Oxalis's recent activity
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Comment on Automation for android, preferably FOSS in ~tech
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Comment on AOL will end dial-up internet service in September, 34 years after it's debut — AOL Shield Browser and AOL Dialer software will be shuttered on the same day in ~tech
Oxalis LinkWhat began in September will end in SeptemberWhat began in September will end in September
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Comment on HBO Max to stream fifteen BritBox shows from Aug. 1st to Sept. 29th in ~tv
Oxalis LinkGiven that BritBox seems to focus on murder mysteries, it's worth noting for USA peeps that a bunch of these are available for free almost all the time on library-supported streaming platforms...Given that BritBox seems to focus on murder mysteries, it's worth noting for USA peeps that a bunch of these are available for free almost all the time on library-supported streaming platforms like Hoopla and Kanopy.
Specific titles will vary by region but my local library's... library of titles is chock-full of UK dramas and murder mysteries.
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Comment on A company called Inventwood is starting to mass-produce "superwood" in ~engineering
Oxalis LinkHouse construction is cool and all but I'd love to see furniture makers play around with this stuff. If it's as strong as they say, you could make some impossibly thin chairs and tables that would...House construction is cool and all but I'd love to see furniture makers play around with this stuff.
If it's as strong as they say, you could make some impossibly thin chairs and tables that would look bonkers and still be usable.
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Comment on Decrypted Apple Intelligence safety filters in ~tech
Oxalis (edited )LinkEDIT: as stated by Pending, this is for the assistant/Siri. Here's a good summary of what this is about: https://successquarterly.com/apple-intelligence-guardrails-exposed/ Also the hackernews...So is this giving access to the content filter models that Apple uses to mark and report illegal content on a user's iDevice?Aside from a general curiosity, the only use cases I can see here areGetting to test innocuous data and find false positives to build evidence about how lame the entire concept is.Enabling bad actors to create adversarial networks that can take illegal content and mutate it subtly so it can pass as clean.
EDIT: as stated by Pending, this is for the assistant/Siri. Here's a good summary of what this is about: https://successquarterly.com/apple-intelligence-guardrails-exposed/
Also the hackernews thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44483485
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Comment on Experience on Mastodon in ~tech
Oxalis (edited )LinkTwitter styled "everyone-in-one-room-shouting-eternally" social networks are a bad concept to begin with. For maximum interest, they need a huge numbers of users, many eagerly seeking their five...Twitter styled "everyone-in-one-room-shouting-eternally" social networks are a bad concept to begin with. For maximum interest, they need a huge numbers of users, many eagerly seeking their five seconds of viral fame. Usually that comes in the form of a joke, a cute animal photo, some kind of nsfw media, a hot take regarding [current issue], or a diss reply to a popular account.
With that said, I'm pretty burnt out on the concept and stopped posting to my twitter, bluesky, and mastodon.xyz accounts. Mastodon not really gelling with me forced me to think critically about why it wasn't meeting my needs and from there, I figured out there wasn't much in any form of microblogging that I really enjoyed to begin with.
With regards to mastodon in particular,
The fediverse puts too many technical barriers for most folks (e.g. following accounts on other instances), and the majority of the rest are sidelined by the catch-22 of any fledgling social network: Not enough users to build momentum and draw in more users. -
Comment on What is the best way to discover and listen to music? in ~music
Oxalis (edited )LinkEven though the actual reviews can be a bit... pretentious, I find sites like https://rateyourmusic.com/ and https://www.albumoftheyear.org to be useful. In particular, RateYourMusic has a really...Even though the actual reviews can be a bit... pretentious, I find sites like https://rateyourmusic.com/ and https://www.albumoftheyear.org to be useful.
In particular, RateYourMusic has a really nice collage/list system where people can put together albums under whatever theme they want: https://rateyourmusic.com/lists/ Some of them can get really esoteric like "Water Themed Vaporwave".
The site also describes releases not just by genre and sub-genre but also by music movements and "descriptors". Check out this album for an example that uses all the fields: https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/boards-of-canada/music-has-the-right-to-children/
Usually what I do is find an album I like that I would enjoy something similar to. Find its page on RYM and see if there are any interesting lists it is a part of. Then I check out its genre/subgenre/description tags and explore from there.
The last site I poke around on is https://everynoise.com/ but since the owner was a spotify dev that got laid off last year, he's put the site on life support. It's just a massive, messy map of genre names. Click on one for a sample, click the little arrows for a focused cloud of artists in that style.
