• 4 Posts
  • 21 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • While I appreciate the focus and mission, kind of I guess, your really going to set up shop in a country literally using AI to identify air strike targets and handing over to the Ai the decision making over whether the anticipated civilian casualties are proportionate. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai-database-hamas-airstrikes

    And Isreal is pretty authorarian, given recent actions against their supreme court and banning journalists (Al jazera was outlawed, the associated press had cameras confiscated for sharing images with Al jazera, oh and the offices of both have been targeted in Gaza), you really think the right wing Israeli government isn’t going to coopt your “safe superai” for their own purposes?

    Oh, then there is the whole genocide thing. Your claims about concerns for the safety of humanity ring a little more than hollow when you set up shop in a country actively committing genocide, or at the very least engaged in war crimes and crimes against humanity as determined by like every NGO and international body that exists.

    So Ilya is a shit head is my takeaway.




  • The reason they cited in the article is that voters have realized this race is really Biden v Trump, and reality has given Biden a 3-4 point bump.

    Another theory I will throw out is adjusting the weighting. Polls infamously under weighted Trumps support in 2016, and since then there has been an effort to “correct” the weighting. However, Trump has consistently underperformed his polls in the primaries, suggesting that the polls might have gone too far in weighting in favor of Trump support. So the current batch of polls might just be a correction, and Biden has been marginally ahead the whole time. But I don’t know what I’m talking about, so take this all with a grain of salt.

    What is interesting and worrying to me is how hard it’s going to be to predict who turns out for this election. Will voters be motivated to prevent another Trump term, or are they just apathetic about choosing between the same two old guys as last time and will sit home? Trump’s base is amped up, will democratic enthusiasm get anywhere close to that? How can pollsters accurately predict any of this? It’s not like there are a lot of close historical examples to turn to.




  • I’ve used it just to access Bing Chat, which has become my go to AI chatbot for a couple of reasons: 1) you theoretically get access to gpt 4 without paying 20 dollars a month, 2) it cites it’s sources, and 3) it can create images via DALLE from within the chat (which is handy, you can chat with the AI to help you think of an image prompt, the just say “ok make an image based on that description”). Other then that, i use Firefox at home. At work our choices are chrome or edge, so I use edge because of bing chat and I kind of like the layout better. It feels like choosing between buying something from Amazon or Walmart, which terrible corporation do I hate more in a given moment.


  • I feel like if I ever become an audiophile, I’ll probably be looking at getting a separate music player with a DAC, a Tidal subscription, and a pair of kickass wired headphones. But for now, I’m mostly listening to podcasts and for music I use Spotify for it’s discovery features, and their audio quality is subpar already. Even if I had a headphone jack, I’m not really benefiting from superior sound quality but I am getting frustrated with tangled cords and getting caught on doorknobs. I’ll take the convenience of Bluetooth, especially while working out. And Bluetooth standards have been getting better anyway, in a few years it might be on par with wired.



  • This is great, but what I’m really struck by is the Fox News homepage’s top story is about the autopsy of Obama’s chef? I didn’t realize how out of touch I am with right wing media. I assume there is some conspiracy that Obama had his chef killed for “reasons”? Or maybe this is some vaccine conspiracy? Can you imagine what your brain would be like if this was your main source of news?

    I just checked as I’m writing this out of curiosity. Top story on CNN is Prigozhin being killed. Top story on Fox News is “Hunter Biden went on foreign trips.” No wonder so many people’s brains are rotten.


  • Reddit isn’t fun anymore, I agree with that. I checked /r/all for this first time today in months. I haven’t logged in or browsed since the blackout, but there are a few communities I miss and was thinking about going back over for those, so I checked r/all out of curiosity to see how things have been. The content was just so much trash, and I don’t even think it’s that much worse. It’s just that I’ve been away for so long that I’m looking at it now like “how did I spend my days scrolling through this garbage for hours?” It’s just boring, it’s like just interesting enough to keep you scrolling hoping to find something actually interesting.

    Here on lemmy there is far fewer users and far less content. But I’m starting to see that as a good thing. I pop by and scroll, but I don’t spend hours here like I did on reddit. The discussions are smaller, but more engaging and thoughtful. I remember before I left there were certain threads I’d see and just skip because I already knew exactly what all the comments would be. Also, I’m actively engaging more here, so there is actually some “social” in my social media use, instead of just passively consuming like I mostly did on reddit.

    Overall I think ithe switch to Lemmy has been good, for me at least. It’s like I’ve broken the reddit addiction, and looking at it now I can’t understand why I got so caught up with it in the first place. To me, reddit just isn’t fun anymore.


