lvxferre

lvxferre , 10 hours ago (edited 10 hours ago)

I've mentioned this two days ago. I didn't test it because I don't have an account there any more, but I'm predicting that they'll slowly remove functionality from old.reddit by redirecting it to the new one.

And, really, in another context getting rid of the old interface would be sensible. Because you expect the newer one to be improved. You got to be dumb as a snoo to do it like Reddit did, where the newer interface isn't just markedly different from the old one, but crappy.

(inb4 yes, the admin said "nooo we aren't removing old reddit lol". And my cat said that she wouldn't scratch my furnitures.)

lvxferre , 1 day ago

I think that the EU is fully aware that what makes those extra powerful is network effect. And, once they're gone, something else pops up in their place. The case of Germans using WhatsApp for example would become inconvenient for them for fifteen whole minutes, then they'd jump into an alternative, and business as usual, without Faecesbook/Merda meddling.

lvxferre , 1 day ago

Yes. And wikis, too.
We (people in general) have a tendency to share stuff in forums, like Lemmy. That's fine in the short term, but in the long term this stuff should be sorted, organised, and preferably mirrored. Wikis are perfect for that, while the internet archive is more like "bulk" storage.

lvxferre , 1 day ago

There's nothing intrinsically non-primary in the format. At the end of the day they're collaborative writing projects, split into pages with internal and external links; it's just that the biggest one out there happens to be tertiary.

And I believe that they could help a lot with this issue if people migrated/copied meaningful info from forums (like Lemmy) to wikis. Forums are good for discussion, but they tend to accumulate a lot of trash; having the good content sieved and sorted in a wiki makes it more accessible for everyone.

lvxferre , 1 day ago

Thanks for giving me another bone to pick against Discord ¬¬
Seriously. Fuck Discord.

lvxferre , 2 days ago

It would be better if you shared a pic of that "ugly mess". That said I think that it should be fine (rule-wise) to ask it here.

For now, tips that I can give you:

• Focus on a theme for that build. The simpler the theme, the easier to get.
• Find good combos of blocks, and use them somewhat consistently for a feature of your build. For example: I personally like building walls with stone bricks + wood (it's cheap for survival, and it looks good), while the roof is mostly Nether bricks;
• Don't fight against the terrain. Some terraforming is fine; but flatting it all out will make your build look out of place.
• Use pictures for reference. Copying is 90% of creating.
• Too much detail is as bad as too little. Find a good balance.

lvxferre , 2 days ago

It is not so bad that it's an "ugly mess". It's simply cluttered. The shape looks good even if a bit weird, the issue are your choices of blocks, they're clashing with each other, and you're using a lot of different types so it's really hard to combo them.

I'd suggest you to make a creative mode copy of your world and try the following, see if you like the results:

• Replace those birch logs with spruce, so they contrast better with the birch planks. Either keep them all with their bark, or remove it from all of them. If you feel that the build becomes too colourless, barkless acacia logs are also an option.
• Replace the yellow and red concrete with the same type of log that you picked above.
• Pick one between basalt, plain stone, or that white stone (I think that it's modded marble?). The mix is fine in the right building because it's just stone, but when you're combining it with other elements it's making it look too busy.
• I'm not too hot on the usage of concrete + bricks like you did in the right. Perhaps it would be better to stick to one or another.
• That amethyst doormat needs to go. It makes your sight gravitate towards the floor.
• Consider replacing those torches in the building with lanterns, hanging from the roof. The ones nearer to you are a bit trickier, I'd probably try to replace them with froglight or shroomlights.

lvxferre , 10 hours ago

Sometimes less is more. (And sometimes more is more. It... depends, really.)

I like the shape, though. A lot of people struggle giving their buildings depth, but you did it rather well.

lvxferre , 2 days ago

People downvoting this post: don't shoot the messenger.

