em-dash's recent activity
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Comment on Subvert - The collectively owned music marketplace in ~music
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Comment on What is a business/org that is great and ethical in so many aspects that everyone should consider using? in ~life
em-dash Link ParentThat's more sensical than my version, but... ugh, I hate it, in a way I don't hate "we don't take credit cards at all". It feels some sort of anticompetitive-adjacent.It's all just bargaining for a better rate via exclusivity.
That's more sensical than my version, but... ugh, I hate it, in a way I don't hate "we don't take credit cards at all". It feels some sort of anticompetitive-adjacent.
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Comment on What is a business/org that is great and ethical in so many aspects that everyone should consider using? in ~life
em-dash Link ParentCostco seems alright as big businesses go, but I cannot shop there because they have inexplicably decided to only take Visa cards and I don't have any of those. (Yes, I could go to an ATM first...Costco seems alright as big businesses go, but I cannot shop there because they have inexplicably decided to only take Visa cards and I don't have any of those. (Yes, I could go to an ATM first and pay in cash, but that is too much friction for my taste.)
I assume there are entirely sensical reasons for this, but I choose to believe the MasterCard and Costco CEOs are lifelong archrivals.
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Comment on Why do you like your job? in ~life
em-dash LinkI get paid entirely too much. Silicon Valley company salaries are wild. But also, the company I work at is fully remote and heavily asynchronous, which means I can do things like sleeping until...I get paid entirely too much. Silicon Valley company salaries are wild.
But also, the company I work at is fully remote and heavily asynchronous, which means I can do things like sleeping until after noon, or wandering off to appointments without having to schedule them around meetings, or if I get frustrated with work I can just go do something else for a while instead.
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Comment on Wikipedia is resilient because it’s boring in ~tech
em-dash Link ParentFWIW they're not really as short on cash as they claim to be. We editors have had to tell them several times to stop running fundraising banners implying they're going to run out of funds. One...FWIW they're not really as short on cash as they claim to be. We editors have had to tell them several times to stop running fundraising banners implying they're going to run out of funds.
One could argue that the other causes they spend the excess on are worthy thereof, but ugh, I wish they'd be more transparent about it.
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Comment on Should C be mandatory learning for career developers? in ~comp
em-dash LinkI do agree that people should conceptually understand memory allocation and references vs values before calling themselves skilled developers, but why C specifically? Is it the best avenue toward...I do agree that people should conceptually understand memory allocation and references vs values before calling themselves skilled developers, but why C specifically? Is it the best avenue toward that understanding, or is it just the one you're familiar with? C is an abstraction over 1970s-era computers, and has held back progress in some significant ways by remaining the standard low-level language for so long. (It's why so many things are single-threaded even in these days when we regularly have tens of cores in a machine, for instance. Multithreading is just that unnatural in C and languages with similar execution models, which is most of them.)
Separately, how many layers do you need to go down before you consider yourself to have understood a system? Does it make sense to teach C without assembly, or assembly without raw machine code? Does this keep recursing down to individual logic gates and beyond?
(I hope not too far beyond; transistors are the level where my understanding becomes "idk, cursed dark magicks probably, just trust that they behave as advertised".)
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Comment on MIT report: 95% of generative AI pilots at companies are failing in ~tech
em-dash Link ParentOne of the hardest things for me to internalize in the world of business has been that businesses actually care much more about being able to blame failures on someone else than about not having...One of the hardest things for me to internalize in the world of business has been that businesses actually care much more about being able to blame failures on someone else than about not having failures. It's an alien mindset to me, but realizing that it's a mindset businesses have explains so many weird decisions.
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Comment on Question - how would you best explain how an LLM functions to someone who has never taken a statistics class? in ~tech
em-dash Link ParentBecause it's read a lot of text written by super smart and caring people, and it's imitating the way those people talk. The companies making these LLMs also want them to seem smarter and nicer, so...Can you explain why it feels like a super smart and caring person sometimes?
Because it's read a lot of text written by super smart and caring people, and it's imitating the way those people talk. The companies making these LLMs also want them to seem smarter and nicer, so they tweak the numbers a bit to make it more likely to pick words that smart and nice people use.
And why is it bad at some things and just makes stuff up?
You know how smart people who know a lot of things tend to sound really confident while explaining them, and seem to have an answer for every question you could ask? That tone is what they're picking up on and imitating. But talking like a smart person doesn't mean you actually are a smart person. If it's talking about something that it hasn't read much about, it'll still try really hard to sound confident and knowledgeable, but everything it's saying will be a complete guess.
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Comment on I am very privacy-oriented, but my recent Pixel phone somehow obtained all my pictures from my Linux computer in ~comp
em-dash LinkI don't know what's going on with the rest, but since I happen to know about this: NuGet is a package manager used for downloading libraries while building .net (C# and the other programming...I don't know what's going on with the rest, but since I happen to know about this:
And I just was looking around my ~/ directory, and I saw a directory titled .nuget... I checked pacman (I'm on Arch, so that's my package manager), and it's not installed, but I deleted it because it had a lot of sketch files that ... okay, so I deleted the directory and honestly I don't have it anymore to state what exactly was in it.
