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zephr_c ,
@zephr_c@lemm.ee avatar

Authoritarianism is all about concentrating power around fewer people. That what authoritarianism IS. Giving more power to the least powerful people is always anti-authoritarian. Yes, there are always trade-offs, no they're not always as obvious as this one, but more power to more people is never authoritarian.

Can Milky Way and Andromeda collision reconcile with an Expanding Universe with galaxies spreading away from each other like "raisins in a loaf"?

I understand that our local galaxy group is considered "gravitationally bound" and therefore exempt from the expansion from each other ((, but we don't seem to have other galaxies collected into their own "local groups" of gravitationally bound clusters, so are we saying we're somehow unique? Is there a trick of perception...

zephr_c ,
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The short simple version is that if galaxies happen to be close enough to each other they fall toward each other faster than the space between them expands. That's what "gravitationally bound" means.

zephr_c ,
@zephr_c@lemm.ee avatar

Those look like pretty thin slices. They might work. I'd also try it.

9 years later, I finally played fallout 4

Having dropped New Vegas in the past due to lost interest, I decided to try this game out finally since a friend of mine was having a fallout 3 playthrough himself. It was it 8 bucks, so I figured why not. I have to say, I put way more hours into this game than both other Bethesda games I've played through (Skyrim and Oblivion)...

zephr_c ,
@zephr_c@lemm.ee avatar

Fallout 4 kind of in a weird place where it's simultaneously a bad Fallout game and arguably the best Bethesda game. How much you like it really just depends on which of those things you're more into. I've personally never really gotten the appeal of Bethesda games. I usually end up spending 90% of my time going through my inventory analyzing the price to weight ratio of all the worthless junk I've accumulated, and the worlds have always just felt really shallow to me personally, but clearly I'm in the minority. I am sort of curious why more people seem to have agreed with me on Fallout 4 than on Skyrim though. I guess maybe it's just that the people who talk about it the most are more likely to be Fallout fans than Bethesda fans.

zephr_c ,
@zephr_c@lemm.ee avatar

Until someone figures out a better way of doing it that's not a real answer. I'm not going to pay for every website that gets shared on every website I regularly visit. Even if I wanted to, I just don't have that kind of money.

I don't know how to fix this, but it is fundamentally broken.

zephr_c ,
@zephr_c@lemm.ee avatar

Seriously? The old core i7 870 (not a typo) I have in my closet meets the requirements? Adding the watermark for CPUs older than that just seems mean-spirited.

zephr_c ,
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It’s not really direct cause and effect, but yeah. The incentives for a publicly-traded company make enshitification far more appealing then it would be for most other organizations.

zephr_c ,
@zephr_c@lemm.ee avatar

Oh, also, it’s a common misconception that publicly-traded companies are required to maximize profits. They can have whatever goals their shareholders want. It’s just that the way modern publicly-traded companies work, most of their shareholders are people quickly buying and trading shares based on who they think will earn them the most money this month, so that sort of inevitably becomes the goal of any publicly-traded company.

zephr_c ,
@zephr_c@lemm.ee avatar

Apparently it's okay to commit genocide of an entire ethnic group if a few of them are Nazis, I guess. 'Cause, you know, swastikas made all Germans evil, and it wasn't all the war and genocide making the Nazis evil, right?

zephr_c ,
@zephr_c@lemm.ee avatar

I don’t know why people keep saying that flatpaks don’t support cli apps. They do. I know it’s awkward to type out flatpak run io.github.zyedidia.micro or whatever every time you want to use a text editor, but aliases fix that pretty neatly, and that example wasn’t hypothetical.

zephr_c ,
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If that were an actual manhole you’d be right, but its obviously not.

zephr_c ,
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I’m pretty sure the reason is that the hole isn’t deep enough for it to matter. That’s nowhere near big enough to be a manhole.

zephr_c ,
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To be fair, those areas of North America don’t have a single simple climate either. It is pretty unhelpful though, I’ll grant you that.

zephr_c ,
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To be fair, there aren’t a lot of areas around that size in the world with deserts, jungles, and monsoons. It’s a pretty good comparison, as much as it’s possible for there even to be one between regions that large.

zephr_c ,
@zephr_c@lemm.ee avatar

I’ve heard that one before. I’m rooting for you and all, but it ain’t really happening that way.

zephr_c ,
@zephr_c@lemm.ee avatar

They won’t. I fought for decades, and all I got for my troubles was a heart attack and a world that’s worse than when I started.

zephr_c ,
@zephr_c@lemm.ee avatar

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like you once. Lemmy here is my nice little hole. If you think anything happening here is going to change the world you are delusional. Go somewhere with people who can and will do things.

zephr_c ,
@zephr_c@lemm.ee avatar

Jokes on you then. I’m probably staring because I’m trying to figure out what’s going on with that eye makeup, and I have no idea what that face is supposed to mean.

zephr_c ,
@zephr_c@lemm.ee avatar

Well if the CEO of clouds says it, it must be true!

zephr_c ,
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They’re still neutron stars though. As far as we know the only ways for a neutron star to stop being a neutron star is for enough stuff to fall into them that they collapse into a black hole, two merge to become a black hole, or if they get eaten by a black hole. Otherwise neutron stars are just about the most stable things in the universe.

