papasquat's recent activity
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Comment on Tilderinos who split after long (10–15 years) relationships: what led to it and how did it happen? in ~life.men
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Comment on Given everything we know about AI so far, what do you think it can or cannot be good for? in ~tech
papasquat Link ParentMy concern here isn't so much about it being used directly as evidence of a crime, but it being used long before cases even get to that point. We've seen that with Flock cameras. Cops don't use...Image Recognition AI - Law Enforcement
My concern here isn't so much about it being used directly as evidence of a crime, but it being used long before cases even get to that point.
We've seen that with Flock cameras. Cops don't use its license plate recognition in court as evidence, they use it as a gigantic countrywide dragnet so that when they're looking for someone, they can find that needle in the haystack that is every car on the road. That may or may not be unconstitutional, because on the one hand you're surveiling a massive number of people that have no probable cause, and on the other hand you're in public without any expectation of privacy.
That kind of technology can be used for a lot of things that I find frankly pretty scary. Automated sentiment analysis bots looking at social media posts to flag people as persons of interest, cameras with gait analysis features correlating the way people are walking with nervousness/impending crime, facial recognition networks, automated traffic analysis flagging IPs and so on.
Those things don't get submitted as evidence, but they give cops tips on where to look. The 4th amendment is open to very, very wide interpretation, so in practice this kind of stuff has a lot of leeway to get implemented, and even in the cause of clear constitutional violations, by the time violations are discovered and litigated, the damage is already done, and the offending agency faces no actual consequences other than going "oopsie, we won't do it again!". Lives are already ruined, discourse is already chilled, and everyone already has the feeling that they're being watched 24/7. Especially when you have an administration like this one who is so readily willing to weaponize the entire justice apparatus for political gain.
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Comment on Given everything we know about AI so far, what do you think it can or cannot be good for? in ~tech
papasquat Link ParentHonestly... My prediction for ai usage in education is almost the exact opposite unfortunately. From data I've seen about how students use AI, those predictions seem to be grounded in evidence....Honestly... My prediction for ai usage in education is almost the exact opposite unfortunately.
From data I've seen about how students use AI, those predictions seem to be grounded in evidence.
The ultimate problem I think is that learning is like walking a tight rope. The process of understanding complex ideas needs to be hard and uncomfortable. It needs to be hard enough that people come to realizations on their own from basic principles to really fundementally understand those ideas. At the same time, it needs to not be so hard that the student gets discouraged and gives up.
A good tutor is really adept at walking that tight rope. When a student asks why something is the way it is, the tutor won't just give them the answer, they'll point them in the direction they need to figure out the answer themselves, and nudge them in the right direction if any of their assumptions or deductions aren't correct, and explain why they aren't correct.
Publicly available AI tools aren't good at this part from what I've seen. They'll just straight up tell you the answer and praise you for asking it.
That causes that information to go in one ear and out another, because no work was done to arrive at the conclusion. From what we know about learning, that work and discomfort is just really vital to the process, and LLMs eliminate all the friction that causes it.
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Comment on Given everything we know about AI so far, what do you think it can or cannot be good for? in ~tech
papasquat Link Parent"quality" in art isn't really that useful or meaningful of a descriptor. The main reason people enjoy art is because it's communication between one human to another. If there's a good chance that..."quality" in art isn't really that useful or meaningful of a descriptor.
The main reason people enjoy art is because it's communication between one human to another. If there's a good chance that no actual human thought was put into a piece of art, it automatically becomes worth very, very much less.
It's kind of like high end watches. On a technical basis, the $60 dollar quartz Timex in wearing right now is superior in most ways to a $200,000 patek phillipe. It tells time a lot better, it doesn't have to be wound up, it's more waterproof than most models, more durable, and a lot more reliable.
People like mechanical watches because a lot of human thought, skill, and creativity went into making them. They're low volume, hand assembled, custom designed objects made by a master craftsman. My watch was made in a factory by the millions by machines.
