thecakeisalime's recent activity
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Comment on Non-queer men of Tildes: PLEASE consider before commenting on ~life.women and ~lgbt without careful consideration. We are losing members over this issue. in ~tildes
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Comment on eMudhra intermediate CA compromise in ~tech
thecakeisalime Link ParentA certificate tells you whether a website is who they say they are. Certificates are signed and verified by certain providers, and that's how your browser knows that the certificate matches the...A certificate tells you whether a website is who they say they are. Certificates are signed and verified by certain providers, and that's how your browser knows that the certificate matches the website.
There's a certain type of attack known as a man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack, where an attacker intercepts your request for a website, and returns a different website instead. Sometimes this website will look identical to the one you mean to go to, but as it's not the real one, if you enter a password or something, they now have a copy of your password. This is usually stopped by the certificate, which tells you that the website you loaded isn't the one that matches what the certificate says.
The exploit lets an attacker sign a "fake" certificate, which means your browser might not notice when a MITM attack is taking place. For all intents and purposes, your browser believes that it's going to the "real" website.
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Comment on Why do we find Tildes (and Lobsters) more interesting than the alternatives? in ~tech
thecakeisalime Link ParentI'm the opposite. I recognize your username since you post here a lot, but unless I dig through comment histories, I'm not going to remember much about any specific commenter. If there was a forum...I want to recognize people. I want to care about them and see what they have to say. This has meaning in and of itself.
I'm the opposite. I recognize your username since you post here a lot, but unless I dig through comment histories, I'm not going to remember much about any specific commenter.
If there was a forum similar to Tildes, but comments weren't tied to usernames and had to stand on their own, I think I might prefer that to Tildes. However, I think Tildes has struck a good balance (especially by not gamifying commenting with karma), and there are a lot of potential issues with fully anonymous commenting that I don't necessarily have an answer to.
I 100% agree with everything else you said though. Reddit is 99% people just reposting the same jokes over and over in the comments and arguing about everything instead of trying to have a discussion.
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Comment on Modern myths in ~life
thecakeisalime Link ParentI don't know if this is exactly what you meant, but this reminds me of another vaccine-related myth: that the post-vaccine side effects tell you how effective the vaccine is. It doesn't. You can...at least his post-vaccine reaction should be moderate
I don't know if this is exactly what you meant, but this reminds me of another vaccine-related myth: that the post-vaccine side effects tell you how effective the vaccine is.
It doesn't. You can have a strong visible reaction or no visible reaction, and in either case, you'll have no idea whether your body is properly recognizing the vaccine and producing the proper antibodies (though it usually will be in both cases).
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Comment on Help me choose a small electric car in ~transport
thecakeisalime Link ParentI had a 2008 Prius. I kinda just assumed it had the same transmission, but mostly my comment about components was related to things like oil, fluids, belts, and other general wear items that do...I had a 2008 Prius. I kinda just assumed it had the same transmission, but mostly my comment about components was related to things like oil, fluids, belts, and other general wear items that do need replacing as they wear out. Transmission failures are expensive whether they're ICE or the hybrid system, and unless a model is particularly known for transmission issues, probably shouldn't factor into the equation on whether to buy it.
I'm not saying hybrids are unreliable, but they do need to follow basically the same maintenance schedule as an ICE, whereas EVs need basically no maintenance outside of tires, brakes, and air filters.
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Comment on Help me choose a small electric car in ~transport
thecakeisalime Link ParentThis is the opposite experience that I've had (sample size = 1), but it also just doesn't make that much sense. Hybrids - even non-plug-in ones - have all the components of a traditional ICE...The most reliable and cheap to maintain vehicles are (non-plug-in) hybrids
This is the opposite experience that I've had (sample size = 1), but it also just doesn't make that much sense.
Hybrids - even non-plug-in ones - have all the components of a traditional ICE vehicle, and most or all of the components of an EV, which comes with all of the maintenance requirements of both. On the EV side of thing, there's basically zero maintenance required, but there's still just more parts that probably won't, but might break.