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Comment on Thomas Keller asked me to leave the French Laundry. It turned into my most extraordinary night as a critic. in ~food
Oxalis LinkThat's some old-school pettiness. I wonder how Keller feels about the de-professionalization of the review industry; the endless throngs of normal folk peddling their yelp opinions on things he...That's some old-school pettiness.
I wonder how Keller feels about the de-professionalization of the review industry; the endless throngs of normal folk peddling their yelp opinions on things he probably feels they deserve no say in?
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Comment on Will the humanities survive artificial intelligence? in ~tech
Oxalis Link ParentI've only used LLMs a handful of times for one off questions so I don't really have my finger on the pulse of the state-of-the-art. That said, I've heard good things about the LLama and Qwen...I've only used LLMs a handful of times for one off questions so I don't really have my finger on the pulse of the state-of-the-art.
That said, I've heard good things about the LLama and Qwen series of 'nets. They're distilled down to be functional on consumer hardware.
The Getting Started guide I've had bookmarked for ages: https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/16y95hk/a_starter_guide_for_playing_with_your_own_local_ai/ (Might be out of date)
The community that guide came from seems like your normal enthusiast subreddit, still could be useful for finding what models are worth trying: https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/
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Comment on Will the humanities survive artificial intelligence? in ~tech
Oxalis Link ParentI don't have much to say about how this concept will play out, it's all too depressing. I do have an article from 2014 that's been sticking in my craw for over a decade now. To Siri, With Love -...I don't have much to say about how this concept will play out, it's all too depressing.
I do have an article from 2014 that's been sticking in my craw for over a decade now.
To Siri, With Love - How one boy with autism became BFF with Apple's Siri - Non-paywalled link
Seems 13 year old Gus was just ahead of the curve. His more-extreme-desire for information drove him right into Siri's grasp due to its infinite patience. That same willingness to converse will be the siren song for us all and at the same time dissolve our willingness to extend that patience to others since we've been indulged so heartily for so long.
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Comment on q5.js – Beginner friendly graphics powered by WebGPU in ~comp
Oxalis LinkAs someone that's been using Processing/P5.js since its very early days as a research project from MIT's aesthetics + computation group, I'm really happy to see a comprehensive evolution of the...As someone that's been using Processing/P5.js since its very early days as a research project from MIT's aesthetics + computation group, I'm really happy to see a comprehensive evolution of the project and its easy-to-start API.
I know there were some issues with P5.js regarding funding and project stewardship that put the mission into stasis, so seeing an API-compatible project that's aiming for massive performance gains is really great!
With all that said, it seems WebGPU is disabled on all of my privacy-first browsers, so some of the fancier demos in the docs are nonfunctional. Always a shame to have to decide between security and functionality.
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Comment on Some ChatGPT users are developing delusional beliefs that are reinforced by the large language model in ~tech
Oxalis LinkI'm amazed that the article didn't provide the 2021 murder attempt of the queen as an example of how AI can feed delusions under direction from someone with mental illness. LLM tech wasn't...I'm amazed that the article didn't provide the 2021 murder attempt of the queen as an example of how AI can feed delusions under direction from someone with mental illness.
LLM tech wasn't anywhere near as clever as it is now in 2021, and Chail wasn't using the AI "girlfriend" service as a general "how to commit murder" educator. He was just looking for gratification in the form of star wars themed role play. Somehow that devolved into a grand conspiracy that drove him to adopt a Sith Lord persona and attempt murder of a royal as revenge for the "1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre, when British troops opened fire on thousands of people who had gathered in the city of Amritsar in India".
I always cycle around to the articles that came out after the seminal rebuke of LLM's entitled "Chat-GPT is Bullshit". Scientific American has a good layman's rundown on it but here's the most useful excerpt:
[AI is Bullshit.] We don’t say this lightly. Among philosophers, “bullshit” has a specialist meaning, one popularized by the late American philosopher Harry Frankfurt. When someone bullshits, they’re not telling the truth, but they’re also not really lying. What characterizes the bullshitter, Frankfurt said, is that they just don’t care whether what they say is true. ChatGPT and its peers cannot care, so they are, in a technical sense, bullshit machines.
