Grzmot's recent activity

  1. Comment on Google is testing the ‘impact’ of removing EU news from search results in ~tech

    Grzmot
    Link Parent
    Kagi still gets reddit, but that's only coz they pay Google.

    Kagi still gets reddit, but that's only coz they pay Google.

    13 votes

  2. Comment on I've added ~society for topics related to politics, law, policies, and similar societal-level subjects in ~tildes.official

    Grzmot
    Link Parent
    We bow to you, King.

    We bow to you, King.

    10 votes

  3. Comment on The Browser Company announces Arc Browser will no longer be their flagship product in ~tech

    Grzmot
    Link Parent
    It makes sense to have a native browser for your operating system. I'm not denouncing Safari, but what I mean is that for Apple, Safari is part of a package that sells their hardware, so it can be...

    It makes sense to have a native browser for your operating system. I'm not denouncing Safari, but what I mean is that for Apple, Safari is part of a package that sells their hardware, so it can be free in the sense that you need to buy a device from them to get to it. They don't need to monetize Safari itself.

    The Browser Company however, does. It's in their name, they want to make Browsers only. But clearly they are still in the stage of achieving infinite growth so this is what they do. Don't build a stable product and focus on serving the user base (which, if they didn't have investors hounding them, they could at least attempt) instead of, I'm assuming here, putting Arc in maintenance mode and developing something else. It feels to me like Arc is being put into maintenance mode.

    4 votes

  4. Comment on The Browser Company announces Arc Browser will no longer be their flagship product in ~tech

    Grzmot
    Link Parent
    When Arc got announced and it was discussed here on Tildes, I wrote a comment detailing my reservations about adopting Arc as my main browser. It's very clear that the company making it is...

    When Arc got announced and it was discussed here on Tildes, I wrote a comment detailing my reservations about adopting Arc as my main browser. It's very clear that the company making it is following the typical tech company startup scheme, i.e. get seed funding, grow fast, worry about how to monetize it later.

    You can read between the lines of the CEO's announcement video that this is exactly what's happening. Their key performance indicator is user growth, and the CEO said in the video that with the current growth rate, they are not going to reach a billion users. Read, or listen, in this case, between the lines: they are not growing fast enough.

    Browsers have been free for over two decades. Chrome exists because Google wants data, Firefox exists because Google really doesn't want Chrome to be designated a monopoly, Safari exists because Apple is obsessed with end-to-end control. And Browsers are the only thing this company is presumably going to be making.

    They have no path to profitability, they don't even have the concept of a plan of profitability, and they are not growing fast enough to make the people funding them right now happy. This is what this is. They made something good, but too niche for tech investors. They are also headquartered in New York, so I imagine their upkeep is expensive.

    This is what this is. They cannot, or are unwilling for whatever reason, to monetize their current userbase. So to get more funding, they have to keep growing. This is their attempt.

    22 votes

  5. Comment on Despite its impressive output, generative AI doesn’t have a coherent understanding of the world in ~tech

    Grzmot
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    It's great that we now have a paper to point to, but at no point did LLMs include any sort of reasoning capability. They are empty words, so this doesn't surprise me too much.

    It's great that we now have a paper to point to, but at no point did LLMs include any sort of reasoning capability. They are empty words, so this doesn't surprise me too much.

    16 votes

  6. Comment on Paper: Feminism in Programming Language Design in ~comp

    Grzmot
    Link Parent
    And mind you, I'm very happy you did. Engaging with a new perspective can yield positive results; the real only problem is your own energy and willingness to do so and your time. I do think that...

    I don't really know whether this person is an expert or not, but I completely understand - this post happened more or less exactly how I expected it to go from the moment I saw the topic. I think it's important for all the different kinds of conversation that have happened in these comments to happen, but wanted to draw attention to something that was missing on Tildes (but not on lobsters as another commenter pointed out).

    And mind you, I'm very happy you did. Engaging with a new perspective can yield positive results; the real only problem is your own energy and willingness to do so and your time. I do think that people here in the comments can definitely fall into group thinking because our backgrounds tend to be similar. It's why someone going out of their way to read the entire 16 pages of the report and approaching it with a different mindset is so valuable.

    4 votes

  7. Comment on Paper: Feminism in Programming Language Design in ~comp

    Grzmot
    Link Parent
    See, something that gets ignored about this approach though is that people who try to do things differently even in a practical way like that will still experience pushback because they are going...

    "Source is available, go fork and have fun with that."

    See, something that gets ignored about this approach though is that people who try to do things differently even in a practical way like that will still experience pushback because they are going against the grain.

