theneverfox

theneverfox, 10 months ago

As a millennial, I’d like to be able to just live

theneverfox, 10 months ago

He’s a billionaire. He probably doesn’t buy generic baby sauce, he probably buys “Sweet Baby Ray”

theneverfox, 10 months ago

They’re just a company themselves. They’re basically like Yelp from several generations ago… They’re not a consumer protection agency so much marketing/reviews from back when it all had to be compiled on paper by hand

theneverfox, 10 months ago

Yeah…You need to profit to incentivize innovation and r&d. Fine.

Why does that mean you should get total control? Especially for drugs - for many reasons (it’s a very messed up industry), but most of all because public health affects all of us - not just when we’re directly connected to the victims.

Already, patents are basically a temporary monopoly. The government sets all sorts of weird limits. It’s not a free market, not even remotely close

So why should they get total control instead of fixed percentage by anyone making the drug? Maybe limited to time frame, maybe based on a multiple of cost

Hell, uncle Sam pays for a lot of this research, and the big players spin off subsidiaries to subsidize the risk. We could offer bounties or make the research fully public. There’s so many ways to do this better

Instead, we use a method where corporations get to make decisions, with zero concern over the cost in lives, or the drain on society it causes

theneverfox, 10 months ago

Why in the world would you need phone data for that???

Nearly all existing public transportation was designed before cell phones. And there’s so many better ways to get that data… In fact, I’m not sure anyone uses individually identifiable tracking to plan public transportation… It’s neither necessary or even convenient for that

theneverfox, 10 months ago

Silence isn’t a thing.

Sound of leaves rustling, the ocean, or even gentle wind? I sleep, no problem

A house quietly creaking and my blood flowing?

I’ve put on music or Netflix since childhood

theneverfox, 10 months ago

IDK, that doesn’t sound healthy.

Life is made up of infinite details. Looking too closely at any of them shouldn’t be done without a reason, that way lies madness

Looking at details makes sense when the data is actionable. If you think “my electric bill is too high” or “I’m worried about my power consumption”, then try living with it a bit hotter/colder. That’s a decision to make on more like a monthly basis, maybe every couple weeks - day to day it’s one of a ton of variables. It’s not useful information outside a spreadsheet

Making that decision on a daily basis sounds like obsession. If you just think it’s interesting, you should probably keep it to yourself (and similar minded people)… If your wife doesn’t want to hear it, you should listen to her

Tell me once, fine, maybe it’s a bit interesting. Do it every day for a week, and my brain starts trying to keep a running estimate. I would get very angry, very quickly, because it would make my life slightly worse moving forward for no benefit

theneverfox, 10 months ago

I do. If it’s publicly available, individuals should be able to learn from it. Artists don’t pay their influences that helped develop their style, we don’t pay the programmers that answer questions on stack overflow

Hell, I’m not sure generative AI should have to pay for training data at all. It points to a weakness in the system, and it doesn’t fix it - the field is getting away from needing existing datasets. GPT4 swallowed everything worth swallowing, and it’s already training GPT4.5. This would only make it harder for new players to compete in the generative AI space

It can’t profit only the few, it’s too big a force multiplier. Paying up front doesn’t fix it, recurring payments don’t fix it… That’s nothing but a payoff to a few people as this starts to eat the best parts of the job market

We need to think much bigger - we need to look at how we handle ownership as a society

theneverfox, 10 months ago

Id use an app you trust for now

On a site you have to sanitize your data, on a native app you’d have to go out of your way to render this kind of thing…wefwef/voyager is actually a web page (and they might or might not be sanitizing their inputs), the other top options are probably using libraries to do it, and data sanitation is pretty basic. Literally web dev 101. They’d have to choose a very full-featured rendering library that also entirely ignores security, or they’d have to have rolled their own

At least now I know why my renderer has been so annoying about the warnings the last couple days…

For any devs that read this - this is a great example of why you can’t trust anything coming off a federated network. Type check and sanitize all your inputs, always. We need to get away from trust - this isn’t a trustful situation

Luckily, this was more of a warning than an actual attack - and there will be actual attacks. We have to be defensive - always - every time at every level.

And Flemmy will be that, once I feel good releasing it (2 features left before I’m out of reasons to procrastinate). It’ll be just me, always

theneverfox, 10 months ago

Illegal? Probably not, so long as you were careful about not hosting any of their code/data

Would doing it publicly end with you getting buried in lawsuits? It might. Anyone can sue for any reason, and copyright holders love making examples of people

theneverfox, 10 months ago

Smith described capitalism, he didn’t idolize it.

He’s often misquoted, but skim through the wealth of nations. It most certainly does not say unregulated capitalism just works out magically.

It describes how capitalism works, and heavily implies the situations where it doesn’t. It’s not subtle about it either

theneverfox, 10 months ago

What he described by the invisible hand was the idea of systematic forces - essentially emergent properties of a system.

They’re patterns in a system that emerge not from individual actors, but from the interaction of many actors. No one has to enforce the behaviors - hell every individual actor in the system might be against it - but the system itself creates certain forces

Smith approaches the concept awkwardly and very cautiously - he probably was afraid he’d sound like a lunatic, or that the concept would be controversial

theneverfox, 10 months ago

No, we tried communism, the weird dielectric system of government that Lenin came up with.

