DefiantEmbassy's recent activity

  1. Comment on Travel essentials: eight items to pack for your next trip – and what to leave at home in ~travel

    DefiantEmbassy
    Link Parent
    Going to have to disagree on the TRTL… best sleep I’ve ever had on a plane. And no breakage at all.

    Going to have to disagree on the TRTL… best sleep I’ve ever had on a plane. And no breakage at all.

    1 vote

  2. Comment on Bluesky melts down over Jesse Singal in ~tech

    DefiantEmbassy
    Link Parent
    jay is a she (unless i’ve missed something indicating they have decided to identify otherwise)

    jay is a she (unless i’ve missed something indicating they have decided to identify otherwise)

    3 votes

  3. Comment on Bluesky melts down over Jesse Singal in ~tech

    DefiantEmbassy
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    There is a good subset of Bluesky - certainly, I can see from my "Popular With Friends" feed that most people I view are actively against the insane rhetoric on the platform calling Jay a "temu...

    There is a good subset of Bluesky - certainly, I can see from my "Popular With Friends" feed that most people I view are actively against the insane rhetoric on the platform calling Jay a "temu Elon".

    But the reality is that the platform has suffered, from my perspective because of people like Rachael Maddow bringing an onslaught of people who've only ever touched Facebook before. I've had my own annoying experiences on the platform. The reality is that there is a significant portion of the left-wing who have just become a mirror image of the right, and it is just a noxious experience to be around them.

    25 votes

  4. Comment on Elon Musk plans to take on Wikipedia with 'Grokipedia' in ~tech

    DefiantEmbassy
    Link
    The depressing thing is that this won't stop them from harassing and trying to destroy Wikipedia.

    The depressing thing is that this won't stop them from harassing and trying to destroy Wikipedia.

    13 votes

  5. Comment on imgur.com geoblocks the UK in ~tech

    DefiantEmbassy
    Link Parent
    Yeah except Imgur blocks at least some VPNs (i’m on mullvad) and doesn’t tell you why (it gives a vague technical reason).

    Yeah except Imgur blocks at least some VPNs (i’m on mullvad) and doesn’t tell you why (it gives a vague technical reason).

    2 votes

  6. Comment on ‘Simpsons’ movie sequel sets summer 2027 release date in ~movies

    DefiantEmbassy
    Link
    From what I can tell about the OG movie, they were able to get a whole load of the original writers back for it. Will they do so for this one? Sounds unlikely. And with the voice actor for Marge...

    From what I can tell about the OG movie, they were able to get a whole load of the original writers back for it.

    Will they do so for this one? Sounds unlikely. And with the voice actor for Marge being quite... grating these days, I'm far more skeptical this one can live up to the heights. But who knows.

    4 votes

  7. Comment on Shopify, pulling strings at Ruby Central, forces Bundler and RubyGems takeover in ~comp

    DefiantEmbassy
    Link Parent
    Well, we don’t know for sure. But dhh is a board member at Shopify. In fact, the CEO of Shopify races cars with dhh. So, there is a relation there.

    Well, we don’t know for sure.

    But dhh is a board member at Shopify. In fact, the CEO of Shopify races cars with dhh. So, there is a relation there.

    17 votes

  8. Comment on Shopify, pulling strings at Ruby Central, forces Bundler and RubyGems takeover in ~comp

    DefiantEmbassy
    Link
    As someone who hasn't touched Ruby, a) what a complete cluster fuck, b) yeah, i think I'm staying away from Ruby, and probably trying to avoid Shopify where I can

    As someone who hasn't touched Ruby, a) what a complete cluster fuck, b) yeah, i think I'm staying away from Ruby, and probably trying to avoid Shopify where I can

    21 votes

  10. Comment on Oracle, Silver Lake consortium to control 80% stake in TikTok in US in ~finance

    DefiantEmbassy
    Link Parent
    I mean, Automattic invested in WPEngine as it was named. They could have raised these issues way earlier. In general, my position lies somewhere close to this article. And frankly, yes. In...

    And the confusion WP Engine has created by intentionally choosing that company name does seem pretty damn unethical to me too.

    I mean, Automattic invested in WPEngine as it was named. They could have raised these issues way earlier. In general, my position lies somewhere close to this article.

    And frankly, yes. In practically every online discussion I can see, the consensus has swayed wildly against Mullenweg.

    6 votes

  11. Comment on Oracle, Silver Lake consortium to control 80% stake in TikTok in US in ~finance

    DefiantEmbassy
    Link Parent
    i mean most people are on the side of WPEngine in that controversy, so they’d be pro Silver Lake i’m sure they’ve got plenty of other stuff you can dislike :)

    i mean most people are on the side of WPEngine in that controversy, so they’d be pro Silver Lake

    i’m sure they’ve got plenty of other stuff you can dislike :)

    4 votes

  12. Comment on My guess and opinion on the common blockers to Linux adoption in ~tech

    DefiantEmbassy
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    So, I'm a software engineer who uses a terminal (macOS/Linux), has sysadmined a Linux cluster, and hell, I'll throw in the fact I'm a Vimmer. In short, a lot of things that ordinarily would drive...

