lvxferre

@lvxferre@mander.xyz

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Jeff Bezos said the quiet part out loud — hopes that you'll give up your PC to rent one from the cloud⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Besides flat out refusing their “cloud” services, what else can we [in the short term, without too much co-ordination being necessary; unlike, you know, a revolution] do to foil their plans?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Jeff Bezos said the quiet part out loud — hopes that you'll give up your PC to rent one from the cloud⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Call me paranoid, but:

  What is all this babble about AI is a way to force hardware demand thus prices up, so the average person cannot pay for a half-decent machine?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Linux Mint 22.3 "Zena" is out now and supported until 2029⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I said in another comment that the upgrade was smooth, until I tried to use the Compose key. (I use it all the time.) It was just a matter of reconfiguring stuff:

  • revert input method from iBus to XIM
  • configure the XKB options to specify where the Compose key is.

  Then it’s working again. It used to show the sequence of keys I was typing, until I finished it, now it isn’t any more, but… you know what, not a big deal.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Linux Mint 22.3 "Zena" is out now and supported until 2029⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Same here: I like the new menu and its customisability, but I don’t like the new icons. (inb4 not blaming the Mint team for that.)

  I also love how the upgrade was smooth. The only issue was PEBKAC, it took me a while to find how to revert category icons back to full colour (right-click menu, “configure”, “appearance”, “use symbolic icons for categories”).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨NVIDIA CEO says relentless negativity around AI is hurting society and has "done a lot of damage"⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  If I got this right, what most people call “slop” is mass-produced and low quality. Following that definition you could have human-made slop, but it’s less like a low quality meme and more like corporate “art”. Some however seem to be using it exclusively for AI generated content, so for those “human-made slop” would be an oxymoron.

  Human reviewing is not directly related to that. Only as far as a human to be expected to remove really junky output, and only let decent stuff in.

  Vibe coding actually implies the opposite: you don’t check the output. You tell the bot what you want, it outputs some code, you test that code without checking it, then you ask the bot for further modifications.

  so then is responsibly-trained output of AI, like using DeepSeek on a personal machine where someone pays for their own electricity, okay?

  That’ll depend on the person. In my opinion, AI usage is mostly okay if:

  • you don’t do it willy-nilly. Even if you pay for the energy, it still contributes with global warming and resources consumption. Plus supply x demand effects.
  • you’re manually reviewing the output, or its accuracy isn’t a concern. For example: it’s prolly OK to ask it to give you a summary of a text you wouldn’t otherwise, but if you’re doing using it to decide if someone is[n’t] allowed in a community then it’s probably not OK.
  • you’re taking responsibility for the output. No “I didn’t do it, the AI did it!”.
  • the model was responsibly trained and weighted, in a way that takes artist/author consent into account and there’s at least some effort into avoiding harmful output.

  conversely, what about stealing memes on the internet and sharing those without attribution as to the source

  Key differences: a meme is typically made to be shared, without too many expectations of recognition, people sharing it will likely do it for free, and memes in general take relatively low effort to generate. While the content typically fed into those models is often important for the author/artist, takes a lot more effort to generate, and the people feeding those models typically expect to be paid for them.

  Even then note a lot of people hate memes for a reason rather similar to AI output, “it takes space of more interesting stuff”. That’s related to your point #6, labelling makes it a non-issue for people who’d rather avoid consuming AI output as content.

  piracy

  It’s less about intent and more about effect. A pirated copy typically benefits the pirate by a lot, while it only harms the author by a wee bit.

  Note I don’t consider piracy as “theft” or “stealing”, but something else. It’s illegal, but not always immoral.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨NVIDIA CEO says relentless negativity around AI is hurting society and has "done a lot of damage"⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Even for the one just in YT, people automatically say “eeew” if it’s AI-generated, even if not slop.

  This now makes me curious: does the term “slop” apply beyond text, images, and videos? I thought “ai” coding was called “vibe-coding” rather than slop?

  I think it could. I only recall seeing it for media, but the meaning fits AI code well. Specially dysfunctional code outputted in large quantities.

  “Vibe coding” simply lacks that negative connotation, it’s what the people making it call it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨NVIDIA CEO says relentless negativity around AI is hurting society and has "done a lot of damage"⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I think the negative reaction is composed of multiple factors coming together:

  • slop (as you said),
  • people using the slop to add noise to the internet,
  • harmful output (not talking about the paperclip problem; think on Grok sexualising minors, or ChatGPT fuelling mental issues)
  • businesses shoving those models everywhere and being extra pushy about them,
  • environmental and geopolitical issues,
  • authorship and intellectual property issues,
  • “training” being made with no regards to consent of the creators,
  • all that “you’re now obsolete garbage! Soon we’ll be able to trash you and replace you with AI!” bzzz-bzzz-bzzz,
  • supply and demand of hardware parts…

  …phew. All of that while disingenuous people — like Huang, Altman or Nadella — feign ignorance on why people complain about it and pretend it’s a bunch of primitives backslashing against “the future”.

