zaphod

zaphod , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

Funny, I feel the same way about Fallout and The Witcher. Just… don’t get the appeal. As always, to each their own. Hence why I generally try to avoid yucking other people’s yums.

zaphod , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

Ahh yes, the old “sticks and stones” defense that completely ignores human nature and basic decency. I use the same logic when I tell other people their babies are ugly. “Look, if you ask me your kid is an eyesore but it’s just my opinion so I don’t know why you’re so mad right now…”

zaphod , 1 month ago

It’s all about tone. The original comment was incredibly combative and hyperbolic (“I utterly loathe Mass Effect. I consider it one of the worst pieces of science-fiction ever created.”) so much so that it would easily be mistaken for flamebait given the thread was likely to attract fans of the series.

It certainly didn’t strike me as the start of an open-minded conversation.

But in hindsight I should’ve just downvoted and moved on rather than commenting as I did, so that’s on me.

zaphod , 1 month ago

I don’t. Played with it a bit but as a capable writer and coder I don’t find it fills a need and just shifts the effort from composition (which I enjoy) to editing and review (which I don’t).

zaphod , 1 month ago

Oh please. The anti-TikTok hysteria has been going on much longer than the Israeli invasion of Gaza, and the narrative has largely been about national security concerns, particularly as they relate to election misinformation.

Agree or not with the anti-China rhetoric about TikTok, but at least argue about the facts and not inane conspiracy theories.

zaphod , 1 month ago

On what basis? The legal power of the US government to break up or otherwise force divestment of corporate assets is the basis upon which antitrust law is built. The only way this law could be overturned is it’s found unconstitutional, and if that happens, you can say goodbye to the FTC.

zaphod , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

You’re missing my point.

In the case of antitrust law, the government has to prove its case in court because that’s the way the Sherman Act and related laws are written, not because the constitution necessarily requires it. And it’s the constitutional interpretation that matters as this is a law passed by Congress. A constitutional challenge is the only way to reverse it.

That said, TikTok is owned by a Chinese organization. So if I’m wrong and the constitution does protect corporations from forced divestment in a situation like this, it wouldn’t apply to TikTok. This is much closer to protectionist trade policy and I’m not aware of any cases where such acts were found to be unconstitutional. To the contrary, as a recent example, Huawei was banned from American markets on national security grounds (see: CFIUS) and while challenged in court, those challenges were defeated. And then there’s OFAC and the entire American sanctions regime (e.g. Russian asset seizures).

To be clear: I am not saying I support this ban one way or the other. I’m saying the belief that this will easily be struck down in court is misguided and that it’s not an obvious slam dunk.

zaphod , 1 month ago

See my reply to your sibling comment. This is wishful thinking. You could be right, but it’s just as likely (I’d argue more likely) you’re wrong.

zaphod , 1 month ago

I couldn’t agree more. IMO the right solution is to regulate data collection, mandate algorithmic transparency, and require opt out for algorithmic curation.

But the discussion isn’t about whether this is the right remedy (IMO it’s not) but about whether the remedy will be held up by the courts.

zaphod , 1 month ago

Huawei was banned from critical infrastructure. You can still buy their products for personal use.

In what way does that invalidate it as an example?

The executive cannot just declare something punitive.

CFIUS and OFAC would beg to differ.

Also, if there aren’t rights for foreigners in the US then there aren’t rights for citizens. Because the loss of your rights is always just one declaration away. Which is why rights for everyone inside our borders has been the standard for 70 years.

Bytedance isn’t inside your borders and the constitution doesn’t protect extra-nationals. There’s a reason Guantanamo Bay still exists.

zaphod , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

You wouldn’t be able to use TikTok as a personal thing. This isn’t critical infrastructure.

I’m sorry, but this is irrelevant. Look at the list of CFIUS cases. Among them:

CFIUS requested that Chinese gaming company Beijing Kunlun Tech Co Ltd. sell Grindr, citing national security concerns regarding a database of user’s location, messages, and HIV status, after the company acquired the gay dating app in 2018 without CFIUS review.

Would you agree that Grindr probably doesn’t count as “critical infrastructure”?

(BTW, before you mention it, the CFIUS case on that list vis a vis TikTok was reversed by the court because they ruled the executive exceeded the bounds of the IEEPA, not because the IEEPA itself was unconstitutional).

(CFIUS) is a powerful interagency panel that screens foreign transactions with U.S. firms for potential security risks.

So again. Not personal use.

LOL security risks are literally the justification for the bill. The bill even says as much:

To protect the national security of the United States from the threat posed by foreign adversary controlled applications, such as TikTok and any successor application or service and any other application or service developed or provided by ByteDance Ltd. or an entity under the control of ByteDance Ltd.

So if CFIUS is constitutional, then I fail to see why this law is any different.

Look, again, I get it, I think the law is dumb, too.

But it is absolutely not a slam dunk that the law will get struck down by the courts, whether you like it or not.

The difference between your position and mine is I can acknowledge I may turn out to be wrong.