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Comment on Overview of the proofs behind the Navier-Stokes $1 million millennium prize problem in ~science
thecakeisalime Link ParentI disagree with this conclusion. Most promising research direction gets shared in the form of published papers, and those get published (for better or worse) because if researchers don't publish,...The incentives may now be pointing in the direction of no longer sharing any promising research directions with the broader community
I disagree with this conclusion. Most promising research direction gets shared in the form of published papers, and those get published (for better or worse) because if researchers don't publish, they lose funding and may be fired.
In this case, it seems like OpenAI brute forced the solution, but I do think that with time, AI will be able to also "discover" some of the intermediary solutions. That probably depends on how researchers decide to use AI to tackle the problem. It's also potentially possible to take the solution and work backwards to discover things that may have been discovered during the journey.
Brute forcing solutions is not new to mathematics. Sometimes people just want to know if something is true. I would be very surprised if no one was able to use this solution elsewhere.
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Comment on Overview of the proofs behind the Navier-Stokes $1 million millennium prize problem in ~science
thecakeisalime Link ParentThis is basically how mathematics progresses. Mathematicians use computer-based tools all the time to help them, and the only difference here is that these specific mathematicians are backed with...Why spend your career working on a difficult problem if a lab will just throw 10,000 agents at that problem and solve it over the weekend?
This is basically how mathematics progresses. Mathematicians use computer-based tools all the time to help them, and the only difference here is that these specific mathematicians are backed with more resources than anyone else gets.
There are a lot of issues here with plagiarism and the lack of citations which shouldn't be excused, and it seems like they chose this specific problem explicitly to scoop the existing researchers, which is a pretty shitty thing to do, but using AI to find solutions to problems should not be the controversial part of this.
Imagine that some billionaire has a grudge against a mathematician, and decides one day to spend as much money as necessary to hire a bunch of other mathematicians to just get together, solve the problem, and scoop the guy he hates. That's obviously a shitty thing to do, but it's good for mathematics as a whole. That's sort of what happened here, other than the plagiarism.
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Comment on Operation Bluebird launches Tweet.app in ~tech
thecakeisalime Link ParentSimilarly, there's a bunch of Standard gas stations, which are identical to Chevron gas stations other than the name, and this is simply to keep the trademark alive.Similarly, there's a bunch of Standard gas stations, which are identical to Chevron gas stations other than the name, and this is simply to keep the trademark alive.
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Comment on How often are you eating plant based meals? in ~food
thecakeisalime LinkI only eat 2 meals a day (intermittent fasting), and I usually eat a vegetarian "lunch", but dinner will often have some meat component. I have been slowly shifting my dinners to be less...I only eat 2 meals a day (intermittent fasting), and I usually eat a vegetarian "lunch", but dinner will often have some meat component. I have been slowly shifting my dinners to be less meat-heavy, and trying to introduce more fish and less beef. Since both my partner and I are eating roughly 50% vegetarian, it's the same impact as one person going fully vegetarian, without either of us giving up meat. I have some vegan friends, and when we hang out, I have no problems with going vegan for a meal or a day.
I really love cheese and eggs so I'll probably never go vegan. Also, there's just a lot of animal byproducts used in everything, from white sugar to wine, that are hard to know even exist unless you're looking for it.
I also don't understand this whole protein craze. Most people are already eating too much protein, but there's an entire aisle at the local Costco dedicated to various protein bars and powders.
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Comment on Game Pass was supposed to save Xbox – instead, it’s killing the company in ~games
thecakeisalime Link ParentI think the article is using some "piracy" math to count the losses. There are almost certainly real losses to specific developers, but I don't know if the game pass reduced the total customer...I think the article is using some "piracy" math to count the losses. There are almost certainly real losses to specific developers, but I don't know if the game pass reduced the total customer spend - it's just spread out over more games.
If someone buys a game for $70, they're going to play that game, and maybe only that game. If they've paid for the game pass, they might try out many other games that would have normally also cost $70, but they'd have never purchased normally.
For example, if a user played 10 different games in a month, each of the developers might get ~$1.50. Their calculated loss here is $68.50 per player per game, but spending $700 to play all those games was never an option. If the player continues to play all of these games in the next month, the loss shrinks a little, but it's unlikely that any game is going to capture a player's attention for the 47 months it takes to hit that $70 per game benchmark.
