Grumble4681's recent activity
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Comment on An insight into looksmaxxxing/blackpill "ideology" in ~life
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Comment on Ilhan Omar says she isn’t a multimillionaire, blames accounting error in ~society
Grumble4681 Link ParentSo in effect one probably just needs to post the text to a pastebin style site and link that instead?So in effect one probably just needs to post the text to a pastebin style site and link that instead?
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Comment on Ring camera is getting more and more annoying in ~tech
Grumble4681 LinkThe way I related/look at it is through the Alexa Echo Dot speakers I bought years back. They were basically the cheapest game in town, and I was using them for voice controls of other smart...The way I related/look at it is through the Alexa Echo Dot speakers I bought years back. They were basically the cheapest game in town, and I was using them for voice controls of other smart devices I had, even once I set up HomeAssistant I was still using Alexa for voice controls. In that specific case I had turned on/off all security and privacy settings I could find as I would go through every nook and cranny of the settings I could find, minimized as much of the advertising or nuisance elements of it as I could, and then just tried to get as much value out of what I paid for it. Pretty sure they do similar things with those speakers as you mentioned with the Ring camera where they add new stuff you have to turn off.
I haven't taken my speakers out of storage for awhile to know what they are like nowadays but I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to using them again depending on how much shittier they may be now. The interesting thing about them before is they didn't have a good way to advertise, but now that they've baked in LLMs to Alexa I'm not sure if that's still the case anymore. I was just using it to turn off lights or turn on a TV or something so I really never needed it to tell me anything, I just wanted it to execute a command, so other than Amazon was able to collect my speech data or something like that I felt like I got decent value from it because they didn't have a good way to monetize it against me at the time.
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Comment on Medium term cold storage options? in ~comp
Grumble4681 Link ParentI don't use Syncthing, but on the website it says this That seems to indicate that it still port forwards, but through UPnP rather than through explicit port forwarding rules. There are other ways...I don't use Syncthing, but on the website it says this
Simple. Syncthing doesn’t need IP addresses or advanced configuration: it just works, over LAN and over the Internet. Every machine is identified by an ID. Give your ID to your friends, share a folder and watch: UPnP will do if you don’t want to port forward or you don’t know how.
That seems to indicate that it still port forwards, but through UPnP rather than through explicit port forwarding rules. There are other ways as well, looking at their docs, it links to a list of relays and if these are full relays, then they're transferring whatever data you're syncing in full (encrypted), and you can see on that list of relays the speeds at which some of them operate. It's not necessarily blazing fast, which is typical/common for relays. The other way around these options, which is what Tailscale and similar services do, is use a middle-man server to coordinate NAT hole punching in firewalls between different client devices to help them establish a direct connection.
So Tailscale likely still represents a better solution in some cases, because Tailscale can establish direct connections rather than being bottlenecked by whatever speeds a relay is capable of handling.
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Comment on AI populism's warning shots in ~society
Grumble4681 Link ParentI didn't know that term so thanks for enlightening me of that. You're correct, I agree that isn't what was happening here. My apologies for assuming you didn't vet it, I made an assumption that...You're totally right that the gish gallop is a real thing, but I think you'd agree that that's clearly not what's happening here.
I didn't know that term so thanks for enlightening me of that. You're correct, I agree that isn't what was happening here. My apologies for assuming you didn't vet it, I made an assumption that because there wasn't much of any extrapolation on that data within the comment that linked to it that you didn't vet it, so clearly that assumption was wrong.
To try to simplify what I saw, I saw a source that seemed presented as authoritative and comprehensive and not necessarily vetted (what I thought at the time). I did not see anyone responding to that data (other than the parent commenter you were refuting) or discussing the validity of it at all, no conversation about the validity of it, it was just sitting there as though it was the be-all-end-all of the argument. I found this to be inherently worse than a fully unsubstantiated claim presented as fact, because at least it was clear to everyone there was no source presented for that claim and reasonable to assume it was that person's belief that it was fact rather than assuming it was backed by good data.
So my perspective was that it accomplished what it was appearing to be designed to do, which was eliminate the opposing argument by being too difficult to investigate the validity of the source/data and establish a counter-narrative as fact, so rather than the prior comments unsubstantiated claim of violence being apart of most progressive movements being the final statement of fact on the matter, it replaced that with a new claim that was substantiated by data that was presented as more accurate and comprehensive than it was. It's "The actual data", the one and only authoritative set of data, so unless someone can prove it wrong with other data, and somehow prove that that data is better data, then obviously the conclusion must be right, nonviolence is more successful.
