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krashmo ,

Nice, it should be even easier to sneak a chicken past a guy in a wheelchair.

krashmo ,

What’s there to learn that isn’t already widely known? Existing (copyright) laws are asinine and all corporations eventually become consumed by greed. That’s America in a nutshell.

krashmo ,

We’re calling them freedom tacos now you god damn xenophobe.

krashmo ,

Nothing for people who know what DNS is. They’re targeting the people who don’t.

Oklahoma Supreme Court dismisses lawsuit of last Tulsa Race Massacre survivors seeking reparations (apnews.com)

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit of the last two survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, dampening the hope of advocates for racial justice that the government would make amends for one of the worst single acts of violence against Black people in U.S. history....

krashmo ,

Hey now, there’s a guy in a wheelchair in this one. That’s progress if I’ve ever seen it.

Transgender swimmer Lia Thomas out of Olympics after losing legal battle (www.theguardian.com)

The US swimmer Lia Thomas, who rose to global prominence after becoming the first transgender athlete to win a NCAA college title in March 2022, has lost a legal case against World Aquatics at the court of arbitration for sport – and with it any hopes of making next month’s Paris Olympics....

krashmo ,

You’re directly contradicting the argument that every trans activist has been making for decades by saying that sex and gender are “effectively the same thing”. Is that really what you want to be doing here?

Justice Alito questions possibility of political compromise in secret recording (apnews.com)

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is heard questioning whether compromise between the left and right is possible in a conversation posted on social media Monday. The conservative justice is also heard agreeing with a woman who says the United States should return “to a place of godliness.”...

krashmo ,

In the same way that I think the quickest way for stricter gun control laws to be passed is for minorities to start open carrying firearms en-masse, I think the best way to educate Christian nationalists on the importance of the separation of church and state is for everyone to start attending their local mosque and preaching the virtues of Islam when discussing politics. Conservatives are incapable of understanding the negatives of any policy position until they experience them personally. Force them to experience what it’s like to be a religious minority and they will change their tune very quickly.

krashmo ,

I think that’s too far out in left field from these people’s perspective for it to be as effective as Islam would be. They need to think they’re being outcompeted by a legitimate religion. Maybe I’m giving them too much credit but I think enough people would see that as an intentionally contrarian organization and not as a competing religious ideology. I don’t think that would evoke the genuine fear of becoming a religious minority. Maybe I’m wrong about that but that’s my take at least.

krashmo ,

I don’t think you need to deface it. You could even display it if you’re so inclined. Just make it clear to people who see it that you aren’t a Nazi sympathizer in the same way you’ve done here and you’ll be fine.

A PR disaster: Microsoft has lost trust with its users, and Windows Recall is the straw that broke the camel's back (www.windowscentral.com)

It’s a nightmare scenario for Microsoft. The headlining feature of its new Copilot+ PC initiative, which is supposed to drive millions of PC sales over the next couple of years, is under significant fire for being what many say is a major breach of privacy and security on Windows. That feature in question is Windows Recall, a...

krashmo ,

Your grandma probably hates the fact that you did though. There’s a small chance that’s not the case but I’d be shocked if she hadn’t complained about it many times to other people.

krashmo ,

People do hate change. The bigger the change the more they hate it. That’s exactly why Windows to Linux is much worse for them than Windows 10 to Windows 11.

krashmo ,

My kid regularly gets a little bit of shit in his underwear and I’ll catch him sneakily changing his pants. When I ask him what happened he always says he was having too much fun to stop and go to the bathroom. If a kid was sick and excited about something, like the Hornet’s mascot showing up to school, I could easily see something like this happening.