On average, this is probably fine. People will play games they otherwise would have never looked for, and those developers will get a cut. But this model tends to pay the big hitters less than they otherwise would have earned, and prop up the smaller games. That's probably a good thing overall, but buying game studios so you can stream the games and funnel profit away from yourself to the smaller studios doesn't seem like the winning move.
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Comment on You can vote on the design of the next Euro banknotes! in ~design
thecakeisalime Link ParentThe last one is Bertha von Suttner. I had to look this up. She was the second female Nobel laureate (after Marie Curie in 1903), the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and the first...The last one is Bertha von Suttner. I had to look this up. She was the second female Nobel laureate (after Marie Curie in 1903), the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and the first Austrian laureate.
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Comment on You can vote on the design of the next Euro banknotes! in ~design
thecakeisalime Link ParentCanadian bills are moving towards a vertical design. So far, it's just the $10 bill, but next year the $20 bill will also be vertical, and sometime after that the $5. I don't know why we change...Canadian bills are moving towards a vertical design. So far, it's just the $10 bill, but next year the $20 bill will also be vertical, and sometime after that the $5. I don't know why we change them one at a time.
I don't know how much the orientation matters in day to day use - people mostly aren't taking bills out of their wallets and admiring the designs.
One thing present on the Canadian bills that isn't in these Euro mockups is just the name of the person/building depicted. I don't know who all these people are, and while I could look them up, a name would give a much better starting point.
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Comment on My polish costs nothing in ~tech
thecakeisalime Link ParentFair enough. I probably wouldn't work well in an environment where a boss wanted to dictate the style of internal informational emails, but I can fully accept that those bosses exist. Text-heavy...Fair enough. I probably wouldn't work well in an environment where a boss wanted to dictate the style of internal informational emails, but I can fully accept that those bosses exist. Text-heavy emails just feels like another bullshit metric that some high-level exec decided was a good proxy for productivity, even though it's the opposite. People waste time writing lots of unnecessary words, and then (presumably) people waste time reading those words.
In places that do everything face to face, it's always good to send a follow up email summarizing the key points so that (1) there's a paper trail, and (2) if something was misinterpreted, there's an opportunity to correct it.
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Comment on My polish costs nothing in ~tech
thecakeisalime Link ParentIf all they have to say can be summed up in five bullet points, I would much rather read an email with five bullet points than five paragraphs of nothing. There can be a lot of information lost...If all they have to say can be summed up in five bullet points, I would much rather read an email with five bullet points than five paragraphs of nothing. There can be a lot of information lost going from bullet points -> AI paragraphs -> my own interpretation of those 5 points. If you just present the five points up front, there's a lot less going on, and less room for me to misinterpret your (literal) points.
Every time something is translated or rewritten (whether it be by a human or a tool), some information is lost or altered, even without accounting for the possibility that mistakes . Sometimes, it's acceptable or even good (e.g. changing "In my personal opinion, I think that it could be said that blah" to "I think blah"), and sometimes it's a very bad change. It's like playing a game of telephone, or using Google translate to go between languages a few times before you end up with unintelligible garbage, except with AI-assisted tools, it still seems coherent, so it's harder to tell that something's wrong.
For example, I ran the sentence "This sentence could not possibly be unfalse" through Hypertranslate, and the result is the complete opposite "This sentence cannot be false." Now, you may say that "unfalse" isn't a word, and it got translated to "false" along the way. And that's probably correct. But if a non-native speaker is trying to say something, and uses a word that isn't quite right, most English speakers can recognize what they mean, even if the word is wrong. Computers don't always have that nuance.
TL;DR:
- If the message is just five key points, just use the key points
- Every rewrite introduces the possibility of losing or changing meaning
- AI-generated text can hide mistakes because it still sounds natural and coherent
- Humans can usually infer from incorrect word usage but computers might not be able to
- Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?
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Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books
thecakeisalime Link ParentI agree. It's his first published book, and it definitely shows. It's not a terrible book by any means, but it doesn't have the same polished feel as his later works.I agree. It's his first published book, and it definitely shows. It's not a terrible book by any means, but it doesn't have the same polished feel as his later works.