But what isn't inherently obvious about data like that from a distance is that the amount of simplifications that they make to make those claims are so great to not really be factual in any objective sense of the word. I literally picked out the very first example in the book, I didn't go cherry picking through it to find that. The very first thing I read was seemingly quite favorable conditions to their core contention, so it wouldn't necessarily be the most compelling one for me to use to disprove it, but even then I found it so flawed that I figured even that was good enough to use. I have no doubt that I could find issue with nearly every single one of the cases they go through based on that initial one. I felt confident that highlighting that one example would illuminate how simplifying the data in the way that they attempted to do just simply doesn't make sense and is fundamentally flawed to simplify it in that way.
So yes I agree, I don't believe that to be gish galloping at all, nor do I think it was necessarily malicious or anything of that sort. But that book is almost 300 pages long, and it's not nearly the same as looking up crime statistics or such which have way more research and authoritative sources with much less simplification so it's easier to digest the argument and refute it. To drop that as "The actual data" and not cover anything about what is within it or what that data actually is, I thought created a barrier too high that even if someone was inclined to debate it, they wouldn't because the cudgel of 'fact' made it so there was only a very high effort way to do so. Even if someone presented multiple notable examples that refuted it, those would only be considered as anecdotal cases rather than the much greater amount of data points covered in that book.
Yeah, it's a complex source, but it's a complex topic. I tried to link the website instead of the book specifically so that people could at least see something; what more could I reasonably have done? That's a serious question - this is important to me, I want to convince people, what more could I reasonably have done? Echoing your exact concerns about having to expend more work to disprove something than to prove it, I chose not to put in the effort to quote at length out of the book/website because what I was arguing against was no source whatsoever.
I agree with you that you were arguing against a claim that had no source whatsoever and therefore it isn't really fair that you should have to put in that much more effort to argue against it. I did mention this earlier in this comment, and perhaps this is unique to me and not something that applies to others, a claim stated as fact without any source at all is less concerning to me than a claim purported as fact with a source that is presented as authoritative but isn't as good as people may believe it is because I think that people are more willing to take in and believe the latter than they are the former. I simply view someone who makes that claim without any source as it being their belief that it is fact and I guess that is how I am able to find it less concerning as I presume that is what other people do when encountering such claims. It's probably more specific to the context of this site, claims stated as fact without substantiation in other contexts may be more concerning to me as I would be worried about the capability of the audience for those type of claims more than I am here.
Edit: having considered it more, I could have been nicer. I could have added a caveat that sociopolitical questions are always debatable. I'm not 100% convinced that would have been more compelling, more convincing, but it's worth giving more thought at the very least.
I really didn't see it as mean. I think it was incorrect of me to say that phrasing was disingenuous, I did think it at the time as I didn't reasonably believe that the data was all that strong but I understand now that you were trying to elevate the discussion. I just thought it shut down the conversation too easily in a way that wasn't befitting the veracity of the data.
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Comment on AI populism's warning shots in ~society
Grumble4681 Link ParentFact is better than vibes I agree, but rarely do we actually have fully agreed upon facts for things on a more complex level. This is going away from my original comment so I do not intend for the...Respectfully, I completely disagree. Fact is better than vibes. If I'm wrong, prove me wrong, right? If my data sucks, argue that too! But philosophically, I completely disagree that anecdotal experiences bear the same weight as a book from someone who's actually compiled a dataset to try to prove something. (Edit: Obviously, yes, it depends on the book and the authors. This one is from a Harvard professor, not some kook. You've been arguing in good faith so I don't expect such a facile argument from you, but adding this for posterity.)
Fact is better than vibes I agree, but rarely do we actually have fully agreed upon facts for things on a more complex level. This is going away from my original comment so I do not intend for the intricacies of the level at which I will go here to apply to the prior argument necessarily, because what prompted each response is different. Even simple 'facts' are easy to find contention. It's simple to say its a fact that X amount of burglaries occur, and cite an FBI source or local police department sources etc. if I want to constrain the argument to a locale, and even if you argue that their tally is 100% correct, that the police or FBI encountered or discovered that exact amount of burglaries, you still can't even fully agree on the facts of that number because there can be disputes as to how it comes across. Well the local police department puts more resources into patrolling neighborhoods with higher reports of burglaries, so now they've discovered more burglaries. If they put fewer resources into it, does that mean there are less burglaries, or less discovery of burglaries? This is also the basis of all varying kinds of conspiracies on the less factual side of facts surrounding autism. Factually, rates of autism are increasing. Or maybe they are not, we're just putting more resources into diagnosing them.
