RoyalHenOil's recent activity
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Comment on A lukewarm defense of LLMs in ~tech
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Comment on The American suburbs are better than you think in ~life
RoyalHenOil LinkI've lived urban, suburban, and rural, and I haven't found that my level of loneliness is affected by the type of setting. I end up hanging out with the same number of people no matter where I am....I've lived urban, suburban, and rural, and I haven't found that my level of loneliness is affected by the type of setting. I end up hanging out with the same number of people no matter where I am.
However, the quality of my socializing isn't the only factor in my mental health. The quality of my solitude matters just as much, and that does depend a lot on the type of setting. In particular, I go stir crazy very quickly if I can't regularly (ideally an hour or two daily) spend time outdoors in a natural-ish setting away from other people.
Most of my experiences with urban spaces don't really allow for this, because all the parks are constantly filled up with people. Some surburban areas are fine, but others aren't. It depends a lot on things like how many parks there are relative to the local population, how large and secluded the backyards are, how much tree cover or shrubbery there is around to create a sense of isolation, etc. And some rural areas honestly aren't much better than the suburbs.
I'm very lucky to live in a rural area now that has tons of parks and trails through wooded areas where I can be alone, as well parks that are more open and communal where I meet other people (with better than even odds that I'll run into people I know, since it's a small town). And these parks are so vast and interconnected that I can easily walk between them to get differing levels of social interaction or solitude depending on my mood.
So I guess my opinion is that parks are what make the difference. I like more parks and more kinds of parks, and I like them to be as accessible as possible. That's probably more achievable in areas with lower population density, but it's certainly no guarantee.
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Comment on Popcorn! What's the best way to make it? in ~food
RoyalHenOil Link ParentI have a Whirley Pop with nylon gears and an aluminum body. My partner and I have been using it a long time, probably in the ballpark of 10 years by this point, used approximately weekly. It's...I have a Whirley Pop with nylon gears and an aluminum body. My partner and I have been using it a long time, probably in the ballpark of 10 years by this point, used approximately weekly. It's still going strong. We've never had to repair it or replace any parts.
It does have some aesthetic flaws — oil stains (as you would expect), the wooden handle has gone a bit cloudy because we occasionally put it in the dishwasher, and it's dented in the corner where my partner dropped it on the floor one time — but none of them affect its ability to make great popcorn.
I suspect the metal gears might be intended for commercial purposes (like a Whirley Pop that's getting used many times a day, day after day). For home use, nylon should be fine.
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Comment on Pete Hegseth barred trans troops. US military boards are rejecting those orders. in ~society
RoyalHenOil LinkIt's interesting to me that it's the Navy and the Marines who are denying Hegseth's orders, considering how different their cultures are: andIt's interesting to me that it's the Navy and the Marines who are denying Hegseth's orders, considering how different their cultures are:
The Navy has nearly twice as many people who identify as gay, bisexual or transgender — 9 percent — compared to other branches, according to a 2015 report by the RAND Corporation.
and
The Marine Corps has the lowest reported percentage of women, gay and transgender personnel. It also has a tradition-bound culture based on masculine toughness. But Marines have an almost cultlike loyalty to fellow Marines, expressed in their motto, Semper Fidelis — Always Faithful.
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Comment on #YesAllMen #NotAllMen #MaybeSomeMen How to be better? in ~life.men
RoyalHenOil Link ParentThis thread is about men, so it makes sense for the comments to be about men as well. I think it's entirely fair for the men participating to talk about their experiences as men and not opine so...This thread is about men, so it makes sense for the comments to be about men as well. I think it's entirely fair for the men participating to talk about their experiences as men and not opine so much on the experiences that women have. I would much rather speak about my own experience as a woman (when relevant to the conversation) than read a dialogue between a group of men conjecturing about experiences none of them have had.
Personally, I think @crypticcuriosity629 has navigated this supremely prickly subject exceptionally well. (If anything, I think they're too cautious and hedging, but it's completely understandable given their previous experiences in online spaces. It honestly sounds pretty traumatizing.)
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Comment on #YesAllMen #NotAllMen #MaybeSomeMen How to be better? in ~life.men
RoyalHenOil Link ParentI just want to say that I agree with everything you're saying here, and I completely understand your anxiety bringing it up. A lot of men I know have admitted similar anxiety to me. I think...I just want to say that I agree with everything you're saying here, and I completely understand your anxiety bringing it up. A lot of men I know have admitted similar anxiety to me.