Report: Warner Bros. Execs Thought Suicide Squad Would Make A Ton Of Money Despite Development Woes (kotaku.com)

Anyone who played Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League could probably guess that something went terribly wrong during development. Bloomberg now reports that the multiplayer bomb from a studio beloved for its single-player Batman: Arkham games was plagued by several issues leading up to its repeatedly delayed launch....

krashmo ,

MBAs have no useful skills and yet they run every company in existence.

krashmo ,

Exactly. I would say an MBA is only useful if your undergrad degree was in something other than business. It is meant to add management skills to an already skilled individual. If you don’t have any other skills it’s just an expensive piece of paper that, at least to me, signifies essentially the same thing as being the boss’s son would. You probably aren’t very good at anything but always think you’re the smartest person in the room.

krashmo ,

People do need thicker skin though. So much internet drama is magnified beyond reason by people who can’t just ignore assholes. That’s not excusing the fact that they’re being assholes. Obviously if they would stop being assholes that would be the ideal solution. However, we all know that will never happen. No amount of legislation, moderation, or punishment will ever remove that tendency from people. It is fundamental human nature. Stop fighting a losing battle. Learn how to block people and move on with your life. If you stop engaging they’ll get bored and leave you alone. They thrive on your reaction so stop giving them one.

At the end of the day it’s your job to protect yourself in all aspects of life, including online. Stop trying to outsource it to software developers. They gave you all the tools you need decades ago.

krashmo ,

Why do game makers need to be the responsible party? I’ve never played a game that didn’t let you block and/or mute people you’re playing with. That doesn’t make assholes disappear but it stops the problem from impacting you. Why add a middleman to the equation? Taking care of it yourself is much faster and doesn’t depend on convincing someone else that what’s happening needs to be dealt with. You can block people for having the wrong favorite color if you want to.

There’s too much inconsistency in what people perceive to be inappropriate behavior for a central authority to have the final say on the matter. Moderator action should be reserved for situations that explicitly violate the law, and even that varies significantly based on location and interpretation. It’s much simpler to let players decide what they will tolerate on their own.

krashmo ,

I’m not a lawyer but it is my understanding of US law that something like what you see in the video does not meet the legal definition of a threat. There is no indication that the offender knows the real identity or location of the person they are speaking to, both of which are required to establish the intent necessary to define something as a threat in the legal sense of the word. Furthermore, the person speaking appears to be from another country, likely the UK or Australia, both of which have different laws than the US. Is Riot supposed to evaluate this situation based on the laws of the country in which they have their corporate HQ, the country the speaker resides in, or the country in which the listener resides? I don’t think a lawyer in any of those three countries would advise this streamer to press charges based on the content of this video alone which would indicate that this kind of behavior is not illegal. Perhaps it should be, but that’s another matter entirely.

To reiterate, none of this is meant to be interpreted as a defense of what that guy said. It’s just to illustrate the point that moderation is not a simple thing to enforce even in situations where a surface level evaluation seems like it should be. It’s much simpler to mute this guy or leave the lobby or whatever else you feel like you need to do to protect yourself. The unfortunate reality remains that people like this will always be around no matter what system is in place to minimize their impact. That’s not to say that no steps should be taken with that goal in mind, just that when all is said and done you will always bear some responsibility in protecting yourself from content or behavior you don’t want to be exposed to.

krashmo ,

I don’t know that that’s true. Some games may be worse than others but I don’t think there are any specific games, or for that matter places online in general, where some form of harassment is not an issue. If you want to avoid it entirely then you need to avoid people entirely and that’s not really a teneble solution.

krashmo ,

Ok so what exactly is your proposal? We’ve already established that what happened in this video is not illegal based on the laws of any of the countries that the people involved likely live in so what’s next? How do you go from where we are now to the system you want to see implemented?

You’re talking about abstract ideas and I’m talking about actionable realities. The two often conflict with each other. The world you’re describing isn’t the one we live in so if you you want to make it a reality you need to get much more specific about how to implement your vision. It’s easy to say “do more” when you don’t have to worry about the resources required or side effects of what you’re asking for.

Normally I’d agree with the blanket statement that companies are allowed to get away with too much but the way you’re applying that argument here doesn’t make sense. You’re also saying that people don’t have any responsibility to protect themselves and I just can’t agree with that statement. It’s way too idealistic to be applicable to real life in any significant way.

krashmo ,

Yes that is how moderation has worked in some places in the past. It’s also been historically unpaid volunteer work and not particularly effective, especially at large scales. Most of the people here have at least one story about bad moderation on reddit precisely because that kind of moderation is inefficient and heavily influenced by the personal bias of the moderator reviewing a report. You still needed to block people on a regular basis if you wanted to both participate and avoid harassment from a subset of users. That’s how it is all over the internet and there is nothing that can be done to completely remove that element of online activity. Hence the need for thicker skin.

krashmo ,

I didn’t say no attempts should be made to improve things. In fact in one of my comments I explicitly said the opposite. I’m saying people need to be both realistic in their expectations of what any moderation policy can achieve and proactive in the pursuit of their own online safety. Moderators will never be able to fully eliminate this problem because it is an inherent part of the behavior of a subset of humanity and humans are involved in the activities where this harassment takes place.