Value is subjective, and it's even more subjective when it comes to visual art.
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Comment on Given everything we know about AI so far, what do you think it can or cannot be good for? in ~tech
papasquat Link ParentI think that's what everyone enjoys about art, even if they haven't been able to identify that. I think that's why "ai art" as a medium is doomed to failure. There's a reason why the most...Beyond that, I enjoy art because it's saying something to me. It's an expression of another person, conveying something beyond the words, sounds, or images themselves.
I think that's what everyone enjoys about art, even if they haven't been able to identify that. I think that's why "ai art" as a medium is doomed to failure.
There's a reason why the most technically talented musicians aren't necessarily the ones that become famous.
The ones who become famous are generally interesting and captivating as people first, and talented musicians second. People want to know why the Red Hot Chili Peppers wrote under the bridge, or what Madonna meant by "like a virgin" (shout out to Tarantino). Sites like genius exist solely for people to think about song lyrics and debate what they actually mean. The context and the people's lives behind the art is important to everyone who consumed it.
When the answer becomes "that's what the algorithm was trained on" the whole thing becomes a complete waste of time. No one is paying for a movie ticket to see something no human had a hand in making. It would feels like just watching tv static. Totally pointless noise.
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Comment on NFL head coach Mike Tomlin shows off the Minecraft world he has worked on for twelve years in ~games
papasquat Link ParentYeah, that's fucking lame. My first reaction is that someone as busy and high profile as an NFL head coach having the time and interest in having a Minecraft world is cool as shit. Most people get...Yeah, that's fucking lame.
My first reaction is that someone as busy and high profile as an NFL head coach having the time and interest in having a Minecraft world is cool as shit.
Most people get to be really really into one or two things. Big sports guy, or big video game guy, or big car guy, or big finance guy. Being able to do multiple of those things at a high level is very impressive, and building a huge bespoke city is definitely being into Minecraft at a high level.
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Comment on Was watching a history YouTube video when I realized they are all AI in ~tech
papasquat Link ParentI first noticed this when I was in the military. If I was off deployed somewhere doing something, I'd often see it on the news a few days later, and there was virtually always very key details...I first noticed this when I was in the military. If I was off deployed somewhere doing something, I'd often see it on the news a few days later, and there was virtually always very key details that were totally wrong, or full of blatant misconceptions.
It made me start taking most news stories with a really huge grain of salt.
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Comment on Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery will now be called Skydance, David Ellison reveals in ~movies
papasquat Link ParentWell, the whole thing is being run by a talentless hack that owns one of the largest media companies in the world solely because his dad was rich. You really can't expect great decision making.Well, the whole thing is being run by a talentless hack that owns one of the largest media companies in the world solely because his dad was rich. You really can't expect great decision making.
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Comment on Interview: Firefox’s chief on why he hopes a redesign will help win users from Chrome in ~tech
papasquat Link ParentThe development pace of a nostalgia driven video game is completely incomparable to a browser rendering engine. They're by far the most complicated pieces of software people interact with on a...The development pace of a nostalgia driven video game is completely incomparable to a browser rendering engine.
They're by far the most complicated pieces of software people interact with on a daily basis, and the fact that http is an open protocol with God knows how many extensions, and the RuneScape protocol is not, means that developers do not get to dictate the speed of development. They have to adapt to externalities completely out of their control. Keeping a web rendering engine up to date is one of the most gargantuan tasks there is in the production of software.
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Comment on Interview: Firefox’s chief on why he hopes a redesign will help win users from Chrome in ~tech
papasquat Link ParentThings people need don't necessarily pay the bills unfortunately. That's the main thing all these features no one needs is trying to solve. Chrome doesn't have to make money. Safari doesn't have...Things people need don't necessarily pay the bills unfortunately. That's the main thing all these features no one needs is trying to solve.
Chrome doesn't have to make money. Safari doesn't have to make money. Edge doesn't have to make money.
