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tojikomori

@tojikomori@kbin.social

Conscientious spectre making a home in the threadiverse.

I also toot as @tojikomori.

tojikomori,
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Apparently not in Windows settings:

If the BIOS says it supports Modern Standby, Windows takes it at its word and completely disables the ability to enter S3 sleep (classic standby). There’s no official or documented option for disabling Modern Standby through Windows, which is incredibly annoying.

Side note: for a while, there was actually a registry setting you could change to disable Modern Standby on the Windows side. Unfortunately, Microsoft removed it, and to my knowledge, has never added it back.

I'm not a Windows user, so I can't confirm one way or the other, but toward the end of the end of the article the author gives vendor-specific instructions for disabling the S0 Low Power Idle capability from BIOS.

BBC Launches A Mastodon Instance - fediverse - Project Segfault Kbin (kbin.projectsegfau.lt)

Hi! 👋 Here's our #introduction. We're BBC Research & Development; we explore and test new technology to discover how the BBC can best make use of it in the future. For 100 years our engineers have been at the forefront of developments in broadcasting. We're now researching how everyone could get TV & radio via the internet...

tojikomori,
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For anyone as confused as I was: yes, this is indeed a link post on lemmy.world pointing to an article on kbin.social hosted by kbin.projectsegfau.lt and ultimately linking to social.bbc.

The old Fedi switcharoo.

tojikomori,
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From the title I was hoping for an investigative piece on Apple's payment model and whether it treats classical musicians any better, but it's just a comparison to other streaming services padded with trademark New Yorker bloviation.

tl;dr: they don't like Apple's editorials, prefer Idagio's search results, and everything invented after the phonograph was a mistake.

Google is working on essentially putting DRM on the web (github.com)

The much maligned “Trusted Computing” idea requires that the party you are supposed to trust deserves to be trusted, and Google is DEFINITELY NOT worthy of being trusted, this is a naked power grab to destroy the open web for Google’s ad profits no matter the consequences, this would put heavy surveillance in Google’s...

tojikomori,
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Thanks for this. I skimmed the proposal doc itself and didn't quite understand the concern people have with it – most of the concerns that came to my own mind are already listed as non-goals. The first few lines of this comment express a realistic danger that's innate to what's actually being proposed.

tojikomori,
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"Good vibes only" seems to be embedded in the culture of web development today. Influential devs' Twitter accounts have strong Instagram vibes: constantly promoting and congratulating each other, never sharing substantive criticisms. Hustle hustle.

People with deep, valid criticisms of popular frameworks like React seem to be ostracized as cranks.

It's all very vapid and depressing.

tojikomori,
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Just tried the demo yesterday. The tutorial's integrated into the gameplay in a way that didn't feel obstructive to me. It's less like an old-school sandbox tutorial and more that the game makes it obvious what you have to do for the first mission. And it seems to focus on the new mechanics since the basic stuff is already made obvious by overlays showing the controls.

There will be people who have no capacity for nuance and see this as a boolean thing, and for them: the tutorial's not skippable, no. But for most people, it shouldn't be an issue.

tojikomori,
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The one thing I don't like about its navigation mode is that it can't be used for anything else at the same time. If I start walking directions to a restaurant and then someone asks me what time it closes or if there's a bar nearby then I have to cancel the navigation or use a different app to look that up.

tojikomori,
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The Verge article is paywalled for me, but the screencaps Alex shared in his toot don't really support his summary. The article mentions that Threads can import content from Mastodon as an example of the sorts of things ActivityPub supports, and that's about as close as it gets.

And then there's this:

The company is planning to create a roundtable for administrators of other servers and developers to share best practices and work through problems that will inevitably arise, like Meta's server traffic putting strain on other, smaller servers.

Emphasis mine. How would Meta's server put strain on other, smaller servers if it's not federating with them?

I'm fully willing to believe Meta wants to EEE ActivityPub, but this particular claim doesn't seem to check out.

tojikomori,
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A lot of nuance and empathy in this piece, it's worth a close read.

As women, we didn't feel we should have to defend ourselves against such a ridiculous statement, we shouldn't need an uncomfortable public confrontation; but why did none of the men say anything? This is where it got interesting. They felt they didn't want to speak on our behalf, didn't want to be perceived as jumping in and taking our voices. We were surprised, we felt they didn't have our backs and didn't see it as an issue. They felt confused as to how to act.

I've had similar experiences on both ends of that. Confrontation is wearying so usually I just do an internal eye-roll and move on. But at other times I've felt something ought to be said, but thought I lacked the expertise or lived experience to make a convincing case.

tojikomori,
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Comment from the MacRumors forum, in case you're hoping it'll solve the problem Joanna Stern reported on:

Unfortunately on iOS, the backup to Face-ID for the iPhone's Keychain or PassKeys is the iPhone's passcode. So anyone that has access to your phone and knows the passcode, can use the phone's passcode to log-in to iCloud or Apple ID with this feature.

tojikomori,
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Maybe this is just a contrarian view, but I see "AI" as a potential rather than a technology. Right now, transformer-based technologies are what most of us mean when we talk about AI, and it's not clear to me how much more potential that idea really has. When I look at how much energy it takes to set up something like GPT-4 I see us pushing hardware to its limit and yet the outcomes are still too often unsatisfying. Significant breakthroughs are needed somewhere in that architecture just to do the kind of things we're trying to do today at the fidelity we expect and without breaking the bank.

The technology we have today might be to AI what the phonograph was to audio recording. As a technology we hit the limits of its potential pretty quickly and then… we fixated. Entirely different technologies eventually led to the lossless spatial audio experiences we can enjoy today, and seem more likely to carry future potential for audio too.