If you expect every person you meet, online or in person, to respect the rules you are going to be disappointed. By all means, make suggestions for improvement. But understand any solution will be imperfect and accept your role in dealing with those imperfections. To put the sentiment in a more succint form, get thicker skin.

krashmo ,

While that is true in many respects, voice chat is quite difficult to police compared to text chat. I’m not sure how you go about automating or even monitoring that without recording everything people say using your service. Which then brings up a whole host of issues from data storage costs to privacy concerns to consent to record laws. You pretty much have to rely on users to submit evidence of their claims and that leads us back to the idea that users need to expect to have an active role in enforcing any sort of moderation policy.

krashmo ,

I understand the comparison but you can’t exactly mute people with minimal effort in real life. Additionally, the threat of rape in person is significantly different than anonymously online from a legal perspective because the person making the threat knows who and where the target is at the moment the threat is made.

At a high level I don’t disagree with most of what you’re saying. The point I’m making is that there’s a pretty large gap between “something should be done about online harassment” and “this is our plan for stopping online harassment”. Most calls for action appeal to the first without much concern for the second, and the solution is the difficult part, not identifying the problem.

krashmo ,

For most people gaming is a social activity. The popularity and prevalence of multiplayer games vs single player games bears this out. Playing single player games is not a viable solution to avoiding harassment for people who are interested in the social and/or multiplayer aspects of gaming. Muting people who are dicks is a viable solution and that’s exactly what I’ve been advocating for in this discussion. Many others seem to think they shouldn’t need to be involved in the process and game devs or other communication platforms should do all the work for them. I don’t think that’s a realistic suggestion.

krashmo ,

Sure, but who decides who the assholes are? What standard of proof do they use? What happens to people who almost meet that definition but don’t quite? Some cases are pretty straightforward but many have too much grey area for a simple concept like ‘ban all the assholes’ to hold up without a huge amount of effort that often can’t be provided effectively.

Evidence is key and that can be difficult to get. Additionally, players often edit clips to get the reaction they want from moderators or the community as a whole. The video in the linked article could potentially be a great example of this. The streamer obviously wants you to think they were attacked unprovoked but is that really what happened? We have no context for what led to the recorded exchange. Did the streamer refer to him using a racial slur for failing to hold what they thought was the proper position during the round immediately before the video begins? That doesn’t excuse what the player said in response but it does change the context significantly. If you ban the rape guy and then he releases a video showing the streamer saying even more outrageous things do you reverse the ban, ban them both, or give them both a warning not to be dicks in the future? This is not an isolated incident either. Multiple situations just like this happen every day on platforms with any significant number of users. How do you give each one the time it requires to be resolved correctly? Will you have any players left if you ban everyone who offends someone else?

The point is, policing people’s behavior is very challenging. There are tons of ways to abuse any system you can design unless you record literally everything your users do and that comes with it’s own set of moral and logistical issues. The simplest and most universally applicable solution is to enable users to block other players themselves. Making that impact matchmaking is kind of dumb in my opinion as it just opens up the potential for abuse as you noted. Set up a few very simple ground rules and then let players sort out who they want to be able to communicate with based on how they treat them. That’s the only solution I can see that is realistic and sustainable but it requires users to take an active role in maintaining the community, which they should be doing anyway if they want it to be the kind of place you’re describing.

krashmo ,

It does talk about some steps they’re taking right at the beginning. I missed those initially because on mobile it looks like an ad before the actual article starts so I skimmed over it.

krashmo ,

Just because they’re already doing it doesn’t mean there’s no issues with it.

krashmo ,

You can say there’s no issues with that system as many times as you like but it’s not going to make it true. Some people definitely disagree with you on that point and I know that because I’m one of them. You don’t seem all that interested in having that opinion challenged so I’m not going to bother writing out why here but I’ve said more on the topic in this thread if you’d like to understand another perspective more clearly.

