infpossibilityspace's recent activity

  1. Comment on ‘Do not pet’: A robotic dog named “Spot” made by Boston Dynamics is the latest tool in the arsenal of the US Secret Service in ~tech

    infpossibilityspace
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    A fishing net would tangle up in its limbs

    A fishing net would tangle up in its limbs

    4 votes

  2. Comment on Delhi shuts schools, bans construction as pollution levels hit new high in ~enviro

    infpossibilityspace
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    Even after Covid, we still don't take air quality as seriously as we should. Air pollution kills. This video essay puts air quality in context with water quality and germ theory to explain why we...

    Even after Covid, we still don't take air quality as seriously as we should. Air pollution kills.

    This video essay puts air quality in context with water quality and germ theory to explain why we should care more than we do (and why we currently don't).

    Hopefully they'll be able to pass some meaningful legislation to reduce pollution from factories/transport before too many people get ill.

    https://youtu.be/efM2VlCueZc

    6 votes

  3. Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books

  4. Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books

    infpossibilityspace
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    Trust when buying food was one of the first examples that came to mind too. Definitely adding it to my reading list, cheers!

    We don’t demand a background check on the plumber who shows up to fix the leaky sink. We don’t do a chemical analysis on food we eat.

    Trust when buying food was one of the first examples that came to mind too. Definitely adding it to my reading list, cheers!

    1 vote

  5. Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books

    infpossibilityspace
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    I read "How to win friends..." after someone gifted it to me a whine ago, and the advice is so dull and obvious I don't understand why it's so popular.

    I read "How to win friends..." after someone gifted it to me a whine ago, and the advice is so dull and obvious I don't understand why it's so popular.

    2 votes

  6. Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books

    infpossibilityspace
    (edited )
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    I've started reading "A Short History of the World in 50 Lies" by Natasha Tidd. It tells the bittersweet origins and effects of the biggest lies that have been invented over the past 2 millennia,...

    I've started reading "A Short History of the World in 50 Lies" by Natasha Tidd. It tells the bittersweet origins and effects of the biggest lies that have been invented over the past 2 millennia, and how our lying has evolved over time.

    I say bittersweet because it really puts into context the idea that "a lie will get halfway around the world before the truth puts its shoes on", but also that the truth eventually catches up and resets society back to a more reasonable state (though it can't fix the deaths/damage caused along the way).

    It also ties back to something that's been on my mind for a few weeks - how trust is probably the most important thing we do when building a society, how fragile it is, and how our trust in institutions might be misplaced or manipulated for other selfish reasons - so it needs to be given carefully.

    2 votes

  7. Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books

    infpossibilityspace
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    Interesting! Anecdotally, it feels like there's a big difference in my level of immersion/imagination when I'm reading that is so much richer compared to audiobooks. Maybe because audio allows me...

    Interesting! Anecdotally, it feels like there's a big difference in my level of immersion/imagination when I'm reading that is so much richer compared to audiobooks. Maybe because audio allows me to do other things at the same time, but it's hard to wash dishes while holding a book? Or maybe I don't want someone's interpretation of dialogue?

    I want to like audiobooks, my brother does, but I just can't for some reason.

    2 votes

  8. Comment on Embracer has entered a $1.2 billion agreement to divest mobile developer Easybrain to digital entertainment firm Miniclip in ~games

    infpossibilityspace
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    Miniclip? The website that hosts online games I remember playing almost 20 years ago? Are little website games still popular enough that Miniclip has $1.2B lying around? I'm clearly missing...

    Miniclip? The website that hosts online games I remember playing almost 20 years ago? Are little website games still popular enough that Miniclip has $1.2B lying around?

    I'm clearly missing something here, what else does Miniclip do to earn money?

    9 votes

  9. Comment on Tips for increasing online privacy (without going insane)? in ~tech

    infpossibilityspace
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    If you have an Android, check out TrackerControl (TC) from the F-droid app store. It allows you to control where apps are allowed to send data to, and disable them from sending your information to...

    If you have an Android, check out TrackerControl (TC) from the F-droid app store.

    It allows you to control where apps are allowed to send data to, and disable them from sending your information to ad/tracker companies.
    It's very granular and can also prevent apps from working if you disable too much, but it's categorised well and you just unstick restrictions until the app works again

    1 vote

  10. Comment on My Leopold FC900R broke - Recommendation request in ~tech

    infpossibilityspace
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    One thing I'd be cautious of with a 96% - your muscle memory of where keys live will have to be retrained. Not having a gap surrounding cursor keys always takes me an extra half-second to locate...

    One thing I'd be cautious of with a 96% - your muscle memory of where keys live will have to be retrained. Not having a gap surrounding cursor keys always takes me an extra half-second to locate even after using a 96% for a few years.

    The tiny space saving isn't worth it imo, I regret getting a 96% and plan on buying a proper full-size replacement at some point.

  11. Comment on Watch electricity hit a fork in the road at half a billion frames per second in ~science

    infpossibilityspace
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    I still remember being fascinated by electricity as a kid when we first learned about how slow electron drift velocity is in school and it completely blew my mind that electricity is...

    I still remember being fascinated by electricity as a kid when we first learned about how slow electron drift velocity is in school and it completely blew my mind that electricity is simultaneously incredibly fast but also so damn slow.

    Seeing it visualised like this is pretty validating from what I imagined it would be having done a degree in physics, and it's still amazing.

    4 votes

  12. Comment on A pregnant teenager died after trying to get care in three visits to Texas emergency rooms in ~society

    infpossibilityspace
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    Non-American here - How would Roe vs Wade get un-overturned? A lawsuit against the state that gets appealed to SCOTUS (wouldn't it get shut down as already litigated?) or something the president...