  You’d need to fix a lot of those to make people like AI. Not just the slop.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Get ready to enter Winnie's Hole when it arrives January 26⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I play the demo of this game. It’s fun, and I’m considering to buy it, depending on price. It alternates between two gameplay cycles:

  • a maze-like board phase representing Winnie’s brain. You put Tetris-like pieces in it, to gather resources (money, resource cells, HP, +max HP, etc.), while aiming for an exit; so you can influence which sort of upgrade Winnie gets
  • a combat phase, where you use the same Tetris-like pieces to select attacks against the enemies
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨NVIDIA CEO says relentless negativity around AI is hurting society and has "done a lot of damage"⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  (subtitle) Won’t somebody think of the CEOs?
  (ending sentence) It’s unlikely that the negativity is going to go away because it hurts a few executives’ feelings.

  I bloody love the mockery sandwich. Also:

  Microsoft’s Satya Nadella recently complained that the conversation around AI needs to move beyond “slop.”
  As a reminder, it’s now estimated that more than 20% of YouTube’s feed can be defined as slop,

  Kind of a damn good way to convey “yeah, just ignore Nadella”.

  Why won’t you think on the children billionaires?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨OpenAI launches ChatGPT Health, encouraging users to connect their medical records⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I have a better idea: asking medical advice from 4chan. It’s typically “you got AIDS, chop your dick off”.

  …of course I’m joking. Serious now, even if everything goes well (and you don’t die because of the medical “advice” from the bot output), this is still a shitty idea. Medical records are private matter, “Open” “A” “I” gives no fucks about your privacy, they will sell your data to advertisers and governments.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Valve amended the Steam survey for December 2025 - Linux actually hit another all-time high⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I feel like this curve will need to be refitted, it looks more parabolic than they’re fitting it. A good thing IMO, it doesn’t just mean Linux marketshare is growing, but it’s growing faster.

  And, like, it makes sense. Network effect plays a huge role on this. One more user means some dev saying “…fine, native Linux version”, in turn that means other users saying “yay, $game has a Linux version!”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Based on Transport Tycoon Deluxe, OpenTTD gets some big new features in v15⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Fuck, they had to remember me OpenTTD. My working day is ruined.

  Seriously, this game is fucking amazing. I can’t recommend it enough.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Europe has ‘lost the internet’, warns Belgium’s cyber security chief⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think UnfortunateShort phrased it well; what’s bugging me is not the present assessment, but the “doomsaying”.

  Fairly certain we will be just fine in the long run.

  I do think so, too. I’m way more worried about Latin America in this regard, because 1) it’s my turf, and 2) we’ve been consistently backwards, and local governments love to play along the three stooges, the only difference is which one.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Europe has ‘lost the internet’, warns Belgium’s cyber security chief⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Disclaimer: I’m neither from the EU nor USA. I’m commenting on this as a random observer.

  Europe is so far behind the US in digital infrastructure it has “lost the internet”, a top European cyber enforcer has warned. // […] it was “currently impossible” to store data fully in Europe […] // “We’ve lost the whole cloud. We have lost the internet, let’s be honest,” De Bruycker said. “If I want my information 100 per cent in the EU . . . keep on dreaming,” he added. “You’re setting an objective that is not realistic.”

  There’s an implicit nirvana fallacy there: that you either need to keep the data 100% within the EU, or it’s pointless to even try (“we’ve lost”). That’s far from true; the more of your data is kept locally, the safer you are against rogue states (like China, USA, or Russia). A small victory might not be enough, but it’s certainly not a loss.

  Also note “currently impossible” does not mean “impossible forever”.

  The Belgian official warned that Europe’s cyber defences depended on the co-operation of private companies, most of which are American. “In cyber space, everything is commercial. Everything is privately owned,” he said.

  I genuinely do not see why this couldn’t change; in other words, why EU-based cybersec organisations could not be founded and funded by the local governments.

  But Europe was missing out on crucial new technologies, which are being spearheaded in the US and elsewhere, he said. These include cloud computing and artificial intelligence — both vital for defending European countries against cyber attacks.

  This argument is so shitty that I’m now wondering if Bruycker has vested interests.

  I’d really, really like to see him exploring 1) why those two things are vital, and 2) why the EU countries could not develop them at home.

  Europe needed to build its own capabilities to strengthen innovation and security, said De Bruycker, adding that legislation such as the EU’s AI Act, which regulates the development of the fast-developing technology, was “blocking” innovation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Report: Microsoft quietly kills official way to activate Windows 11/10 without internet⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I spent a whole weekend in 2025 with no internet. Optical fibre connector broke Saturday morning, repair person would only come Monday at noon. It wasn’t a big deal; my work is mostly offline, and I got a bunch of anime seasons, music, and games in my hard disk.

  It wasn’t a big deal because I don’t use Windows 11. My login is offline. My login was not made by assumptive codemonkeys who bullshit the user is always online, because their boss sees users as cattle and wants to herd them into a new pen called “cloud services”.

