Grzmot's recent activity
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Comment on How a flawed idea is teaching millions of kids to be poor readers in ~science
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Comment on How a flawed idea is teaching millions of kids to be poor readers in ~science
Grzmot Link ParentI learned German first at school, and despite that language having the reputation of being more difficult and with lots of rules, it is also phonetic. I imagine that when it comes to reading, it's...I learned German first at school, and despite that language having the reputation of being more difficult and with lots of rules, it is also phonetic. I imagine that when it comes to reading, it's something the child profits off a great deal. With English you have the difficulty of spelling being very inconsistent as it relates to sound of the words, while in German every word makes sense from a spelling perspective. That makes learning to read by speaking the invidiual letters out loud much more powerful.
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Comment on How a flawed idea is teaching millions of kids to be poor readers in ~science
Grzmot Link ParentWhat an incredibly stupid thing to say considering that the majority of languages today work with alphabets, i.e. letters that represent a particular sound. Even most languages that do not use the..."The purpose is not to learn words," he said. "The purpose is to make sense."
What an incredibly stupid thing to say considering that the majority of languages today work with alphabets, i.e. letters that represent a particular sound. Even most languages that do not use the latin alphabet still work this way, like the Cyrillic or Arabic scripts. Sure, ultimately writing conveys meaning, but that's only step 3 out of 3. Step 1 is reading, and step 2 is translating that into the language you speak in your head.
It's such simple thing to get. Kids learn speaking first, you then teach them what sound each letter represents, and you let them speak out loud each letter of a word until they get it. I really don't understand how you could ever think that trying to jump to step 3 could be a good idea? Does he think that children that grow up just sort of magically gain step 2 along the way? Most people don't figure stuff out by themselves on a topic they are not interested in. That doesn't change between kids and adults.
These motherfuckers are teaching kids to read like English as if it were using Chinese characters. What the fuck.
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Comment on The algorithm failed music in ~tech
Grzmot Link ParentI switched over to Qobuz, which is still a streaming service, but one that takes a much more manual approach to recommending music. They do also offer the ability to purchase albums entirely and...I switched over to Qobuz, which is still a streaming service, but one that takes a much more manual approach to recommending music. They do also offer the ability to purchase albums entirely and without DRM, but which you can also then stream, even if you're not subscribing. It had a similar effect. I don't think lossless streaming is any better than a good 320kbps mp3, but it's a nice bonus.
I had become fed up with Spotify mostly because it stopped being a service only for music. Their podcast push only alienated me further, since it didn't feel like I, as a music listener, was their customer any more. Asine UI decisions like "canvas" video covers, that played short gifs from music videos instead of just showing you an album cover also felt like a UX department that lacked any direction.
I toyed with the idea of doing my own streaming thing, or like you, returning to listening from local libraries on the go and then syncing when I come back home. What made me opt against setting up my own streaming was that my homelab isn't running 24/7 yet, only when someone is watching movies. Qobuz felt like a neat solution that's still very easy to use and can tide me over until my homelab is running 24/7.
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Comment on The algorithm failed music in ~tech
Grzmot Link ParentI know that last.fm has stuck around through it all somehow. Maybe I should take a look at it. It just always emphasized the social network part of listening to music and it's something I've been...I know that last.fm has stuck around through it all somehow. Maybe I should take a look at it. It just always emphasized the social network part of listening to music and it's something I've been trying to cut from my life rather than enhance it's presence in it.
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Comment on The algorithm failed music in ~tech
Grzmot LinkWhen I first started using Spotify in my teens, I moved my small music collection of punk rock, pop, game and movie soundtracks onto the platform. Discover Weekly, together with the song...Spotify’s goal is to keep you listening no matter what. In her book Mood Machine, journalist Liz Pelly recounts a story told to her by a former Spotify employee in which Daniel Ek said, “our only competitor is silence.”
