LewsTherinTelescope's recent activity
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Comment on Don't contribute anything relevant in web forums like Reddit in ~tech
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Comment on Looking for DRM-free book recommendations in ~books
LewsTherinTelescope (edited )LinkAnything published by Tor Books or related imprints is DRM-free. Note that some platforms like Amazon don't respect it and add their own anyway, though; Google Play is what I use because it's a...Anything published by Tor Books or related imprints is DRM-free. Note that some platforms like Amazon don't respect it and add their own anyway, though; Google Play is what I use because it's a big enough platform to have most books you'd want while still allowing you to directly download the file if the publisher allows it, but worth looking into whether the platform(s) you already use support it or not.
More specifically this includes several popular fantasy series like Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time (more traditional epic fantasy), Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere universe (it varies but generally under the epic fantasy umbrella), Tamsyn Muir's The Locked Tomb (....it's complicated), and Travis Baldree's Legends & Lattes (cozy fantasy). I believe they also do sci-fi—I know they published Ender's Game (very well-known military sci-fi)—but I didn't start paying attention to this until relatively recently, so I'm not too familiar with their exact catalog.
Edit: added brief genre descriptions to the examples + added one more to the list for variety
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Comment on Don't contribute anything relevant in web forums like Reddit in ~tech
LewsTherinTelescope Link ParentHa, yeah, it sure can be an experience 😅 I don't tend to hang around the big places directly these days, I don't have the energy anymore. More often if I find something meaningful it's from...Ha, yeah, it sure can be an experience 😅 I don't tend to hang around the big places directly these days, I don't have the energy anymore. More often if I find something meaningful it's from searching a topic directly and then skimming until I see either a long comment or a comment with a long reply chain.
Blogs do have a lot of benefits, don't get me wrong. Raymond Chen's "The Old New Thing" is great for humorous-yet-fascinating tech stories, for example—they are the platform for truly long-form content that needs lots of formatting or that you want to present without arguing a bunch, basically the museum equivalent of social networks. But they're not very good for interactivity, and most attempts to add comment systems prove... unpopular (though it can work sometimes, depends on the software and the audience). Crossposting to a bigger platform works well for starting a discussion, but responding to a tech support post or something with "here's a link to my blog about this" is often going to trigger people's "is this a scam" senses, or just going to make it plain awkward to go back and forth between places as the chain continues.
Different softwares, different purposes.
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Comment on Don't contribute anything relevant in web forums like Reddit in ~tech
LewsTherinTelescope Link ParentI've pretty regularly had interesting discussions on Reddit, though I know that's not everyone's experience. That said, it's definitely more common for me on medium-sized subs, where there's...- Exemplary
I've pretty regularly had interesting discussions on Reddit, though I know that's not everyone's experience. That said, it's definitely more common for me on medium-sized subs, where there's enough people to get a lot of viewpoints but not enough that it becomes a YouTube comment section, but it does happen even in the bigger places too, just less often.
I'm not sure what the answer is, to be honest. In a perfect world people would move to a better platform that solves the issues the article talks about, but the infrastructure generally isn't set up for it outside the big companies, and I'm not sure what could cause a true migration—mods practically shut down the site for several days recently yet the only long-term result was it growing 1.5x in active users over the past year and becoming profitable for the first time in its history. Alternatives have gotten bigger, but they're still minuscule compared to the "big guys"—see also Twitter's stubborn refusal to die, even with smaller groups moving to places like Bluesky. And when people do move it's often to Discord, which—while pretty good as a chat app—is even worse for archival, searchability, and customizable experience than central forums are.
More specifically thinking of sites like Reddit or Tildes, part of what makes that threaded forum design great is they're a middle ground of sorts between the older more open formats. They have flexibility for long posts reminiscent of blogs, capacity for fast interaction reminiscent of instant chats, threadability reminiscent of email, and discoverability/categorization reminiscent of traditional forums. They aren't the best at any of what they do, but they're good enough at all of them in a way that makes them perfect for the sorts of discussions that (at their brightest) they draw people toward hosting on them. It's hard to truly replace that with any other style of platform, and unfortunately none of the alternatives like Lemmy or Kbin have caught much traction.
Private platforms also tend to have a more polished experience than open clones, which practically speaking is going to keep casual users on them despite the long-term issues and accessibility problems. Even as someone who I'd like to think is more open to such things, I find myself frustrated by all sorts of little conveniences I'm used to being missing like keyboard shortcuts for formatting when I just want to say something short and quick. They simply don't have access to the same development resources that a big company does unless they're something huuuge like Linux or Git, and as much as the inevitable enshittification is a major problem, many will stick to a place with too many useless features over a place with too few normalized ones. (That said the network size effect is probably the bigger blocker, this just adds extra friction to getting the ball rolling.)