So the reason I want to disentangle this response from the others is because I believe that this response is more so going in the direction of saying 'nothing is fact' or some interpretation along those lines, and that's not really my intention either.
Claims like "nearly every successful progressive movement resorted to violence" need to be supported, because otherwise people will believe something that is probably not true. This wasn't a statement of opinion, it was a statement of fact. And unless I'm misunderstanding you, even your argument is more like "this data is imperfect" than "here's a competing analysis that shows violence is more effective."
You're right that it wasn't competing analysis saying it was, though I personally believe that violence and nonviolence work off each other in non-discrete ways and they amplify the success of the other, which was my motivation for looking into how that source defined things as I don't believe it can be distilled into something as simple as that. I do agree that claims on some level need to be supported, especially stated as strongly as a fact, but alternatively, sources provided such as yours have their own complications. I don't know that I would have invested as much into the reply if you hadn't attempted to use it the way you did, meaning its not the source itself that I had the most issue with, it's the way it was used.
For a source like that, the degree of effort required to cite it is substantially lower than the degree of effort required to vet it. Not only is the book not publicly available for free through official means, it's extremely lengthy, and the freely provided supporting material in your link is also lengthy and because of the concepts it is addressing, it uses overly complex descriptions that abstract away the simplifications and assumptions it makes which make it a more laborious read.
But philosophically, I completely disagree that anecdotal experiences bear the same weight as a book from someone who's actually compiled a dataset to try to prove something. (Edit: Obviously, yes, it depends on the book and the authors. This one is from a Harvard professor, not some kook. You've been arguing in good faith so I don't expect such a facile argument from you, but adding this for posterity.)
I don't know how I feel about this, if only because I almost fell for the same trap. I still don't know about the potential source I was going to cite, but there was a published critical response to the book you cited by a professor at Cambridge University, Christopher Finlay (now with Durham University), and my initial thought was, well he's a political science professor at Cambridge University, it must be reputable. I tried to look into him a little more and I read a little bit of something else by him and I just came away skeptical of him, not that I know for sure he doesn't have valid things to say, I just didn't know if I understood what I had read so I didn't want to just rely on him for his status.
So instead I set out on the more laborious process of downloading the book cited and illustrating with a specific example why I think that the data is flawed on a fundamental level. I could have simply argued against it without citing anything, but then your cudgel of 'actual data' wins out, because I would have no data. That's where I think the problem comes in with using 'data' as a cudgel, because you didn't vet it, but you made me vet it in order to respond. I personally think using data, science, and facts in this manner contributes to anti-science rhetoric, because its unrealistic to expect most people to be able to devote the energy and efforts needed to do what I did. I was only able to bring myself to do it because I'm unemployed and have no life. I recognize that your response was to someone claiming a fact without evidence, so I realize you didn't just say it unprompted or for no reason, but I don't know that it's the right type of response for that circumstance.
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Comment on AI populism's warning shots in ~society
Grumble4681 (edited )Link ParentHere's where I think it's disingenuous, and I don't mean it to be an attack on you, but it comes across as a cudgel of 'science' or 'fact'. But the data in this case is just made up by a few...- Exemplary
Here's where I think it's disingenuous, and I don't mean it to be an attack on you, but it comes across as a cudgel of 'science' or 'fact'. But the data in this case is just made up by a few people.
To be fair, all data is on some level just made up of course. If you are tallying points in a basketball game, the ball going through the hoop counts for points and was part of the design of the game but that also makes it universally recognized on some level. How to tally the data of scoring points in a basketball game is pretty straightforward subsequently, and it would be pretty straightforward to present it as 'actual data'. But then there's someone who passes the ball to the person who puts the ball through the basket, and that person gets an "assist". It's data, but it's more made up because of how it's defined and by who. The NBA counts assists differently than other leagues, or even over historical NBA. Even so, it's still a widely recognized stat that at least by context someone can often determine what definition of assist goes with the data, and the non-specific definitions are widely known on some level by people who follow the sport at least.
There could be a dataset for players who picks their nose on the court but no one is tracking that. But my point is, how you present what qualifies as 'actual data' matters. If I say 'the data shows the team that picks their nose on the court most wins', and then I go selectively looking through games, and then also choosing what counts as 'nose picking', and present it as 'actual data', in some sense it's true that it's data, it's bad data, but if not for the comical premise, I'm giving it more authority than it actually has by presenting it as 'actual data' because I'm the only one tracking the data. It's one guy (me) who selectively went through things and came up with my own criteria and judgements and chose 'nose picking', it's not a wide group of professionals in the NBA or basketball scene who defined a 'nose picking' stat.