    Programmers, even with their inherent practical background, are still people, and people are mostly fallible. We cannot hide about some notion of peak objectivity that only programmers have, because it's just not true. Think back on the master/main brach discussion for git. It's a harmless change, fixed within one line of the config and for repo users it's no change at all. There was tremendous debate around it.

    If the person who wrote this paper decided to go about it in a practical way, I can still see wave of barely concealed hatred be sent their way about "What's even the point of this" and "They way we are doing things right now is great already, this is useless".

    Yes, folks from the humanities viewing things from through a certain lens can get a tad silly. But it's also a different perspective and why it's important to remain skeptical, one should be careful to not let that skepticism border into cynicism.

    Just because we're "the experts" does not mean that we'll be right. There is a bigger chance that we might be, but it's absolutely not a guarantee, and people are very very very prone to group-think. If you ever want a cautionary tale of experts ruining a good chance, read up on the life of the venerable doctor Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis. He did, and tried to introduce an objectively good thing. The people of the medical field rewarded him with so much hatred that he ended up dying in an asylum at an early age.

    7 votes

  8. Comment on Paper: Feminism in Programming Language Design in ~comp

    Grzmot
    Link Parent
    A perceived outsider has come into a group of insiders and offered perceived criticism against the thing that unites the insiders, thus earning their ire. A tale as old as time, a limitation...

    A perceived outsider has come into a group of insiders and offered perceived criticism against the thing that unites the insiders, thus earning their ire. A tale as old as time, a limitation humanity is unlikely to overcome.

    Tildes is a tech-focused site, despite its forages into other topics, most folks here have a software development background. Layered onto that are a few things:

    Developers are, ultimately, practical people. If you want to impress developers, you do it by developing something cool. If you want to make a programming language with a focus on being inclusive, you have to do it, or developers won't care.

    Software development is a male dominated space, so on top of the outsider coming in to critique what unites the group spiritually, they come in and look different too! (Shocker, whoah :OOOO how can people just do that?? /s)

    I agree with you that people are approaching this a bit too harshly. It's clearly not directed at developers (evident by the huge paragraph titled What is a programming language?), however whenever a non-expert in a specific topic attempts to do some intersectionality, the experts are going to gather and watch with nervous curiosity like monkeys watching tourists in tropical countries, especially because Feminism:tm: is cool now and (western) companies want to be feminist so what if this non-expert's opinion suddenly induces change that we don't like???

    I will offer one critique to your comment though: It is very useful to think about how to make programming more inclusive. It's not very useful to center the design of a programming language around non-programmers reading it, because non-programmers tend not to read code. The result of such an exercise is a language, that at best, programmers don't want to touch because it sucks to actually use. Don't design the scalpel after the needs of the painter, design it after the needs of a surgeon.

    Mind you, I totally agree with you with the overt focus on maths. It's too much, and has less to do with actual programming than the maths-heavy comp sci curricula of most universities would let you think. However, maths has two very big advantages:

    1. The way solving maths forces you to think is a great precursor on how you need to think to solve programming tasks

    2. Comp Sci is an extremely broad field. I honestly expect it to shatter into multiple fields with time, it's not been around for too long yet. To some extent, this has already happened. The current issue with that is that Comp Sci thus needs to teach you a lot of shit, and unfortunately, maths is the basis for a lot of famous algorithms that are used to teach the basics of programming and algorithm design at uni.

    The best people to practically do stuff like this are always those that start off with a background in programming and then branch out into the humanities and return to their original craft to examine it under a new light and with new knowledge. Or the other way around. But like you said, people here aren't really engaging with the posted article on that level. We're the monkeys, sitting on a tree, watching the tourists and bickering about how they didn't bring any nuts or fruits this time around.

    25 votes

  9. Comment on Vivaldi 7.0 has been released in ~tech

    Grzmot
    Link Parent
    Yep, you are totally right.

    Yep, you are totally right.

    1 vote

  10. Comment on Vivaldi 7.0 has been released in ~tech

    Grzmot
    (edited )
    Link
    Vivaldi is a great browser for power users, but for me the problem (back when I used it) was the lack of device sync. This has long been rectified I believe, but currently I'd rather stick with...

    Vivaldi is a great browser for power users, but for me the problem (back when I used it) was the lack of device sync. This has long been rectified I believe, but currently I'd rather stick with Firefox. I'd give this a try if they'd pledge to switching to Blink Gecko, the Firefox browser engine, because it's clear that Google is going to wield Chromium like a weapon to get the job done on ad blockers, and the internet without an adblocker is not just barely usable, it's actively dangerous.

    I don't even know if you can use Firefox's browser engine and build something on top of it that is completely different. I know that Firefox forks exist, but those always change only specific things and are more focused on customizing Firefox to some insane degree rather than doing their own thing. I'm certain it's not feasible for Vivaldi to switch browser engines, but I'm not sure if it's even possible.