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Comment on Anyone on Tildes tried Bazzite or similar Fedora Atomic distros? in ~comp
Oxalis LinkI've been running Aurora (the distro that uses KDE Plasma) as my daily driver for the past 6 months. General computing and some light python/golang development. It's nice. If you unlock the *-dx...I've been running Aurora (the distro that uses KDE Plasma) as my daily driver for the past 6 months. General computing and some light python/golang development.
It's nice. If you unlock the *-dx dev mode, the additional tools are really useful.
I'm still a bit ambivalent about the entire rpm-ostree system. Installing software like normal is really frowned upon and can cause some issues when rebasing/updating but not everything can work in a flatpak as the project demands. I find myself dropping things I'm curious about due to not wanting to bother with layering.
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Comment on Mark Zuckerberg statement suggests that Meta could create ads for businesses directly, eliminating role of ad agencies in ~tech
Oxalis Link ParentI think the implication is that advertising firms were some of the most die-hard users/abusers of third-party AI tech in its early days. Now one of the top services they utilize to canvas their...I think the implication is that advertising firms were some of the most die-hard users/abusers of third-party AI tech in its early days. Now one of the top services they utilize to canvas their work in front of prospective customers has stated that they want to eliminate the middle man entirely.
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Comment on I don’t want to be famous on the Internet anymore in ~tech
Oxalis LinkI don't have much to add to this. You're definitely not alone. This tweet is over a decade old now but I still think of it whenever I ponder if putting myself out onto the...I don't have much to add to this. You're definitely not alone.
This tweet is over a decade old now but I still think of it whenever I ponder if putting myself out onto the one-big-room-humanity-screams-into (the internet) is worth it.
eventually you too will get bored of public vulnerability and become interested solely in making your apartment nicer
Maybe it's time to start looking into getting some succulents?
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Comment on The characters of plastics in ~science
Oxalis LinkAs someone currently goofing around with his first 3D printer with a hardened nozzle and heated chamber, I've been wanting a nice rundown on all the various exotic plastics out there. I love this...As someone currently goofing around with his first 3D printer with a hardened nozzle and heated chamber, I've been wanting a nice rundown on all the various exotic plastics out there. I love this format and wish it went further.
Nowadays there are so many weird offshoots available (PBT, PCTG, PMMA, PEEK, PVB, etc) out there with little work given to differentiate them aside from offering datasheets that are often difficult to compare between manufacturer. Given the wide world of use cases and how industry is mostly concerned with injection molding, it's hard to figure out what a specific plastic chemistry is best suited for in the 3DP space.
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Comment on Roku says its ads aren’t meant to be ‘interruptive’ after controversial test in ~tech
Oxalis LinkFor folks running roku devices and have the time for some DIY fun, think about either self-hosting a Pi-Hole adblocker on your network (with proper smartTV blocklist) or switching your network's...For folks running roku devices and have the time for some DIY fun, think about either self-hosting a Pi-Hole adblocker on your network (with proper smartTV blocklist) or switching your network's default DNS to a free DNS with an adblocking feature like ControlD or DNSForge.
I've used DNSForge in the US without a noticeable delay and it blocked roku's mainpage and screensaver ads. I wasn't a part of the loading video ad A/B test so I have no clue if things still work, neither does reddit/pihole discourse from what I can see.
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Comment on Passing the torch - Discord is getting a new CEO in ~tech
Oxalis LinkSo with the impending IPO and enshittification, does anyone have any hands-on experience with running (or just being in) a Matrix community at scale? The only Matrix spaces I've tried out where...So with the impending IPO and enshittification, does anyone have any hands-on experience with running (or just being in) a Matrix community at scale?
The only Matrix spaces I've tried out where small and quite dead. No one ever uploaded media nor used the voice/video chatting. So I still don't know how ready it is for prime time.
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Comment on NASA - Graphics Standards Manual (January, 1976) in ~design
Oxalis LinkGetting rid of the worm for the meatball was the stupidest decision but from what it sounds like, the older employee base at NASA never accepted the modern (in 1970s terms) look of the worm and...Getting rid of the worm for the meatball was the stupidest decision but from what it sounds like, the older employee base at NASA never accepted the modern (in 1970s terms) look of the worm and wanted the over-complicated "stencil lettering with swoops" logo back.
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Comment on What are your favorite music videos? in ~music
I haven't used an android device since 2022 so I don't know all the latest stuff but I remember these being the only FOSS automation apps that people mentioned. All are on f-droid.
Tasker is probably the best bet though and even then, I don't know if you can really connect things like calendar events and alarms together in flexible ways. Everything is getting so locked down.