I'll copypaste what I said in !redditmigration about this topic:

As I mentioned in the kbin comm about redditfugees: I think that the platform stopped being sustainable, and that changes like this - either trying to increase engagement or appeasing power users - are only a symptom of that.

They won't work, by the way, because of the trust thermocline (the impact of an act violating the users' trust is considerably greater, if there's a backstory of trust violations).

...excuse me while I grab some popcorn. I'm loving to watch this.

---

Fun comment (from a user) in that thread:

Because it's a Reddit Product Decision, you can always expect one step forward, two steps back, and four steps off in a random direction that makes no sense.
FAQ
Can people who used all their gold due to your short-sighted mistake get it back? Haha, no.
Are you offering any compensation? Sure, we'll give you some free bullshit. And it expires, so make sure to Drive Engagement and Interact with Posts before the end of the year!
Wait, you're replacing the stuff you made arbitrarily expire with a different arbitrarily-expiring currency? You know it.
Can you use Gold that people give you on other posts? Absolutely not. Gold you are given goes into a big pot where it will remain, serving no purpose, unless you're like the 0.1% of people on this site who ruthlessly and relentlessly farm for gold and karma. If you're one of those people, you can financialize your Reddit experience, earning upwards of, like, five bucks!
I run a subreddit that provides resources for people in mental health crisis or other major medical issues. Can I turn off gilding to stop people boosting bad or unsafe answers? At Reddit, we believe that consumers deserve choice, and in this case, the choice they deserve is to seethe and cope. You absolutely cannot turn this shit off.
You're at least blacklisting the really high-risk subs from the new old Gold program, right? Yes.
What happens when you inevitably miss a sub and end up causing massive headaches for mods? They can contact us at the Mod Help PO Box in Anchorage, Alaska. When the intern checks the mail in 6 months, we'll get right on it.
What if I'm not eligible for the Contributors program? Go fuck yourself.
Does it work on Old Reddit? What do you think?

---

Additional detail: did anyone notice that you can't log through old.reddit any more? I don't even have an account there any more, but if you try it, here's what you get:

https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/ed93becd-22a5-4973-899e-25d571b0eb53.png

They are already actively removing functionality from old.reddit!

lvxferre , 2 days ago

They take labour into consideration because less time spent serving a drink = you can serve more drinks = we can replace two of you with one.

lvxferre , 5 days ago

I got the same issue months ago, with Mint. I have a script to switch audio outputs, and it stopped working after... apt upgrade! Apparently what used to be called "hdmi-stereo" is now "hdmi-stereo-extra1", no idea why.

In the case of my script, once I got what was going on, I solved it with a simple "if" statement:

if [[ $(pactl list sinks | grep extra) == "" ]]
  then declare -g mainProfile="hdmi-stereo"
  else declare -g mainProfile="hdmi-stereo-extra1"
  fi

(My system uses pulseaudio. Don't ask me why. I'm not touching it with a 3m pole.)

lvxferre , 6 days ago

If you're in doubt if some content violates the rules, report it, and let the mods decide if it's okay or not okay. That is not abuse of the report function.

Include a short description on why you're reporting some piece of content. Specially in larger comms, the mod queue can get really large. If reasonable mention the rule being violated; a simple "r1 off topic" goes a long way.

Context is everything. If what a user said only sounds bad in a certain context, say it. If the user is clearly problematic due to their profile, say it.

You're probably better off not interacting with the content that you're reporting.

Don't boss the other users around. It's fine to be informative; it is not fine to act as a moderator when you are not one. If moderative intervention is necessary, report it.

Stop giving shitty mods a free pass. Honest mistakes happen; but if the mod in question is assumptive, disingenuous, trigger-happy, or eager to enable certain shitty types of user, spread the word about their comm being poorly moderated. And don't interact directly with the comm. I think that at least here in the Fediverse we should demand higher standards from our mods.

lvxferre , 6 days ago

I have definitely erred in this regard several times!

