accomplish short term is to perhaps roll the dice in our favor a bit more often.
The perceived results from the end users however may significantly improve. Consider some human examples: sometimes people disagree with their doctor so they go see another doctor and another until they get the answer they want. Sometimes two very experienced lawyers both look at the facts and disagree.
The system that prevents me from knowingly stating something as true, despite not knowing, without some ability to back up my claims is my reputation and my personal values and ethics. LLMs can only pretend to have those traits when we tell them to.
There are a few things humans (and thus a healthy society) require for survival. Water, food, shelter.
When we start to point unadulterated VC backed capitalism at those resources, I think we give up something in our society and culture that we don't actually want to give away.
I travel a lot worldwide and have used Airbnb quite a few times. However I'm now on the side of "Airbnb is evil".
A couple years ago had a horrific experience in a villa and Airbnb customer support didn't give a rats ass. Fortunately, my bank did and my credit card chargeback for $4,000 was successful. While I was going through that experience I came across a multitude of communities of travelers who have had equally horrific, oftentimes more horrific experiences with Airbnb where they've failed to step in and assist in any way.
Random dudes who own houses are on average unqualified in the hospitality business and not incentivized by maintaining a brand reputation. There are so many issues caused by shitty Airbnb hosts that hotels - real hotels - just don't suffer from.
So now we have this situation where a lot of spaces are allocated to hotel businesses, more space is allocated to residential housing, And any random dude who can qualify for a mortgage can take a house off the market, fill it for 10 or 15 days out of the month, and keep both a domicile unused for a resident and a hotel room empty.
This is one of the few areas where I think hotel regulations are smart.
Will be interesting to read the arguments and hear what experts have to say.
There is some precedence that corporations do have first amendment rights.
A hypothetical argument from TikTok is they think they are allowed constitutional rights, in this case to publish whatever they want, in the act of doing a commercial activity and that the law which was passed to force a sale to a local owner is a violation of their right to speak freely.
I suspect TikTok operates in the USA under an American registered entity that is wholly owned by a foreign entity. Whether that grants or removes any such constitutional rights seems unclear.
Next, it doesn't seem like the law intends to block TikTok's "speech", rather it specifically allows the executive branch to block this particular type of foreign entity from doing business on American soil on the grounds of security, enforced most likely by blocking it from doing business with the app stores. This also has precedence - a lot of it, in fact - when it comes to security. The US blocks all kinds of foreign businesses from trading with American businesses. Like arms dealers and drug dealers.
So TikTok will need to defeat the idea that even as a foreign businesses they don't need to be subject to the whims of the executive branches power to block foreign businesses AND that even congress doesn't have the power to write a law that gives the executive branch this power (because, ya know, they just DID write that law).
And then TikTok will need to win on the idea that somehow their rights have been suppressed.
Seems like a long shot to me and the precedence that would be established by making it difficult for Congress to write laws that give the executive power to block foreign entities because it risks their unlikely right to speech in the US seems a bit whack.
The Verge published this spam article about the "best printers of 2024" to demonstrate how terrible Google's search results are. It now appears as the top non-sponsored post if you search "best printer" on Google....
Missing the days of Consumer Reports. I think the velocity of new products is too high for them to be relevant for more than a few months once they release a report anymore.
I saw a website that was selling Reddit bot services to companies that want to review their products. They would just send a swarm of bad accounts in there and make nice comments. Even replying to their own comments.
After that I stopped trusting almost every Reddit review (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
Might be somewhat acceptable if a job was available while in prison to support these living expenses. That at least might improve confidence and start the rehabilitation process.
Oh wait, who am I kidding. Prison has nothing to do with rehabilitation.
It's Zelenskyy's job to say that. But if he doesn't get it he'll be in a tough situation with his troops assuming he tries to backpedal that and encourage them to keep fighting.
I don't understand why Europe isn't more involved in shutting this situation down. It's your goddamn borders at risk if this smoldering fire isn't put out.
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Over 1,000 pilgrims died during this year's Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, officials say ( apnews.com )
More than 1,000 people died during this year’s Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabiaas the faithful faced extreme high temperatures at Islamic holy sites in the desert kingdom, officials said Sunday....
Dell said return to the office or else—nearly half of workers chose “or else” ( arstechnica.com )
Stonehenge sprayed with paint by environmental protesters ( www.dw.com )
The prehistoric megalithic structure in England has been targeted by activists spraying orange powder paint, social media footage showed....
The return of pneumatic tubes ( www.technologyreview.com )
Did you use pre-internet online services like CompuServe or Quantum Link? How was your experience?
Was it fascinating? Did it feel like the amazing future? Were you all too aware of the mounting cost relative to what you were actually doing?
Google won’t comment on a potentially massive leak of its search algorithm documentation ( www.theverge.com )
A purported leak of 2,500 pages of internal documentation from Google sheds light on how Search, the most powerful arbiter of the internet, operates....
FBI Arrests Man For Generating AI Child Sexual Abuse Imagery ( www.404media.co )
Masahiro Sakurai refused to add Dolby Surround to a Kirby game because players had to sit through the logo ( www.videogameschronicle.com )
'Stop threatening Taiwan', its new president William Lai tells China ( www.bbc.com )
Taiwan's newly inaugurated president William Lai has called on China to stop threatening the island and accept the existence of its democracy....
We have to stop ignoring AI’s hallucination problem ( www.theverge.com )
Winamp has announced that it is opening up its source code to enable collaborative development of its legendary player for Windows ( about.winamp.com )
What it's like to be a developer in 2024 ( sopuli.xyz )
Source
How Airbnb accidentally screwed the US housing market and made $100 billion ( www.arktrek.shop )
TikTok sues U.S. government, saying potential ban violates First Amendment ( www.nbcnews.com )
The Verge shows how Google search is useless ( www.theverge.com )
The Verge published this spam article about the "best printers of 2024" to demonstrate how terrible Google's search results are. It now appears as the top non-sponsored post if you search "best printer" on Google....
Biden calls US ally Japan ‘xenophobic’ along with Russia and China ( www.cnn.com )
TIL 40 states in the US charge you $20-$80 a day for being incarcerated in prison. ( en.m.wikipedia.org )
Very weird that I am so old and have literally never heard this mentioned in a TV show or book or movie or anything....
Zelenskyy straight-up said Ukraine is going to lose if Congress doesn't send more aid ( www.businessinsider.com )
President Zelenskyy warned that Ukraine would lose the war if the US didn't send it more aid....