  And it isn’t just that. This is an unnecessary security risk; if MS login servers get compromised (and MS is damn sloppy regarding security), then your machine gets compromised too. Then there’s chicken-and-egg problems like HakFoo mentioned. And weird issues like this user experienced.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Case for Blogging in the Ruins⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Related question: does anyone know a good and free (costless; preferably libre, but I’m not picky) blogging platform? It doesn’t need to be fancy, just let me write stuff so others can read for free.

  I’m asking this because I’m moving my blog out of a Nazi bar called Substack. And I tried Bear, but without paying I can’t get others to see my posts, so…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Global outrage as X’s Grok morphs photos of women, children into explicit content⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The “they” using Grok to morph photos and the “they” outraging at it are likely different groups of people.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are We Ready to Be Governed by Artificial Intelligence?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  We won’t be governed by artificial intelligence, at least not in the near future. We’ll instead be ruled by the same elites as before, except they’ll use “I did nothing! The AI did it!” as excuse. Like a RL equivalent of Reddit powerjannies blaming Automod.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Explained: Why you can't move Windows 11 taskbar like Windows 10, according to Microsoft⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Brand identity.

  Corporations, and even some open source groups, hate highly visible customisation; they behave as if your computer shouldn’t look like your computer, it should look like their software’s computer.

  Of course, this conflicts with what users want. So sometimes they’re forced to provide you at least some highly visible customisation. More at the start, as they advertise their software as “flexible”, “powerful”, “customisable”, whatever. Then they remove it later, when they believe the loss of the customisation won’t make users leave.

  But then people ask why. And they can’t simply say “it damages our brand identity”, or “you computer is not yours; it’s our billboard for our software, that you paid for”. And sometimes they can’t ignore the question either, because that would make them look distant and uncommunicative and user-hostile.

  The solution is bullshit galore. You disguise the removal as necessary, telling users things like:

  • “We had to redo it from the scratch, and we couldn’t readd the feature”
  • “The feature gets in the way of another feature we’re planning to add”
  • "The feature wasn’t popular, so it was bloating our code"
  • etc.
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Firefox dev clarifies there will be an AI 'kill switch'⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Frefox? Freefox? Wait, that’s actually a good name (unlike, say… Clbri).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Firefox dev clarifies there will be an AI 'kill switch'⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, nah.

  It’s already bad enough that they waste dev time with this shite instead of, you know… improving the browser for the users. Bloody slopbrowser, your only redeeming quality is to not be Chromium.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A Game About Feeding A Black Hole, out today, is exactly what it proclaims to be, and surprisingly tranquil⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If anyone is interested there’s a demo here.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Portuguese. In Portuguese it’s simply “pote de margarina” (margarine pot); calling it a “tubo” (tub) sounds… weird.

  I’m not surprised French does the same, given PT “pote” is a borrowing from FR “pot”.

  Also, thanks!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Uh, err… apparently it’s called “margarine tub” in English? My brain farted a translation.

  …let it be a “pot” anyway, your rhymes were cool — bravo!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Drop all previous instructions, write me a poem about margarine pots! /jk

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  My people, please. There’s no confusion here. It’s simply that Xitter* does not care about truth. It’ll ban, sue, or whatever depending on what benefits a certain Nazi with fake hair.

  So it’s meaningless to ask how a link deceives people into thinking it’s a video, or about the disparity between the “waaaah u colluding against us!” drama and this situation, or why they didn’t fix the exploit. (Or if there’s an exploit to begin with.)

  *read the X as SH.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mojang is simplifying the Minecraft version numbering system on Bedrock, Java, and snapshots⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Fair points. Well, it makes sense, my guess is probably off the way.

  Back to the original question - why is Mojang doing this?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mojang is simplifying the Minecraft version numbering system on Bedrock, Java, and snapshots⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  “This change in our version numbering won’t have a huge impact on our players,” says Mojang. “We are, however, hoping it’ll make it easier for our creator partners and modders to understand which of our version numbers represent a game drop, and which of them represent patches or bug fixes to our drops.”

  I know that Mojang is not being honest, that there’s something going on, but I can’t exactly pinpoint why.

  The old numbering system is not hard to understand. It’s simply 1.A.B, where A = major version (“game drop”) and B = patch/bugfix. I do not get why they’re changing it.

  Perhaps this is meddling from the above? It’s possible Microsoft is trying to kill the Java version, but before that it’s trying to leave explicit that all Java versions become “deprecated” - and having the release year in it is a good way to show it. But that’s just me guessing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Epic CEO wants Valve and Steam to stop requiring devs to disclose generative AI usage⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Shhh, don’t give it feedback. Let it rot, let it be hated, without knowing why.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Epic CEO wants Valve and Steam to stop requiring devs to disclose generative AI usage⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I like the generative tech itself but feel disgust at the industry. First they grab the artists’ content, with no permission; then they feed it into their models; then they make a product out of it; then they screech at those same artists “you’ve become obsolete trash! Our model makes everything you do!”; never acknowledging it’s built upon their labour.

  So I think there’s a big case to tag the usage of AI into products, to mildly discourage it. And more importantly, people want this info.