I think that everyone did this at least once, so don't worry too much. Still, it's less work for the mods if you don't do it.

lvxferre , 4 days ago

If your description of the events is accurate: that's a shitty mod, and a good example of what I wrote in the last paragraph. We should be denouncing this sort of crap, and avoiding comms where it happens.

It’s not always so easy to assume that mods are going to be fair. Reporting people comes with a risk.

I'm not assuming that the mods are going to be fair. I'm taking into account that shitty mods do a favour to you when they out themselves, as they're basically showing you which comms to avoid.

lvxferre , 6 days ago

When I wake up I notice that I was dreaming once or twice per week. It's always weird dreams. Weird as in:

• aliens spitting on trees
• tomato fighting in the library, killing and burying the old librarian, to resurrect a god
• using a rolled newspaper as a magic wand, triggered by the word "photon"
• a vulture digging gold nuggets from my liver, a la Prometheus
• a pig praying (stupid dream bilingual pun)
• my cats preparing popcorn (I don't even like popcorn)

lvxferre , 7 days ago

I'll mostly share tips regarding what you said, OK?

Quite a few programs still rely on files in ~/.config/. So if you feel like the options in a program are "missing", give its config file a check. (To see hidden directories: Ctrl+H)

There's another MS Paint alternative called Kolourpaint. I personally prefer it over Drawing; once you install it you'll need to install quite a bit of stuff from the KDE environment, but I think that it's worth.

The super key can be configured to your taste. For example mine brings up composing, so if I type Super+e+1 I get ɛ, Super+a+1 I get ɐ, so goes on. (I open the menu with Alt+F1, by the way.) As implied, as a further tip - if you need certain characters you can create custom keystrokes through a file called .XCompose.

lvxferre , 8 days ago

Yup, I also think that it's a retention tactic. Not the first one: karma, user profiles, that new year crap etc., they all boil down to "we're giving you reasons to consistently come back, and produce content for us for free."

The timing hints me that the Reddit userbase is getting a lower rebound ratio nowadays. i.e. user goes there to see some junk, then forgets about the site.

lvxferre , 8 days ago

„Im so inconvenienced by the piece of trash i bought wanting to stay a single piece of trash” // Humans as they discovered they made a small continent out of trash in the ocean. If it bothers you so much then stop buying plastic trash.

People are clearly complaining about how the feature was implemented. Not the goal (to keep it as a single piece of trash).

lvxferre , 8 days ago

So? (implied: "I dun unrurrstand u're point")

I'm highlighting that the other user is missing the bloody point of the complain.

People want less plastic waste, sure. And yes, less consumption is a way to achieve so - no shit Sherlock "riodoro" Holmes. However, in this specific case the design solution was done so poorly that it inconveniences the user by a lot, and it isn't even reducing (first R) the amount of plastic being used, it's just in the hopes that people actually recycle (third R) that small piece of junk there.

Is this clear now?

lvxferre , 8 days ago

Bloody snitch. People like this are why dogs don't talk IRL!

lvxferre , 8 days ago

I still play SimCity sometimes. The SNES version. There's something beautiful on slowly building your city, solving problems that arrive, and when you're don... oh wait you're never done! (Not even with the Mario statue.)

More into colony sim territory: Oxygen not Included, Dwarf Fortress, RimWorld. In special I've been playing the later quite a bit (1.4 version, up to Biotech), selectively breeding colonists to get superpawns.

lvxferre , 10 days ago

This would be great if Nintendo was genuinely concerned about encouraging the usage of a hostile platform. Sadly odds are that it cares about its brand way more than "those things" playing their games.

Nintendo didn't provide one [reason], but it's likely due to X's increased API costs

I don't think so. Even with the abusive costs the price would be rather small for Nintendo, in comparison with the advertisement of its games in Twitter. I think that it's mostly a "eeeeew, Nintendo has X integration? Nintendo must be fascist."

