Pepetto's recent activity

  1. Comment on Xteink X4 Developer Edition in ~tech

    Pepetto
    Link
    Any news on how repairable those are? It looks very glued in... Doesn't mean it's impossible to repair with a heatgun but is a bad sign. Ereaders can last decades so battery replacement is a must...

    Any news on how repairable those are? It looks very glued in... Doesn't mean it's impossible to repair with a heatgun but is a bad sign. Ereaders can last decades so battery replacement is a must (to me).

    1 vote
  2. Comment on How has inflation changed your quality of life? in ~finance

    Pepetto
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    I'm not denying that people can struggle, just that i've met plenty of people who struggle yet don't complain, and plenty of people who complain but don't struggle. (In the situation you suggest,...

    I'm not denying that people can struggle, just that i've met plenty of people who struggle yet don't complain, and plenty of people who complain but don't struggle.
    (In the situation you suggest, without my spouse, yes I would start to struggle).

    As an exemple, hearing people being horrified of not eating beef anymore sounds like " my buttler's buttler had to fire his buttler! ".
    Now obviously this was a cherrypicked exemple, i'm sure some people here do really struggle. I just wish the diva's would stop hogging the attention.

    In the end, inflation will help reduce consumption, which the planet needs. Voluntary degrowth doesn't seem very popular, inflation is the least bad alternative.

    1 vote
  3. Comment on What change would make you quit Tildes? in ~tildes

    Pepetto
    Link Parent
    Obviously (or not, apparently) I wasn't saying you are a tyrant, just that the way he apologised too much for a minor thing (you don't agree that apologising 4 times, just for suggesting the use...

    Obviously (or not, apparently) I wasn't saying you are a tyrant, just that the way he apologised too much for a minor thing (you don't agree that apologising 4 times, just for suggesting the use of AI, is too much?) seemed like he percieved you (or the tildes community, i just singled you out because he was responding to you) like one.
    It's like they're walking on eggshell, worried about being percieved as thinking "the wrong way".
    I find this kind of excessive fear can stiffle conversation.

    3 votes
  4. Comment on What change would make you quit Tildes? in ~tildes

    Pepetto
    Link Parent
    This profusion of apologies makes me uncomfortable. This makes definetlynotafae seem like some tyrant. I totally get making your intent clear and as many people as possible feel valued, which i...

    I'm going to stop saying anything now.

    I totally get that this is a hot button issue, and I'm very sorry to have said anything.

    I've made a mental note to never touch upon this subject again.

    Sincere apologies to everyone

    This profusion of apologies makes me uncomfortable. This makes definetlynotafae seem like some tyrant. I totally get making your intent clear and as many people as possible feel valued, which i think is the intent, but this is too much, i really think she can handle someone asking permission for using ML on her writting.

    1 vote
  5. Comment on How has inflation changed your quality of life? in ~finance

    Pepetto
    (edited )
    Link
    I barely noticed the inflation concretely, I just save a bit less, but I know I have most things going my way: I was brought up very frugal, I live in europe (france) where we have high taxes but...

    I barely noticed the inflation concretely, I just save a bit less, but I know I have most things going my way: I was brought up very frugal, I live in europe (france) where we have high taxes but decent (excellent by american standards) public service (mass transit, healthcare, education) / cost of living is lower, and I earn much more than i need (I live comfortably with about 500 euros a month, which includes vacation, restaurant and home maintenance, i expect my expenses will dramatically increase when we have kids).

    I will admit to being skeptical of most people claiming to struggle, as most I met IRL who did so were being financially irresponsible or had unreasonable expectation. I find it more satisfaction inducing to compare my life to the average life even just 100 years ago (regular people, not nobility) instead of the american billionaire (I have running hot water, functionally infinite free quality entertainment, and a banana for 10 minutes of minimum wage FFS).

    5 votes
  6. Comment on How has inflation changed your quality of life? in ~finance

    Pepetto
    Link Parent
    Please please please take some picture of some of your mendings to show us whats possible for us noobs! (I could definetly look it up online, but seing yours would feel much more relatable.)

    Please please please take some picture of some of your mendings to show us whats possible for us noobs!
    (I could definetly look it up online, but seing yours would feel much more relatable.)

    2 votes
  7. Comment on How I feel about LLM (AI) writing in ~tech

    Pepetto
    Link Parent
    Sounds good. not a shadow ban, just a noise tag which autocollapses the comment (IIRC), so it disincentivize growing that branch of the comment tree... I like that it doesn't require any new tool...

    Sounds good.
    not a shadow ban, just a noise tag which autocollapses the comment (IIRC), so it disincentivize growing that branch of the comment tree...
    I like that it doesn't require any new tool to be develloped, just uses what we allready have.

    1 vote
  8. Comment on How I feel about LLM (AI) writing in ~tech

    Pepetto
    Link Parent
    Hard agree on that. Maybe an "needlessly inflammatory" tag which auto-minimizes the comment? I know I'm part of this problem, but I'd enjoy a feed-back mechanism and reminder to adapt my tone...

    recently I've seen a rise in .... discourse temperature?

    Hard agree on that.