  • I know literally nothing about computers and I’ve been daily driving Linux for well over a decade. I just use Ubuntu and I’ve been pretty much using all the default settings, apart from some customization here and there. There was a time years ago when I wanted to learn and tinker, but in reality I never learned to use the command line for more than running updates (I still sudo apt-get update cause it makes me feel like hackerman).

    My point is, Linux is super easy to just set up and run. If you want to learn more, there’s plenty of opportunities for that. But it’s not something to be intimidated by at all. A lot of the community is enthusiasts (who’ve I’ve found extremely helpful back when I used to have problems) so you’ll hear more jargon in these spaces. But I’m sure there are tons of others like me that use Linux just fine day to day without understanding a ton about computers.


  • You have it worse I promise, that sounds miserable. I’m in northern California, but what the other reply you got said is accurate here as well. Lows in the 60Fs (15C), maybe even the upper 50s, when it’s really bad lows are in the mid 70s. Most days I have a fan in the window to cool things off overnight and even if not it gets cool enough that the AC won’t work itself to death overnight. I get up early so open all the windows, fans everywhere, and I try to get my place down to 70f (21c), close it all up by 9am, then try to ride it out without ac until the lows drop again. Humidity is very low where I am too. This Sunday it’s now saying 105 (41c) for a high and 66 (19c) for a low if that gives you an idea.




  • I was kind of surprised, where I am those are pretty normal temperatures, not for weeks on end but it can hit like that for a few days in a row. We’re expecting higher temperatures this weekend.

    Many Iranian cities and towns have suffered from temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Degrees Fahrenheit) in recent days, while the oil-rich southwestern city of Ahvaz hit 50 degrees Celsius on Tuesday. [122F]

    The capital city of Tehran experienced temperatures of 39 degrees Celsius on Wednesday.

    I just checked and their nightly lows are in the high 80sF so that sucks for sure. That 122F high is bonkers though, that’s pushing death valley territory. But overall it’s not worse than Arizona has been going through for like more than a month, highs above 110 and lows in the 90s. Greece’s heatwave seems like it is about on par to what Iran is going through, and I don’t remember hearing about them shutting down the country, just limiting outdoor work and deliveries during peak heat hours.

    But like you said, A/C might be a difference maker. I don’t know what Iran’s climate control availability is like, and this article didn’t say.






  • I think this gets lost in the conversation a lot. The API change is a symptom of the larger problem of enshitification, which itself is worse for Reddit because 1) they haven’t been able to make a profit thus far, 2) the IPO push, and 3) Tik Tok exists and is far more popular. What was a slow and gradual process of enshitification (killing AMAs, secret santa, NFT bullshit, etc) is now about to hit hyperspeed.

    One data point that is really worth highlighting is the Apollo dev said he had a call with Reddit at the end of January and they told him they had no plans to make changes to the API in 2023 and likely for a few years beyond that, and if they made any changes it would be to incorporate more features. Then in April Reddit annouces API changes with pricing to come within 2 weeks. Then 6 weeks later Reddit reveals the pricing, 30 days before it goes into effect. So this wasn’t some long term strategic plan. Something is happening in Reddit, there is some immediate pressure to make more money and quickly. This is almost a panic move, and I don’t think the IPO can fully explain that. Another data point is the recent (and likely just the first) round of layoffs.

    And it won’t be the last big user-unfriendly change. The API is low hanging fruit, relative to the userbase. Reddit seems to be on a hard push to monitize in every way they can as quickly as possible. I’d expect a lot more changes that will annoy the userbase, and thanks to the blackouts the users are primed to recognize the further enshitification for what it is. Reddit would be smart to take a couple months of cooling off to lull users back into a sense of normalcy before implementing their next profit generating move, but nothing they’ve done so far strikes me as smart and strategic. I’d guess there will be further waves of Reddit refugees landing on Lemmy’s shores seeking asylum in the next 12-18 months.


  • Interesting example with The_Donald. “Of course, it would have been better for the internet if TheDonald had simply disbanded. But the fact that it continued once being booted off Reddit illustrates how little Reddit itself brought to the community — and how easily other, more reputable subreddits might build new homes elsewhere, so long as their users have the will.”



  • Spez says the blackout is no big deal and will blow over by Wednesday. Spez also says people are so pissed off they will randomly attack people in the streets wearing Reddit gear. So either people don’t care and everything will be back to normal soon, or people are in a blind rage about the API changes and prone to random acts of violence. Which is it?

    Notice Spez doesn’t go so far as to claim there have been any specific threats or incidents of violence. There is no evidence or justification supporting his warning. He is just 100% throwing that in there for the headline. Reddit has gotten bad press all week, Spez thinks pretending to be a victim of the rabid reddit mob (which is simultaneously full of keyboard warriors who will accept defeat by tomorrow) will get him some sympathy in the press. The dude is pathetic.