Those products are ways that their manufacturers can enforce their vision of the internet and keep their users locked into their ecosystem so they can make money off of them elsewhere.
Mozilla straight up just doesn't have that option. They're a company that primarily makes a web browser. That's largely their only significant product. They need to figure out a way to actually turn that product into a sustainable income stream, independent of Google. Virtually no one is willing to pay for a web browser, so Mozilla has to get creative.
If Firefox went away, that would be the end of a true competitive 3rd party web rendering engine, which would be bad for everyone. Especially the die hard ideological open source purists who are the first to demonize and nitpick every little thing Mozilla tries to set their company up for sustainability.
The open source hobbyist community cannot solve this problem alone. A project as massive and expansive as a web rendering engine needs talented, committed, full time professional developers, and that requires funding.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
papasquat Link ParentI don't mind the idea of a time-based evolving meta in theory. What bothers me is that I know I'll never be able to participate in it. Unless drastic changes are made, I'll never get to fly a...I don't mind the idea of a time-based evolving meta in theory. What bothers me is that I know I'll never be able to participate in it. Unless drastic changes are made, I'll never get to fly a hydra little bird. I don't have the time to devote to grinding out 40 hours of pilot gameplay every season.
That'd be fine if the hydra little bird was just one option for something that can fill a similar role which handles it in a slightly different way, but it isn't. It's way easier to get kills with than the machine gun helicopter, which straight up can't even destroy most vehicles.
On the infantry side, I have level 2 armor, and I'm not likely to get any higher. I don't have a weapon capable of killing people wearing the highest level armor fast enough that they can't just aim at me and kill me, no matter how quick I am, even if I hit all my shots at their head.
I just don't have the time to play the game enough to consistently be competitive late in the wipe. My skill level isn't fantastic, but I do quite well in FPS games when the playing field is leveled. I just don't love this trend started by the extraction shooter genre where you're on an infinite treadmill which demands you regularly sink hours into the game in order to have fun.
Like I said, that could just mean the game is not for me. Every game isn't for every person, and I'm sure there are a lot of people that both enjoy the constant grind and have the time to invest into it, but for my own sake, I'm hoping that something is changed longer term, otherwise I just don't see this game having legs for me after the first wipe.
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Comment on Jon Watts is our ‘Star Wars: Episode X’ director in ~movies
papasquat Link ParentOh, true. I misinterpreted what you meant, sorry! I agree with you honestly, Star Wars is doing a lot better than Star Trek. Star Wars has always been a heroes journey type story putting ultimate...Oh, true. I misinterpreted what you meant, sorry!
I agree with you honestly, Star Wars is doing a lot better than Star Trek. Star Wars has always been a heroes journey type story putting ultimate evil against ultimate good, and resisting the temptation to do the wrong thing, even for the right reasons.
In that respect, most of the new movies still mostly do that? They just do it really badly.
With most of the new Star Trek shows, I was left asking myself if anyone involved in the writing ever actually saw a TOS or TNG episode, or if basically all of their knowledge came from cultural osmosis. Most of the new shows just completely miss the point of what Star Trek was even about.
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Comment on Jon Watts is our ‘Star Wars: Episode X’ director in ~movies
papasquat Link ParentI'm not a prequel lover, but I have to admit that the way it depicted the fall of the Old Republic was somewhat believable. It made sense. Wrap the gigantic bureaucracy into a gigantic seemingly...I'm not a prequel lover, but I have to admit that the way it depicted the fall of the Old Republic was somewhat believable. It made sense.
Wrap the gigantic bureaucracy into a gigantic seemingly existential war, gaining support to giving more and more power to an authoritarian, and then that authoritarian uses his newfound authority to consolidate power, culminating with him disolving the Senate at the beginning of a New Hope. Makes sense. We've seen this kind of thing happen countless times throughout history.