I think on a 'data' level, that's similar to an anecdote. What makes an anecdote less useful in certain contexts is that it's one person's experience or one single event that isn't necessarily representative of all events. I do believe the book had two authors, and perhaps there would be more people involved than that, but on the scale of what we're talking about here, I think it deserves more than just a few people to have some level of agreement of definitions on the subject matter to have more weight behind it. It's not data to be used as a cudgel against philosophical arguments or anecdotal experiences. To be more widely recognized and accepted is where I would draw the line on presenting it more authoritatively.
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Comment on AI populism's warning shots in ~society
Grumble4681 (edited )Link ParentIt's rather disingenuous to phrase it as "actual data" as though there's some universally recognized or agreed upon data points that cleanly define and disentangle violent and non-violent...- Exemplary
It's rather disingenuous to phrase it as "actual data" as though there's some universally recognized or agreed upon data points that cleanly define and disentangle violent and non-violent activities.
Here's a bit of that 'actual data', since conveniently, the person who came up with the framework for that data, sells it in a book which I didn't pay for and I suspect most others here wouldn't want to pay for to verify the data.
In 1975, Indonesia invaded East Timor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_invasion_of_East_Timor
The following quotes are from the book, not from Wikipedia, but I wanted to link the Wikipedia page as a baseline for people to read about one of the data points without having to pay for it.
Fretilin’s armed wing, the Forças Armadas de Libertação Nacional de Timor-Leste (Falintil), led the early resistance to Indonesian occupation forces in the form of conventional and guerrilla warfare. Using weapons left behind by Portuguese troops, Falintil forces waged armed struggle from East Timor’s mountainous jungle region. But Falintil would not win the day. Despite some early successes, by 1980 Indonesia’s brutal counterinsurgency campaign had decimated the armed resistance along with nearly one third of the East Timorese population.
So I guess this must count as a data point against the success of violence.
Yet nearly two decades later, a nonviolent resistance movement helped to successfully remove Indonesian troops from East Timor and win independence for the annexed territory.
So two decades later, nonviolence succeeded...
Suharto was ousted in 1998 after an economic crisis and mass popular uprising, and Indonesia’s new leader, B. J. Habibie, quickly pushed through a series of political and economic reforms designed to restore stability and international credibility to the country. There was tremendous international pressure on Habibie to resolve the East Timor issue, which had become a diplomatic embarrassment, not to mention a huge drain on Indonesia’s budget.
So Indonesian President (and he was basically a dictator) who controlled Indonesia for 31 years and was 77 years old, embroiled in issues beyond East Timor, was finally defeated by nonviolence. I guess the thousands of people who died fighting in the resistance died for nothing and if they had only resisted peacefully in the beginning, they would have been able to achieve success...
Although a small number of Falintil guerrillas (whose targets had been strictly military) kept their weapons until the very end, it was not their violent resistance that liberated the territory from Indonesian occupation. As one Clandestine Front member explained, “The Falintil was an important symbol of resistance and their presence in the mountains helped boost morale, but nonviolent struggle ultimately allowed us to achieve victory. The whole population fought for independence, even Indonesians, and this was decisive.”
Just to reiterate, that quote is from the book. So nonviolence won, but violent resistance was an important symbol for resistance overall. But nonviolence gets the point, there's no assists in this data.
Now the following is pulled from the Wikipedia page linked above
The US played a crucial role in supplying weapons to Indonesia. A week after the invasion of East Timor the National Security Council prepared a detailed analysis of the Indonesian military units involved and the US equipment they used.
Go to the page to check out the equipment if you wish, but the critical point I'd like to highlight here is that violence won the fight to begin with. The Indonesian dictator didn't take over East Timor with beautiful and persuasive rhetoric, but with the backing of the US and violent force.
Additionally, the data used in this book started in the 20th century, and I discovered this article published in SAGE
https://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/21cs.pdf
Where it covers a response to the 'actual data', so it's an interesting perspective where they are responding to a critical response to the data, so you get a broader picture of what is contentious about that data without a fixed framing of the direct response. In this article, it mentions the critical response goes back to the 19th century, and it discusses the flaws in the critical response about using data from the 19th century. However what I find enlightening about this is that in that critical response, they claim that if you use data from the 19th century, then violent responses have more success than nonviolent. Again, that page covers the flaws of using data from that time period, but I do think it's interesting while those flaws may be the reason why the Erica Chenoweth piece started where it did, but it's also convenient that they just happen to start their dataset at a point where it favors their argument.
