irotsoma

@irotsoma@lemmy.blahaj.zone

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Social media ads passing as posts: How advertising slips into Instagram⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  The fact that my Facebook timeline had become a pretty steady ratio of 1 ad:1 suggested post which is essentially an ad):1 post from either someone I follow, a group post from a group I’m in, or a post from an account that I liked or a few other ad-like types of posts, meant I only saw content I wanted on one or two posts out if every 20 or so posts in my timeline and I rarely saw important posts from friends. That was one of many reasons I left.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨China's green energy boom could spell the end of the fossil fuel age⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah just meant the ones ive seen that looked similar didn’t have flushing mechanisms much like the urinals that don’t need to be flushed. Those ones aren’t suitable fir pooping, but sounds like this one is different.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨China's green energy boom could spell the end of the fossil fuel age⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  OK the white ones like that that I had seen a couple of times didn’t have a flushing mechanism or big enough opening to aim, so if someone pooped in it, it would just sit there until someone came to clean it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨China's green energy boom could spell the end of the fossil fuel age⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Squat toilets are usually either a pit or like this one that’s basically a floor mounted urinal. So yeah, can’t poop in a urinal. But sucks when they’re all that pubic restrooms have.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨CATL announces sodium batteries that cost as little as $10/kWh, a massive price reduction compared to the current average of $115/kWh for lithium-ion batteries.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t have a YouTube account and my pihole ad blocking gets me bkocked, is there an article it references? Also, what’s the kWh to cubic feet/meters ratio compared to current lithium ion?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨UK government inexplicably tells citizens to delete old emails and pictures to save water during national drought — 'data centres require vast amounts of water to cool their systems'⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Or maybe stop “AI” from sucking down gobs of power for no good reason other than to steal content and waste websites’ bandwidth that specifically say not to crawl them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨My new laptop chip has an 'AI' processor in it, and it's a complete waste of space⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean, even if the NPU space can’t be replaced by more useful components easily or cheaply, just removing it is sure to save a small amount of power which equates to a possibly not so small amount of heat that needs to be dissipated, which takes not insignificant amounts of and/or requires slowing the system down. Additionally, the pathways likely could be placed to create less interference with each other and direct heat transfer which is likely to mean more stability overall.

  Of course without a comparable processor without the NPU to compare to, these are really difficult things to quantify, but are true of nearly all compact chips on power sensitive platforms.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hackers Went Looking for a Backdoor in High-Security Safes—and Now Can Open Them in Seconds⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes, but I’m saying they’re making these laws and saying they need it. Many people agree that they need it and because they think they are still secure because they’re using an “encrypted connection”, assuming they don’t think they need to be secure from their government, they are supporting it. If they see that by letting the government steal their data they are also letting that scammer that keeps scamming their grandmother for her credit card to get that credit card number without even needing to scam her anymore, they may think twice about supporting the policy.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hackers Went Looking for a Backdoor in High-Security Safes—and Now Can Open Them in Seconds⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh totally, but that’s the intended purpose. The thing is they’re saying they can do all that and still allow people to have a secure connection to their bank or whatever, but that’s impossible. Eventually, backdoors always lead to making the security worthless whether it’s bad design like putting hinge screws outside of the door so thrives can just use a screwdriver to remove the door, or a backdoor for locksmiths or government, it’s a weak link it doesn’t matter how thick the door is if a screwdriver removes it or how hard the encryption is to break if it can be bypassed by getting the code used by locksmiths or government, bad actors will get ahold of it and use it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Problem is scraper bots are way more aggressive and harder to block. If they were ignoring Reddit because they were taking content from IA but IA is willing to obey robots.txt whereas scraper bots are not, they just shifted the load of serving the bots or playing whack-a-mole with their block evading mechanisms. They aren’t going to stop the bots. It may result in being able to negotiate a license with the bigger guys, but that’s likely not going to make up for the money they spend on dealing with the bots in the long run. Of course companies like this don’t really think long term, it just looks good to investors this quarter.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hackers Went Looking for a Backdoor in High-Security Safes—and Now Can Open Them in Seconds⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  And this is the same reason why encryption backdoors would basically make encryption worthless. Doesn’t matter how strong the metal/encryption is if a backdoor exists to be the weakest link.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AWS deleted my 10-year account and all data without warning⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Local storage backups (local to the servers wherever that is, so “relatively local”) should be the initial backup, then those backups should be what’s synced to the off-site/third-party provider, generally. But it really depends on the types of tech and how those backups are generated.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AWS deleted my 10-year account and all data without warning⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  If this was a self-hosted forum, yes, that’s an option. But for professional purposes, a dedicated off-site backup provider is better than having storage at an office site.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AWS deleted my 10-year account and all data without warning⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Not too surprising. Data backups need to be with different providers. The article seems to think it’s not “putting all your eggs in one basket” because the provider had redundancy. But that’s not much different from storing physical backups locally because they were stored in a fire-proof safe. Sure you made backups, but by storing them in the same building as the servers means the same disaster that could take out the servers could take out the backups. A “fire-proof” safe will protect it from some things that won’t protect the servers, but there are still types of disasters that could take out both, like a big enough bomb rather than just a fire.