How come no true use for recent AI developments has been found yet?

I saw people complaining the companies are yet to find the next big thing with AI, but I am already seeing countless offer good solutions for almost every field imaginable. What is this thing the tech industry is waiting for and what are all these current products if not what they had in mind?...

krashmo ,

Current gen AI is pretty mediocre. It’s not much more than the bastard child of a search engine and every voice assistant that has been around for the last ten years. It has the potential to be a stepping stone to fantastic future tech, but that’s been true of tons of different technologies for basically as long as we’ve been inventing things.

AI is not good enough to replace the majority of workers yet. It summarizes information pretty well and can be helpful with drafting any sort of document, but so was Clippy. When it doesn’t know something it can lie confidently. Lie isn’t really the right word but I’ll come back to that concept in a second. Incorrect information is frustrating in most cases but it can be deadly when presented by a source that is viewed as trustworthy, and what could be more trustworthy than an AI with access to the collective knowledge of mankind? Well, unfortunately for us AI as we know it isn’t really intelligent and the databases they’re trained on also contain the collective stupidity of mankind.

That brings us back to the concept of lying and what I view as the fundamental flaw of current AI; namely that any sort of data interpretation can only be as good as the data it describes. ChatGPT isn’t lying to you when it says you can put glue on your cheese pizza, it’s just pointing out that someone who said that got a lot of attention. Unfortunately it leaves out all the context which could have told you that pizza would not be fit to consume and presents the fact that it was a popular answer as if that is the only thing that defines the best answer. There’s so much more that needs to be taken into account, so much unconscious human experience being drawn from when an actual human looks at something and tries to categorize or describe it. All of that necessary context is really difficult to impart to a computer and right now we’re not very good at that essential piece of the puzzle.

If we could assume that all datasets analyzed by AI were free from human error, AI would be taking over the world right now. However, that’s not the world we live in. All data has errors. Some are easy to spot but many are not. AI firms are getting companies to salivate at the idea of easy manipulation of data in one form or another. They aren’t worried about the errors in the data because they view that as someone else’s problem and the companies all think their data is good enough that it won’t be an issue. Both are wrong. That’s exactly why you hear a lot of talk about AI right now and not all that much practical application beyond replacing customer service reps, especially in the business world. Companies are finding out that years of bad practices have left them with a dataset full of errors. Can they find a way to get AI to correct those errors? In some cases yes, in others no. In either case the missing piece preventing a full scale AI takeover is all that human background context necessary for relevant data interpretation. If we find a way to teach that to an AI then the world is going to look vastly different than it does today, but we’re not there yet.

krashmo ,

Assuming it doesn’t evolve the ability to digest human flesh after it eats all the plastic, I think this is great news.

krashmo ,

She’s got DSL. Dinshaw’s suckin lips

krashmo ,

The original article contains 300 words, the summary contains 301 words. Saved -0%.

How in the fuck did we end up with more words?

krashmo ,

I’m sure everyone working multiple jobs is not in this situation but I know people who don’t need to work multiple jobs but do anyway. Hell, I’ve considered doing it myself and I make more than enough to support my family on one income. I’m working from home and the nature of my job has me sitting around waiting to answer questions fairly regularly. It would be pretty easy to land another remote gig and stack incomes with the goal of paying off my mortgage early. I haven’t seriously pursued it yet but I might. You never know what the future holds. Having a paid off house changes your income needs in a major way.

krashmo ,

I never read the sub but I’ve seen the website that is run by (I believe) the same guy. It’s an interesting concept. Needless to say, corporations aren’t thrilled by the idea. They’d rather automate all of our jobs and keep the excess. All the more reason to consider having multiple jobs I suppose.

krashmo ,

That seems like it would be tough working in vastly different timezones. I guess you don’t have to worry about meetings overlapping nearly as much but you’re basically signing up for 12 hour days everyday. I don’t think that’s worth the effort. EST and PST is about as far apart in time as I’d be willing to go.

My issue is that the field I’m in is specialized enough and I’m visible enough that it would be tough to not get recognized at another company. I’d almost have to work for a direct competitor to my current employer and they all have a lot of employees that used to work at my current company. Getting caught and losing both jobs plus the ability to work at two companies in a fairly niche industry would be pretty shitty.