    So, I'm a software engineer who uses a terminal (macOS/Linux), has sysadmined a Linux cluster, and hell, I'll throw in the fact I'm a Vimmer. In short, a lot of things that ordinarily would drive me towards adopting Linux for the desktop & advocating it for others. But, frankly, you'll pry Windows out of my cold dead hands, for a couple of reasons.

    • General familiarity: everything about how Windows is laid out, to how the mouse moves across the screen (granted, Linux is closer to Windows, but on a low-powered machine I found Windows was /far/ more responsive), is just second nature to me now.
    • Bad experiences. The last time I tried running Linux on a SP3, I ran into a couple of issues.
      1. I managed to soft brick a Fedora (!!) install within about 5 minutes by changing a theme, updating and restarting. The login theme no longer existed.
      2. The screen on the device was broken. On Windows and Xorg, there were relatively trivial ways to disable it. But for some reason, the only way I could find to get something remotely similar on Wayland was to use an application that simply consumed all of the input. (Hopefully, I've Cunningham's Law'ed my way into the answer now).
      • None of the above issues are really impacted by the Microsoft-ness of the device, so I'm not really swayed by it.
    • Games. I play too many games with kernel-level anti-cheats (and I'm /fine/ with it).

    Windows is /relatively/ simple for me. I install it (after finding the right incantation to get local login), run ShutUp10!, and then use winget to get all my apps. Once I've done that, it just works. I know I could get Linux to a very similar state, but I'm not interested.

    As for what I suggest to others, I would much rather recommend ChromeOS Flex to people instead of a Linux distribution. Mostly because I will never have to give them tech support again.

    6 votes

  13. Comment on Your favorite YouTube channel is (probably) owned by private equity in ~creative

    DefiantEmbassy
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    One note: the video lists PRIME Hydration as a success story of influencers creating real world products. It’s more mixed than that: PRIME had a brilliant initial run, but sales have collapsed by...

    One note: the video lists PRIME Hydration as a success story of influencers creating real world products.

    It’s more mixed than that: PRIME had a brilliant initial run, but sales have collapsed by 71% in the UK.

    7 votes

  14. Comment on Grok searches for Elon Musk's opinion on controversial questions in ~tech

    DefiantEmbassy
    Link Parent
    There’s also an interesting note in the post after that, which is focused on Grok Heavy not having a public system prompt

    There’s also an interesting note in the post after that, which is focused on Grok Heavy not having a public system prompt

    In related prompt transparency news, Grok's retrospective on why Grok started spitting out antisemitic tropes last week included the text "You tell it like it is and you are not afraid to offend people who are politically correct" as part of the system prompt blamed for the problem. That text isn't present in the history of their previous published system prompts.

    Given the past week of mishaps I think xAI would be wise to reaffirm their dedication to prompt transparency and set things up so the xai-org/grok-prompts repository updates automatically when new prompts are deployed - their current manual process for that is clearly not adequate for the job!

    7 votes

  15. Comment on Grok searches for Elon Musk's opinion on controversial questions in ~tech

    DefiantEmbassy
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    Super interesting behaviour. At the /very/ least, it has a weird sense of identity. Although I wouldn't be surprised to hear that there is some element of the system prompt being hidden, that...

    Super interesting behaviour. At the /very/ least, it has a weird sense of identity. Although I wouldn't be surprised to hear that there is some element of the system prompt being hidden, that causes this behaviour.

    12 votes

  17. Comment on Org-roam is not for me in ~tech

    DefiantEmbassy
    Link Parent
    Ditto for me, but with Obsidian (although I migrated from org-roam). The Zettlekasten stuff effectively provides a useful framework, but I don't subscribe to it. And search works great with...

    Ditto for me, but with Obsidian (although I migrated from org-roam). The Zettlekasten stuff effectively provides a useful framework, but I don't subscribe to it. And search works great with Obsidian's native tooling, and if I needed something more powerful, it's just text at the end of the day.

    2 votes

  18. Comment on Org-roam is not for me in ~tech

    DefiantEmbassy
    Link Parent
    Interesting factoid: the developers of Obsidian actually started out with a infinite outliner, Dynalist (a cheap way to validate this, see the publisher of the Obsidian Android app). It's...

    Interesting factoid: the developers of Obsidian actually started out with a infinite outliner, Dynalist (a cheap way to validate this, see the publisher of the Obsidian Android app). It's basicially on infinite hiatius from what I can see, so probably not worth investigating.

    2 votes

  19. Comment on Minecraft’s problems aren’t just the new features in ~games

    DefiantEmbassy
    Link Parent
    Just wanted to say thanks! I did not know there were mods for newer versions that brought old terrain gen back. I ended up going with 1:1 Beta for my goals, which was "as close to 1.7.3 as...

    Just wanted to say thanks! I did not know there were mods for newer versions that brought old terrain gen back. I ended up going with 1:1 Beta for my goals, which was "as close to 1.7.3 as possible, on a newer engine" (because 1.7.3 isn't the best experience in terms of technology).

    2 votes

  20. Comment on I'm tired of dismissive anti-AI bias in ~tech