Surveilling Alone: In the U.S., home security cameras are booming in an era of rising crime and declining trust. But they’re driving neighbors further apart. ( www.thenewatlantis.com )

Today, a different form of efficient design is eliminating “eyes on the street” — by replacing them with technological ones. The proliferation of neighborhood surveillance technologies such as Ring cameras and digital neighborhood-watch platforms and apps such as Nextdoor and Citizen have freed us from the constraints of...

zephr_c ,
@zephr_c@lemm.ee avatar

I mean technically yes? There’s kind of a post pandemic return to normal still going on, and before that there were consistent record low crime rates for the first half of the 10s, so they’re not that low, but they’re still pretty low. Nowhere near as bad as the terrifying dark ages of the 90s.

zephr_c ,
@zephr_c@lemm.ee avatar

So uh… how exactly does a 3D printer use AI? Is the AI running the stepper motors? Or is this person actually suggesting that an AI could design a bridge? Because, uh, no. No it can’t. Maybe someday in the distant future, but large language models aren’t structural engineers. Those aren’t even remotely the same thing.

zephr_c ,
@zephr_c@lemm.ee avatar

Did you actually even read the article you linked? It’s about a type of generative AI that’s slightly better than humans at finding the most efficient way of providing structural strength with minimal material. If you think that’s all there is to designing a bridge I can only hope you aren’t allowed anywhere near a bridge I need to drive across.

zephr_c ,
@zephr_c@lemm.ee avatar

Engineers using a specialized AI to make a design slightly lighter and then using a 3D printer to print that design isn’t a 3D printer using AI.

zephr_c ,
@zephr_c@lemm.ee avatar

Yeah, and none of them can actually design bridges. Some of them can be useful tools for engineers to use while designing bridges, but this isn’t tech bro fantasy land. You’re gonna need some engineers. That’s gonna take more than a day.

zephr_c ,
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OpenSUSE Tumbleweed has it. The Fedora 40 beta has it. Its just a result of being bleeding edge. Arch doesn’t have exclusive rights to that.

zephr_c ,
@zephr_c@lemm.ee avatar

Uhh? Good for you?

zephr_c ,
@zephr_c@lemm.ee avatar

It literally does though. Stable doesn’t mean bug free. It means unchanging. That’s what the term “stable distro” actually means. That the software isn’t being updated except for security patches. When people say stable distro, that is what they are trying to communicate. That means the software will be old. That’s what stable actually means.

zephr_c ,
@zephr_c@lemm.ee avatar

I think the question here is how is this money laundering? I could sell Sherlock Holmes for $60, and that wouldn’t be Arthur Conan Doyle giving me money under the table. How is this any different?

zephr_c ,
@zephr_c@lemm.ee avatar

Is there any evidence of churches buying these stupid bibles? If there is that’s a pretty serious accusation. If it’s just weirdo Trump cultists then that’s not actually money laundering.

zephr_c ,
@zephr_c@lemm.ee avatar

Holy crap, you’re making accusations that the guy who’s out of money is illegally recieving tons of money and I’m the unreasonable one? From everything I’m seeing and hearing outside of Lemmy churches are actually pissed off at how tacky this is, but sure, baseless accusations make you the reasonable one.

zephr_c ,
@zephr_c@lemm.ee avatar

Just because he does worse things all the time doesn’t mean this isn’t serious. Don’t let him move the goalpost like that. But also maybe have some actual evidence instead of just paranoid conspiracy theories. That’s their thing. We need to be better than them.

zephr_c ,
@zephr_c@lemm.ee avatar

Look, campaign finance in the United States is absolute bullshit. Chances are that anyone dumb enough to buy an overpriced Trump branded bible could already legally just give him the money though.

Yes. He is a con-man and a grifter. We all know that here. Trying to pretend this is money laundering when the money doesn’t even need to be laundered just makes you seem like a crazy person though. I would like for us to all stay in touch with reality. Election finance reform would be great. Wild criminal accusations based on nothing but vibes won’t help that happen though.

zephr_c ,
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So your argument is that he’s money laundering because money laundering doesn’t mean money laundering.

Okay. This conversation was a mistake.

zephr_c ,
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I know ad rates and metrics are heavily based around click through, but does it even actually matter? I mean, TV ads are big money expensive, and nobody has ever clicked on those. I guess if you’re advertising a shitty mobile game or something then it matters, but does McDonalds or whatever even want you to buy a hamburger before you watch a YouTube video? That doesn’t really make a lot of sense.

zephr_c ,
@zephr_c@lemm.ee avatar

Partly it’s just worse lighting, but also 3 months of sleep deprivation isn’t conductive to looking your best.

zephr_c ,
@zephr_c@lemm.ee avatar

Free speech means I’m allowed to say whatever I want, and everyone else is also allowed to say whatever I want, right?