I just have no idea what solution is viable, it feels like they all lead back to the same place eventually.
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Comment on Don't contribute anything relevant in web forums like Reddit in ~tech
LewsTherinTelescope LinkIt's an interesting article and I appreciate the in-depth breakdown of the issues with such places, but "just don't interact with where the vast, vast, vast majority of people are online" doesn't...It's an interesting article and I appreciate the in-depth breakdown of the issues with such places, but "just don't interact with where the vast, vast, vast majority of people are online" doesn't feel like a practical solution to the problem to me. Yes, it sucks that if you reply to someone it likely won't be archived and will eventually disappear compared to more open platforms, but simply never replying at all doesn't really seem like better distribution of information to me?
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Comment on Billions in election bets are raising the stakes in the US presidential race in ~society
LewsTherinTelescope Link ParentRight, but if only 12% of them tend to be right that suggests what they think is not a particularly useful metric, no? Or am I just misunderstanding what that means?Right, but if only 12% of them tend to be right that suggests what they think is not a particularly useful metric, no? Or am I just misunderstanding what that means?
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Comment on Billions in election bets are raising the stakes in the US presidential race in ~society
LewsTherinTelescope Link ParentI think I'm not understanding what prediction means, then.I think I'm not understanding what prediction means, then.
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Comment on Billions in election bets are raising the stakes in the US presidential race in ~society
LewsTherinTelescope Link ParentFrom the article: I admit I don't know the math behind betting market statistics, but that doesn't sound like a terribly accurate prediction mechanism to me?From the article:
The majority of Polymarket’s 210,000 users have lost modest amounts of money on the platform, according to the analytics site LayerHub, and as of Friday only 12 percent of users have made a profit.
I admit I don't know the math behind betting market statistics, but that doesn't sound like a terribly accurate prediction mechanism to me?
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Comment on Reddit moderators will now have to submit a request to switch their subreddit from public to private in ~tech
LewsTherinTelescope Link ParentI think at some point they tried some sort of crypto thing for compensation, but no idea what became of that.I think at some point they tried some sort of crypto thing for compensation, but no idea what became of that.
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Comment on Reddit moderators will now have to submit a request to switch their subreddit from public to private in ~tech
LewsTherinTelescope Link ParentI don't know if I'd agree with that, at least on the subreddits I help moderate. We do report spam and ban evasion to the admins, but it still goes through us first and we usually have to take...I don't know if I'd agree with that, at least on the subreddits I help moderate. We do report spam and ban evasion to the admins, but it still goes through us first and we usually have to take action while we wait for a response (though the automatic spam filters have been getting better lately). Pretty much everything else we handle entirely ourselves.
Though I think I may not be understanding the distinction you're drawing between "content quality and character" and other types of content moderation.
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Comment on Reddit moderators will now have to submit a request to switch their subreddit from public to private in ~tech
LewsTherinTelescope Link ParentAccording to the article you can still limit it to approved posters for up to seven days without an admin request using some new "Temporary Events" feature, which is better than nothing at least....According to the article you can still limit it to approved posters for up to seven days without an admin request using some new "Temporary Events" feature, which is better than nothing at least.
Though ironically this means it wouldn't actually have stopped the latest wave of protests anyway.
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Comment on Libgen must pay publishers $30M [following a US court ruling], but no one knows who runs it in ~tech
LewsTherinTelescope Link ParentOne of my professors would upload the PDFs to the class page with Z-Library's URL still in the filename lol.One of my professors would upload the PDFs to the class page with Z-Library's URL still in the filename lol.
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Comment on Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the US, allowing him to go free in ~news
LewsTherinTelescope Link ParentThe article includes a quote saying "This was an independent decision made by the Department of Justice and there was no White House involvement in the plea deal decision", depending on how much...The article includes a quote saying "This was an independent decision made by the Department of Justice and there was no White House involvement in the plea deal decision", depending on how much stock you put in those sorts of statements.
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Comment on Minimalist Android launcher recommendations in ~tech
LewsTherinTelescope LinkI used to use HgLauncher, which is pretty much just a search bar, a dock, and an alphabetical apps list. Unfortunately it doesn't support shortcuts last I checked (at least I think that was the...I used to use HgLauncher, which is pretty much just a search bar, a dock, and an alphabetical apps list. Unfortunately it doesn't support shortcuts last I checked (at least I think that was the issue), so instead I've been using TinyBit configured to replicate it as closely as possible. Might be able to use the latter to get what you want as long as you have another app with a checklist widget, but I haven't done much customization besides what was necessary to copy Hg so I'm not certain.