Here's another quote from the Chenoweth 'actual data' book
Our central contention is that nonviolent campaigns have a participation advantage over violent insurgencies, which is an important factor in determining campaign outcomes. The moral, physical, informational, and commitment barriers to participation are much lower for nonviolent resistance than for violent insurgency. Higher levels of participation contribute to a number of mechanisms necessary for success, including enhanced resilience, higher probabilities of tactical innovation, expanded civic disruption (thereby raising the costs to the regime of maintaining the status quo), and loyalty shifts involving the opponent’s erstwhile supporters, including members of the security forces.
I find that to be a fairly reasonable argument. What this doesn't account for however are the myriad of circumstances and motivations that lead to popular support. There's no reconciliation of how violence can play a part in that. So is it a knock against the success of violence if a cult in Waco, Texas, fails to hold their freedom? Perhaps they would have been more successful in a non-violent approach. Of course I'm intentionally choosing an incident that was a relatively small group of people that failed to achieve what they had wanted in a violent encounter, because I think it highlights the flaws in what incidents you count. I don't think this incident was counted and I didn't dig into the book to find out, I picked it on my own.
I think the idea when people compare violent and nonviolent activities is that there may be some similar level of participation, even if that's not the normal case. In essence, the sentimental force behind the violent movements are also in existence behind the nonviolent ones.
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Comment on How are we all feeling about piracy these days? in ~movies
Grumble4681 (edited )Link ParentYeah that service seems to be pretty good for just streaming movies/shows if that's what you want. I've tried it and it's not terribly difficult to set up and it's got just about anything....Yeah that service seems to be pretty good for just streaming movies/shows if that's what you want. I've tried it and it's not terribly difficult to set up and it's got just about anything.
Personally, I already invested in storage and whatnot many years ago and I just prefer to download the content that I want, so I just go with Usenet and Sonarr/Radarr setup and supplement that with a semi-private torrent site. I mostly like to watch my go to media and perhaps some new stuff here or there, so it makes sense for me to just download and keep what I want. Does come in handy on occasion when I don't have internet access, or good internet access anyhow, as I still have access to the content I want.
I'd also strongly suggest if you're getting into any of this, for simplicity you may be better off getting a cheap Android TV box. The Walmart ONN 4k versions in the past were the best deal around, but they recently retired a lineup of those and are just beginning to replace them with new versions which I suspect will be slightly higher priced and verdict is out on the quality of the hardware itself compared to the past lineup. I believe the service mentioned in the linked post (not mentioning the name directly in my comment in case for whatever reason Deimos ends up deleting various posts/comments because this topic is iffy to discuss on here).
The reason for Android TV is that you can sideload on it, and Amazon is cracking down on sideloading some apps on Fire devices, and eventually they're moving the OS away from Android, or something along those lines. Naturally, piracy apps and such may lend towards being banned from official app stores, which is where Android TV boxes are more useful than others. It's also the case that if you're not a multi-billion dollar corporation building a streaming app, you probably don't want to invest resources into building apps for every single smart TV and platform out there, Android TV ends up being a decent baseline for app developers to target.
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Comment on The center has a bias in ~tech
Grumble4681 Link ParentWhile I would agree those would be ideal places, that seems a bit more like preaching to the choir. What percentage of people are actually exposed to those situations at any significant level?...I was moreso thinking humanities courses at universities, or at museums covering historical atrocities, than like Nazi bars or terrorist meet-ups.
While I would agree those would be ideal places, that seems a bit more like preaching to the choir. What percentage of people are actually exposed to those situations at any significant level? You're not really covering that many people in that case. That could also be taken as "well you're just not smart enough or don't have enough money to be involved in this discussion" considering the resources required to travel for leisure or go to university.
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Comment on OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s home targeted with molotov cocktail in ~tech
Grumble4681 Link ParentI firmly believe there are plenty more uses for code so I do think that is the potential future. Many open source projects development is limited by contributors, and often there's people who want...I firmly believe there are plenty more uses for code so I do think that is the potential future. Many open source projects development is limited by contributors, and often there's people who want to contribute but can't code and don't have a ton of money to fling around so there's very little they can actually do. Not saying those people should contribute by vibe coding, rather I'm saying that I identify those scenarios frequently where demand of coding exceeds supply. And there are tons of niche cases where the average non-coding person could probably come up with an idea for software that would be useful to some, but they can't make it themselves and it's not worth anyone else's time to do it.