I think something people forget is that it's not just men who encounter these communities. It's also boys — potentially very young boys. And this content can also be very damaging to girls (I know it would have been extremely harmful to me to encounter it when I was middle school age, and that's also the age I was most active in online communities and would have been most likely to encounter it if I'd been born just 5-10 years later).
It's not limited to gender discourse, either. Some of the most seemingly random, innocuous subjects can spawn incredibly toxic communities. I don't think the subject matter itself is what causes this. It just seems to be human nature for a subset of the population to snowball into the most vile bullies (and far worse, looking at the historical record) when they aren't kept in check by moderating forces.
I don't know what the solution is. Asking people to change or bullying them back doesn't work, and many of the legislative ideas I've seen are pretty frightening from a privacy standpoint. Directly targeting social media algorithms that push controversy into everyone's feeds would likely help, but it can't eliminate self-organizing communities where many of the worst abuses occur, like private Discord groups that people create and join voluntarily.
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Comment on #YesAllMen #NotAllMen #MaybeSomeMen How to be better? in ~life.men
RoyalHenOil Link ParentIt's very common for cliques to form on the internet because it's easy for people to leave or stop interacting with a community whenever they see some bullying crop up — which, in practice, means...It's very common for cliques to form on the internet because it's easy for people to leave or stop interacting with a community whenever they see some bullying crop up — which, in practice, means hostile corners of the internet gradually drive everyone else away and reinforce their own hostility to ridiculous levels.
It sounds to me like you stumbled across just such a community, and a particularly bad one. They'll try to tell you they're representative of women at large (stock standard abuse technique: convincing the victim that the bully is always right and the victim always wrong, and no sane third party would ever sympathize with the victim) — but, fortunately, you're in a good position to judge because you can simply ask women you know.
To the best of your ability, I would disregard hostile communities and try not to let them color your perception of yourself or other people. The group you stumbled into are not activists, they're not trying to help women (believe me, in communities like that, women who in any way question the bullying they witness get an over-the-top hostile reception as well), and they don't offer any practical strategies for tackling the problems they keep beating everyone over the head with — and will actively tear down any solution somebody might come up with (as you yourself observed) because it undermines the abusive stranglehold they have on that corner of the internet (similar to how an abusive spouse or parent constantly undercuts the victim's attempts to make peace and somehow always manages to turn it around on the victim).
People who are actually fighting to make a change in the world encourage curious onlookers and welcome people who are potentially receptive to their message. They might still disagree with many of the opinions you offer, but they'll make an effort to explain their arguments without being alienating (which they might not necessarily succeed at, but at least they're trying), and part of their argument will include volunteering alternative solutions to the ones you have proposed. They may use logic or they may use emotional appeal but, either way, their goal is to get you on board, not beat you up.
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Comment on Looking for advice: How do I find out what stocks to invest into? in ~finance
RoyalHenOil Link ParentYeah, that's why I opted for GLDM over the other gold funds.Yeah, that's why I opted for GLDM over the other gold funds.
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Comment on Alberta voters reject plan for referendum to leave Canada in ~society
RoyalHenOil Link ParentI'm not too familiar with Canadian law, but in many (most?) places around the world, citizens cannot be legally compelled to vote, so voluntary referenda are the best they can do, imperfect as...I'm not too familiar with Canadian law, but in many (most?) places around the world, citizens cannot be legally compelled to vote, so voluntary referenda are the best they can do, imperfect as they are.
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Comment on Exposing AdFection - how Discover-Tech turned targeted ads into a pipeline for zero-click mercenary spyware in ~tech
RoyalHenOil Link Parent"Candiru" is the first thing that jumped out at me! A semi-parasitic fish that burrows into the gills of other fish to siphon the blood directly from their arteries (and, according to urban..."Candiru" is the first thing that jumped out at me! A semi-parasitic fish that burrows into the gills of other fish to siphon the blood directly from their arteries (and, according to urban legend, might mistake your urethra for gills if you pee in the water, since fish release urea through their gills).
So they're not even trying to pretend they aren't evil.