A gigantic space laser that shoots halfway across the galaxy in a fraction of a second and destroys a bunch of planets is not something that could plausibly destroy a galaxy spanning government. The whole idea of it is stupid, and the idea that the Empire managed to just somehow escape and do another buildup without anyone noticing is also ridiculous.
It's like the writers never stopped to think that the citizens of the Old Republic, the citizens of the empire, and the citizens of the new Republic were all largely the same people.
Who the hell are the citizens of the first order?
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Comment on Jon Watts is our ‘Star Wars: Episode X’ director in ~movies
papasquat Link ParentAs a fellow Star Trek fan, let's not get all high and mighty here... I suffered through as much of Discovery and Picard as I could handle.As a fellow Star Trek fan, let's not get all high and mighty here...
I suffered through as much of Discovery and Picard as I could handle.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
papasquat Link ParentWell, that's honestly my main issue. Like, if there were no seasonal resets, eventually, I would get the top level gear, and I'd be at a level playing field. With resets though, the people with...the devs are planning on having seasonal progress wipes which does partially fix the issue of gear and grind imbalance
Well, that's honestly my main issue. Like, if there were no seasonal resets, eventually, I would get the top level gear, and I'd be at a level playing field. With resets though, the people with hundreds of hours per week to play will get top level gear in a couple of weeks, and I never will.
Personally, I think resets are a very lazy way to "solve" balance long term. If the game can't handle everyone running around with endgame gear, it's not well balanced. Resets are a bandaid that makes the whole situation worse and allows devs to not address the root cause of the issue.
I kind of find the idea of progression in general to be antithetical to the whole idea of a competitive shooter personally.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
papasquat LinkWardogs: I've been playing this game for the past couple of weeks, mostly because almost all of my long term friends love milsim-esque open world shooters, even though they're not quite my speed...Wardogs: I've been playing this game for the past couple of weeks, mostly because almost all of my long term friends love milsim-esque open world shooters, even though they're not quite my speed generally. I prefer tighter, more precise movement based arena shooters. I have to compromise to ever get to play games with them, so I picked up wardogs when EA dropped.
My feelings on the game are very mixed. It's an interesting, novelish concept. I detest extraction shooters because of how much they impose on my life. I very briefly played tarkov before I decided it wasn't for me, and had a lot of fun with Arc raiders until the first wipe, when I realized truly how much I hate any sort of grind in a game.
Wardogs fixes a lot of those problems for me, while perpetuating other ones.
On the one hand, there are no stupid fetch quests that I need to complete under duress because every other player is trying to do them too. I think the persistent money system is interesting, if not a little kludgy in its current implementation, and new players aren't completely uncompetitive in the way they are in an extraction shooter.
On the other hand, the game is rife with unlocks, and a lot of them are pretty much required to counter certain (popular) styles of play. Getting harassed by an enemy helicopter? You'll need an rpg or machine gun to deal with that on foot effectively, and those require you to grind out levels in the support tree.
Getting sniped? Sorry, the sniper rifle that you're allowed to use to start is less than useless, and also, most people sniping have access to thermal spotting scopes that can see you through a lot of stuff very easily.
Want to fly an attack helicopter? Sorry, you need to do a lot of transport flying to be able to do that.It continues ad nauseum, and a lot of the unlocks aren't just different ways to accomplish the same task, they're just straight up upgrades which are better in almost every way.
That wouldn't be so bad for me, because I like the gameplay generally, and even though I'm only playing for maybe 10 hours a week versus some of the people online that are playing the game for more time than I work at my full time job, I'd eventually get all the same unlocks. However, they're taking another cue from tarkov, and doing regular progression wipes.
Maybe that's just for early access, but it's become the norm for a lot of similar games in the genre, which personally, I feel is just a really lazy way to avoid having to actually balance your game.
I'd chalk the game up as "not for me", if there wasnt so much interest from my friends still, but I think their patience with the issues I have is waning still as well.
That said, I do still have fun with the game here and there, and it could easily become a game I really enjoy most of the time if they fixed some of those issues I have with it, which are easily fixable.
