xthexder

xthexder , 3 hours ago

No, there’s definitely a science to this. It’s the same reason sandwiches taste better if you cut them in a triangle. The sharp points make for the perfect bite size.

xthexder , 3 days ago

A quadratic function is just one possible polynomial. They’re also not really related to big-O complexity, where you mostly just care about what the highest exponent is: O(n^2) vs O(n^3).

For most short programs it’s fairly easy to determine the complexity. Just count how many nested loops you have. If there’s no loops, it’s probably O(1) unless you’re calling other functions that hide the complexity.

If there’s one loop that runs N times, it’s O(n), and if you have a nested loop, it’s likely O(n^2).

You throw out any constant-time portion, so your function’s actual runtime might be the polynomial: 5n^3 + 2n^2 + 6n + 20. But the big-O notation would simply be O(n^3) in that case.

I’m simplifying a little, but that’s the overview. I think a lot of people just memorize that certain algorithms have a certain complexity, like binary search being O(log n) for example.

xthexder , 3 days ago

Renting out cabins and beach houses makes way more sense, since those are typically places you wouldn’t live in full time. The rest of the short term housing rentals end up driving up the cost of living.

xthexder , 6 days ago

We’re talking about legally, not practically. Obviously copying movies is physically possible.

xthexder , 6 days ago

Dang, I can’t even be mad with a face like that.

xthexder , 7 days ago

Wrong kind of link 😜

xthexder , 10 days ago

That doesn’t seem worth it when you can fit that amount of storage in about 20 L with lithium ion cells (think a small PC case), or something like 40 L if you used sodium ion cells, which are looking like a new alternative.

Concrete offgassing of CO2 is already a big contributor to greenhouse gasses, so I can’t imagine this battery version is improving things there. You’d probably have to wire your whole basement with electrodes to even access the stored energy.

xthexder , 19 days ago

It’s sad that the best most startups can hope for is to be bought by a giant corporation. Not a lot of people are interested in just having a successful long-term business.

xthexder , 24 days ago (edited 24 days ago)

I’m not a professional, but all my powertools are covered under my renter’s/hone insurance. It’s incredibly cheap compared to car or health insurance.

Edit: I guess this doesn’t count if the tools are stored in a vehicle parked anywhere but in my garage. There’s definitely some policies available that will cover the full contents of your vehicle though.

xthexder , 24 days ago

It’s sad probably 90% of this stuff won’t make it back to it’s original owner. Who’s still got serial numbers or receipts for something they bought in 2014? Most people will have moved on or had insurance replacements already

xthexder , 30 days ago

This is the true “We did it Reddit” moment.

xthexder , 1 month ago

Just useful enough to become incredibly dangerous to anyone who doesn’t know what they’re doing. Isn’t it great?

xthexder , 1 month ago

Brazil’s approach for fostering innovation and technology is to tax all outside tech at 100%, even though no local industry for the products even exists. I don’t have high expectations for them investing in scientific publishing.

xthexder , 1 month ago

You can’t use cash online tho

xthexder , 1 month ago

It’s a little like comparing a top of the line gaming laptop to a middle of the road efficient laptop. Sure the games will run a bit better on the powerful laptop, but you’re trading that for battery life. The Steam Deck is insanely efficient, and they made a few hard tradeoffs like the 1280x800 display resolution (which is great for battery, and honestly plenty sharp for the screen size).

I’m still a little blown away it runs Balder’s Gate 3 and Cyberlunk 2077 at all.

xthexder , 1 month ago

I’ve had the audio desync in cutscenes after leaving a game open in sleep for a week or two. I think it’s an issue with how the game timers work. If they’re counting since the game started, any slightly inaccuracy will become more obvious as the game is left open, regardless of sleep.

xthexder , 1 month ago

I think they’re being more literal. All the latest open source AI models get posted on Hugging Face.

xthexder , 1 month ago

Basically every car says not to wash in direct sunlight. From my understanding it’s because you’ll end up with water spots and other residue from the soap drying on to the paint before you can rinse it off.

xthexder , 1 month ago

Let me try putting this a different way: The machine is picking the next best word / action / chess move to output based on its past experience of the world (i.e. it’s training data). It’s not just statistics, it’s making millions of learned connections between words, and through association they start to have meaning.

Is this not exactly what the human brain does itself? Humans just have the advantage of multiple senses and having a physical agent (a body) to interact with the world.

The problem that AI has is it’s got no basis in reality. It’s like a human talking about fantasy things like unicorns. We’ve only ever experienced them as descriptions and art created from those descriptions without any basis in reality.

xthexder , 1 month ago

Because hallucinations pretty much exactly describes what’s happening? All of your suggested terms are less descriptive of what the issue is.

The definition of hallucination:

A hallucination is a perception in the absence of an external stimulus.

In the case of generative AI, it’s generating output that doesn’t match it’s training data “stimulus”. Or in other words, false statements, or “facts” that don’t exist in reality.

xthexder , 1 month ago

I have adopted the philosophy that human brains might not be as special as we’ve thought, and that the untrained behavior emerging from LLMs and image generators is so similar to human behaviors that I can’t help but think of it as an underdeveloped and handicapped mind.

