sleepydave's recent activity

  1. Comment on Benn Jordan on how bots have come to sow disinformation in ~society

    sleepydave
    Link
    This and his ADHD pharma video have been very enlightening and well researched, absolutely worth a watch for anyone who hasn't seen them already.

    This and his ADHD pharma video have been very enlightening and well researched, absolutely worth a watch for anyone who hasn't seen them already.

    3 votes

  2. Comment on Save Point: A game deal roundup for the week of November 17 in ~games

    sleepydave
    (edited )
    Link
    Lowest recorded price on Untitled Goose Game Half-Life 2 is free for a limited time, and the rest of the HL franchise is on sale
    6 votes

  3. Comment on The man problem | “Why are men moving right?” in ~life.men

    sleepydave
    Link Parent
    From what I've heard she's also expressed strong support for Bernie Sanders, so I'm skeptical that the intent behind that was simply "racism". Insensitivity, sure.

    From what I've heard she's also expressed strong support for Bernie Sanders, so I'm skeptical that the intent behind that was simply "racism". Insensitivity, sure.

  4. Comment on The man problem | “Why are men moving right?” in ~life.men

    sleepydave
    Link Parent
    ...is not a fallacy at all, it's well established and perfectly logical. Your comment is poorly worded but if I'm understanding the intent behind it correctly, I did not insinuate that the person...

    the idea that it’s possible to make any detailed inferences about the personal habits or beliefs of someone simply sharing some context that they think is important to consider.

    ...is not a fallacy at all, it's well established and perfectly logical. Your comment is poorly worded but if I'm understanding the intent behind it correctly, I did not insinuate that the person I replied to was wrong for having concerns, but that the specific concerns they raised had little verifiable merit to my knowledge and that it's disingenuous to leap to those kinds of conclusions from feelings-based observations of an online persona you've likely never held a conversation with.

    11 votes

  5. Comment on The man problem | “Why are men moving right?” in ~life.men

    sleepydave
    Link Parent
    This kind of response represents a kind of fallacy I've noticed people collectively falling prey to over the years, the idea that if someone isn't expressing exclusively progressive ideas then...

    This kind of response represents a kind of fallacy I've noticed people collectively falling prey to over the years, the idea that if someone isn't expressing exclusively progressive ideas then they must be conservative or some other kind of antagonist to the "in" side of binary politics. I'm not an avid viewer of this person's videos but I've seen a few that were shared with me and to say she espouses right wing dogwhistles is a major stretch.

    21 votes

  6. Comment on Elections: ultimately, it’s going to be okay in ~society

    sleepydave
    Link Parent
    I'd be inclined to agree. Say what you will about Bush's policies and motivations, but at the very least he showed a capacity for compassion and human decency that I have never seen from Trump.

    I'd be inclined to agree. Say what you will about Bush's policies and motivations, but at the very least he showed a capacity for compassion and human decency that I have never seen from Trump.

    9 votes

  7. Comment on Elections: ultimately, it’s going to be okay in ~society

    sleepydave
    Link Parent
    I don't take issue with differences of opinion or ideals, people are perfectly entitled to their personal views despite how others apparently take differences of worldview as personal attacks...

    I don't take issue with differences of opinion or ideals, people are perfectly entitled to their personal views despite how others apparently take differences of worldview as personal attacks nowadays. What I've found most concerning is the antagonistic behaviour from both sides of the aisle, including the "my opinion is the one true correct opinion and if you disagree you're a Fascist Snowflake Pedo Nazi" rhetoric. America seems to be the only country that is so intensely politically divided that political ideals are now a personality trait in and of itself?

    8 votes

  8. Comment on Elections: ultimately, it’s going to be okay in ~society

    sleepydave
    Link Parent
    Considering today's outcome, I think millions of leftists would be ecstatic if they could have George W. instead. Fuckin' hindsight lol.

    Considering today's outcome, I think millions of leftists would be ecstatic if they could have George W. instead. Fuckin' hindsight lol.

    39 votes

  9. Comment on I think it's time to give a "news detox" a try in ~talk

    sleepydave
    Link
    n=1, but I've been casually doing this for a couple of years with good success for my general quality of life. Journalism and news media are past the point of no return in terms of...

    n=1, but I've been casually doing this for a couple of years with good success for my general quality of life. Journalism and news media are past the point of no return in terms of integrity/objectivity or lack thereof, and being barraged by an on-demand feed of tragic events is not something our minds have developed any kind of healthy resilience against.

    I suggest finding a good RSS reader app and taking the time to curate specific feeds for topics and industry sectors by which you want to stay updated.

    12 votes

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

    sleepydave
    Link Parent
    An LLM's "ability to follow deductive reasoning steps" is purely performative - an LLM does not understand anything at a conceptual level and can only output what it determines to be of highest...

    An LLM's "ability to follow deductive reasoning steps" is purely performative - an LLM does not understand anything at a conceptual level and can only output what it determines to be of highest probability based on its training data, and does so on a token-by-token basis where it is not following a true logical path. There is no "thought process".

    LLMs are not currently designed to be logical or even correct, they are fundamentally designed to be as linguistically coherent as possible. Anything else is secondary to that.

    12 votes

  11. Comment on Steam games will now need to fully disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages in ~games

    sleepydave
    Link Parent
    My primary certs are in networking IT and I'm aware of how most anticheat technology works :)

    ...without relevant domain knowledge or experience in game networking and anti-cheat, I would caution you about making sweeping generalizations...

