Areldyb's recent activity
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Comment on Offbeat Fridays – The thread where offbeat headlines become front page news in ~news
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Comment on Iran war live: US, Tehran confirm ‘peace deal’ reached in ~society
Areldyb (edited )LinkTalks between the US and Iran are called off because of fighting in Lebanon, officials say Running with a peace deal that depends on the actions of other parties who aren't even part of the deal...- Exemplary
Talks between the US and Iran are called off because of fighting in Lebanon, officials say
Talks between the U.S. and Iran were called off on Friday after intense fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, three officials said, raising questions about a nascent agreement to end the war in Iran.
Iranian officials didn’t travel as planned to Switzerland, insisting that the fighting in Lebanon must stop before the talks can take place, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing mediation to try to get the talks rescheduled. U.S. Vice President JD Vance also canceled his trip.
Running with a peace deal that depends on the actions of other parties who aren't even part of the deal is... certainly a choice.
Anything to stop this war, but
the Israelis haveNetanyahu has no intention of stopping this war.Edit: the people aren't the government
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Comment on What is your eleventh favorite video game? in ~games
Areldyb Link ParentThe Witness is fascinating. I've finished it twice. Once felt like an ending, the other really felt like an ending, and I'm still not confident I reached the end of it.The Witness is fascinating. I've finished it twice. Once felt like an ending, the other really felt like an ending, and I'm still not confident I reached the end of it.
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Comment on What is your eleventh favorite video game? in ~games
Areldyb LinkMy Steam hours are a pretty poor gauge of how much I really liked a game, and most of my gaming is on other platforms anyway, so I can't do the easy thing. I considered taking the task seriously,...My Steam hours are a pretty poor gauge of how much I really liked a game, and most of my gaming is on other platforms anyway, so I can't do the easy thing. I considered taking the task seriously, going through games on every platform I could think of, selecting the ones where my reaction is an immediate "ooh, I like that game" and then painstakingly sorting them... But I didn't do that for the survey, that was an in-the-moment call, so I decided I'd do the same here.
And then I landed on The Secret of Monkey Island, which is a classic that everybody knows (I wish I'd found the time for it when it was featured in CGA!) so I want to talk about something else.
I want to talk about DATA WING.
DATA WING is a 2D arcade racer for Android and iOS; the device you're probably reading this on will run it just fine. You play as the (well, a) titular DATA WING: a tiny digital construct delivering inter-process communications in a computer system. The story is the real reason to play, so I won't spoil more.
It's an hour or two of play time delivered in b(i|y)te-size racing levels with a killer vaporwave aesthetic. Its creator, Dan Vogt, was very intentional about its design; the learn-by-doing curve in the first few levels is just about perfect.
And it's free, and really free, with no ads or gotchas. You can play it now, for nothing, and you should.
There are so many good games out there, you guys.
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Comment on Tildes Survey #9: How optimistic are you about the future? (Results) in ~talk
Areldyb LinkI'm having an even harder time with this one than the video game question. 😅 "The future" is pretty big. The future of what? The world? My country? Myself and my family? Over what timeframe? I...I'm having an even harder time with this one than the video game question. 😅
"The future" is pretty big. The future of what? The world? My country? Myself and my family? Over what timeframe? I have such different answers based on these criteria that I might be better off abstaining.
We are doomed, and things are going to be great. I don't know what that translates to but it isn't "neutral".
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Comment on Write your own virtual machine in ~comp
Areldyb LinkHey, I remember the LC-3! Good times. And an embarrassing number of hours in the computer lab.Hey, I remember the LC-3! Good times. And an embarrassing number of hours in the computer lab.
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Comment on Kingdom Hearts IV | Gameplay teaser trailer in ~games
Areldyb LinkI wish I could feel hyped about this, but KH3 was such a letdown for me that I feel completely done with the series. The story felt like it failed to land the plane, and I had more fun with the...I wish I could feel hyped about this, but KH3 was such a letdown for me that I feel completely done with the series. The story felt like it failed to land the plane, and I had more fun with the gummi ships than anything else.
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Comment on WiFi 5 beamforming is able to infer the identity of individuals without a WiFi device on them through passively recording communication in radio networks in ~tech
Areldyb Link ParentYou reminded me of a conference talk I was at last week where a pair of researchers had trained a neural net on the sounds of pencil scratching on paper, with the upshot that they could read the...You reminded me of a conference talk I was at last week where a pair of researchers had trained a neural net on the sounds of pencil scratching on paper, with the upshot that they could read the text that someone was writing next to a computer using only the computer's mic. Wild stuff.
Where I've landed is that if it's larger than quantum and it's happening in physical space, it will leak info through side channels. (And maybe quantum stuff does too, I'm not a physicist.)
