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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 20th, 2023

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  • Funnily enough I actually have Firefox open by default whenever I boot up my PC.

    I have no taskbar or desktop items. I always default to a specific workflow of pressing the windows key (or whatever we call it for Linux), and searching for everything. I have since early windows 10.

    I realised that 90% of the time, I was opening Firefox, so now it just opens. I have a pretty minimal toolbar setup for it, so it’s basically just an address bar that automatically focuses when I start typing.

    One day I’ll set up something where I have multiple search hotkeys for web search, file search, application search, music etc, that will sort of replace this.


  • China aren’t strictly speaking allies. They get a lot of oil from Iran and have plenty of deals in place, to the point that many people believe that the Venezuela coup and Iran war are a US ploy to destabilise China specifically.

    China basically stay out of geopolitics far more than people assume. They are very unlikely to enter the Iran war on either side, ever.


  • I’m guilty of using LLMs from time to time, and more guilty of finding it gradually replacing what I used to Google search.

    If it’s something that Wikipedia can help me with, that’s still my first port of call, but gradually, for anything problem solving related, I just ask an LLM.

    Even a year or two ago, I was googling things with reliable websites for advice at the end, like reddit, but clearly that has decayed as a reputable source for support.

    Googling things that require more than just knowledge is difficult now, and asking the sometimes wrong machine is consistently more useful.


  • I’m guilty of using LLMs from time to time, and more guilty of finding it gradually replacing what I used to Google search.

    If it’s something that Wikipedia can help me with, that’s still my first port of call, but gradually, for anything problem solving related, I just ask an LLM.

    Even a year or two ago, I was googling things with reliable websites for advice at the end, like reddit, but clearly that has decayed as a reputable source for support.

    Googling things that require more than just knowledge is difficult now, and asking the sometimes wrong machine is consistently more useful.



  • Khrux@ttrpg.networktoScience Memes@mander.xyzard
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    1 month ago

    I’ve always had a soft spot for the word rizz. Not just is it a shortening of charisma, so more sensible than other zoomer words, but I grew up playing D&D, where wisdom is frequently shortened to Wis, and Cha is bad to say and doesn’t rhyme.


  • Khrux@ttrpg.networktoTechnology@lemmy.worldFacebook is absolutely cooked
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    2 months ago

    When I was still using Instagram reels, I was always amazed how quickly the algorithm figured me out. If I hesitated for even a second on a reel, it would amend my next ones immediately. I assume the real trick is comparing it to the average time spent on a reel, everyone spends longer on a wall of text reel, but when I stop on a Linux reel for an extra second, I’m immediately in the 1% for engagement.

    I read something years ago about how your phone keyboard tracks your recommended words, it knows if you’re more likely to type apple or Apple, or if you type soup more than average, and any app that gets that data and compares it to the baseline has an instant, in depth profile on you.


  • I’ve seen quite a lot recently saying a particularly distracting aspect of phones isn’t that they’re a screen and a visual stimulus, but a tool and a haptic stimulus.

    An increasingly popular way to combat checking your phone while watching TV is to busy your hands with something. If this works and is widely adopted, we won’t need shows to have second-screen writing repetition; our brains tell our hands to use the tool, and it just so happens that the tool is full of text and speech and occupies the language center of our brains, meaning we stop listening to the show.


    Also, a whole separate thing I often think about, before 2010, there were very few high budget TV shows. TV was made on a much smaller budget than film, and the writing often took a hit too, and that was just the reality of watching TV. They were also designed to hook people who were clicking around channels with lots of recaps and narrative refreshers, for people tuning in halfway through, this is like the second-screen writing issues we complain about now on steroids, straight to TV movies were also terrible for this.

    Movies that were designed for Cinema revenue weren’t impacted by this or course, but even DVD revenue movies often have simpler plots and reiterate their narratives for people who are half watching while chatting or stoned or whatever.





  • Compared to crypto and NFTs, there is at least something in this mix, not that I could identify it.

    I’ve become increasingly comfortable with LLM usage, to the point that myself from last year would hate me. Compared to projects I used to do with where I’d be deep into Google Reddit and Wikipedia, ChatGPT gives me pretty good answers much more quickly, and far more tailored to my needs.

    I’m getting into home labs, and currently everything I have runs on ass old laptops and phones, but I do daydream if the day where I can run an ethically and sustainably trained, LLM myself that compares to current GPT-5 because as much as I hate to say it, it’s really useful to my life to have a sometimes incorrect but overalls knowledgeable voice that’s perpetually ready to support me.

    The irony is that I’ll never build a server that can run a local LLM due to the price hikes caused by the technology in the first place.




  • As much as I don’t disagree, I think the “Apple is closest to Nazism” comment touches on something different. Other massive American companies have awful practices but they don’t care particularly how their way of making money looks. Apple wields a specific aesthetic power that generally dictates a hegemonic uniformity, that strays the line of being to their detriment at times. I don’t think any other big tech company would care in the same way if not for their desire to copy Apple.




  • Blurry photos is fine to make an stylistic choice. The 2019 movie The Lighthouse stylistically looked like a 1920s film, before modern music intentionally used bitcrushing, it used vinyl cracks, boomer shooters made in this decade intentionally look like 1990s Doom clones.

    When a medium’s shortcoming is patched by technology, it ultimately becomes an artifact of the era where it was accidental. Once a few years have passed, it becomes more synonymous with the era than the mistake.

    It’s not necessarily nostalgia, Gen Alpha and the younger half of Gen Z never grew up without smartphones, so they don’t miss the era of poor film photography. Although every generation does this simulation of forgotten mistakes, it’s particularly poignant now, where the high quality, perfectly lit, professional feeling photos convey something artificial, i.e. smartphone software emulating camera hardware, faces tuned with filters or outright AI generated content. Even if it’s false imperfection, the alternative is false perfection.

    Art using deliberate imperfections that were unavoidable in the past is romanticising something perceived as before commercialism, and that’s admirable.



  • People disagree because it’s still an abstraction of camo. Wearing it in the first place came from people fawning over militarism.

    I actually think it can work with a queer look in one of two ways, so you are likely fine: Either it’s effectively teasing the pro authoritarian militarism camo types, or it’s a radical anarchy armed rebel look, which without praxis is really just the former look again. Either way these are fine.

    Another reason maybe you’ve been downvoted is that people loathe the deep abstraction of modern, or rather postmoderm society. Camo was made for soldiers > Camo was worn by patriotic civilians simulating the soldier aesthetic > particularly under the Bush administration, it became less a symbol of soldiers, and more a symbol of patriots. Patriotism is nationalism.

    Today when most of us camo in the military cosplaying way, we think ‘nationalist’. When we see a person in a little bit of camo, perhaps just some came shorts and a regular t-shirt, we think either ‘nationalist’, ‘okay with nationalism’ or ‘ignorant of nationalism’.

    So when most people see someone in a blended queer and camo look, they probably assume one of three things: ‘ignorant of nationalism’, ‘critical of nationalism in a rebellious manner’ or ‘pro nationalist queer’. Of course one of these is fine, but one is very bad.