    Non-American here - How would Roe vs Wade get un-overturned? A lawsuit against the state that gets appealed to SCOTUS (wouldn't it get shut down as already litigated?) or something the president needs to force through?

    5 votes

  13. Comment on Russian court fines Google $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 in ~society

    infpossibilityspace
    Link Parent
    If you really want to break your brain, have fun learning about arrow notation and how big Graham's number is :D https://youtu.be/GuigptwlVHo

    If you really want to break your brain, have fun learning about arrow notation and how big Graham's number is :D

    https://youtu.be/GuigptwlVHo

    2 votes

  14. Comment on Russian court fines Google $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 in ~society

    infpossibilityspace
    Link Parent
    What's even the point of a fine that big? Google have no presence in Russia, and no other government is going to take this seriously...

    What's even the point of a fine that big?
    Google have no presence in Russia, and no other government is going to take this seriously...

    Not that there's much chance of bankrupting Alphabet over the issue. Google in Russia has been inactive since 2022 after the search giant effectively pulled out of the country following Putin's special military operation. Google says the Russian authorities had seized its bank accounts and the offshoot was essentially bankrupt. The ad-spreader had over 200 staff in Russia and, while some have been relocated, others were laid off.

    25 votes

  15. Comment on Formula 1 Mexico City Grand Prix 2024 - Results in ~sports.motorsports

    infpossibilityspace
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    Why not both? I've been a fan of Mclaren since I started watching in the mid 00's, and got attached to Kimi Räikkönen and Lewis Hamilton, and while I always wanted my drivers to do well at their...

    1. Why not both? I've been a fan of Mclaren since I started watching in the mid 00's, and got attached to Kimi Räikkönen and Lewis Hamilton, and while I always wanted my drivers to do well at their new teams, I'm still happy when Mclaren get good results.

    2. This is very much personal opinion and part of the fun imo. To me, Verstappen is incredibly quick but dirty in wheel-to-wheel combat, Leclerc is also fast and better at overtaking but lacks consistency etc. I think the fun thing is to have no biases and make up your own mind.

    3. Historic rivalries don't play much part in my experience, teams go up and down too much for rivalries to last more than a few years, and are forgotten fairly quickly. I find the teams take on the aura of the team boss and some of the high up engineers - I can't imagine RedBull without Horner, or Mercedes without Toto for example. They affect your perception of the team hugely.

    1 vote

  16. Comment on Anthropic announces New Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Claude 3.5 Haiku and the Computer Use API in ~tech

    infpossibilityspace
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    I agree. In my experience, one of the biggest problems is the lack of written documentation because it's all in people's heads who haven't had time to write it down, but then I still don't really...

    a company who has their data in order. This is supposed to sell the product to managers in companies that have none of that

    I agree. In my experience, one of the biggest problems is the lack of written documentation because it's all in people's heads who haven't had time to write it down, but then I still don't really see how this helps?

    Maybe if it sat in on all of your meetings and was able to message people after the fact when you had a question it wasn't able to answer? Perhaps that is the end goal, but we're still a ways from that I think...

    1 vote

  17. Comment on Character.AI faces US lawsuit after teen's suicide in ~tech

    infpossibilityspace
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    Surely this is the real problem we should be trying to fix then, rather than creating & encouraging people to converse with chat bots that cannot empathise with you and will say whatever sounds...

    let's deploy more mental health resources. But there aren't enough resources right now.

    Surely this is the real problem we should be trying to fix then, rather than creating & encouraging people to converse with chat bots that cannot empathise with you and will say whatever sounds like the right advice?*

    Encouraging more people to enter this field and making access easier/cheaper requires a paradigm shift in how we conceptualise healthcare, but we don't do it because it sounds too hard (and lobbying money keeps it this way).

    *I say "sounds like" since it can't provide personalised help - because you aren't in their training data

    13 votes

  18. Comment on Anthropic announces New Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Claude 3.5 Haiku and the Computer Use API in ~tech

    infpossibilityspace
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    The example in the video of purely Web based apps like Excel, which should be easy. Office 365 has numerous APIs, not to mention Excel libraries for programming languages, so interfacing with...

    The example in the video of purely Web based apps like Excel, which should be easy. Office 365 has numerous APIs, not to mention Excel libraries for programming languages, so interfacing with Excel should be trivial.

    You can also use tools like Curl to GET and POST web data, or Everything/find+grep to search across your entire computer.

    If their example was of navigating some 15 year old offline legacy app, I'd be a lot more impressed. Right now it's just using OCR to do things like a human would, not like how a computer can.

    2 votes

  19. Comment on Anthropic announces New Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Claude 3.5 Haiku and the Computer Use API in ~tech

    infpossibilityspace
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    The computer use demo seems needlessly wasteful for the sake of looking flashy to me? Why does it need to scroll through a document to look for information when it can use an API to search for the...

    The computer use demo seems needlessly wasteful for the sake of looking flashy to me?

    Why does it need to scroll through a document to look for information when it can use an API to search for the string in a fraction of the time? Or slowly type one character at a time rather than submitting a block of text into the box, again using an API?

    Making computers act like humans is like trying to make a car out of train parts - you can do it, but it'll be faster if you put in on some tracks instead...

    4 votes

  20. Comment on London’s £4.5 billion super sewer is open for business in ~engineering

    infpossibilityspace
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    I don't understand how these fit together, it's owned by wealth funds that have no wealth? How does that make sense - what's stopping them running up billions of debt for their own gain and just...

    Kemble is owned by a few foreign sovereign wealth funds and pension funds

    Kemble can't pay its debts

    I don't understand how these fit together, it's owned by wealth funds that have no wealth? How does that make sense - what's stopping them running up billions of debt for their own gain and just walking away?

    I guess that's what you get when you put public infrastructure in the hands of a private corporation...

    2 votes