    My primary certs are in networking IT and I'm aware of how most anticheat technology works :)

    4 votes

  12. Comment on Steam games will now need to fully disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages in ~games

    sleepydave
    Link Parent
    There are emerging and even semi-established AI/ML solutions that address the "uncaught exceptions" particularly well when properly trained, as ML tech is extremely effective at pattern...

    There are emerging and even semi-established AI/ML solutions that address the "uncaught exceptions" particularly well when properly trained, as ML tech is extremely effective at pattern recognition to the point of vastly exceeding human capabilities. It's not as impossible as you might expect.

    However I think we're at odds of priorities here - I'm approaching this from a technological perspective since I don't play multiplayer games, but I understand the true risks involved in allowing this to become pervasive behaviour from software vendors. I understand why non-technical users would have an opposing opinion if they have to deal with cheaters on a regular basis, and rightly so in some ways, but they would only understand what's at risk at the point where it becomes a problem that personally affects them. It's not just an issue of "something could happen", it's that it is an eventuality. Whether it's one of my aforementioned examples, or a memory management vulnerability allows an unrelated process to take advantage of that kernel access in malicious ways, it really is just a matter of time. Anyone worth their salt in the security space will tell you without hesitation that reduction of vulnerability vectors is critical.

    2 votes

  13. Comment on Steam games will now need to fully disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages in ~games

    sleepydave
    Link Parent
    That's more so a symptom of broader stakeholder/economic pressure than any kind of technological issue

    That's more so a symptom of broader stakeholder/economic pressure than any kind of technological issue

    7 votes

  14. Comment on Steam games will now need to fully disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages in ~games

    sleepydave
    Link Parent
    Kernel-level access should only be requested on a basis of absolute necessity, it's the point where there is no barrier preventing the ring-0 process from assuming full control over a system and...

    Kernel-level access should only be requested on a basis of absolute necessity, it's the point where there is no barrier preventing the ring-0 process from assuming full control over a system and can bypass any kind of client-side antimalware protections. It shouldn't have to be explained that it introduces potentially devastating effects if (for example):

    • A security breach allows a bad actor to push a malicious update
    • Poor QA allows a bad update through internal checks and onto client systems (we all should be intimately familiar with this problem by now :P), especially as memory-related bugs can be far more devastating in kernel space than user space
    • Considering Tencent's acquisition of Riot Games and China's adversarial behavior on the world stage, as well as their policy-based ability to railroad a backdoor into any digital system controlled by a Chinese entity, having a vector to assume control of/botnet-ize a significant portion of western client devices would be a highly compelling idea to the CCP if they thought they could get away with it

    Anti-cheat should be conducted via behavioural monitoring systems to detect in-game actions that breach the bounds of human interaction/interfacing, not by assuming kernel-level control and implementing invasive monitoring measures like screening all running processes and memory on the system and taking periodic screenshots.

    18 votes

  15. Comment on Very unusual behaviour trying to use Duck Duck Go. Any suggestions for what to do? in ~tech

    sleepydave
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Don't use Google DNS, it's just a vector for them to parse your web traffic across the entire internet. Use Mullvad DNS for privacy, Cloudflare for raw speed, depending on your priorities. Mullvad...

    Don't use Google DNS, it's just a vector for them to parse your web traffic across the entire internet. Use Mullvad DNS for privacy, Cloudflare for raw speed, depending on your priorities. Mullvad also offers a variant with DNS-level adblocking which is especially useful on mobile devices.

    1 vote

  16. Comment on Very unusual behaviour trying to use Duck Duck Go. Any suggestions for what to do? in ~tech

    sleepydave
    Link
    Potentially something to do with this? What I suspect is more likely is some kind of IP-based "shadowban" or rate limiting, most likely because some system/org in the chain of delivery has...

    Potentially something to do with this?

    What I suspect is more likely is some kind of IP-based "shadowban" or rate limiting, most likely because some system/org in the chain of delivery has determined your IP address to be abusive - namely if you are behind CGNAT or have been doing any kind of web scraping or automation that flagged a detection system. Contact your ISP and request a unique IP if you don't have one already.

    3 votes

  17. Comment on Steam games will now need to fully disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages in ~games

    sleepydave
    Link
    About time :) It should also come with disclosure about the risks of granting ring 0 access. The fact that Windows fails to adequately distinguish between a standard installation and a ring 0...

    About time :) It should also come with disclosure about the risks of granting ring 0 access. The fact that Windows fails to adequately distinguish between a standard installation and a ring 0 installation to the user at the UAC prompt is appalling and I'm glad we're seeing industry trends heading in the right direction, even if it took an unprecedented international incident to spur it on.

    34 votes

  18. Comment on Steam Deck shipping to Australia this November in ~games

    sleepydave
    Link Parent
    I don't think it's been an issue of market size, as Valve has publicly taken issue with Australia's consumer protection laws in the past. Either way, I've been waiting for it since 2021 so I'm...

    I don't think it's been an issue of market size, as Valve has publicly taken issue with Australia's consumer protection laws in the past. Either way, I've been waiting for it since 2021 so I'm glad it's happening at all.

    5 votes

  19. Comment on YouTube Premium is getting a big price hike internationally in ~tech

    sleepydave
    Link Parent
    SponsorBlock functionality works for me, it just presents a small (non-intrusive, but easy to miss) skip button.

    SponsorBlock functionality works for me, it just presents a small (non-intrusive, but easy to miss) skip button.

    1 vote

  20. Comment on YouTube Premium is getting a big price hike internationally in ~tech