Now I don't know that all those potential scenarios will come to fruition even with AI, because there are some limits to vibe coding and there were probably still be some limits to what a developer will spend their time on if a non-dev can't vibe code it themselves. If it's something only 1 person wants, and it takes 10 minutes and they pay $30 for it or something, that might be one case, but if only 1 person wants it and it takes 10 hours, that's an entirely different circumstance.
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Comment on The center has a bias in ~tech
Grumble4681 Link ParentRight, and in those private groups, where they become an echo chamber, they're going to point to how you've pushed them to discuss it in private and that you're the real enemy and there will be a...Nope! Because people are free to have discussions about genocide and eugenics in private, invite-only groups.
Right, and in those private groups, where they become an echo chamber, they're going to point to how you've pushed them to discuss it in private and that you're the real enemy and there will be a nugget of truth behind their attacks on you, that you purposefully misrepresent your position and lie (because of a fear of a slippery slope, but that part won't be accounted for), and it won't just be you in particular it's directed at, it will be anyone on 'your side', it will be whatever your perceived side will be.
On the one hand I could take a very cynical or even nihilistic take and say no matter what, we lose, but I don't know that I believe that either. Whether you clamp down to suppress expression of ideas or you don't, it almost feels like an inevitable tide, but I also wonder if there are cases where both ways have worked at different times and in different circumstances, where suppression only made things worse and fighting with truth worked better, and in other circumstances where truth didn't prevail and suppression worked better.
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Comment on The center has a bias in ~tech
Grumble4681 Link ParentCan't it also be argued that you're acknowledging one is worse than the other, but on some level you don't want to admit it, so you're removing any distinction which to some would feel...Once you concede that, although it's bad to sterilize an entire culture, it's worse to just kill them, then that permits a man proposing the former to seem a level headed pragmatist by comparison to those raving lunatics proposing the latter. It's the civilized solution, even! Kill the indian, to save the man.
Can't it also be argued that you're acknowledging one is worse than the other, but on some level you don't want to admit it, so you're removing any distinction which to some would feel disingenuous and cause them to feel you're lying to cover something up.
I don't personally believe that, but I think there's a slippery slope whichever side you go down. Purposefully misrepresenting something because you don't want to give the appearance that one is worse than the other gives people cause to distrust you. The way you're approaching it may be the better way overall, I just don't think it should be seen as one without its own set of consequences.
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Comment on OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s home targeted with molotov cocktail in ~tech
Grumble4681 Link ParentEven ignoring his sales pitch in there, it's impossible to take him seriously because he offers nothing but platitudes and nothing of substance or specificity. He won't actually stand up for...Even ignoring his sales pitch in there, it's impossible to take him seriously because he offers nothing but platitudes and nothing of substance or specificity. He won't actually stand up for anything. He acts like he understands the frustration people have with him, with the company he works for, with the industry he works within, but he can't actually detail or specify the root causes of the problems or the solutions.
He mentions how democracy needs to stay a democracy and companies shouldn't capture the power, without mentioning or addressing how it's widely believed to already be corrupted, that companies have all the power and democracy is non-existent. What is Sam Altman doing to help? I mean aside from the pitch for OpenAI here, it was also supposed to be a pitch for Sam Altman, the guy who is on 'our' side, that he understands the plight of others who might molotov cocktail his house, but the most he can offer is a line or two about having a family. He needs to only look around at all the people getting crushed by the system to see that having a family doesn't protect anyone, so he might want to find a better pitch than that.
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Comment on Industry initiative launches Euro-Office as true sovereign office suite in ~tech
Grumble4681 Link ParentGoodwill does operate retail chains and is a not-for-profit organization, they sell donated items, typically for low costs. On the one hand I understand they get it for free so its kinda crappy...I don't recall whether it was Value Village or Goodwill, but I was at both this weekend and one accepts donations as a non profit, but operates a retail chain, too.
Goodwill does operate retail chains and is a not-for-profit organization, they sell donated items, typically for low costs. On the one hand I understand they get it for free so its kinda crappy they can turn around and sell it but it does cost to have a location to store those items and sort through them and such. In theory donations would pay for that perhaps but Goodwill runs many programs and I'm not diving through their financials to cast any specific judgement on it. Sometimes it costs money to dispose of stuff you don't want anymore, depending on what the items are anyhow, especially if you don't really want to do any work cleaning stuff up and taking photos and listing them on places to sell them yourself, or running garage sales etc. so that kinda shows that them taking those items for free as donations does incur some costs.