Communism, the market ideology, can exist within a capitalist framework - all we have to do is say “companies are owned and operated by employees. From now on, we cap ROI when loaning money, no more infinite payout because you provided startup capital”.

Communes and entirely employee owned/operated companies exist, and they do well. They just don’t grow until they implode - they grow to a point and then stop letting people in

Communism is a market system, not a system of government. It doesn’t need to be centralized - and centralization is the real problem IMO

theneverfox, 10 months ago

I like your thought process, but this is a bad idea

It’s a lot like poisoning your chickens to defend against foxes. It might work, it might not, but it only makes sense if you’re willing to sacrifice the chickens to take out some foxes

theneverfox, 10 months ago

Yeah, it’s boring as shit, if want a conversation partner there’s better (if less reliable) options out there, and groups like personal.ai that repackage it for conversation. There’s even scripts to break through the “guardrails”

I love the boring. Every other day, I think "man, I really don’t want to do this annoying task. I’m not sure if it even saves much time since I have to look over the work, but it’s a hell of a lot less mentally exhausting.

Plus, it’s fun having it Trumpify speeches. It’s tremendous. I’ve spent hours reading the bigglyest speeches. Historical speeches, speeches about AI, graduation speeches where bears attack midway through… Seriously, it never gets old

theneverfox, 10 months ago

It’s federated, so yeah - you can interact with the fediverse from any federated node

The node you call home matters though. You’ll run into your local users more, you’ll come across certain communities more.

The experience is very different. Use multiple accounts, but find a home

theneverfox, 10 months ago

That’s why it has to be done now - before we rely on them for content.

This isn’t email or LinkedIn, it’s not about who’s on it - it’s about content and the community

If we join with them, we’ll get way more content and a way bigger community - not a better one though.

We need enough, and we need organic growth. We don’t need a firehose, and definitely not one held by the people who made social media what it is everywhere else

theneverfox, 10 months ago

I want to have kids. But bringing them into a poisoned and dying world where they have to earn the right to exist? That just seems cruel

If we get past the next few decades, I’ll bring them into a world worth living in

theneverfox, 10 months ago

I have very mixed feelings about this. I feel personally attacked, but also might reference this moving forward

theneverfox, 10 months ago

I’m torn. I feel like admitting guilt and owning up to your failures is a virtue, but I’m not sure the rest of the world agrees with me

Neurotypical enough to read body language, neurodivergent enough to never understand why

theneverfox, 10 months ago

I’m a software dev, I can fairly claim to be a software engineer as well

It’s not just having a product owner. We have a parable…

A manager asks a senior dev how long it will take him to build a thing. He says 9 months. They ask how long if they get another couple devs on it - he says 8 months. He asks how long if they add a dozen people, and he says it will never be finished

There’s plenty of variations, but it’s not a joke - how many people built the Linux kernel? How many built C? How many built Apache, how many built transformers, how many built osX?

The answer to the best technologies is always 1 or 2, maybe with helpers. The more people you add, the harder it is to innovate - you can polish all day long, but 1 sharp person can build something better than a dozen equally sharp people. One brilliant person is more effective than one brilliant person with a dozen helpers

It’s all about quality, quantity only weighs down the process

theneverfox, 10 months ago

I still use it in wsl and for my media server, there probably better out there but it’s good enough

theneverfox, 10 months ago

Late stage capitalism, savage capitalism, an overcapitalized society, whatever you want to call it… It’s a bunch of different factors that all eat away at the social fabric that make raising kids easier

Housing is expensive, and people frequently move for a job. It’s pretty unusual to live next door to family, who would often give free childcare. You also don’t get neighborhoods full of young parents anymore - everyone is just living wherever they can afford to

For-profit media - thanks to decades of horror stories (of crimes that peaked in the 80s, but are great for viewership), leaving a child not in the hands of a specific, designated adult is grounds for a CPS visit in a lot of places. You can’t drop them off at the park (even if there are many adults present) or leave them at home anymore, regardless of if they actually need the supervision. It’s one thing if they’re 3, but a 7 year old can generally keep themselves alive pretty well, especially if you prepare them for it

Monetization and over scheduling - activities for them are paid and have specific time slots. Tae Kwon do is an hour at 6, soccer is 5-7… If you’re late you need to find someone to watch them. And most of that requires money and a big time investment because of car culture

Babysitters are the exception, but they’re either rare or expensive. Minimum wage isn’t near enough for teens to want to do such a crap job (parents often treat them like crap and expect a lot more from them now), and teens are less trusted. They even have certifications for teens that are a few hundred bucks to teach them what to do in an emergency - basically the heimlich maneuver, how to change a diaper, and when to call 911. Adult professionals have regulations to meet, and are a significant cost

Finally, we’re pushed hard to be individuals that can be interchangeable and portable labor. Outside of family, we don’t have the same tight bonds of friendship our parents or grandparents did… And even family doesn’t mean what it used to

theneverfox, 10 months ago

I mean, yeah? I just listed a bunch of circumstances

Humans are the most trainable animals we know of. The differences are due to the systems we’ve built - humans aren’t much different, but the way we organize has changed rapidly

theneverfox, 10 months ago

Okay, but why does your comment sound so defeatist?

Fight goddammit, this is the time when the most actual leftists will see this shit. This is an inflection point, this could be the moment that matters… Or just another missed chance