Furthermore, ByteDance absolutely is not operating within US borders. It’s incorporated in China and the Caymans (in the latter case as a variable interest entity so that Americans can buy economic exposure to ByteDance shares that otherwise don’t trade on any US stock exchanges).

TikTok, a wholly own subsidiary, is incorporated within the US. A forced divestiture affects the parent company (ByteDance).

The real question is whether the ban itself, if divestment doesn’t occur, would be constitutional, given that would affect TikTok Ltd., and that, to me, is unclear, and I expect it’s that portion of the law where TikTok is most likely to succeed in courts.

zaphod , 1 month ago

Also, did you just admit CFIUS doesn’t apply?

Ahhh my bad. I noticed you seemed to fail at reading comprehension earlier but I didn’t realize it was a chronic condition. Carry on!

zaphod , 1 month ago

Why would a court be able to “easily find this was handled improperly”?

zaphod , 1 month ago

In infrared. Titan basically looks like a brownish grey blob to the naked eye due to its incredibly dense atmosphere.

zaphod , 1 month ago

They basically remap wavelengths, so yes, absolutely those would be representative of real features, either in the atmosphere or on the ground.

That said, absolutely, sometimes there’s a bit of artistic license in how the wavelengths are mapped.

Edit: the space.com article on the image describes some of the physical features depicted:

space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-saturn-moon-…

zaphod , 1 month ago

Given for months now I keep randomly experiencing UI hangs requiring me to kill Nova, that day may have finally come…

zaphod , 1 month ago

Nope, Pixel 6 running Android 14. It’s highly variable but I’d say it happens… every two or three days, sometimes multiple times a day. To say it’s aggravating is putting it very mildly.

zaphod , 1 month ago

My tenants are living in a house that they wouldn’t be able to afford on their own in today’s market.

Yes, but: why is the market in the state it’s in? It couldn’t be because a large supply of housing is locked up by landlords, thereby artificially curtailing supply and driving up prices…

zaphod , 1 month ago

Not funny once you realize all doctors are actually lizard people in human skin suits performing experiments on us. QED sucker!

zaphod , 1 month ago

Btw that sexual assault scene is even more fucked up when you learn that Grace Lee Whitney was sexually assaulted by an unnamed executive associated with the series…

zaphod , 2 months ago

But you gotta love the next paragraph:

Two episodes before we shot Hugh’s death [scene], they called me in. They were kind of cagey about it. They said, “Listen, this is Star Trek. Nobody really dies.”

🖖

zaphod , 2 months ago

My Momentum 4s have 60 hours of battery life…

zaphod , 2 months ago

Another reason to regulate industry, as has already begun in the US and EU. Relying on individual behavioural changes to solve these types of systemic failures simply does not work.

But I’m glad it gives you a reason to feel morally superior.

zaphod , 2 months ago

They’re not.

History has proven over and over again that systemic change doesn’t happen through voluntary individual action unless government creates incentives or nudges to drive that action.

Admonishing people to eat less (or no) meat won’t solve the problem of antibiotic resistance any more than asking them to pollute less fixed global warming.

If anything, asking individuals to sacrifice to solve a problem caused by industry will just harden people against action as it directs blame in exactly the wrong direction.

zaphod , 2 months ago

Keep saying it. It’ll be true eventually.

zaphod , 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago)

What?

Compiling quality datasets is enormously challenging and labour intensive. OpenAI absolutely knows the provenance of the data they train on as it’s part of their secret sauce. And there’s no damn way their CTO won’t have a broad strokes understanding of the origins of those datasets.

zaphod , 3 months ago

They could just as easily close ranks with support for Bibi galvanizing over perceived foreign influence in their politics. Nationalism in ab powerful narcotic and the US making that move could just pump it into their veins.

zaphod , 3 months ago

Or burned out because they get pulled into every project that’s gone off the rails.

zaphod , 3 months ago

Gentle heating in a hot water bath or the microwave will liquify that honey again.

zaphod , 3 months ago

Times like this I’m glad I have not one but two friends who are backyard beekeepers. They are more than happy to give away the enormous amount of honey they collect each year…

zaphod , 3 months ago

Ah, see, I’m Canadian so that only works like two months out of the year when we’re able to emerge from our igloos…

zaphod , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

The show has one non-binary character and a gay couple and suddenly they’re relying on “cultural hot topics”.

Please.

Disco had a lot of flaws, and most of them were the same flaws we saw in Picard: the writers just couldn’t write full season plot arcs that were satisfying and believable. This is made worse because each season had to raise the stakes, to the point where it just got kinda exhausting. Meanwhile the show just took itself way too seriously, without really earning my emotional investment.

zaphod , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

So, putting a gay couple on screen and just having it be a normal aspect of who they are (to be clear: the nature of their relationship was never a plot point on the show) is “blandly doing the cultural issues”?

Was casually putting Uhura, a black woman, on the bridge of a starship on a show airing in the 1960s, without ever calling attention to her race, also “blandly doing the cultural issues”?

zaphod , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

The focus on drama over logic completely shallows out the allegory until it’s JUST a gay couple being contemporarily gay on screen

Yeah. That’s my point.