Artists, especially new ones trying to break through, actually started changing how they composed to play better in the algorithmically driven streaming era. Songs got shorter, albums got longer, and intros went away. The hook got pushed to the front of the song to try to grab listeners’ attention immediately, and things like guitar solos all but disappeared from pop music. The palette of sounds artists pulled from got smaller, arrangements became more simplified, pop music flattened.
Market research firm MIDiA published an alarming study in September that said, “the more reliant users are on algorithms, the less music they hear.” It found that while new music discovery is traditionally associated with youth, “16-24-year-olds are less likely than 25-34-year-olds to have discovered an artist they love in the last year.” Gen Z might hear a song they like on TikTok, but they rarely investigate beyond that to listen to more music from the artist.
Algorithm fatigue has been building for some time. Apple made human curation a central selling point of its music service, enlisting big names like Jimmy Iovine and Zane Lowe. But recently, the rebellion against the algorithm has picked up steam.
At this stage, anti-algorithm is itself an entire genre of content. Particularly on YouTube, where creators make videos about ditching streaming, stopping doomscrolling, and how the algorithm has flattened culture.
More companies will probably start offering off-ramps as algorithm fatigue grows. But, eventually, companies will figure out how to create the illusion of serendipitous discovery. They will serve up algorithmic recommendations, but package them in a way that feels more natural.
When I first started using Spotify in my teens, I moved my small music collection of punk rock, pop, game and movie soundtracks onto the platform. Discover Weekly, together with the song suggestions to extend playlists, became my primary way of discovering new music. Until then, my collection had been strongly influenced by my older brother and my father, adding in some country music into my weird mix.
I used Spotify for years, and my favorites got longer and longer, fueled by the algorithmic suggestions. What I didn't realize is that my suggestions gravitated towards a very certain direction: A sort of acoustic indie pop music. The rock, the electric guitars, the punk, it gradually filtered out. Now, I didn't hate it, but I later realized, I didn't love it either. I just listened to it. Spotify's goal of providing content, not music, had worked on me without me even realizing.
When I got into my first relationship, my then girlfriend also listened to punk rock, and introduced me to Billy Talent, a band that I had not heard anything from beyond their most famous song Red Flag. When I checked out more of their albums, I rediscovered my love for the punk rock genre, and had a stark wake up call when I realized that my favourite songs playlist with 400+ entries had gradually transformed into a series of similar sounding acoustic indie pop songs from artists that I didn't give a shit about, but that crucially, you could just listen to inoffensively. It was the sort of playlist you'd hear in a bougie modern café, playing on in the background while you were chatting with someone.
I detested it, and started cleaning house. Since then, I've tried to be much more active about my listening and active about finding new music to listen to.
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The algorithm failed music
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Comment on How Bill Gates is reframing the climate change debate in ~enviro
Grzmot Link Parent"Ending capitalism" would mean an international revolution on a scale that feels impossible on the climate change timeline we're on."Ending capitalism" would mean an international revolution on a scale that feels impossible on the climate change timeline we're on.
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Comment on Affinity V3 is here with a new freemium model in ~design
Grzmot Link ParentI own Davinci Resolve (DR) Studio and it has some features which are useful for non professional users, mainly extra codec support. I think the free version only supports h264, and not HEVC. That...I own Davinci Resolve (DR) Studio and it has some features which are useful for non professional users, mainly extra codec support. I think the free version only supports h264, and not HEVC.
That being said, DR is not a typical enshittifaction story. They have a very clear, very open business goal: The software is free, because they sell you the hardware to use it properly with. Even for professional software, DR Studio has a one time 300 USD ish price that gives you an actual lifetime license, and you get it with even the cheapest hardware editing keyboard they sell, which is like 400 USD.
The company behind it makes money by selling hardware to edit on, cameras, and instructional material like courses on how to use both with Davinci Resolve. This is different from Affinity V3, which, aside of the AI subscription, has no monetization.
