lonk's recent activity

  1. Comment on The editors protecting Wikipedia from AI hoaxes in ~tech

    lonk
    Link
    The article has interesting examples of challenges AI slop poses. I feel like the solution would involve some hybrid of reputation system and human review. That is, give reviewers tools to...

    The article has interesting examples of challenges AI slop poses. I feel like the solution would involve some hybrid of reputation system and human review. That is, give reviewers tools to identify clusters of bot/AI activity.

    7 votes

  3. Comment on Can solar costs keep shrinking? in ~enviro

    lonk
    Link Parent
    I posted this article after reading the one you linked. Both are related. It describes some ways the costs other than the cost of the panels themselves can be reduced. And if you don't have to...

    I posted this article after reading the one you linked. Both are related. It describes some ways the costs other than the cost of the panels themselves can be reduced. And if you don't have to connect to the grid - it is even cheaper.

    4 votes

  5. Comment on Solar will get too cheap to connect to the power grid in ~enviro

  6. Comment on Which user feedback tools would you recommend? in ~tech

    lonk
    Link
    Google Forms is easy to use.

    Google Forms is easy to use.

    3 votes

  7. Comment on Fecal microbiota transplant: Inside the black market for human poop in ~health

    lonk
    Link Parent
    To help diagnose if you have an unbalanced gut microbiome you can do a simple stool test that will show you what bacteria species you have and in what numbers relative to general population. The...

    To help diagnose if you have an unbalanced gut microbiome you can do a simple stool test that will show you what bacteria species you have and in what numbers relative to general population. The one I used is biomesight.

    The association between autism and gut has been studied.

    There are species of Clostridium (including C. difficile) that produce a nasty metabolite called p-Cresol which messes up dopamine to norepinephrine conversion - both are important neurotransmitters. This is because our body creates dopamine from an amino acid tyrosine and the Clostridium bacteria also eat tyrosine and turn it into p-Cresol. Both dopamine and p-Cresol look the same to the enzyme DBH which converts dopamine to norepinephrine so DBH latches on to p-Cresol and then it gets stuck because it cannot do the next step. The enzyme becomes inhibited forever. This makes your body have too much dopamine accumulated and not enough norepinephrine.

    Search for "ASD DBH cresol" to find plenty of research papers.

    7 votes

  8. Comment on Are there other good aggregator sites? in ~tech

    lonk
    Link Parent
    Let me know if you have any ideas how to make it better. I recommend signing up with an email address - then you can subscribe to get the content recommendations as a newsletter.

    Let me know if you have any ideas how to make it better. I recommend signing up with an email address - then you can subscribe to get the content recommendations as a newsletter.

    2 votes

  9. Comment on Are there other good aggregator sites? in ~tech

  10. Comment on What have you been listening to this week? in ~music

  11. Comment on Elon Musk thinking of charging money for Twitter in ~tech

    lonk
    Link Parent
    Thanks for the excerpt video! If you indeed just want to protect from bots by increasing the cost of creating bots then you don't have to charge all users monthly. A one-time payment of $5 would...

    Thanks for the excerpt video!

    If you indeed just want to protect from bots by increasing the cost of creating bots then you don't have to charge all users monthly.

    A one-time payment of $5 would be enough as it proved to be for Metafilter (https://www.metafilter.com/newuser.mefi)

    Even better - a security deposit would do the trick. If the account is banned for policy violation - the security deposit is not returned. But any user could get the security deposit back if they want to stop using the system.

    This way you increase the price for negative behaviour without creating barriers for all users.

    You can see it as a way to compensate your moderation efforts.

    Of course you should not create perverse incentives where you ban accounts to simply increase your revenues. For example, it should not be tied to moderator compensation.

    Advertising revenue is one way to ensure alignment of incentives - the long-term value of regular users should be higher than the security deposit amount.

    3 votes

  13. Comment on One in five single adults in Canada live in poverty in ~life

    lonk
    Link Parent
    Totally agree. The fact that disabled are in poverty shows that there is little support. Many of the programs don't cover the needs of disabled people.

    That actually makes the situation worse, IMO.

    Totally agree. The fact that disabled are in poverty shows that there is little support. Many of the programs don't cover the needs of disabled people.

    4 votes

  14. Comment on One in five single adults in Canada live in poverty in ~life

    lonk
    Link
    The article mentions that most of these people are severely disabled:

    The article mentions that most of these people are severely disabled:

    These working-age single adults make up to 38 per cent of all food-insecure households in the country with 61 per cent of them severely disabled living alone below the poverty line, the report said.

    12 votes

  15. Comment on Show ~/project: A thread to share your finished projects in ~comp

    lonk
    Link
    I'm building https://linklonk.com - a personalized news aggregator. You submit and rate links and get content from other users who liked the same links as you + from RSS feeds that posted content...

    I'm building https://linklonk.com - a personalized news aggregator. You submit and rate links and get content from other users who liked the same links as you + from RSS feeds that posted content you liked.

    I did the a Show Tildes back in 2020: https://tildes.net/~tech/u7f/linklonk_a_link_aggregator_with_a_trust_system
    and a Show HN in 2021: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29445764

    Most recently I added loading links shared on Mastodon and Bluesky: https://linklonk.com/social

    3 votes

  17. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    lonk
    Link
    I'm experimenting with aggregating links people post on Mastodon and on Bluesky. The first version is here: https://linklonk.com/social I'm using Mastodon API to access public federated timelines...

    I'm experimenting with aggregating links people post on Mastodon and on Bluesky. The first version is here: https://linklonk.com/social

    I'm using Mastodon API to access public federated timelines of a few servers to get all new posts and extract links from the posts. The API gives access to the same content you would see on https://mastodon.social/public. Interestingly, some servers give access to the streaming API where you get updates in real-time, but most servers only give access to polling timeline API where you fetch 20 most recent posts.

    Unfortunately, the server timeline only includes original posts but not boosts (like a retweet). Having boosts would have dramatically increased the volume of data to help find most popular content shared on Mastodon.

    For Bluesky I used this sample code to get all updates through the streaming API: https://github.com/CharlesDardaman/blueskyfirehose

    I haven't figured out how to link "likes" on Bluesky to the posts they are liking. When I do figure it out then a like of a post with link A could be treated as if the user that liked posted that link themselves.

    I know that the Mastodon community has been very sensitive to the ways the Mastodon data is used. See https://fedsearch.io/:

    Due to extreme backlash from the Mastodon community we decided to end the project, it is obviously not wanted by server admins.
    While our intention was to provide the end-user with a global search to find information and friends, the concerns of its usage by trolls has been far greater amongst the community.

    The concern is that if you make Mastodon data more easily accessible then you open up harassment attack vectors. That's why I'm not linking back from https://linklonk.com/social to the source posts and to the author profiles. I'm not sure if this resolves all issues that the community might have. I posted about it asking for feedback at https://mastodon.cloud/@lonk/110619081493442451

  18. Comment on Incredible invention - this drone could change everything in ~tech