Either way it's a positive.

lvxferre , 10 days ago

I think that it's more like "Mike got a promotion *for saving our brand from unnecessary damage". The whole thing stinks "muh brand" from a distance for me.

lvxferre , 10 days ago

My personal take is that the current generation of generative models peaked, for the reasons stated in the video (diminishing returns). This current gen will be useful, but progress-wise it'll be a dead end.

In the future however I believe that models with a different architecture will cause a breakthrough, being able to perform better with less training. And probably less energy requirements, too.

lvxferre , 10 days ago

I don't think that reinventing computers will do any good. The issue that I see is not hardware, but software - the current generative models are basically brute force, you throw enough data and processing power at the problem until it becomes smaller, but at the end of the day you're still relying too much on statistical patterns behind the wrong entities.

Instead I think that the ML architecture will change. And this won't be done by those tech bros full of money burning effigies, who have a nasty/stupid/disgraceful tendency to confuse symbolic representations with the things being represented. Instead it'll be done by researchers in some random compsci or robotics lab, in a random place of the world. They'll be doing some weird stuff like emulating the brain of a fruit fly, and someone will point out "hey, you see this feature? It has ML applications". And that'll be when they actually add some intelligence to those systems, i.e. the missing piece of the puzzle. It won't be AGI but it'll be better than now, at least.

lvxferre , 10 days ago

Not even another info transferring entity would solve it. Be it quantum computers, photonic computers, at the end of the day we'd be simply brute forcing the problem harder, due to increased processing power. But we need something else than brute force due to the diminishing returns.

Just to give you an idea. A human needs around 2400kcal/day to survive, or 100kcal/h = 116W. Only 20% of that is taken by the brain, so ~23W. (I bet that most of that is used for motor control, not reasoning.) We clearly suck as computing machines, and yet our output is considerably better than the junk yielded by LLMs and diffusion models, even if you use a really nice computer and let the model take its time producing its [babble | six fingers "art"]. Those models are clearly doing lots of unnecessary operations, while failing hard at what they're expected to do.

Regarding research, my point is that what's going to fix generative models is likely from outside the field of artificial intelligence. It'll be likely something small and barely related, that happens to have some ML application.

lvxferre , 10 days ago

It's a bit messy but the rule in question might be from

• the user's instance
• the community's instance
• the community itself

Typically when mods ban you based on violations of some global rule they'll highlight it, e.g. "global rule 1". And it's good form to include the short description of the rule being violated as the reason for the ban (e.g. instead of "rule 1", saying "rule 1 - uncivil behaviour").

Without further clarification, however, it's usually the community rules. Otherwise you'll likely get banned from your account (if you violated the global rules of your instance) or from the instance where the comm is.

In the desktop, to see the community rules you check the side panel:
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/cd6ec317-acd5-44e8-91e2-ad6ad5429664.png

And for the instance you see them on the main page of the instance:
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/0482cb3f-ee8a-40e4-a29d-fa0747f8c86c.png

Props for reading the mod logs, by the way. And if you want to know who did what, this site shows exactly which mod or admin is behind which moderative action.

lvxferre , 10 days ago

If you’re referring to .ml, Rule 1 is saying anything they don’t like (criticizing an authoritarian regime, etc)

It's a bit more complicated than that. Basically they distort every single rule, not just rule #1. Rule #1 is specially common because they label criticism against certain governments as xenophobia, but sometimes you get "rule #4" (because you insisted on a certain point) or "rule #2" (because someone said some stupid shit and you didn't play along).

lvxferre , 10 days ago

Old English attests the word as docga. My hypothesis is that it's dōc "bastard, mongrel" + -ga [diminutive suffix], roughly like calling it "the little mutt". The vowel shortening would've been happened already back then, otherwise the modern form would be *doog /du:g/.

Note that Latin/Romance attests similar phenomena (depreciative word for animal becoming the default word + diminutives being ingrained into the main word). And typically when you see weird stuff going on in a language you'll see it happening in other languages too.

lvxferre , 11 days ago

Linux if I'm using the machine.