    I thought about saying something like "this sounds like the kind of thing that just gets us all upset at each other so I'm going to opt out and encourage everyone to do the same". But that's counterproductive isn't it.

    Maybe an "needlessly inflammatory" tag which auto-minimizes the comment?
    I know I'm part of this problem, but I'd enjoy a feed-back mechanism and reminder to adapt my tone properly to the local culture. Then again, some inflammatory comment can be justified in some situation?
    maybe we could make do with a culture of being extracareful to answer very calmly and call it out (in a spoiler?) when a comment is inflammatory, so we don't get a runaway flame war. I'm not holding my breath.

    5 votes
  9. Comment on When Richard Dawkins met Claude in ~health.mental

    Pepetto
    Link Parent
    For sure. (In its defense, i did instruct it to argue for "my side") I disagree, the thing we understand better should be the reference, not the more complex less well understood thing just...

    Claude will say anything the person operating it is more inclined to, eheh.

    For sure. (In its defense, i did instruct it to argue for "my side")

    In my opinion, the burden is on you, @Pepetto, and for a simple reason: the brain is the reference, as it's more complex and (much) older than computers.

    I disagree, the thing we understand better should be the reference, not the more complex less well understood thing just because it's older.

    It's probably not your case, but usually those who thinks of the brain as a kind of computer tend to level everything in computer terms, in numbers, such as Silicon Valley sociopaths that believe all our society issues (socializing, poverty, injustice, crimes) are math problems that can be solved with code. When they are able to impose this distorted vision, what we see is an impoverishing of the human experience they tackled. See social networking, probably the most recent successful endeavor, which replaced in-person interaction with likes and followings and a

    It is indeed not my case (i think). I'm convinced rationality help a lot to understand the world and guide toward a solution, but one should always keep in mind that models are imperfect and going all in on yout assumption without care is a recipe for pain (and unfortunately not just your own).

    But I'm not sure what you are getting at... The human brain cann't be some form of organic computer, because that's a world view also held by evil people?
    Many Silicon Valley Sociopath also use suncream, yet there is nothing wrong with that...
    I'm confident i could easely find some horrible groupe of people who believe in an immaterial soul, would you like me to?

    1 vote
  10. Comment on When Richard Dawkins met Claude in ~health.mental

    Pepetto
    Link Parent
    But the puppet cann't do what a human can? the human inside the puppet can do what the human can, but then equating the system [human+puppet] to a [human] is completely correct... Sometime, my...

    but that’s the same argument that a puppet is a human being.

    But the puppet cann't do what a human can? the human inside the puppet can do what the human can, but then equating the system [human+puppet] to a [human] is completely correct...

    the fact that we do not understand these things are exactly the reasons why a brain is unlike a computer. We do not understand the mechanics of them fully, which is quite different from computers which we have understand whole cloth.

    Sometime, my computer crashes and I don't know why... must be a magical computer.
    History is full of examples of things we didn't understand but still used, until we eventually did understand... We didn't understand fluid dynamics for centuries, yet water was still a physical system obeying real laws.

    Just for fun I asked Claude to come up with a response

    I could do the funniest thing and just have Claude answer himself:

    The brain is a computational system — an information-processing device whose operations can be described computationally, even if we don't yet fully grasp those descriptions. "Computer" here is a broad functional category, not a specific engineering blueprint.
    This is the consensus view in computational neuroscience, which studies "the computational principles of brain functions" without reducing the brain to a silicon PC
    The burden is actually on Akir: if the brain isn't performing computation, what is it doing when it transforms sensory inputs into adaptive behaviors, learns from experience, and represents the world?

    That's actually better than I could have said myself... (which means I suck at philosophy, I can usually tell Claude says lots of crap when it's in my field)

    Dead Internet is here everyone, we can go back to spend time with our loved ones!

    1 vote
  11. Comment on When Richard Dawkins met Claude in ~health.mental

    Pepetto
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    well, yes. but why would that stop it from being a computer? No-one here is saying the brain is an electrical appliance. just a different type of computer, an organic computer, duct-taped together...

    it is an electrochemical system. It’s far more parallel in structure than any computer system made so far.

    well, yes. but why would that stop it from being a computer? No-one here is saying the brain is an electrical appliance. just a different type of computer, an organic computer, duct-taped together by natural selection.

    and we still do not fully understand even basic things like why it needs to sleep or emotions.

    We do have pretty good guess, the day night cycle made it advantageous to have a short low-power mode to conserve resources, and then that trait became fixed as more and more new genetic innovation ended up relying on that mechanic...
    Emotion simplify complex environmental information into actionable states.

    Are those the correct explanation? maybe not, but "We I still do not fully understand" is not a very strong argument for or against anything.

    To be clear, I really don't think LLM are conscious (I'm not even 100% sure we humans are conscious and consciousness isn't just some weird illusion), but I think silicon could eventually become just as conscious as humans. Why couldn't it? only carbon has this magical property?

  12. Comment on ‘It’s shameful’: New York’s elite lash out at Zohran Mamdani’s second-home tax in ~finance

    Pepetto
    Link Parent
    I'm not sure we're actually disagreeing on much policy. But I think 'less state' and 'better state' aren't the same argument, and libertarians often conflate them. Milei's Argentina cuts spending...