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Comment on Looking for advice: How do I find out what stocks to invest into? in ~finance
RoyalHenOil (edited )Link ParentThe safest ETFs, where you should invest the bulk of your savings, are the ones that are not industry-specific and instead follow very broad markets, such as the world market (like VT). Depending...The safest ETFs, where you should invest the bulk of your savings, are the ones that are not industry-specific and instead follow very broad markets, such as the world market (like VT).
Depending on your preferences, you might decide to invest in two or three broad-market ETFs so that you can weight your investments the way you want them. For example, if you want to weight the USA more heavily or less heavily than VT weights it, you might decide to skip VT altogether and instead invest in VTI (the US market) and VEU (the world market excluding the US) at the ratio you desire.
Most people weight their investments fairly heavily toward the country or the region where they live, but it depends. For example, I live in Australia, but I have weighted my investments heavily toward Europe because I hope/expect Australia to become more deeply enmeshed with the EU over the next couple of decades. I also wanted to reduce my exposure to the US market because it's too risky for my tastes right now (too much Nvidia). In practice, this means I've invested some in VT (the general world market), some in VEU (the world market excluding the US), and some in VGK (the European market). These three are the great bulk of my investments, about 75% taken together.
It's also not a bad idea to invest some (maybe 10%?) of your portfolio in ETFs for something that isn't the stock market, as a hedge against certain kinds of economic upheaval. Bonds and gold are very popular options. For example, when Trump took office, I invested in a gold ETF (GLDM) as a hedge against inflation.
If you feel like playing the stock market a little, you can invest in more specialized ETFs that are focused on specific markets or that track a smaller number of companies (such as the S&P 500). But this is completely optional, and I suggest making it only a portion of your total investments, since it can be more risky.
How large or small that portion should be depends on your age. As a general rule, if you're a long way off from retirement, you can make more high-risk-high-reward investments. As you get closer to retirement, you want to move toward steadier investments. Personally, I decided not to invest more than 10-15% this way, and I'll wind that down to 0% as I near retirement. I'll also increase the percentage of funds I put into gold and bonds, since they don't really make much money, but they usually do a very good job of protecting the money you do invest.
However, plenty of people happily invest everything in just a single broad-market ETF like VT for their entire lives, and they do very well for themselves.
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Comment on Why is there no word for please in the Nordic languages – are their speakers simply more direct, or is politeness expressed in ways outsiders may not immediately recognise in ~humanities.languages
RoyalHenOil (edited )Link ParentIn my experience, Australians don't care too much for the standard American accent, but they go nuts for more obscure accents — especially Southern accents. To Americans, even the general...In my experience, Australians don't care too much for the standard American accent, but they go nuts for more obscure accents — especially Southern accents.
To Americans, even the general Australian accent is pretty obscure. But Americans do seem to go nuts for the more rare broad (rural) accents in particular. Every American who's visited me here loves the accents they hear in the city, but they really grin ear to ear when they visit the tiny farming hamlet where I live (and the feeling is mutual when my visitors have Southern accents).
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Comment on Why is there no word for please in the Nordic languages – are their speakers simply more direct, or is politeness expressed in ways outsiders may not immediately recognise in ~humanities.languages
RoyalHenOil Link ParentIn my experience, Australians are quite a bit more outgoing with strangers than, say, people from London or people from New York. But people from the southern US (and especially people from the...In my experience, Australians are quite a bit more outgoing with strangers than, say, people from London or people from New York. But people from the southern US (and especially people from the majority Black and Hispanic neighborhoods where I grew up) are much more chatty with strangers still.
Where I grew up, I'm considered abnormally reserved and untalkative around strangers. But at least around Melbourne, and even in the tiny Victorian town where I live now, people have noted that I interact with strangers way more than they're used to (and that's with me actively suppressing that cultural instinct).
All that being said, I've found Australians universally receptive to being chatted with this way. They just won't be the one to make the first move in most cases.
I wouldn't describe Australians as "unpolished" so much as "refreshingly casual" — which I suspect is a facet being highly egalitarian and anti-hierarchical. Where I grew up, there's a lot more social ranking and bigotry, more standardized etiquette, and more code switching (where the etiquette you follow depends heavily on context), which is difficult to navigate and pretty oppressive feeling.