Admit it: ‘Artificial general intelligence’ may already be obsolete, Expecting OpenAI’s GPT and other large language models to beat humans at thinking like a human might be missing the point. ( www.fastcompany.com )

Elon Musk filed a lawsuit in San Francisco’s Superior Court accusing OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, of betraying the startup’s initial commitment to openness, the betterment of society, and lack of profit as a motive. Among other things, Musk’s 35-page complaint argues that OpenAI has violated its original deal to share...

zephr_c ,
@zephr_c@lemm.ee avatar

This just fundamentally doesn’t understand what artificial general intelligence means. It’s not a fancy way of saying “human but smarter”. That’s just wrong. It’s an artificial intelligence that’s good at a lot of different things. You know. General. Someday, if we live long enough, we will create an AI capable of figuring things out that it wasn’t designed for and we didn’t teach it. Maybe that will be tomorrow. Maybe it’s still centuries away. It’s actually really hard to figure out how long it will take us. Making a really good text generation algorithm doesn’t make the concept of learning more than one thing obsolete though. And predicting what text goes in a bar exam after being given a massive sample of bar exams isn’t the same thing as learning to be a lawyer.

Tech bros with more money than sense suing each other over terms they don’t understand is not a rational system to base research off of, and we should ignore them.

zephr_c ,
@zephr_c@lemm.ee avatar

Heck, sign me up. That’s basically time travel to a future where presumably humanity has gotten its shit together if they’re still around inventing better ships. I see no downsides.

zephr_c ,
@zephr_c@lemm.ee avatar

It’s really only more secure in the sense that in general more complicated programs have more things that can go wrong with them. Either bugs, or just user error.

That is a valid concern, and most people don’t need or use any of sudo’s extra features, so it’s completely reasonable to switch to doas because of that, but it’s not like there’s some glaring security flaw in sudo that most people really need to worry about. Especially if they’re not doing weird things in the config, which would mostly be the same people who could easily switch to doas anyway.

zephr_c ,
@zephr_c@lemm.ee avatar

Canonical is a profitable corporation trying to convince people to use their actual closed garden software repository but they can’t even be bothered to do even the most basic of sanity checks to prevent obvious scams from appearing on their store. Stop making excuses for them.

Threads is automatically hiding comments that mention Pixelfed ( mastodon.social )

For anyone wondering if Threads and Facebook at large will be a fine neighbor in the space and compatible with other apps/services in the fediverse: they’re already automatically hiding comments that mention Pixelfed mastodon.social/@dansup/112126250737482807

zephr_c ,
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Threads hasn’t had federation enabled until now, but you’ve always been able to interact with Mastodon… sort of. The Lemmy UI doesn’t really have a good way of finding Mastodon posts that don’t tag a Lemmy community or of following Mastodon users, but if they do tag a community the Mastodon post will show up as a Lemmy post in that community.

zephr_c ,
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The point was never that any group of people should always be perfect. The point is that you have to search out and get rid of the bad apples to prevent spoiling.

zephr_c ,
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No, your employer doesn’t want people to learn what they’re really like, which is exactly why you should make it public.

zephr_c ,
@zephr_c@lemm.ee avatar

I’ve gotta say: My experience using Arch and its derivatives has really made sympathize with vegans. How in the world are you even supposed to respond when a total stranger just walks up to you out of nowhere to tell you that people who do the thing they don’t know you do will never shut up about it. Like, seriously. What is even the appropriate response in that situation?

zephr_c ,
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I’m guessing this is probably a joke? I can’t actually tell over the internet. Either way I hate you for doing exactly what makes this whole situation impossible though.

zephr_c ,
@zephr_c@lemm.ee avatar

Sure, they can, and yeah it is pretty easy, but people have lives. They move on. A distro always has someone checking to make sure things aren’t broken. On Flathub it won’t even break. It’ll just waste drive space and start giving users annoying error messages, and there if the maintainer isn’t interested in maintaining it anymore the only option for doing anything about it is to fork the whole project, and who’s going to do that for something that isn’t even really broken?

zephr_c ,
@zephr_c@lemm.ee avatar

How exactly do you update the github of a flathub package with no one actively maintaining it? Not sarcastic. That is an actual question.

And I’m not worried about big officially supported apps. A better example of the kind of thing I’m talking about is older open source games. Flatpak could be great for games. No distro out there is maintaining a current version of every open source game that has ever been released, but Flathub can, and it could be great. Unfortunately anything that’s not being actively maintained is rapidly going to become a 200MB download that whines about security every time you update your flatpaks, even if it doesn’t connect to the internet at all. Even if it’s possible for any random person to update it, who will?

Of course, this doesn’t just have to be about games. There are lots of open source programs out there that just kind of get completed and abandoned. And that’s not even bringing up all the closed source software on flathub that definitely won’t be updated eventually. These aren’t unsolvable problems, of course, but I don’t even think anybody working on flatpak even cares.

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