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Comment on There is no reason to buy another PlayStation or Xbox in ~games
thecakeisalime Link ParentI've had the same thought, but I don't know if it's due to nostalgia, the novelty of being a kid, or because games are truly getting worse. Breath of the Wild is a great attempt at an open world...I cannot remember the last time I bought a game and enjoyed it in the way I enjoyed Wind Waker or other games from my childhood.
I've had the same thought, but I don't know if it's due to nostalgia, the novelty of being a kid, or because games are truly getting worse.
Breath of the Wild is a great attempt at an open world game, and Echoes of Wisdom was enjoyable, though short. But ultimately, they're both still providing the same experience of running around a map, collecting things, and exploring dungeons. Does that add enough novelty to the formula of Wind Waker or Ocarina of Time? I personally did not enjoy and never finished Tears of the Kingdom, because it just felt like I was playing BotW again (and I somewhat agree with you that even BotW felt repetitive at times). Maybe there's just too much "reuse" (for lack of a better term) in all new Zelda games, and it'll never eclipse the first one we played as children because it's not novel anymore.
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Comment on Rewriting Bun in Rust in ~comp
thecakeisalime LinkThere was a previous discussion on this. I guess this is the follow up blog post promised in the PR.There was a previous discussion on this. I guess this is the follow up blog post promised in the PR.
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Comment on Smush in ~games
thecakeisalime Link Parent362 points. The limit on letter usage was an interesting twist to this type of game. I'm not sure how I feel about the multiplier bonus. If you figure out the pangram, it's optimal to wait until...362 points. The limit on letter usage was an interesting twist to this type of game.
I'm not sure how I feel about the multiplier bonus. If you figure out the pangram, it's optimal to wait until the multiplier is on a letter that appears the most times in the word, and also wait until the pangram will "use up" as many letter uses as possible. However, it seems the multiplier chooses a letter at random, or possibly a letter you haven't used very much, so it's hard to coordinate that. Near the end, it also seemed like there wasn't always a word that I could make using that bonus (though I may have just not found it).
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Comment on Vatican declares Society of St. Pius X in schism, excommunicates bishops in ~humanities
thecakeisalime Link ParentCan you expand on this a bit? My (limited) understanding of Buddhism makes me think that Buddhists who chant sutras know the general meaning of the sutra, if not the literal translation of the...but the fact that the same phenomenon shows up independently across so many unrelated traditions suggests that a reductive explanation like "liturgical languages only exist to trick people and maintain control" doesn't tell nearly the whole story. Its not like the Buddhist monks are winning huge levels of societal control when someone alone in their house chants a sutra in a dead language.
Can you expand on this a bit? My (limited) understanding of Buddhism makes me think that Buddhists who chant sutras know the general meaning of the sutra, if not the literal translation of the words they are saying. Much like I can go to an opera and read the subtitles to understand what the singers are saying, it's still conveying the meaning, but I don't get a word for word translation. But as far as I'm aware, there are no subtitles for Latin mass, which seems to be a big difference in your analogy comparing Latin mass to Buddhist sutras.
I think it's mostly an overcorrection opposing what seems like hyperbole or fearmongering that these issues are presented as. I understand that #YesAllMen doesn't literally mean 100% of men on Earth, but sometimes the discussions seem to trend in that direction. But a video like the one referenced in the other thread is fundamentally an "attack" on "all men", and "men in tech" specifically. It's not surprising that people get defensive about it, because most people don't want to be the person that's being described (even, or especially, if they are that person).
I don't think I was ever as bad as denying someone's lived experience, but in the past (pre-Tildes) I would absolutely stumble into a thread and just "um acktuallly" someone's use of "all" or "every" or whatever. The worst (for me) was during the peak of the defund the police movement, because some people claimed that obviously they didn't mean remove all funding, but others absolutely wanted that, and it mostly just caused a lot of confusion and anger all around. Nowadays I mostly just try to avoid commenting on these topics (I'm doing a bad job of that right now).
I don't know if there's a solution to this, because modern internet discourse has basically removed the ability to speak with nuance, and #YesMostMenButNotAllOfThemButMaybeActuallyYou is not a very good slogan.