HarkMahlberg
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HarkMahlberg

@HarkMahlberg@kbin.social

Programmer and Airplane Enthusiast.

"You just don't know how AI works" earns you a block.

RE: Is Ernest still here?

I check in here quite often, but for now, I'm just focusing on clearing spam and keeping the instance alive. In January, I was working on the AP module, and there has been significant progress in the work, which hasn't been publicly published yet. Unfortunately, at the beginning of the year, I developed a skin condition that...

HarkMahlberg,
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I hope the procedure goes well and you have a speedy recovery! ❤️

HarkMahlberg,
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Really just the big ones. Lemmy, Mastodon, and Misskey. In my humble opinion, judging by the software alone, Misskey > Mastodon, kbin > Lemmy. Judging by the culture is a lot harder because it depends on the instance.

HarkMahlberg,
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Much as I love the software, I made accounts in a few other Fedi platforms just to have some "outs." Don't put all your eggs in one basket and all.

HarkMahlberg, (edited )
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The author does have a way with words lol. I love this paragraph in particular, emphasis mine:

As we speak, the battle that platforms are fighting is against generative spam, a cartoonish and obvious threat of outright nonsense, meaningless chum that can and should (and likely will) be stopped. In the process, they're failing to see that this isn't a war against spam, but a war against crap, and the overall normalization and intellectual numbing that comes when content is created to please algorithms and provide a minimum viable product for consumers. Google's "useless" results problem isn't one borne of content that has no meaning, but of content that only sort of helps, that is the "right" result but doesn't actually provide any real thought behind it, like the endless "how to fix error code X" results full of well-meaning and plausibly helpful content that doesn't really help at all.

And he describes exactly what I have to deal with on the regular, "content that only sort of helps" that "steals your attention from the content you actually want." Even moving from Google to DDG has only mitigated this problem, it hasn't fully gone away.

But yeah, one of his conclusions seems to be the Death of the Hyperlink? Which, I mean, not even LLM's can kill that. I doubt <a href is going away any time soon.

Fewer people are using Elon Musk’s X as the platform struggles to attract and keep users, according to analysts (www.nbcnews.com)

Data from two research firms and figures published by Musk and X suggest a deteriorating situation for X by some metrics. Musk has marketed it as the world’s “town square,” but in number of users it continues to lag far behind social media rivals that focus on video, such as Instagram and TikTok....

HarkMahlberg,
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I would say that the "positive vibes only" trait is part of it, but the far bigger problem was the character limit. Even when it was double from 140 to 280, that still doesn't not leave room for nuanced opinions. And then, the least nuanced opinions also become the most easily spreadable. Both traits really reward our worst instincts.

HarkMahlberg,
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the Dems vote to keep him in office as long as he stops obstructing the most critical stuff, specifically Ukraine aid.

He'll agree, then backstab the Democrats the moment they try to get anything done. You can't trust that filthy fuck.

they need only find three moderate / retiring Republicans willing to pick a more reasonable speaker.

I think this is both a better strategy for Democrats and a more likely outcome than Johnson keeping his word.

HarkMahlberg,
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Incorporated in February 2021, Trump Media & Technology Group intended to use a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) to facilitate its becoming a publicly traded company. On October 20, 2021, TMTG and Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC), a publicly traded SPAC founded in September 2021 by Miami-based, former Deutsche Bank and Wall Street banker Patrick Orlando, announced that they had entered into a merger agreement that would combine the two entities, allowing TMTG to become a publicly traded company. DWAC was created with the help of ARC Capital, a Shanghai-based firm specializing in listing Chinese companies on American stock markets that had been a target of SEC investigations for misrepresenting shell corporations. In 2021, the DWAC Trump venture was linked with another company, China Yunhong Holdings based in Wuhan, Hubei, until its lead banker who was running the merger promised to sever ties with China in December 2021, stating Yunhong was to "dissolve and liquidate". In February 2022, Reuters reported that the connection between Shanghai-based ARC Capital and Digital World was more extensive than thought, with ARC having offered money to get the SPAC off the ground.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Media_%26_Technology_Group

TLDR: Despite all his rhetoric, Trump is heavily in bed with China, and Truth Social is big part of that relationship. Becoming publicly traded was always the plan, and it's now coming to fruition.

HarkMahlberg,
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Wouldn't this enable, for example, Trump claiming he didn't make the "bloodbath" comment, calling it a deepfake, and telling Youtube to remove all the new coverage of it? I mean, more generally, what stops someone from abusing this system?