I can maintain Windows. But I don't remember how to use it for everyday tasks.

lvxferre , 11 days ago (edited 11 days ago)

When I adopted Siefrieda, the way that I introduced her and Kika (my older cat; she's now 16, I think she was 10 back then) was like this:

• let Frieda in the carrier box. In the living room, so Kika could smell it.
• let cats each in one part of the house, split by simply closing the doors. In my case it was laudry room + patio vs. the rest of the house.
• switch the cats twice~thrice a day. That lets them get used to each other's smell, plus it gives them access to both sides of the house. Typically when I went to sleep Kika would have the main part of the house, as unlike Frieda she was already used to her home.
• put their food on both sides of a glass door. At first they avoided eating at the same time, but when they were OK with it I knew that they didn't mind too much each other.
• open a slid on the glass door, not enough for a cat to pass, but enough for a paw. Let them smell each other "on the live". When Kika was mildly curious with Frieda instead of aggressive, I knew that I could let them in the same room and they wouldn't fight.

Nowadays they aren't best friends, but let's say that Kika tolerates Siegfrieda like you'd tolerate a really annoying kid. The only main issue is that only one of them refuses to share a litterbox, but I'm fixing this.

lvxferre , 11 days ago

I think that the key difference is that plenty societies were built with the "immigration" mindset. It isn't just the ones in USA, but mostly the whole New World. And even if the "bulk" of the immigration in the XIX and XX centuries is over, the mindset is still here.

As opposed to the typical society in the Old World where, if you were born somewhere, odds are that your grand-grand-grand-grandparents were also born there, like Japan and UK-minus-London.

lvxferre , 11 days ago

People actually say shit like “borrow me your car Friday” or “borrow me a pencil”, instead of “lend”.

That's correct. The distinction between lender and borrower is given by the case, so the same verb works for both.

lvxferre , 11 days ago

I'm perhaps a bit biased because for me a country boils down to a government, and I'm from the new world (we tend to see immigrants differently - more like "newcomers" and less like "outsiders"), but I'd consider you British.

That doesn't say much though. At the end of the day, "you're British" or "you're Polish" seem fairly minor to me, compared with "you're human" and "you're you".

lvxferre , 11 days ago

Acho que participaria, sim. Dependendo dos temas; gosto de filosofia da linguagem, epistemologia e ética/moral.

...mas o que isto tem a ver com uma comu para coisas "levemente enfurecedoras"?

lvxferre , 11 days ago

Wines, cheeses, cold cuts, mutton, salmon, porcino. I'd be also experimenting different stuff here and there (casu marzu, maple syrup, etc.)

lvxferre , 12 days ago

Interesting video. At the core it can be summed up as:

• "AI is existential threat" is a lie of big tech trying to use regulatory capture against competitors
• the main competition for that big tech would be open source generative models
• we should fight against big tech in this

lvxferre , 12 days ago

Cut it coarsely. As you cook them, add a tiny bit of sodium bicarbonate. After they melted down, add a tiny bit of vinegar to neutralise the bicarbonate.

They'll caramelise a bit. But that's good.

lvxferre , 12 days ago (edited 12 days ago)

And they're making a fucking mess of the pharmacological and social definitions of "drug". It's the propaganda version of that "ackshyually tomato is a fruit, not a vegetable" brain-rotting idiocy.

Depressant, stimulant, those refer to the pharmacological activity; it'll include even things not socially considered as drugs, such as caffeine (stimulant) and alcohol (depressant). In this sense marijuana is not its own class, it's THC is a depressant.

That "club drugs" category is a fucking mess in both definitions. Ketamine is an anaesthetic, thus likely a depressant; ecstasy is mostly a stimulant with weak hallucinogen properties, pharmacologically they're nothing alike. And socially they're closer to caffeine (as things that you ingest willingly) than to date rape drugs (things that people give you against your consent).