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Comment on US and Iran agree to provisional ceasefire with Tehran saying it will reopen Strait of Hormuz in ~society
Grumble4681 Link ParentI'm sure that the US and Israel knew full well it included it and agreed knowing they would violate it because a ceasefire isn't really a ceasefire, it's a carefully choreographed dance of power...I'm sure that the US and Israel knew full well it included it and agreed knowing they would violate it because a ceasefire isn't really a ceasefire, it's a carefully choreographed dance of power jousting. Who can twist, bend and break the rules to their will the most and get an edge over their opponent. I remember reading reports about the ceasefire as soon as it came out and that it included Lebanon in it.
The reason why I was initially asking about the toll fees as soon as the ceasefire was announced is that I suspected that was Iran's edge. There's no way they agree to a ceasefire where it returns the strait to free and uncontested navigation of ships through the strait because it's like relinquishing their claim that they have a right and power to it. It's their primary source of leverage at this point, even giving that up for 2 weeks would be a major blow to their position.
I have to believe that US officials knew that as well, at least some of them, and were potentially hoping that a ceasefire would alter the dynamics and if it didn't then it's no different than before the ceasefire. Trump also likes any deals where he can say he won the deal because he knows the details of the agreement aren't what most people will be informed about so he can shape whatever narrative he wants about the deal.
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Comment on Half-baked idea for metered inline image allowances in ~tildes
Grumble4681 Link ParentThe flipside to this is that the comparison was made without due consideration to the proposal's changes/limits to what reddit did. Reddit didn't have a restrictive limit on how often you could...The flipside to this is that the comparison was made without due consideration to the proposal's changes/limits to what reddit did. Reddit didn't have a restrictive limit on how often you could use it.
If we're going to criticize one response for mischaracterizing the response before it, it's worth pointing out that the response before it was a bit of a mischaracterization as well.
Where such a limit could falter is that I think it doesn't really scale well with user base growth. If reddit had limits for example, sure there would be substantially less image spam, but there could still be pockets where it happens more because there's so many accounts and not everyone participates everywhere. If most people only comment in big political posts, you might see an oversaturation of inline images in comments on political posts because they aren't going around to other posts to include inline images. In theory, if more people comment in political posts, the inline images are competing with more comments overall, so it may not seem overly saturated, but the issue can be that images take up more space for potentially less effort.
I doubt it would be a huge issue on tildes, but part of what keeps tildes user growth where it is now is the design of the site isn't very friendly to some types of uses. If you introduce features that don't scale well with user growth but those same features also help increase user growth, well it may not be a problem initially but it could lead to the problem happening later on.
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Comment on Why Microsoft’s war on Windows’ Control Panel is taking so long in ~tech
Grumble4681 LinkI chart my significant negative experiences with Windows starting with Windows 8. I know Microsoft has all kinds of issues these days, they are pushing Copilot too much, they implement annoying...I chart my significant negative experiences with Windows starting with Windows 8. I know Microsoft has all kinds of issues these days, they are pushing Copilot too much, they implement annoying advertising in the OS, the audacity to try to force people into Microsoft accounts when they don't want them, and surely much much more. I've read enough stories about the management of Microsoft to believe it's not a great place to work. The bloat of the company itself is much like many companies these days.
I can forgive some aspects of bloat and what not of Windows if they weren't doing all the wrong things elsewhere. Because at least in the case of much of Windows bloat, I expect that it's in part coming from an effort to support all the various hardware and software that has relied on Windows for years and years. This article even says that's part of why the control panel migration is taking so long.
“We’re doing it carefully because there are a lot of different network and printer devices & drivers we need to make sure we don’t break in the process,” explains March Rogers, partner director of design at Microsoft.
On the one hand, supporting so many things made Windows more sticky, everything people bought and used worked on Windows and rarely worked on anything else.
On the other hand, starting with Windows 8 in particular, I feel that Microsoft decided to leverage the stickiness of Windows to bolster other business segments that they failed on. They dropped the ball hard with Windows Phone, consequently I'd argue that resulted in them dropping the ball significantly on touch screen interfaces entirely which meant they failed to create a Windows tablet market, and that also cut them out on hybrid/2-in-1s for awhile until they launched the Surface many years later. Windows 8 was the start of this process, the shoehorning of a user interface into desktop/traditional laptop space when that UI was designed for and made sense on touchscreen devices because they failed to address the market earlier in a better way.