HarkMahlberg,
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Balatro also has a game speed setting that greatly shortens the animations. The game basically moves as fast as you can click.

Anyone else addicted to Balatro right now? (www.playbalatro.com)

I’m not usually a huge fan of rogue-likes, but I’ve enjoyed a few, like Hades. I bought Balatro last week and have been absolutely smashing it ever since then. I love the way the game works, each run being so different even within the same framework, and the feeling when your build starts to go off is so incredibly...

HarkMahlberg,
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The hype is real. There's no microtransactions, no multiplayer, it's just about building the best deck with as many synergies as possible and getting the highest score you can. If you played Magic or even Inscryption, you'll feel right at home.

HarkMahlberg,
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It might be a hot take but I think the bgm is actually the weakest part of the game. Feels too repetitive and too short, like Mementos in Persona 5. I legitimately play on mute and put something else on in the background.

HarkMahlberg,
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This poster spams this one domain constantly. Look at his profile. It's definitely all propaganda and bullshit.

HarkMahlberg,
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Yeah they trialed "organic ads" nearly a decade ago. The userbase got big mad and they changed their minds.

/kbin quick March update

I'm slowly catching up with backlog tasks and cleaning up instances, but there's still quite a bit to do. Day by day, I'm managing to work longer hours, but I still need some time to ramp up the intensity of work. Just wanted to let you know that there might be brief downtimes in instance operation over the weekend. I aim to...

HarkMahlberg,
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Yeah he did have a medical procedure, on top of just finishing with divorcing his wife. Guy's got plenty on his plate I'm sure.

HarkMahlberg,
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The nature of software development and internet communities has always been transient - frameworks and projects and websites have all come and gone. Despite how unlikely it may seem, even Facebook is not immune to becoming dust in the wind someday. God knows I've started my fair share of hobby projects and left them behind in states ranging from broken to buggy, so I should be the last person to throw stones. I know how it feels to just hit a complete motivational brick wall, or to have so many other things come up in life that my little project is the last thing on my mind.

For as long as I can remember, from the days of PHP bulletin boards to Reddit to kbin, I've never had only a single profile. So I think it's not a bad idea to prepare for the possibility that kbin doesn't last forever - literally nothing does. Nor do I think that's a foregone conclusion! But even if Ernest has moved on, or he's tied down by other matters, I think what he built is inspiring. I legitimately believe that kbin is cool tech, far far cooler than Bitcoin or VR or AI. Maybe someone else spins up a kbin instance, or mbin becomes the new de facto standard, but I don't mind running this account for as long kbin.social sticks around... no matter how many 503's I see lol.

I recognize each and every other commenter in this thread, y'all are prolific contributors. So if you are leaving, at least link your new profile in your bio.

HarkMahlberg,
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Here I was naively thinking Michael Clayton was fiction.

HarkMahlberg,
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Ace Combat 04, 5, and Zero
Ratchet and Clank 1, 2, and 3
Jak and Daxter, Jak 2, and Jak 3
Metal Gear Solid 3

HarkMahlberg,
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The author pretty freely admits he shares some blame, having PII on the same phone he uses Lemmy, using Lemmy while not paying attention/being half asleep. I'm sure he does know better and agrees with your statement. And yet, when mistakes happen and people prove to be fallible, Lemmy proves it is not capable of handling the problem.

I also can't believe the Lemmy developers would be so indignant about being presented with such an oversight. GDPR or no GDPR, federated to other servers or not, the idea of PII being hard/impossible to delete from a social media platform is an embarrassment to the developers.

HarkMahlberg,
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This is effectively how Kakao argued against Tachiyomi: they provided extensions to websites where pirated manga could be hosted, even if they weren't running the sites themselves. They facilitated piracy, even if they didn't host any pirated content.

I have a profound respect for how RPCS3 has been able to stay above water. They police the community heavily, AND they have a list of games that are persona non grata to even talk about, let alone ask how to get them to work.

HarkMahlberg,
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Well there's a big hint in that quote for starters. But other than the one I know of, IDK if they've added more since.

HarkMahlberg,
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I'm kind of impressed by the amount of research they did to figure out why this guy's bill was so high, then immediately offered a resolution, and then immediately offered another avenue if the resolution wasn't good enough. Shout out to the customer service rep.

HarkMahlberg,
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We might be witnessing the early stages of the first major smartphone evolution since the introduction of the iPhone—or an AI-hype-fueled gimmick.

How non-committal of Wired.

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