Here, it feels a lot closer to just having one mode you talk to everybody in, and that mode is very close and familiar — lots of banter, casual swearing, and so on thrown around, even if you're talking to your grandma or to your coworkers. There are some downsides to it (like being unpracticed reining that in and adapting to local standards of etiquette while traveling), but for the most part, I love it. It's what we call "folksy" back home.
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Comment on Why is there no word for please in the Nordic languages – are their speakers simply more direct, or is politeness expressed in ways outsiders may not immediately recognise in ~humanities.languages
RoyalHenOil Link ParentThank you, that was very interesting! I've lived in Australia for over a decade now, and I somehow haven't noticed what the norm is here, which makes me think it must be similar to US norms. I...Thank you, that was very interesting!
I've lived in Australia for over a decade now, and I somehow haven't noticed what the norm is here, which makes me think it must be similar to US norms. I don't think people read me as rude here. Instead, they tend to read me as friendly/outgoing (I'm actually supremely introverted, but I grew up in the South), and I read them as shy/reserved.
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Comment on 1 in 8 Billion - Browser game, free, life sim with real statistics from 172 countries in ~games
RoyalHenOil LinkI was a man born on a farm in rural northern Côte d'Ivoire. I never knew my father, and my mother and teachers beat me for being forgetful (undiagnosed ADHD). I was forced to drop out of school at...I was a man born on a farm in rural northern Côte d'Ivoire. I never knew my father, and my mother and teachers beat me for being forgetful (undiagnosed ADHD). I was forced to drop out of school at age 12 due to mediocre grades (even though I prioritized knowledge) and my mother's death.
I had a great love of football/soccer, and I worked as a driver for a few years. I tried to get a better job, but ultimately ended up as a farmer because I couldn't find anything better (despite trying very, very hard to).
My first girlfriend dumped me. I dumped my second girlfriend (due to her student debt). I ended up in an arranged marriage with a street vendor with no debt and a modest income, and we were extremely close/in love my whole life. I turned down the option to marry a second wife because she didn't want me to.
We bought a house and had five children (most of them were even planned!), and I made a decision to never hit them like I'd been hit. I went into debt to pay for their education, and they all five completed high school and went on to get good, stable jobs (e.g., factory work). I was extremely close to all of them, especially my third daughter.
I never owned a vehicle of any type, but when my children were old enough to send me money, I acquired a refrigerator in my home for the first time. Two of my daughters started families before I died, and I had four grandchildren.
I died at 69 of typhoid fever at maximum happiness and relationships, very high health (other than the fever), and reasonable knowledge (around 55) given I never made it past primary school.
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Comment on Why is there no word for please in the Nordic languages – are their speakers simply more direct, or is politeness expressed in ways outsiders may not immediately recognise in ~humanities.languages
RoyalHenOil (edited )Link ParentI feel similar about politeness in English. If I went to a restaurant and said to the waiter, "Can I have the toast?" I would feel suitably polite. But if I said, "Can I please have the toast?" I...I feel similar about politeness in English. If I went to a restaurant and said to the waiter, "Can I have the toast?" I would feel suitably polite.
But if I said, "Can I please have the toast?" I would feel overly insistent, and maybe even outright rude depending on how much emphasis I put into the word 'please' (more emphasis = more rude).
But it depends on context. In a scenario where I'm asking for something that isn't expected (like if I'm visiting my parents and get a sudden hankering for some toast), I'd feel fine saying, "Could you make me some toast please?" so long as I'm not emphasizing 'please' too hard (unless I do it in a jokey way, like, "Please oh please, could you make me some toast? I'm dying.").
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Comment on Someone ‘torturing’ LLMs in a robot prison has triggered the dumbest debate in AI yet in ~tech
RoyalHenOil Link ParentAgreed. We don't know how to identify consciousness effectively (e.g., see debates on which animals are conscious, and even which of our own brain processes are conscious), or even exactly what...Agreed. We don't know how to identify consciousness effectively (e.g., see debates on which animals are conscious, and even which of our own brain processes are conscious), or even exactly what consciousness is. I don't think we can make any definitive claims at this point, and I'd prefer to err on the side of caution.
That being said, if LLMs do experience anything that could potentially be classified as consciousness, I think it's highly likely that it's very unlike our own consciousness, and I'd be deeply surprised if things that make us feel good or hurt our feelings would have the same effect on an LLM, since they don't share our brain chemistry in any way, shape, or form. They are truly alien.