  What if AWS went bankrupt and the servers were repossessed and sold off with the data spread across all the different new owners of the disparate data centers? What if Amazon just decided AWS was no longer profitable and shut it all down.

  Sure that’s not going to happen to AWS right now because it’s hugely profitable, but a serious US market crash combined with a major escalation by the current administration in the increasing surveillance state in the US which could kill the trust in the company, cause a massive migration to EU based companies and cause the subsidiary company that holds the data to go bankrupt without necessarily killing Amazon as a whole. Those subsidiaries often “run at a loss” even with extremely high income in order to divert profit to shareholders, claim tax breaks on “losses”, and eliminate liability to the main company.

  The legal proceedings of bankruptcy or other events could put the data in legal limbo for years before it’s accessible again.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨AI slop is ruining all of our favorite places to scroll⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve seen some, but it’s way, way less common than the major corporate platforms, but since there’s no pay and no ads to make money off of, it’s not too surprising. As the article briefly mentions, there’s just too much monetary incentive to make junk vs quality content on most for-profit platforms.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Atlassian terminates 150 staff with pre-recorded video, AI customer contact solutions rolled out⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Glad I don’t rely on their stuff because the support is about to get enshitified. The company I work for does though…so…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Developer survey shows trust in AI coding tools is falling as usage rises⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Usage is rising because corporate executives started getting kickbacks and thinking they could cut staff by implementing it. But developers who have actually had to use it have realized it can be useful in a few scenarios, but requires a ton of review of anything it writes because it rarely understands context and often makes mistakes that are really hard to debug because they are subtle. So anyone trying to use it for a language or system they don’t understand well is going to have a hard time.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Exhausted man defeats AI model in world coding championship⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I have yet to have an AI write code of more than one or two lines that doesn’t have a breaking bug. Speed isn’t useful if it’s broken. And honestly I usually spend more time debugging AI code than I would have just writing it myself. It’s nice sometimes for getting an understanding of syntax of a system I’m not used to, but beyond very generic scripts that don’t depend on context, it’s pretty useless in my experience. I have Copilot integrates with my IDE for work and it’s more trouble than it’s worth so far. Even just for code completion, the IDE does a better job most of the time even if it suggests much smaller chunks at a time. And the smaller chunks are actually better if I have to proofread every single word either of then outputs anyway.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨ChatGPT advises women to ask for lower salaries, study finds⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Can’t convince a conservative that women and POC still make less money for the same job and affirmative action is still needed, but “AI” knows it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Guardian: Age verification is coming to search engines in Australia – with huge implications for privacy and inclusion⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  “[The changes] will impact everyone who uses the internet in Australia – not just people under 16.”