And even the division in social drugs depends on usage. Marijuana for example can be used for clinical or recreative reasons; abuse is of course bad, but frankly I wouldn't be surprised if most marijuana smokers had better lungs than I do (I don't smoke weed but I smoke tobacco - nicotine is a depressant stimulant BTW). Same deal with the date rape drugs, alcohol could be used as one.

Aaaaah, sorry for the rant. What I want to convey is that yeah, I get why this infuriates you. It infuriated me too.

lvxferre , 12 days ago

I fucked it up - thanks for pointing it out, fixed it. (I switched them because smoking a cig relaxes me quite a bit.)

lvxferre , 13 days ago

And then they clapped.

EDIT, for context: there is [used to?] be a meme in 4chan that Americans clapped for random shit, such as when the movie ends. Likely bullshit, but I'm poking fun at that meme.

lvxferre , 13 days ago

It's complicated. Short version: Portuguese and Italian.

Long version:

• Portuguese - native
• Italian - have been learning it since a kid. It's by no means native speaker level, but I feel rather confident in the language.
• Venetian - I can speak some but I can't write stuff in the language without pulling out a dic. My knowledge of the language is rusting and it pains me.
• English - written only.
• German - I can speak and write some. I use it mostly with my cat.
• Latin - Classical pronunciation and rather decent vocab. Can read Caesar unaided without too much trouble, Cicero is another can of worms.
• French - studied it a long, looooong time ago. Completely forgotten.
• Russian, Ukrainian - sometimes I play a bit with both but I don't speak or write either, I just know Cyrillic. I tend to use Cyrillic a fair bit for my personal notes but it's always with Italian or Latin, it's just so people don't snoop on my notes.
• Spanish - I never studied the language, my pronunciation is awful, but if I wasn't able to read it I'd seriously question my own basic literacy for Portuguese and Italian.

lvxferre , 13 days ago

anglijskij i russkij

I love the fact that I can understand this fine without knowing Russian.

lvxferre , 12 days ago

Yup! And there's some backstory for that.

Back when we adopted Siegfrieda*, I was studying German; and I decided to speak with her in German for my own sake, it's good for memorisation. But then I realised that she and Kika (our other cat) would pay attention to me separately depending on the language, so it was unexpectedly useful.

*the name is also obviously related to that, but partially due to the meaning; it's fitting for a cat that, when adopted, was beaten and starving and pregnant, and now only needs to bother about cardboard boxes and cups of yoghurt. It's like she got her victory peace (Sieg Frieden).

lvxferre , 12 days ago

I get that you're probably joking, but note that calling C++ etc. "languages" is at most synecdoche. A really common one, but still a figure of speech.

(Language has multiple functions; referential, directive, expressive, phatic, metalinguistic, poetic, metalinguistic etc. Those instruction sets used when programming are at best directive speech only, as they're basically issuing commands to something.)

lvxferre , 12 days ago

I got that you were probably joking. However, I've seen so many times people equating the human systems of communication with the computer instruction sets that... well, sorry for the knee-jerk reaction.

(Last time that I saw someone genuinely thinking that C++, Fortran, Python etc. were the same deal as Mandarin, English, Spanish etc., the muppet in question brought up code comments for an "ackshyually lol lmao". Yup.)

lvxferre , 6 days ago

This was in r/linguistics, by the way. And the moderators there were doing jack shit to inform the users. Even if one of them works with NLP, so you'd expect the person to be somewhat well versed in both Linguistics and basic programming.

The worst part? It wasn't even the only time that I saw this conflation. I think that people get caught in the words, and miss that they're referring to different concepts.

lvxferre , 14 days ago

Odds are that the Galicians will want it too. And perhaps the Andalusians - because linguistic factors are only a fraction of what creates identity, and even if they speak a variety of Castilian a lot of them keep a separated identity.