Even if someone could definitely prove that LLMs aren't conscious, I do think it's still good policy to require people to interact with LLMs politely, just to discourage harmful communication habits. These things have a way of bleeding out into real life.
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Comment on Given everything we know about AI so far, what do you think it can or cannot be good for? in ~tech
RoyalHenOil Link ParentI wouldn't even necessarily be opposed to seeing a movie, listening to a song, or reading a book that was AI-generated — if any of them were actually interesting. I'm not even asking for them to...I wouldn't even necessarily be opposed to seeing a movie, listening to a song, or reading a book that was AI-generated — if any of them were actually interesting. I'm not even asking for them to be good.
In the past, I have enjoyed some AI-generated things that were unintentionally funny, like Will Smith eating spaghetti, but those were the early days of gen AI when it wasn't so great at replicating its training data. That poor replication gave it some semblance of creativity. Now it's gotten so "good" that everything it makes is dull.
I guess its creations could be interesting from an anthropological or historical standpoint — like, here is the most generic example of this genre at this exact point in time, which might be a useful way to compare different genres or to study AI technology itself — but nothing I've seen gen AI create in the last couple of years has been very interesting for its own sake.
I think if gen AI were developed to be truly inventive, and not simply an attempted simulation of human creativity (which it will never be able to do as well as humans because it doesn't have human experiences to inform these choices), there might actually be some cool stuff it could do. Other kinds of AI, such as genetic algorithms, come up with some incredibly unique solutions to problems because they're not boxed in by trying to design the way a human designs — and so I find myself much more intrigued by what they create, despite being far older and far simpler than modern gen AI.
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Comment on The return of phones with physical keyboards? in ~tech
RoyalHenOil Link ParentI find phone swiping to make a lot of mistakes. For example, it almost never wants to write "staring" (it thinks I want "starting", or occasionally "staying") even if I swipe very slowly and...I find phone swiping to make a lot of mistakes. For example, it almost never wants to write "staring" (it thinks I want "starting", or occasionally "staying") even if I swipe very slowly and carefully. I have to select the right word out of a list, which slows me down, or go back later and correct words like this, which is even slower.
Swiping with my phone also irritates my hand and wrist if I do it for too long. I have some kind of tendinitis that seems to be triggered specifically by typing with a phone or using a trackpad.
I'm not sure how I'd do with a physical phone keyboard. I've never used one. But if it fixed the tendinitis issue, it would be worth it for me.
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Comment on Amazon uses its tracking data to guess whether shoppers have a flat butt and no friends in ~tech
RoyalHenOil (edited )Link ParentIt's not a feature in Australia, either, and we don't have an equivalent to GDPR. I do have an American Amazon account that I use for eBook purchases, but that account doesn't list any information...It's not a feature in Australia, either, and we don't have an equivalent to GDPR.
I do have an American Amazon account that I use for eBook purchases, but that account doesn't list any information about me whatsoever, so I guess they're ignoring Kindle data:
We haven't saved anything yet. As you shop on Amazon or chat with Alexa, we'll save helpful information to personalize your experience.
A bit of a shame because I'd actually like book recommendations based on what I like to read.
I'm a frequent user of em dashes (as well as semicolons, etc.), and I've never used that dot symbol. I've rarely ever even seen it used, to the extent that I didn't recognize it at first and wondered if you were talking about bullet points. But then I remembered that Word uses that dot to represent spaces when you set it to markdown mode.
I wonder why LLMs like to latch onto certain obscure things so much.
Part of my day job involves editing text written by SMEs. Recently, some of the SMEs I work with have started using LLMs to help write the text, and I can very easily tell which parts the LLMs have written and which parts they wrote themselves. I still have to heavily edit both kinds of text; I'm just correcting different problems — more typos and grammatical errors with the human text (quick and easy to spot and fix), more structural issues with the generated text (more challenging to fix, especially since I'm not an expert on the subject matter myself). I hope it saves them time, because it sure doesn't save me any.
I've been using LLMs to help me edit, and I've found they also do much better editing human-written text than LLM-generated text. With editing human text, an LLM can halve the time it takes me to get through the work, but with editing LLM text, I can't tell that there's any time savings to be had. LLMs mostly don't notice the issues I'm seeing, and I have to hand-hold them through the process.