I don't remember why I decided against KISS tbh. I think it was missing something but I've forgotten what.
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Comment on YouTube tests harder-to-block server-side ad injection in videos in ~tech
LewsTherinTelescope LinkDoes this screw with timestamped links or have they accounted for that?Does this screw with timestamped links or have they accounted for that?
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Comment on ‘Impossible’ to create AI tools like ChatGPT without copyrighted material, OpenAI says in ~tech
LewsTherinTelescope Link ParentNote that they aren't just talking about full books, here's the actual quote cited in the article that the headline is from: For proper stories I can at least see the argument—and if nothing else...Note that they aren't just talking about full books, here's the actual quote cited in the article that the headline is from:
“Because copyright today covers virtually every sort of human expression – including blog posts, photographs, forum posts, scraps of software code, and government documents – it would be impossible to train today’s leading AI models without using copyrighted materials. Limiting training data to public domain books and drawings created more than a century ago might yield an interesting experiment, but would not provide AI systems that meet the needs of today’s citizens.”
For proper stories I can at least see the argument—and if nothing else they should have to buy the book—but I dunno if extending that to "pay every Twitter user per Tweet" is as reasonable. (No idea about the legality though, I'm talking in the plain ethics sense.)
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Comment on I used to love Marvel. Now it feels like homework in ~tv
LewsTherinTelescope LinkThere's some truth to the MCU being more of a slog now, but I don't know about some specific points. Maybe it's because I'm used to books where series entries requiring each other is by far the...There's some truth to the MCU being more of a slog now, but I don't know about some specific points.
I shouldn't need to know exactly who did what and when in the first season of Loki to understand the upcoming second season. The MCU is just too much now.
Maybe it's because I'm used to books where series entries requiring each other is by far the norm, but why is "you should watch Season 1 to understand Season 2" an example of being "too much"? The later WandaVision example works better.
The movies of summer 2023 weren’t Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 or The Flash, but Barbie—a fun feminist romp, even if it was based on a brand—and Oppenheimer, a three-hour biopic about a scientist.
Barbenheimer is the meme of the summer for certain, but it's not exactly like Guardians 3 was unsuccessful, and Across the Spider-Verse (although not MCU) hit rather high both on the financial scale and the meme scale. Sure, it's not the heights of Endgame, but the genre's far from dead.
While I of course can't speak as to what this writer individually is tired of, when it comes to the general trend I don't think "superhero fatigue" is the problem. If the reason Black Widow and *shudders* Eternals were met with tepid reactions is because people are tired of superheroes, how did No Way Home—a multiversal superhero movie relying on at least eight other films for the full experience—become the highest-grossing Marvel film behind Endgame itself, and why did Shang-Chi get a warm welcome? All four released in the span of six months, but they were received entirely differently.
People aren't tired of superheroes, multiverses, or shared worlds, they're tired of mediocre movies.
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Comment on Subreddit migration directory - Subreddits migrating to Lemmy instances in ~tech
LewsTherinTelescope Link ParentNot exactly what you're suggesting, but on Firefox there's the extension Kbin Link (despite the name it supports Lemmy too) which provides a button next to community links that opens them on your...Not exactly what you're suggesting, but on Firefox there's the extension Kbin Link (despite the name it supports Lemmy too) which provides a button next to community links that opens them on your home instance. Still more friction than a non-federated site like Reddit or Tildes, though; unsure if there's a technical reason an extension that allows subscribing directly won't work or if it was just easier to implement this way.
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Comment on What was your first programming language, what languages do you know now, and what tips do you have for those trying to learn any of those? in ~comp
LewsTherinTelescope Link ParentI haven't and I suspect I'm much happier that way 😂I haven't and I suspect I'm much happier that way 😂
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Comment on What was your first programming language, what languages do you know now, and what tips do you have for those trying to learn any of those? in ~comp
LewsTherinTelescope LinkJavaScript was my first (gotta learn how to hackerman with the browser devtools on the school computer!); at this point I have varying degrees of ability with that, Java, Kotlin, Python, and a...JavaScript was my first (gotta learn how to hackerman with the browser devtools on the school computer!); at this point I have varying degrees of ability with that, Java, Kotlin, Python, and a tiiiny bit of Haskell knowledge, though I wouldn't describe myself as great with any of them.
My advice for beginning is the same no matter which you go with: pick something small that you want to do, and learn how to do that one thing. Then pick something else you want to do and learn how to do that, rinse and repeat. That way you can make visible progress and have things to be proud of along the way, which is important for maintaining investment. It's pretty generic advice, but has been very useful for me.
Don't really have advice for advanced users since I'm not there yet, maybe someday I will!
Ba'alzylophone, you mean?