Maybe there is no allegory.

Maybe it’s just a gay couple on screen.

Like Nichelle as Uhura was just a black woman in an elevated position on screen.

No message. Just simple representation.

Why is that such a problem?

Because if you ask people in the community, many will tell you they’re kinda sick of the gay experience only be represented in a negative light, always a struggle, always a message, as opposed to just them simply and comfortably existing.

zaphod , 3 months ago

Headline is clickbaitey, the fact it’s a Boeing is irrelevant. This can just happen.

I was on a flight to Colorado from Canada, flying over the Rockies, and we hit a mild patch of turbulence that, without warning, suddenly turned into a quick, long drop that threw folks who weren’t belted in out of their seats and sent drinks flying.

The lesson is simple: wear your damn seatbelt and avoid walking around the cabin unnecessarily.

zaphod , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

All that says is they’re investigating.

At this time, unless something new comes to light, there’s little reason to believe it’s anything but an unusual episode of turbulence.

Edit: and according to a different article, there is at least one passenger who claims the pilot said their controls “blanked out” which would qualify as “something new”.

zaphod , 3 months ago

Fair enough. Notably, that quote isn’t in the Reuters article, which is what I was commenting on.

No arguments about the need for an investigation, particularly if that quote from the pilot is genuine.

zaphod , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

Random turbulence that maims the flight crew just wouldn’t be practical as a “thing that just happens” on regular longhaul flights.

I never said it happens often but it absolutely does happen. Here was a particularly spectacular example that happened to folks a few years back on their way to Australia (and note, if you want more examples, the article lists a couple of other past incidents that also resulted in crew and passenger injuries):

apnews.com/…/49db2788d04d4e11bcbb1a63dbae4199

Passengers on a flight from Canada to Australia said they had no warning about turbulence that suddenly slammed people into the ceiling of the plane and injured more than three dozen — a phenomenon that experts say can be nearly impossible for pilots to see coming.

One passenger on that flight noted:

“The plane just dropped,” passenger Stephanie Beam said. “When we hit turbulence, I woke up and looked over to make sure my kids were buckled. The next thing I knew there’s just literally bodies on the ceiling of the plane.”

So again, I cannot emphasize this enough: wear your damn seatbelts, people.

zaphod , 3 months ago

Take it to an electronics recycling center. Seriously.

If you already have a homelab, you plan to replace it, you don’t want to repair it, and you don’t have an obvious use case for another machine (it’s just another computer; you either have the need for another computer or you don’t), then holding onto it is just hoarding.

zaphod , 3 months ago

the technology itself has its use cases.

Cool.

Name one successful example.

I mean, it’s been, what, 15 years of hype? Surely there must be a successful deployment of a commercially viable and useful blockchain that isn’t just a speculative cryptocurrency or derivative thereof, right?

Right?

zaphod , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

You didn’t actually read the page you linked to, did you?

Let’s just jump to the conclusion:

This author believes it is technologically indefensible to call Fossil a “blockchain” in any sense likely to be understood by a majority of those you’re communicating with. Using a term in a nonstandard way just because you can defend it means you’ve failed any goal that requires clear communication. The people you’re communicating your ideas to must have the same concept of the terms you use.

(Emphasis mine)

Hint: a blockchain is always a Merkel tree, but a Merkel tree is not always a blockchain.

zaphod , 3 months ago

I stand corrected. One project in Italy and two proofs of concept that never went anywhere.

Truly revolutionary.

zaphod , 3 months ago

Sure, in the same way that some people only watch movies once, or read books once.

Speaking for myself, I’ve found only a small handful of games are worth my replay time, and most of them are Mass Effect…

zaphod , 3 months ago

Absolutely not, unless you adhere to pure utilitarianism. Veidt kills untold numbers of innocent people on a self-imposes quest to do what he believes will save humanity. He was a straight up megalomaniac and the only upside is that his murderous actions eventually lead to peace.

zaphod , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

That’s roughly right, but that doesn’t make him in any meaningful way “good”. Of course I also don’t think anyone who decided to drop the bombs on Japan was a “good guy”. But maybe that’s why I’m not a pure utilitarian.

zaphod , 3 months ago

Wait… why the heck does it need to open a network port?

zaphod , 3 months ago

So laziness. Got it.

(They could easily move to an ipc mechanism that doesn’t require binding a port on a network interface but that’d require time and effort and why bother when the goal is to ship something fast and cheap while the AI hype is strong)

Sounds like a fun way to directly mess with their model though.

zaphod , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

If somebody wanted to draw animated kiddie porn they could still do that. How far would you go until you ban crayons

It’s genuinely impressive how completely you missed my point.

How about another analogy: US federal law allows people to own individual firearms, but not grenades.

But they’re both things that kill people, right? Why would they be treated differently?

Hint: it’s about scale.

The same is true of pipe bombs. But anyone can make a pipe bomb. Genie is out of the bottle, right? So why are there laws regulating manufacture and ownership of them? Hmm…