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Comment on Tildes Survey #5: Pineapple on pizza? (Results) in ~talk
Areldyb Link ParentI do not enjoy pineapple on my pizza, but I'd give this a try.I do not enjoy pineapple on my pizza, but I'd give this a try.
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Comment on "The reason I'm not an atheist is that I think the philosophical arguments against it are unanswerable" in ~humanities
Areldyb LinkI'll pull out the section related to the post title, as that's what drew me in. My (admittedly uncharitable) summary of the argument: Scientists are, at present, confused about consciousness....I'll pull out the section related to the post title, as that's what drew me in.
Hart: The reason I’m not an atheist is that I think the philosophical arguments against it are unanswerable, or at least the philosophical arguments for something beyond materialism are unanswerable.
The problem with people like Dennett wasn’t so much his truculence toward all things religious, which was quite real, but that he was in an odd bind that a lot of modern materialist thought is in: Our sciences are not strictly mechanistic. Physics has not been mechanistic in a comprehensive way for more than a century now. Biology, the life sciences, are undergoing some rather extreme paradigm shifts regarding the levels of intentionality within cells, how homeostasis comes about, and the degree to which genetic-centric theory was adequate. It wasn’t. Richard Dawkins’s “The Selfish Gene,” just at the logical level, fails. And as a scientific proposal, it was decades out of date when it first appeared.
The 17th-century metaphysics of the sciences has captured our minds at a far deeper level than it did originally. The whole reason the mechanical picture of nature was created was to perfect a method of inductive reasoning. So instead of presuming metaphysical causes and instead of presuming the activity of God or the soul, we were going to start just from physical processes, viewing them as mechanical, as machine processes that we would examine discretely. That’s a very good impulse. It’s why we have medical treatments today that were undreamed of before this revolution in thinking.
But this was a filtering process. It was creating a bracketing by excluding from our picture of nature all the marks of mentality — not just consciousness, but intentionality with a purpose, purposive thinking, the unity of consciousness. The realities you’re dealing with here are composite. You don’t have to account for that inexplicable oneness that underlies conscious apprehension.
At first everyone was happy just to keep the two realms separate — here’s nature, it’s mechanical; here’s a realm of God and spirits, which is not mechanical. In the terms of Descartes, there’s an extended substance, res extensa — that’s matter, and that works mechanically. And then there’s a thinking substance, res cogitans, the mind, the soul or God, and that works nonmechanically. The two have a liaison with one another in embodied minds, in human minds, but otherwise they’re distinct. And we don’t have to confuse them.
The sciences commendably want to understand everything. And so in time, they weren’t going to accept this segregation of fields anymore. The attitude was: We want to understand mind and consciousness, too.
The problem is that we’re still using a model that was perfected through the exclusion of all the properties of the mental. It is impossible, using that model, to make sense of the phenomena of consciousness. So what you have to do instead is say that the phenomena of consciousness aren’t real. They can be reduced to mechanical processes. The more you try to do this, the more absurd it becomes. You do end up with, say, Dennett, who said that consciousness is an illusion.
This is the bind we find ourselves in. And many of the phenomena of life, I would argue, also don’t fit the mechanical model. You can explain a great deal regarding physiological systems at the level of their mechanical operation. You can explain a great number of things in terms of evolutionary attrition and retention. But there are many things you cannot explain.
I just think that when you pursue the actual phenomena, not basing this on metaphysical or religious commitments, but just the phenomena themselves, the materialist answers invariably fail. They were right in the 17th century — what the mind does is inherently contrary to what mechanism does.
The straightforward materialism of the new atheists with its mechanistic prejudices is the most self-defeating project there is.
To my mind, if you come to the end of a phenomenology of something like conscious acts and you have to square it with your theory, and you say “The theory doesn’t fit the phenomenon so I better get rid of the phenomenon,” that’s no longer good philosophy or good science. The rule of the sciences and the philosophy that deals in natural thought, natural philosophy, is that if the theory doesn’t fit the phenomenon, it’s the theory that goes.
My (admittedly uncharitable) summary of the argument:
Scientists are, at present, confused about consciousness.
Therefore: God.Do I have that right?
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Comment on What Google thinks you're worth in ~tech
Areldyb Link ParentWell, that cuts against my guess then. Parents' ad profiles are worth 1/3 of non-parents by Proton's analysis, so I'd guessed there were comparatively fewer families in Naperville.Well, that cuts against my guess then. Parents' ad profiles are worth 1/3 of non-parents by Proton's analysis, so I'd guessed there were comparatively fewer families in Naperville.
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Comment on What Google thinks you're worth in ~tech
Areldyb LinkThere's an interesting breakdown of factors determining a profile's ad value, and "parent or not" is a big one. The article includes a list of top ten most/least ad value cities, and the common...Proton analyzed over 54,000 demographic profiles using 2025 ad auction data to estimate what advertisers pay to reach different types of Americans. The range is much wider than you might expect.