NuGet is a package manager used for downloading libraries while building .net (C# and the other programming languages in that family) applications. ~/.nuget would've been a cache of packages downloaded while you (or something running as your user, possibly
makepkg) were compiling something. It's both harmless and safe to delete, since if you do need any of it in the future to build something else it'll just get re-downloaded. -
Comment on Victories and challenges: An A[u]DHD community and support fortnightly thread #5 in ~health.mental
em-dash Link ParentAs someone who has a lot of that symptom and refers to it as "no object permanence", I don't really see the problem with it. It's figurative language. I don't literally believe I lack object...As someone who has a lot of that symptom and refers to it as "no object permanence", I don't really see the problem with it. It's figurative language. I don't literally believe I lack object permanence. I'm happy to avoid using it for other people who find it bothersome, though.
But I also seem to be somewhat less far up the language pedantry axis than most autistic people are. As another example, I consider "I am autistic" and "I have autism" to both be valid and equivalent ways to refer to myself, and don't understand the strong preferences others have between the two.
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Comment on What useful licenses or certifications are surprisingly cheap and easy to get? in ~talk
em-dash Link ParentBoth of those things can be true! Very few things are 100% good or 100% bad. I certainly don't think the solution is to abolish ham radio in any capacity. But the vibes remain, and they're far...OTOH, the old hats have, time and time again, proven immensely helpful for emergency comms.
Both of those things can be true! Very few things are 100% good or 100% bad. I certainly don't think the solution is to abolish ham radio in any capacity.
But the vibes remain, and they're far enough from my and @pallas's values to discourage us from participating. “Yeah, but it could be better" is not a particularly compelling response to that.
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Comment on What useful licenses or certifications are surprisingly cheap and easy to get? in ~talk
em-dash Link ParentI don't have much of one, but: mostly I did manual pseudo-spaced-repetition on the skillcat practice tests (they also have videos, which I did not watch because I know I would not retain much...I don't have much of one, but:
- mostly I did manual pseudo-spaced-repetition on the skillcat practice tests (they also have videos, which I did not watch because I know I would not retain much information that way, so idk if they're good)
- literally the wikipedia article on section 608
- this doc, on how refrigerant numbering actually works, and this doc, on quickly faking refrigerant memorization just well enough to get through the exam's weird focus on refrigerant memorization
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Comment on What useful licenses or certifications are surprisingly cheap and easy to get? in ~talk
em-dash Link ParentThe other things you said too, but this is most of it for me. I grew up on the internet, where pseudonyms and anonymity were the norm (and still are the norm, in the spaces I care to hang out in)....refusal of the community to accept that standards of privacy and safety have changed in the modern world make the hobby unsettling at best and dangerous at worst.
The other things you said too, but this is most of it for me. I grew up on the internet, where pseudonyms and anonymity were the norm (and still are the norm, in the spaces I care to hang out in). I don't usually use that option to its full extent (it's not hard to find my full name from what I've posted here) but it's comforting and normal to have the ability to choose how much I share.
And then I wander into this weird alternate universe, where there's a law saying that when in a chat room I must periodically post my full legal name and home address. On the internet, that would be a level of absurdity that even the most ridiculous of governments would not attempt, but... that's exactly the effect of having it all easily searchable by callsign in a public database and requiring people to explicitly identify with that callsign. Somehow, as far as I can tell, this isn't controversial.
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Comment on What useful licenses or certifications are surprisingly cheap and easy to get? in ~talk
em-dash Link ParentI don't think this is the case? https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-40/part-82/subpart-F#p-82.161(a)(1) : The exempt refrigerants include none of the common household AC ones. (Incidentally, it's...It's worth noting that if you are doing your own HVAC, technically you don't need EPA 608. You only need it if you are doing stuff above 50lbs of refrigerant or if someone is paying you to do something.
I don't think this is the case?
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-40/part-82/subpart-F#p-82.161(a)(1) :
Any person who could be reasonably expected to violate the integrity of the refrigerant circuit during the maintenance, service, repair, or disposal of appliances (as follows in this paragraph) containing a class I or class II refrigerant or a non-exempt substitute refrigerant must pass a certification exam offered by an approved technician certification program.
The exempt refrigerants include none of the common household AC ones.
(Incidentally, it's not clear to me that the DIY-focused brands that ship linesets with refrigerant already in them are actually exempt from this, but everyone seems to think they are. I did consider that but they were more than $10 more expensive.)
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What useful licenses or certifications are surprisingly cheap and easy to get?
I've been looking into installing air conditioning in the building that will eventually be my office and workshop. Local HVAC contractors gave me extremely large numbers as quotes. I've watched...