    I'm not sure we're actually disagreeing on much policy.
    But I think 'less state' and 'better state' aren't the same argument, and libertarians often conflate them.
    Milei's Argentina cuts spending but also gutted university funding, destroying public goods that facilitate private enterprise.
    We must choose which institutions are worth it.
    Nordic country show us that high tax with high effective public spending can work. Low tax and barely any public service isn't such a good deal.
    Basically, corruption is what we should fight against, everything else should fall into place in time if we can nail that long term.

    10 votes
  13. Comment on ‘It’s shameful’: New York’s elite lash out at Zohran Mamdani’s second-home tax in ~finance

    Pepetto
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Well, kudos for expressing a view which is likely to get quite a lot of push back around here. Would I be correct to assume you are libertarian/classical liberal? No shame in that, I was too for a...

    Well, kudos for expressing a view which is likely to get quite a lot of push back around here.
    Would I be correct to assume you are libertarian/classical liberal? No shame in that, I was too for a long time (which isn't implying I "grew out of it" or anything suggesting I know better than you, I really don't) and somewhat still am.
    But Argentina's problem was mostly capital flight due to institutional instability, not welfare spending... and how do you explain the nordic countries as a counter point?

    You could actually hate this more: Mamdani's tax is the politically easy option, it would be much more effective to reform local zoning law and let developers build high density housing (second home owners have a pretty negligible impact on property price, not enough of them). That would actually lower property prices and it's precisely what existing homeowners, including many "leftist", fight hardest against. Everyone supports affordability until it's their neighborhood at stake (this is still the 2 chicken joke).
    But if you want politics to get out of the housing market so that it can work, you should be much more angry against Zoning than against Mamdani's tax!

    22 votes
  14. Comment on Nobody understands the point of hybrid cars in ~transport

    Pepetto
    Link Parent
    Relevant link about trolley-bus I agree, trolley bus are super cool and I'd live to see more of them!

    Relevant link about trolley-bus
    I agree, trolley bus are super cool and I'd live to see more of them!

    2 votes
  15. Comment on Nobody understands the point of hybrid cars in ~transport

    Pepetto
    Link Parent
    Well, yes (i've watch the video too you know), but if you build an overhead wire to collect the regenerative breaking energy, why use an onboard diesel generator at all? Just use the wire...

    Well, yes (i've watch the video too you know), but if you build an overhead wire to collect the regenerative breaking energy, why use an onboard diesel generator at all? Just use the wire...

  16. Comment on When Richard Dawkins met Claude in ~health.mental

    Pepetto
    Link Parent
    nothing magical happens in our brain, it's just compute, so I have no reason to believe AI cann't be just as conscious as humans (however much conscious that actually is). But maybe the AI's way...

    nothing magical happens in our brain, it's just compute, so I have no reason to believe AI cann't be just as conscious as humans (however much conscious that actually is).
    But maybe the AI's way of computing stuff doesn't lead to consciousness?

    Would you say the blink of consciousness still happens if some guy painstakingly (millions of years painstakingly) hand calculates the output of an LLM according to it's weight?

    (I don't know anymore than you, I'm just bouncing off what you said)

    6 votes
  17. Comment on Nobody understands the point of hybrid cars in ~transport

    Pepetto
    Link Parent
    If you have a catenary installed to send the regenerative breaks' energy, you might as well go full electric and ditch the diesel, right?

    If you have a catenary installed to send the regenerative breaks' energy, you might as well go full electric and ditch the diesel, right?

    1 vote
  18. Comment on Railway solar project turns unused track space into energy in ~enviro

    Pepetto
    (edited )
    Link
    At first I thought they meant to use the space on the side of each track (in the countryside, there usually about 5 meter of buffer space until the fence), so probably clever, maybe even use the...

    At first I thought they meant to use the space on the side of each track (in the countryside, there usually about 5 meter of buffer space until the fence), so probably clever, maybe even use the catenary to link it up to the grid...
    But they actually put it in between the rail! Why?
    That doesn't seem very clever, they could easely get damaged, cann't be angle toward the sun... Also, some train (most i think) don't have a septic tank, they just flush everything in between the rails... (edit: this is at least 20 years out of date, only very old trains still flush directly to the track, they now have a tank emptied every 3 days)
    I mean, I have to assume they must have thought about all that but I'm confused they went ahead anyway, maybe those aren't such big flaws?

    4 votes
  19. Comment on When Richard Dawkins met Claude in ~health.mental

    Pepetto
    Link Parent
    I know right, I'm so embarrassed to have looked up to him as a teenager... His strident atheism come backs didn't stay cool very long.

    I know right, I'm so embarrassed to have looked up to him as a teenager...
    His strident atheism come backs didn't stay cool very long.

    12 votes
  20. Comment on Why so many people are going "no contact" with their parents in ~life

    Pepetto
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    edit; pointless Definnitely, we're talking past each other.

    edit; pointless

    , I think it's time you move on.

    Definnitely, we're talking past each other.