    11 votes

  11. Comment on Looking for slim wallet recommendations in ~life.style

    Grzmot
    Link
    I ended up not buying there because life happened, but I was in talks for a custom made wallet from Akeeni https://akeeni.com/ They have a great support and its something else than the endless...

    I ended up not buying there because life happened, but I was in talks for a custom made wallet from Akeeni

    https://akeeni.com/

    They have a great support and its something else than the endless ridge copies flying around. Plus made in the USA and willing to do custom engravings. Their reviews are all incredible.

  12. Comment on If WordPress is to survive, Matt Mullenweg must be removed in ~tech

    Grzmot
    Link Parent
    Wishful thinking IMHO. I agree, but the IRS doesn't exist to work against the rich. It works for them.

    I wonder if, as a result of this, the IRS might end up looking into how Mullenweg is intermingling Automattic, the 501c WordPress Foundation and personal assets (which, I guess, includes WordPress.org?) Even the whole sock puppetting a 501c to help attack a competitor of your for-profit is suspect on its own, never mind the implications of the intermingled assets/power.

    Wishful thinking IMHO. I agree, but the IRS doesn't exist to work against the rich. It works for them.

    3 votes

  13. Comment on wordfreq will no longer be updated partly due to AI polluting the data in ~comp

    Grzmot
    Link Parent
    If your personal hobby (the repo) was made impossible by decisions some suits made far away for money without any actual purpose, and on top of that the field you work in (natural language...

    If your personal hobby (the repo) was made impossible by decisions some suits made far away for money without any actual purpose, and on top of that the field you work in (natural language processing) is dying too, I'd be salty as well.

    6 votes

  14. Comment on wordfreq will no longer be updated partly due to AI polluting the data in ~comp

    Grzmot
    Link Parent
    I don't know, personally I just see two NPCs arguing with each other because their pathfinding algorithms don't allow them to evade each other /s

    I don't know, personally I just see two NPCs arguing with each other because their pathfinding algorithms don't allow them to evade each other /s

    2 votes

  15. Comment on Finland's President Alexander Stubb has called for expansion of the UN Security Council, abolition of its single state veto power, and suspension of any member engaging in an “illegal war” in ~society

    Grzmot
    Link Parent
    There are situation where wars are justifiable, according to UN doctrine. Defensive wars, for example. Those are "legal". Generally a legal war is a war approved by the UN security council I think.

    There are situation where wars are justifiable, according to UN doctrine. Defensive wars, for example. Those are "legal". Generally a legal war is a war approved by the UN security council I think.

    1 vote

  16. Comment on Helldivers 2's crucial 01.001.100 update completely reworks weapons, adds new Galactic War feature, and changes much more in bid to make the game easier in ~games

    Grzmot
    Link Parent
    There's the saying among game designers that given the chance, players will optimize the fun out of the game, and I think in this case, the devs did that on accident. Reading the patch notes...

    There's the saying among game designers that given the chance, players will optimize the fun out of the game, and I think in this case, the devs did that on accident.

    Reading the patch notes definitely made me want to try out the game again.

    9 votes

  17. Comment on How four people destroyed a $250 million tech company in ~tech

    Grzmot
    Link Parent
    Back then it doesn't surprise me, it seems like the founders got in way over their head, fired the one CEO they had with solid management skills and then it went down pretty hard pretty fast....

    Back then it doesn't surprise me, it seems like the founders got in way over their head, fired the one CEO they had with solid management skills and then it went down pretty hard pretty fast. Mismanagement, pet projects that never go anywhere, and of course the classic dipping into corporate funds to pay yourself out.

    8 votes

  18. Comment on How four people destroyed a $250 million tech company in ~tech

    Grzmot
    Link
    A hour long report into the massive mismanagement present at EK, a former industry leader in the field of computer water cooling. Really well done.

    A hour long report into the massive mismanagement present at EK, a former industry leader in the field of computer water cooling. Really well done.

    13 votes

  20. Comment on Children under the age of two should not use any digital media, according to new recommendations from Sweden's public health agency in ~life

    Grzmot
    Link Parent
    In general I agree with the recommendations in the study, but same. I was the bullied kid in highschool, I was a loner and had zero friends. Online games and the friend group that all resided in...

    In general I agree with the recommendations in the study, but same. I was the bullied kid in highschool, I was a loner and had zero friends. Online games and the friend group that all resided in different countries were the only thing that kept me going at that time. I'm much better now (uni was a fresh start that I needed), but I frankly speaking don't know if I would be here at all if I didn't have the ability to shut out the rest of the world when I was going through hell.

    5 votes