  I’d argue that these kinds of laws usually only affect people other than the people who are being blocked. The people being blocked will just find alternatives that don’t block. VPNs or alternative search engines, etc. The only ones affected are the adults who now have to sacrifice their privacy and allow companies to collect and sell all of their information more easily and governments to build a profile of everything a citizen does without context. Search for information about nuclear reactors because there’s a new one being built in your neighborhood and want to know about the risks, and you’ll likely immediately get added to the watch list for nuclear terrorism. Add in a search for explosives to get rid of a tree stump in your yard, and now you may end up on a secret no-fly list and not find out until your vacation is ruined. So many implications to context-less search result data collection which is likely the real aim of these laws rather than keeping kids “safe” since it ultimately just forces them to use less safe alternatives.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Death Of Industrial Design And The Era Of Dull Electronics⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  No reason to innovate when there’s basically no competition. It’s a problem of consolidation in many industries these days. Most governments are owned by big corporations that water down and keep them from enforcing antitrust laws these days.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The bewildering phenomenon of declining quality⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This is exactly how post-capitalism was predicted to go. As consolidation eliminates competition, there’s no reason to maintain quality. If it’s crap or nothing, people have to buy the crap.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Delta Air Lines is using AI to set the maximum price you’re willing to pay⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean, they just called them algorithms or targeted discount codes or sales before. The addition of “AI” is just marketing nonsense for shareholders.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft suddenly kills its movies and TV store on Xbox and Windows⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It would have been good if it had been made all that usable. Many people were looking for a place to have all of their media in one. Smart TVs weren’t the default like now, so they were trying to take the market from things like Roku and Apple TV and such. Still could have been useful if they had made it better than the crappy Smart TV interfaces (which wouldn’t have taken much), but they never did, so it never really caught on.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨TikTok Germany moderators raise alarm over layoff plans⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean yeah that’s the plan. Use AI. Let Nazis be Nazis. Suppress vulnerable minorities. That’s what has happened to most social media in the US over the last few years. No surprises. Just need to get people to move off those platforms to ones with better policies and moderated communities like Lemmy, Mastodon, etc. But that’s always hard to do.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨BulletVPN Closes Down, Pulling The Rug on Lifetime Subscriptions⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Lifetime never means your lifetime. It’s the lifetime if the offer or if you’re lucky, the current ownership of the company. I’ve always weighed them as, is this cost significantly less than the cost of the product over the amount of time I think the product might be useful to me and the development of the product is likely to stay on track.

  I have one for Plex that I got very early on and was well worth it even though I’m moving away from Plex. And one for 1TB of storage on rsync.net which will pay for itself in 5 years and hopefully will survive for another 5 after that at least for me to consider it more than worth it. After that it’s all bonus. I don’t expect it to be around in 20 years or for it to be worth nearly as much then either as storage needs grow and costs shrink. But when I got it a couple of years ago I deemed it worth the gamble.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google Introduced a New Way to Use Search. Proceed With Caution.⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I bet the show summaries are going to be a big target for media companies. I remember when they went on rampages in the 90s against fan sites that had synopses of episodes and this is way more than a simple paragraph or two synopsis of the shows.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tech to protect images against AI scrapers can be beaten, researchers show⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It was always going to be a cat and mouse game because “AI” companies have decided to abandon ethics completely since there are few consequences when you they are just a shell company and the parent company keeps all of the resulting training data and money, so the company that does the training going bankrupt and abandoning responsibility is no issue. Sad that court system is so non-technical that they don’t see the training data produced by copyrighted material to be a copy of the material even if they were to decide that accessing the material was a violation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Study (N=16) finds AI (Cursor/Claude) slows development⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  And in reality it doesn’t work, or only works in very specific scenarios and thus fails with no one who wrote it around to understand why it might fail.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Evidence of cell phone surveillance detected at anti-ICE protest⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Depends greatly on the phone I suppose. And most don’t have removable batteries. If that’s the case that a device stays in standby and can be activated with a transmission vs a button, then leave that device at home for sure.