I hypothesis that a human brain, who’s only perception of the world is the training data force fed to it by a computer, would have all the same problems the LLMs do right now.

To put it another way… The line that determines what is sentient and not is getting blurrier and blurrier. LLMs have surpassed the Turing test a few years ago. We’re simulating the level of intelligence of a small animal today.

xthexder , 1 month ago

I don’t see any rust? That’s just the fingerprints that you can’t not get all over it.

xthexder , 1 month ago

If it’s the city that put that on, they might get you for vandalism or destruction of property, something like that. Those parking boots aren’t cheap.

xthexder , 1 month ago

Bare stainless steel, lol

xthexder , 1 month ago

As someone not subscribed to simpsonsshitposting, I really don’t care if it’s a repost. That community isn’t even on the same instance, so it’s a little like complaining if someone reposts from R*ddit.

xthexder , 1 month ago

The main thing sitting between me and being a billionaire is my conscience and moral values. I’m of the opinion that to become a billionaire you must necessarily have psychopathic tendencies.

For example: No way I could stand up on stage and bullshit my way through a Cybertruck reveal knowing it’s all lies and unfinished ideas.

xthexder , 1 month ago

Personally grit makes me think of literal sand. Or dirt in general. It’s something you wash off the first chance you get. Not exactly something to be celebrated.

xthexder , 1 month ago

If it’s someone else’s job to design things, then that’s a pretty terrible specification. But depending on your role, it’s common enough for there to be one person who designs and builds a feature like “User projects dashboard”, and the job is to decide what’s important based on the product. Especially with smaller companies.

xthexder , 1 month ago

GTA is filled with parody ads, which are actually fun content and not intended to make you buy something. The second they become real ads, you’ll have brands complaining about being displayed next to gun violence or prostitutes, and all the fun goes away.

There’s a reason there’s no real car brands in GTA, because none of them want to be associated with running down pedestrian and drive-bys

xthexder , 1 month ago

If you remember what battery powertools were like in early 2010s, it’s super obvious how far we’ve come. The higher end things like battery powered lawn mowers didn’t exist, and if you wanted real power, you needed a cord.

xthexder , 1 month ago

Classic Nintendo, making simple things like copying screenshots so complicated hacking your switch is a reasonable thing to do…

xthexder , 1 month ago

I guess everything I’ve been calling light rail fits into the suburban rail category. Multiple cities I’ve lived in are adding in “light rail” tracks between major centers

xthexder , 1 month ago

I wonder what the people/hour max is on something like a stadium entrance or hallway? I bet it’s insanely high. Definitely some safety concerns though with crushing or trampling

xthexder , 1 month ago

Sounds like you’re doing the job of a PM to me, but I guess that’s just confirming your point that titles aren’t comparable

xthexder , 1 month ago

And yet the AC still blows cold in my 2004 Honda that’s not ever had the AC serviced… Sad to hear Honda reliability is going downhill.

xthexder , 1 month ago

The keyfob is either just a credit card sized thing, or your phone. There is no fob.

xthexder , 1 month ago

The article says revenue near the end. I find that a little hard to believe though, unless they sold barely any of them.

xthexder , 1 month ago

I think you’re confusing net income with net revenue. As far as I know, net revenue is just gross revenue minus discounts and refunds. All other expenses such as cost of materials are then subtracted after that to get net income (their actual profit).

Either way, revenue represents how much money they actually received from customers.

xthexder , 1 month ago

I believe that’s Mt St Helens erupting. Real footage from 1980 (though this gif is sped up).

xthexder , 1 month ago

That would definitely explain why it’s sped up if the source was a bunch of still images. I’ve seen other edits of it that look a little more like a real-time video.

xthexder , 1 month ago

Logic and reasoning were never on the table unfortunately.

xthexder , 1 month ago

Note that since it’s just an Android app, there is no purpose in selling this e-waste device other than increasing the price, since it does nothing you can’t already do on your phone.

xthexder , 1 month ago

I’m pretty sure that story was faked by putting a separate display in the shell of a pregnancy test. They don’t even have real displays usually, let alone a full reprogrammable microcontroller

xthexder , 1 month ago

Yes, but also no. We use giant prime numbers for cryptography because the more factors it has, the weaker the encryption becomes (because now there’s more than one answer for A * ? = B)

xthexder , 1 month ago

Am I the only one left writing pure JS webpages? I swear for the stuff I’ve done recently, adding React or even jQuery makes things 10x more complicated and bloated. The base JS support browsers have now is actually great. It’s not like the old days trying to support every browser back to IE6

xthexder , 1 month ago

What specific features did you notice the most? (I’m assuming switching from Android?) 90% of my phone usage is through a browser, so I could probably install Graphene pretty easily.

xthexder , 1 month ago

Interesting. Not having a good maps / navigation app might be a bit of a dealbreaker for me, since that’s pretty much the last 10% of what I use my phone for. Degoogling myself there will require some effort…

As for push notifications and feeds, I don’t really have a problem with that on my current phone with base android. I’m pretty aggressive about blocking random notifications or uninstalling apps entirely if they show me push notifications ads or “use me” reminders. And my home screen is just a clock and calendar.

xthexder , 1 month ago

I didn’t realize GrapheneOS is only supported on Pixel phones, so I can’t run it after all…