Either Canva is banking on enough people subscribing for AI tools, or they're banking on this offer being so good it gets people off competitors. But even then, getting people off competitors and onto Affinity is only step 1 of the enshittification process, because there is no way to make it profitable in the current state.
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Comment on Python Foundation goes ride or DEI, rejects US government grant with strings attached in ~society
Grzmot Link ParentI completely agree. Markets abhor instability. Back when America's leaders used to be smart, they understood that the backbone of America's might was international trade, which was one of the...I completely agree. Markets abhor instability. Back when America's leaders used to be smart, they understood that the backbone of America's might was international trade, which was one of the reasons your military got so big. Playing world police and keeping far away places safe was and still is interlocked with your own profits. Isolation is only going to lead to economic downfall.
That being said, markets don't necessarily need to be free to expand and grow. They just need stability. China got incredibly big even though it is not a free country, and there is significant corruption involved and getting any business off the ground, as the state plays a role in everything. But it is a stable country, human rights abuses be damned.
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Comment on 'This is definitely my last TwitchCon': High-profile streamer Emiru was assaulted at the event, even as streamers have been sounding the alarm about stalkers and harassment in ~games
Grzmot Link ParentAccepting the danger of sounding like someone just telling people to go touch grass, a lot of these internet communities are just weird. I'm in a few of them, though I never got into streaming...Accepting the danger of sounding like someone just telling people to go touch grass, a lot of these internet communities are just weird. I'm in a few of them, though I never got into streaming because it seemed pointless to me. Either you're watching a tiny streamer because with the 7 people in chat, they actually have the time and capacity to interact with you, or you might as well go watch Youtube, where editing magic cuts out all the dead space you usually have on a stream. And that's just interesting streamers that do actually interesting stuff, and not people like xQc that somehow make millions for producing boring reaction content all day every day.
There's just something strange that happens to people that spend all their time online like this, inhabiting various personas that just aren't real beyond the realm of the digital. Small real life communities tend to file off the rough edges of people like that because they're forced to interact with people in a way that online communities never do. I think it's a mix of attracting outsiders and the global scale of an online community.
Like every social platform, Twitch does the barest amount of moderation that it can get away with, and it culminates into shit like this every time these online communities descend into real life for a convention. I think attractive women in public spaces have always had this issue, I mean everyone knows the type of "journalism" that exists in Hollywood, exposing the private lives of movie stars like parasites, but there was still some distance. People who read that sort of stuff treated the real people involved in that drama like animals in a zoo. Streamer stalkers confuse positive interactions on a stream as something that isn't there. That's new.
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Comment on 'This is definitely my last TwitchCon': High-profile streamer Emiru was assaulted at the event, even as streamers have been sounding the alarm about stalkers and harassment in ~games
Grzmot Link ParentThe streamer having to hire a personal bodyguard is a direct consequence of Twitch's failure to enforce any sort of boundaries and security. They get the venue, they should be able to ban people...The streamer having to hire a personal bodyguard is a direct consequence of Twitch's failure to enforce any sort of boundaries and security. They get the venue, they should be able to ban people from it for the duration of the con, and keep that banlist up for future cons, so that those people do not get to enter again.
I get that being private security is a thin rope to follow, but the only reason she had to resort to it was because Twitch didn't give a fuck, and then also banned her security, directly exposing her to danger likely because their legal department got afraid of a lawsuit. This is exactly the sort of corporate process I detest, where decisions get made so far removed from the actual humans on the ground that the only thing the people making those decisions see are profit graphs, and they decided that it's cheaper to throw streamers into the meatgrinder, because new innocent fresh faces with a dream will always be pouring in.
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Comment on 'This is definitely my last TwitchCon': High-profile streamer Emiru was assaulted at the event, even as streamers have been sounding the alarm about stalkers and harassment in ~games
Grzmot LinkThis was originally posted on reddit and sparked some interesting discussion there, so I wanted to relay it here. It's just another entry in a long series of entries of Twitch not really giving a...This was originally posted on reddit and sparked some interesting discussion there, so I wanted to relay it here.
