I guess christian socialist (or social democrat, but not super invested in that label). I generally think that we should be helping as many people as much as possible, and it seems to me like the state is a convenient way to organize that. I'm also not as opposed to incremental change as a lot of progressives seem to be, in that I understand that circumstances are dire for a lot of people so I think we should be moving in the direction of making things better in whatever ways we can, either large or small. I also think that collective, communal action outside of the state is good, but that it's often hard to motivate people to help anyone outside their immediate social circle, and most people's social circles are unfortunately very small and getting smaller all the time. I guess I really don't spend a lot of time trying to put myself in a box or align with a particular movement, I just think we can and should do better for folks in whatever way we can manage.
I've been a little confused by the extreme reaction to this game. I've played a decent amount of it and, while it's not a great game by any means, I didn't hate it. It certainly doesn't seem like it deserves to be in the top ten worst rated games of all time on Steam. It's just kinda okay.
Hmm, I must have just gotten lucky or started the game after the usual early patch caught most of the bad ones. I also played it on PC Game Pass so I wasn't really evaluating it with a particular price in mind, which I'm sure made a big difference in my experience.
I must confess to getting a little sick of seeing the endless stream of articles about this (along with the season finale of Succession and the debt ceiling), but what do you folks think? Is this something we should all be worrying about, or is it overblown?...
The thing I'm more concerned about is "move fast and break things" techbros implementing these technologies in stupid ways without considering: A) Whether the tech is mature enough for the uses they're putting it to B) Biases inherited from training data and methods.
LLMs inherit biases from their data because their data is shitloads of people talking and writing, and often we don't even know or understand the biases without close examination. Trying to apply LLMs or other ML models to things like medicine, policing, or housing without being very careful about understanding the potential for incredible biases in things that seem like impartial data is reckless and just asking for negative outcomes for minorities. And the ways that I'm seeing most of these ML companies try to mitigate those biases seem very much like bandaids as they attempt to rush these products out the gate to be the first out the door.
I'm not at all concerned about the singularity, or GI, or any of that crap. But I'm quite concerned about ML models being applied in medicine without understanding the deep racial and gender inequities that are inherent in medical datasets. I'm quite concerned with any kind of application in policing or security, or anything making decisions about finance or housing or really any area with a history of systemic biases that will show up in a million ways in the datasets that these models are being trained in.
Back in the good old days, forums and IRC ran parallel with each other and had no reason to intersect. With the internet becoming bigger, more consolidated and commercialized than ever, people are finding ways to spend time on as few different sites as possible. Forums have closed in favor of cheaper-to-run Discord servers. This...
I have a couple of friend groups that are on Discord, and it works perfectly for what we use it for, which is mostly posting stupid memes a few times a day and keeping up with each other (the main discord is a group of friends from college plus a few others that have joined over time). Discord works great for our game nights and D&D sessions (this is why we started using it in the first place) but I don't really want to engage with it for other things. I do hate it when companies try to use Discord as their primary communication, it really doesn't work well for that.
I’m honestly not sure how to summarize this video. It’s a very interesting look at the way that the impulse to “optimize” gameplay affects the culture surrounding games, especially MMOs and other multiplayer games. It particularly looks at World of Warcraft and the social norms that have developed around and within the...
Obviously we’re not there yet, but anybody have any alternatives to coffee that work for them? I have tried switching to tea because of anxiety but I think the tannins in black tea actually made it worse. Green tea wasn’t as bad, but I just didn’t enjoy green tea very much. I may have been doing it wrong.
What are you reading? (June 2023)
Hey Beehaw, whatcha reading right now?
how would you describe yourself politically, Beehaw, and why?
we previously had this thread but it was lost in a sitewide crash. kind of fortuitous, given all the new people!...
Inside the making of Redfall, Xbox's latest misfire - BNN Bloomberg (www.bnnbloomberg.ca)
Deep Rock Galactic - Season 04: Critical Corruption Preview (store.steampowered.com)
Is the whole AI apocalypse thing overblown or not?
I must confess to getting a little sick of seeing the endless stream of articles about this (along with the season finale of Succession and the debt ceiling), but what do you folks think? Is this something we should all be worrying about, or is it overblown?...
Why I Miss Forums, and Despise Discord/Matrix/Element
Back in the good old days, forums and IRC ran parallel with each other and had no reason to intersect. With the internet becoming bigger, more consolidated and commercialized than ever, people are finding ways to spend time on as few different sites as possible. Forums have closed in favor of cheaper-to-run Discord servers. This...
Why It's Rude to Suck at Warcraft (www.youtube.com)
I’m honestly not sure how to summarize this video. It’s a very interesting look at the way that the impulse to “optimize” gameplay affects the culture surrounding games, especially MMOs and other multiplayer games. It particularly looks at World of Warcraft and the social norms that have developed around and within the...
Hyundai subsidiary has used child labor at Alabama factory (www.reuters.com)
NFTs Are 'A Scam', Says Indie Marketplace Itch.io (kotaku.com)
It was interesting seeing this headline over the weekend. RPG platform DrivethruRPG has also come out with a similar statement.
Coffee may become more scarce and expensive thanks to climate change – The world could lose half of its best coffee-growing land under a moderate climate change scenario (theconversation.com)