The average American generates about $1,605 a year in advertising value. A 35- to 44-year-old man in Bozeman, MT, without children, using a desktop and making high-value corporate searches, generates an estimated $17,929.30. An 18- to 24-year-old father in Fort Smith, AR, using an Android phone and making low-value searches, generates $31.05.
That’s a 577x difference between two people using the same free service.
There's an interesting breakdown of factors determining a profile's ad value, and "parent or not" is a big one. The article includes a list of top ten most/least ad value cities, and the common thread as far as my wife and I can tell is "how child-free is this place?".
Also the whole thing is an ad for Proton services, because of course it is.
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What Google thinks you're worth
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Comment on The Dealer's Tarot - Modern games to play with a tarot deck in ~games.tabletop
Areldyb Link ParentThank you for this, I've been looking for a new game to run and this looks intriguing. 😀Thank you for this, I've been looking for a new game to run and this looks intriguing. 😀
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Comment on Any one use mesh networks like mesh core? in ~tech
Areldyb Link ParentNot at all, I keep forgetting they exist!Not at all, I keep forgetting they exist!
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Comment on Any one use mesh networks like mesh core? in ~tech
Areldyb Link ParentI'm in the US, eastern North Carolina. Things are building out to the point where I pretty regularly hear chatter from Tennessee, and there was some very impressive ducting the other day that let...I'm in the US, eastern North Carolina. Things are building out to the point where I pretty regularly hear chatter from Tennessee, and there was some very impressive ducting the other day that let me pick up a repeater advert in Connecticut!
Netherlands -> UK is quite a feat, what kind of pathing lets you do that?
Public and #test are definitely the two most popular channels, and yeah, most of that is about the mesh itself. That makes sense enough: the mesh is growing fast, and people have a lot of gear to test. I'd like to see more chatter on smaller channels, but... then I'd have to be the change I want to see.
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Comment on Any one use mesh networks like mesh core? in ~tech
Areldyb (edited )LinkMeshtastic and MeshCore are both fairly active in my metro area. I set up a Meshtastic node a while back but mostly ignored it until getting back into it this year. What I found was what a lot of...Meshtastic and MeshCore are both fairly active in my metro area. I set up a Meshtastic node a while back but mostly ignored it until getting back into it this year.
What I found was what a lot of people have found: Meshtastic is great for sparse networks, but as things scale up, congestion becomes a big problem and reliability drops off. I bought a couple more nodes and switched them all over to MeshCore a few months ago. At least in my area, reliability on MeshCore is growing, and with repeaters going up on trees, towers, and mountaintops, messages hop a lot further than I think anyone expected. (Edit: As an example, the furthest contact on my map right now is about 350 miles away. This was supposed to be a metro-area-scale network. We might need to start using region tags to keep traffic local...)
I bought two more WisMesh Tags, they arrived this morning. I might be developing a problem.
Edit again: Forgot you asked about the current drama with MeshCore. I don't think it really imperils the project if that's what you're worried about. It's annoying, but ultimately it won't matter.
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Comment on Which Linux distro do you use, and why? in ~tech
Areldyb LinkLet's see, uh... Mint is my go-to for new installs, because it Just Works so well. Two computers in the house are on it right now. One of them is the living room gaming/media PC, which ran Pop!_OS...Let's see, uh...
Mint is my go-to for new installs, because it Just Works so well. Two computers in the house are on it right now. One of them is the living room gaming/media PC, which ran Pop!_OS for a little while but I found the experience to be pretty flaky.
My laptop used to also run Mint, but I switched to Kubuntu at some point. I forget why I did, but Plasma's so nice I've kept it anyway. That one's also got a Kali VM because everything I use ends up with one of those eventually.
The kids' laptop (the one that isn't running ChromeOS) runs... I forget what I put on there actually, something lightweight that a decommissioned Chromebook could live with. I should look into that.
The Pis all run Raspberry Pi OS.
My wife's all Apple products. She'll see the light someday.
At this point, the only computer in my house still on Windows is my work laptop, and that's only because it isn't mine.
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Comment on Solar oven/cooking in ~food
Areldyb (edited )LinkI have a GoSun Fusion and use it to roast dinner sometimes (usually a pork tenderloin, it fits well in the tube). It works really well! I keep meaning to experiment with it more often.I have a GoSun Fusion and use it to roast dinner sometimes (usually a pork tenderloin, it fits well in the tube). It works really well! I keep meaning to experiment with it more often.
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Comment on US tariffs refunds: pick your poison in ~society
Areldyb LinkI hope this is a joke, but either way I'm done reading.In the Paleolithic era of, say, 2022, we would have had no choice but to wince and trust the government. In 2026, we can ask AI whether the government’s assertions are correct.
I hope this is a joke, but either way I'm done reading.
‘Please avoid chugging your ranch’: TSA forced to issue warning as foreign World Cup fans fall in love with American condiment