It's just another entry in a long series of entries of Twitch not really giving a damn about moderation. I suppose that's in line with literally every other social media site. I'm just surprised that they're letting this happen to Twitch partners. I guess with most kids nowadays wanting to become youtubers and streamers, maybe the company thinks its supply of fresh streamer meat is safe. Maybe they're not even thinking that far ahead and I'm giving them too much credit.
Either way, places like this need better security, I absolutely agree with the points of the streamers there. Obviously they foster these parasocial relationships to some extent to make a living, but that doesn't make what happens on the regular to them okay.
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'This is definitely my last TwitchCon': High-profile streamer Emiru was assaulted at the event, even as streamers have been sounding the alarm about stalkers and harassment
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Comment on Forgot Chrome's unusable, any recommendations? in ~tech
Grzmot Link ParentRunning Firefox with uBlock and everything works just fine? Usually CTRL+F5 fixes any issues with yt, but I've had not had those in a long time.Running Firefox with uBlock and everything works just fine?
Usually CTRL+F5 fixes any issues with yt, but I've had not had those in a long time.
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Comment on ‘I realised I’d been ChatGPT-ed into bed’: how ‘Chatfishing’ made finding love on dating apps even weirder in ~tech
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Comment on ‘I realised I’d been ChatGPT-ed into bed’: how ‘Chatfishing’ made finding love on dating apps even weirder in ~tech
Grzmot Link ParentExcept that it's not? LLMs have no internal logic, the fundamental basis of how they generate text is probability. That's why the training sets are so huge, it's just looking for something...In these cases, it seems more like a helpful and infinitely patient all-knowing assistant to one's incompetent executive.
Except that it's not? LLMs have no internal logic, the fundamental basis of how they generate text is probability. That's why the training sets are so huge, it's just looking for something similar. This is why LLMs have a weird response to being asked about seahorse emojis, for example, because a lot of people from the original training set data were not sure.
The thing is, to an uneducated user, they generate sensible appearing strings of text and can occasionally be helpful with simple queries. But they're sycophantic to a fault in a way that can be dangerous.
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Comment on ‘I realised I’d been ChatGPT-ed into bed’: how ‘Chatfishing’ made finding love on dating apps even weirder in ~tech
Grzmot Link ParentExcept it makes the process worse for everyone else. The best case scenario here is that these idiots pasting AI answers into chats get detected as more of the dating app users wisen up to this...The differentiation will be between those who use their tutor to learn the material, vs those who are hoping their tutor writes their entire papers.
Except it makes the process worse for everyone else. The best case scenario here is that these idiots pasting AI answers into chats get detected as more of the dating app users wisen up to this new system. And it will suck for everyone who turns into a false positive in the process. I don't get why people use dating apps, but I'm also not the typical target audience. This will ruin the apps even further for those for whom they function well right now.
The realistic scenario is that the chats will go well and the first date will flop. That's still a massive waste of time of everyone involved. And the person lying and using AI to get to that first date will have learned nothing, and in the process wasted everyone else's lifetime.
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Comment on Tildes Minecraft: What do you want to see in the next season? in ~games
Grzmot Link ParentYou could also hide it in a section using <details>@...</details>.You could also hide it in a section using
<details>@...</details>. -
Comment on Why I stopped being anti-woke in ~society
Grzmot LinkIt's a great video, and a great showcase of the "it's just a joke bro stop getting mad about it" to it no longer being a joke pipeline. I also enjoyed the breakdowns over the outrage industry a...It's a great video, and a great showcase of the "it's just a joke bro stop getting mad about it" to it no longer being a joke pipeline.
I also enjoyed the breakdowns over the outrage industry a lot, plus the satirical anti-woke analysis of Terminator 2 and Aliens if they came out today. They were incredibly on point.
There are a few exceptions, but I think most of those are loanwords from other languages.