Instagram's unskippable ads test causes outrage among users (www.techspot.com)

Instagram has long been accused of stealing features from platforms such as TikTok, Snapchat, and Twitter/X. It appears that the company has looked to YouTube for its latest idea: unskippable ads that you have to watch for a period of time before being able to scroll further....

krashmo ,

It’s not broken. The platform just isn’t meant for real people to communicate with each other anymore. It’s an advertising farm people show up to willingly because it used to be an interesting place.

krashmo , (edited )

Bushcraft is a good search term if you want to go as old school as possible. Ultralight is similar but using more modern equipment. Backpacking is the general term for long trips through the woods. Any of those will get you some good info on YouTube or various blogs to start with.

In warmer weather you can have a fine weekend with a very small amount of gear. A water filter, a dehydrated meal or two, and a small camp stove would be just fine for a beginner and shouldn’t cost too much for the basic version of any of them. Obviously many people would also want a tent and/or sleeping bag but you can decide how you want to handle that. Sleeping outside isn’t so bad and helps you appreciate a tent much more. Hammock camping is fairly popular as well so maybe consider that option if you want at least a bit of shelter without commiting to buying a tent right away.

I wouldn’t recommend foraging for food until you have some experience just being out there. Maybe bring a book about local plants on your first trip so that you can work on identifying them without the stress of them being your only food source.

The biggest piece of advice is just to get out there and see how it goes. Maybe you’ll love the freedom and challenge of having very little gear with you or maybe you’ll hate not having one specific comfort. Just pick a spot relatively close to civilization for your first trip so you can get out of any trouble you might find yourself in and you’ll be fine. Decide how you want the next trip to go based on the first one and just keep building from there.

krashmo ,

No problem. I’m not an expert in any of these topics but I have been camping and backpacking for a good chunk of my life so feel free to ask any specific questions you may have now or in the future.

krashmo ,

Current gen AI can’t come close to destroying the economy. It’s the most overhyped technology I’ve ever seen in my life.

krashmo ,

I have so many questions about flat earth theory. Many practical questions like you noted but also more general stuff like who benefits from it? Conspiracies usually have some secret order hiding the truth in order to maintain power or enrich themselves. What difference does it make to anyone what shape the earth is? It doesn’t seem like it benefits anyone to deceive the world about that. Maybe globe makers since a 3D object is more expensive than a map on a piece of paper?

These questions pop into my head every time the topic gets brought up but I don’t make the effort to look into it because at the end of the day it feels like a pointless exercise to peer into the mind of a lunatic looking for rationality.

krashmo ,

Sure but they need to be at least a little bit believable and have a clear beneficiary or else they don’t serve much of a purpose. It’s pretty easy to see why various groups of people would have wanted JFK dead, or to fake the moon landing, or hide the fact that vaccines cause autism, or cover up alien abductions, or any of the other conspiracy theories you normally hear about. Flat earth just seems so benign in comparison.

krashmo ,

The problem is that we don’t all know it. If we did then we wouldn’t have to care about what he says. Despite how obvious it is to most of us, a significant portion of us are unwilling to or incapable of seeing it. I’ve been going back and forth for about 8 years on which is worse and I still haven’t made up my mind.

krashmo ,

So far it’s largely just a historical footnote. Wait until sentencing before you get too excited. I’d wager those consequences you speak of are mostly wishful thinking.

krashmo ,

Lock her him up!

We even have signs that will work for this occasion with a slight modification.

krashmo ,

I think that’s accurate for a subset of PC gamers but there’s no shortage of people pre-ordering trash games or encouraging other shitty behavior like microtransactions on PC. Many of those problems could be solved with a patience that doesn’t currently exist in sufficient quantities to discourage publishers from bad practices.

krashmo ,

He’s not clever. He’s a gigantic fucking moron. Don’t give him more credit than he’s due.

krashmo ,

While that last bit is not untrue it sort of ignores the fact that not making it yourself is the whole point of fast food.

Taco Bell is not amazing food but it is decent and relatively inexpensive. That is it’s purpose. If you want authentic Mexican cuisine, or any type of food really, then a fast food joint is not the place to go looking for it.

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