I've been looking into installing air conditioning in the building that will eventually be my office and workshop. Local HVAC contractors gave me extremely large numbers as quotes. I've watched mini split installs and I'm pretty sure they're within DIY range for me. So I spent $10 and a couple of nights of reading, and took the EPA 608 type 2 certification exam today, so now (pending someone watching and approving a 20-minute video of me staring at a phone screen) I can legally install one myself for significantly cheaper.
I've also occasionally considered getting a ham radio license, solely because I like a bunch of adjacent electronics topics and it feels like the kind of thing I could be into. (So far, I haven't bothered because the vibes of the community around it don't feel right for me, but I haven't completely abandoned the idea.)
It occurs to me there are probably several more things like this that I'd never thought about. Small plane pilot's licenses are another, though those require formal training. But attempting to research this mostly returns lists of "you could be an Official Microsoft Certified Professional Excel User!". That's not what I mean.
What other useful licenses can one easily get without making it a whole career? "Useful" here means something like "having the piece of official paper grants privileges that simply learning the underlying knowledge doesn't".
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Comment on Revisiting my digital security model in ~tech
em-dash Link ParentI did something roughly equivalent once with another brand of FIDO key because I wanted to be able to back up the master key. This sort of thing (backups, and duplication generally) needs to be...I wish there were a way to create a certificate of all of your physical keys that you could register with just one key physically present
I did something roughly equivalent once with another brand of FIDO key because I wanted to be able to back up the master key.
This sort of thing (backups, and duplication generally) needs to be possible for me to take an authentication method seriously. Theoretical security consequences be damned; you don't get to decide other people's threat models.
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Comment on I need advice, which laptop would you buy now? in ~tech
em-dash LinkI had a Framework 16, had stability problems with it, and eventually switched to a Thinkpad L16. It's pretty good. In practice, it has the same sort of repair support as the Framework; they just...I had a Framework 16, had stability problems with it, and eventually switched to a Thinkpad L16. It's pretty good. In practice, it has the same sort of repair support as the Framework; they just make less noise about it.
I'm still hoping Apple's success with the M* chips eventually annoys other vendors into making similarly impressive hardware. It seems to be amazing hardware from what I can tell; the software is just aggressively incompatible with me, and last time I looked into it I wasn't sufficiently convinced running Linux on it would be as painless as I'd like.
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Comment on Victories and challenges: An A[u]DHD community and support fortnightly thread #2 in ~health.mental
em-dash LinkMy partner and I are in the last few days before loading all our stuff on a truck to move to the other side of the continent, and ughhh there has been and continues to be So Much Stuff To Do. This...My partner and I are in the last few days before loading all our stuff on a truck to move to the other side of the continent, and ughhh there has been and continues to be So Much Stuff To Do. This has still been taking up all of my time and physical and mental energy. (I am very thankful that she's taken on most of the parts that involve repeatedly calling businesses that don't answer their phones.)
Meanwhile, I've been trying to power through finishing a project at work that I am thoroughly tired of looking at, so that I don't have to come back to it after moving, and it's actually going... okay? I wouldn't describe myself as "enjoying" it, but it's felt a lot closer to the sort of programming I do actually enjoy, despite being a lot of the same kind of work.
I think what I've learned from these two things, though, is that hard deadlines are a stronger motivator for me than I thought. When I really do need to get something done, something in my brain switches, such that I can direct my hyperfocus at that thing. This is new; I spent a lot of school getting much lower grades than one would expect from me because I just couldn't be bothered to do boring work, and then most of my career being moderately frustrated with myself over some vague sense of "I feel like I should be more productive than I am".
I assume that if I figure out how to intentionally trigger this effect, I will immediately overdo it, then burn out and lose the ability to do anything at all. Because, as I just read elsewhere in this thread:
Is your energy quite cyclical, where when you feel like your brain is working you'll push yourself really really hard, and then be totally exhausted and need time to recover?
I wish I could just run my brain at a normal power level all the time, instead of having these cycles. The crash when this one ends is going to suck.
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Comment on Nexus Mods ownership changing hands: An update from Dark0ne in ~games
em-dash Link ParentSerious question, I'm not familiar with the scale of the numbers involved: how much better does it get if you just slap bittorrent-or-similar over it, and only fall back to HTTP if there aren't...Serious question, I'm not familiar with the scale of the numbers involved: how much better does it get if you just slap bittorrent-or-similar over it, and only fall back to HTTP if there aren't enough seeds?
The worst of it will be very popular mods for very popular games, and "distributing very popular things that many people have a copy of" seems like the kind of thing p2p file sharing would be best at.
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Comment on The world’s most-visited museum shuts down, in response to mass tourism in ~travel
em-dash Link ParentAnd not every student is an official enrolled student at a university.And not every student is an official enrolled student at a university.
I would like to read more about this, but all the concrete information is locked away in a zine, for which you have to sign up for a mailing list. (I was curious enough to try; it doesn't immediately send you anything, which is why I'm complaining about it on the internet right now instead of reading.)