I just hate the idea that every game has to have this endless crawl of grind to appeal to the .01% of people that play it for hundreds of hours a week, and apparently can't be content with just playing a game because it's fun, rather than the endless dopamine trickle that comes from unlocking the same thing 5 times over rrhe course of a year.
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Comment on Owners mourn spoiled food after firmware update bricks Samsung smart fridges in ~tech
papasquat Link ParentCouldn't you just like... Mount a tablet to your fridge? That way, when the tablet becomes obsolete in 10 years, and can't run modern apps because the OS won't support it, you could just buy a new...Couldn't you just like... Mount a tablet to your fridge?
That way, when the tablet becomes obsolete in 10 years, and can't run modern apps because the OS won't support it, you could just buy a new tablet instead of throwing out your entire fridge.
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Comment on Owners mourn spoiled food after firmware update bricks Samsung smart fridges in ~tech
papasquat Link ParentYeah, I mean, the idea is fucking stupid, but it kinda makes sense I GUESS? If you really want a calendar on your fridge? What's extremely stupid is that the "smart" part of the fridge (I'm...Yeah, I mean, the idea is fucking stupid, but it kinda makes sense I GUESS? If you really want a calendar on your fridge?
What's extremely stupid is that the "smart" part of the fridge (I'm assuming it's basically a tablet just internally mounted into the fridge) has any sort of integration whatsoever with the refrigeration loop. What could be the possible purpose of that? What benefit would there be?
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Comment on Paramount settles with California, other states over Warner Bros merger in ~movies
papasquat Link ParentWhat's even the point of regulatory bodies if they don't have more power than the organizations they're supposed to be regulating? It's crazy that one private citizen can just threaten the biggest...What's even the point of regulatory bodies if they don't have more power than the organizations they're supposed to be regulating? It's crazy that one private citizen can just threaten the biggest state government in the US into doing his bidding.
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Comment on Googlebook revealed and ready for pre-order in ~tech
papasquat Link ParentIn every sci fi movie ever, when someone has something on their phone/terminal/data slate/padd and they want to show other people in the room, or work on it more intently, then pull out their...In every sci fi movie ever, when someone has something on their phone/terminal/data slate/padd and they want to show other people in the room, or work on it more intently, then pull out their handheld device, and then make a fling gesture with their finger towards the receiving device, where it instantly goes up on the big screen/computer.
It always seems so intuitive and easy, and it's absolutely shocking to me that it's 2026, we've had smart phones with intuitive touch based interfaces for like 20 years now, and I still can't do that.
Chromecast was probably the closest thing, but the experience sucks, it's not an open standard, and it's not nearly as intuitive as just pointing at a screen and flinging.
Just invent the "fling to big screen" protocol already. It can't be as hard as flying cars.
Yes, although my situation was quite a bit different from yours, so I don't know how much it will help. I had been married for four years, together for ten.
We got divorced because of infidelity, or rather, to be more accurate, because she left me for someone else. I was deployed with the military, so I didn't notice that she was falling in love with another man, except for some emotional distance that I couldn't quite put my finger on at the time.
I didn't think about ending it, she just told me that she wanted to get divorced when I got back, and none of the reasons she gave me any sense, it's like she was talking about a completely different relationship.
I found out the real reason a few days later, and at that point I had no more desire to try to win her back. Just a lot of hurt, betrayal, anger, sadness, loneliness and so on. It was the first time in my life I ever felt suicidal, the concept didn't really make sense to me up until then.
She didn't want to fight me for my stuff, so luckily I didn't end up getting financially destroyed, and although I got a lawyer, I got one that specialized in low conflict divorce, and it was very affordable.
I'm doing much better now. I remarried, and am grateful that the bandaid was ripped off so that I could stop wasting my time with someone who it turned out I really didn't like that much after seeing the person she turned into, even though I loved her, and instead got to meet someone who I adore instead.