This is also around the start of the Microsoft Store, Microsoft accounts, and the attempt to position their desktop OS to capture significant revenue streams in a way that Android and iOS do. Of course they didn't push the Microsoft Store too hard because of the pushback, legacy issues and regulation issues that could have potentially come from that, but the other routes they took were smaller steps trying to make up for that.
I do wonder if Microsoft's business model for Windows wasn't scalable in the long run, how do you support an ever growing series of hardware and software for longer periods of time with a one-time license purchase. Even if you increase the price of the license, at some point it just becomes too much to be competitive. In all likelihood, they probably needed to find a way to separate the business of supporting legacy hardware and software while also developing a fresher OS that wasn't bound to all of that, and kept developing an OS people wanted to use instead of developing an OS that people felt obligated to use. This way the price would be lower for people that didn't care about legacy support.
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Comment on US and Iran agree to provisional ceasefire with Tehran saying it will reopen Strait of Hormuz in ~society
Grumble4681 Link ParentRegarding the point where it says it will require coordinating with Iran's Armed Forces, CBC also says this, but additionally adds It's unclear if it means that this is part of their proposal...Regarding the point where it says it will require coordinating with Iran's Armed Forces, CBC also says this, but additionally adds
Iran's plan also includes charging fees for ships to pass through the strait and using the money for reconstruction, The Associated Press reported Tuesday. The New York Times reported that the fee would total $2 million US per ship.
It's unclear if it means that this is part of their proposal beyond the ceasefire, or if that means the ceasefire includes the agreement that Iran will charge fees for ships, and I can't find any sources that clarify this.
In this Time article, it details how ships have already gone through the strait since the war started by making agreements with Iran, which to me presumably means there are payments involved.
Several countries have turned to negotiating directly with Iran to strike deals allowing their vessels to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Ships flying the flags of Pakistan, India, Thailand, Russia, Turkey, China, Iraq, and now Malaysia have safely traversed the strait at some point since the war began. The details of the deals struck with Iran are not yet clear. American allies appear less keen to negotiate individual deals with Iran to allow for the passage of their vessels, although France and Italy reportedly opened talks with Iran last month.
The IRGC Navy said on Sunday that the strait will “never return to its former state,” especially for the U.S. and Israel. What the new form of the strait will look like is not yet clear. As part of the terms of its 10-point proposal that Trump rejected, Iran reportedly said it would reopen the strait while charging up to $2 million per vessel, which it would split with Oman and use its share of the proceeds to reconstruct infrastructure destroyed by the U.S. and Israel.
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Comment on Nvidia's DLSS 5 video taken down due to copyright issue after news site uses the footage in ~tech
Grumble4681 Link ParentI don't even necessarily see this particular instance as being the best evidence of Youtube's system being notoriously bad. What they probably need to do to fix it, if it isn't already available...Youtube's copyright system is notoriously bad, and their AI systems in general have been particularly bad in recent months. But this might be the most egregious example yet since all the videos were nearly a month older than the one uploaded by the news channel, and could easily be handled by having a single human looking at this mess at ANY point.
I don't even necessarily see this particular instance as being the best evidence of Youtube's system being notoriously bad. What they probably need to do to fix it, if it isn't already available anyhow, is give uploaders the ability to claim parts of their videos as copyright protected, and then disclaim other parts. Meaning they would be obligated to mark the video portion (and possibly audio depending on if they were talking over the video or not) where they used a snippet of Nvidia's video as not under their own copyright protection, while still protecting the rest of their video and audio. I also have no idea of how their content match/content ID system works to know the technical challenges that could be involved in doing this, and surely some other issues could arise from this implementation as well.
Even then, if you count that Youtube doesn't have such a feature like that already as a mark of how broken their system is, I don't necessarily agree in spirit. I agree on a level that it is broken, but it's broken because it's borne from laws that are so broken that there's really no way to address with technical solutions. Upon this incredibly broken copyright law, Youtube has constructed a system that attempts to balance the legal requirements of a completely fucking broken assortment of laws with the business gains to be had of streamlining some semblance of copyright management on top of it.
You conveniently cut off the last part of the quote and then responded to it as though it was saying his life is undeniably better than yours, even though it stated his life is undeniably better than an alternative theoretical version of his own life. Sure the argument could still be made that it's not undeniably better than being homeless or whatever else that guy could have ended up being, but that doesn't appear to be the case you were making.