In that analogy, GPT might just be like someone arranging 8 gramophones in a circle to mimic the kind of spatial audio experience available in some headphones now. Impressive in many ways, but directionally not the path where potential lies.

tojikomori, (edited )
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I've seen a few sites welcome the news with glee, as though Reddit's leadership is going to be strongly affected. That's childish and myopic. This is bad news for everyone.

Whether or not Reddit pays, we should assume the data will make its way into the hands of people who (further) weaponize it against Reddit's users, e.g. people who've posted risque photos of themselves or shared compromising details through throwaway accounts can be doxxed or matched to their normal accounts via their IP or other common details. PMs and other private account details might contain mailing addresses and other private or compromising information, too. (Edit: as Phoeniqz points out in replies, the article author assumes this is not the case based on Reddit's and BlackCat's statements about the leak.)

If Reddit knew about the breach earlier and didn't do their due diligence to alert users, then that's further condemnation of their leadership and priorities, but it doesn't undo the damage this might cause users.

If Reddit were to pay BlackCat, then it would further enrich, reward, and encourage them. If, as is more likely, it doesn't, then the blowback it receives (especially from any high profile consequences of the leak) might encourage other companies to pay up in future.

tojikomori,
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Yes but note the specific details of that assumption and their reasoning: it's based on reddit's announcement of the security incident a few months ago which starts:

Based on our investigation so far, Reddit user passwords and accounts are safe…

Now, look again at what BlackCat has promised in this leak:

Instead, BlackCat is teasing such revelations as "all the statistics they track about their users," and data concerning how Reddit "silently censors users."

80 GB of "statistics and data" about Reddit's users is a lot. It may not contain raw IP addresses, but we know that IP matching is one of the ways Reddit catches sock puppets, so there may at least be a hash that could be used to identify accounts held by the same users.

Am I going too far worrying about PMs and other details? Maybe. It really depends on the honesty and competence of BlackCat and Reddit, and the article author's assumptions based on their statements.

tojikomori,
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I have the 4x4 stock calendar widget on my first Home Screen to quickly scan my day in the morning.

The widget I use most often is probably the dense 4x2 Carrot Weather one: it's split down the middle between hourly and daily forecasts, which is helpful for quick chore & dog-walking decisions, especially when deciding whether to put something off until tomorrow because it's too hot/cold/rainy.

tojikomori,
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It was like this for a few months on Mastodon when Twitter did the same. At least spez doesn't have any kind of celebrity status: I was able to go out with some friends last night and not a single person raised this topic. (A couple of them know what Reddit is, but none of them really use it much. And I'm sure no one in the group other than me knows who its CEO is.)

I just hope we have a good network of people here after this story fizzles out of the news. I'd be happy with kbin never becoming as popular as Reddit, so long as there's a healthy bunch of curious people sharing and discussing interesting links.

tojikomori,
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iFixIt gives it a "3" for repairability:

  • Excessive use of strong adhesive makes it very difficult to remove the rear panel, hindering access to every internal component.
  • Without a service manual, it is difficult to open the trackpad without damaging internal components such as the battery and Taptic Engine.

I'd leave the ant be, and maybe get one of these stickers for your Mac.

tojikomori, (edited )
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This reply's interesting:

How can data licensed under the CC-BY-SA licenses (that SO content is licensed under) be "misused"? The license explictly allows others to do essentially anything they want with the data as long as attribution is given, in particular profit off of it.

When SO content is applied as parametric knowledge I'd expect the outcome to fail both the "BY" and the "SA" clauses, since model interpreters can't provide attribution for it and their output won't share the license. That's true even if output is considered public domain: CC-BY-SA content can't be moved into a public domain equivalent license. It seems practically indistinguishable from using any other in-copyright content as training material.

None of that's to say SO is right to stop data dumps. It feels like they're trying to find a technical solution to a legal problem, perhaps even one that rises to criminality on the part of Open AI and others?

tojikomori,
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I agree with your parenthetical strongly enough to rule out a typo.

This announcement lists things that Reddit will humor, for now, and as a way of cheaply outsourcing niche and difficult problems. It clarifies that everyday third party apps were never intended to have a future with the platform. They're simply an obstacle for Reddit's most convincing path to revenue.

I might even have forgiven Reddit if it had said so up front, but the story they've been trying to spin – with prices that just happen to be orders of magnitude in excess of anything devs might afford – is outrageously insulting. I've never had my trust in a brand demolished so thoroughly so quickly.

tojikomori,
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It's a fascinating idea, but it's reading a lot into a small effect on a very small study group.

The authors also don't seem to dwell much on the effect that novelty itself has on study outcomes. This is a common problem with A/B testing: introducing any divergence from what's familiar can draw participants' attention and affect outcomes. "Like" and "Dislike" buttons are familiar for anyone who's spent time on the internet, but "Trust" and "Distrust" buttons are novel and will be treated more carefully. If they were used widely then we'd eventually develop a kind of banner blindness to the language, and their effect on discernment would be further weakened.

This approach could also overindex comments that express risk and uncertainty. Well-worded concerns and calls for "further study" are a time-honored way of disrupting progress (never forget the Simple Sabotage Field Manual) but often sound trustworthy.

Which makes this comment rather ironic.

tojikomori,
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Beehaw's "creative" community fits that description and looks pretty active:
https://beehaw.org/c/creative

tojikomori,
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This is difficult to hear but may be good feedback to share with kbin.social's admins and kbin's devs in the kbinMeta magazine. I don't want to see lemmy.ml defederated at this point, but it's a risky one to have on the front page. It's kind of nuanced:

Lemmy's devs have been running a successful campaign to recruit Redditors to use their app, and many Redditors have chosen lemmy.ml (the instance run by its developers) by default. A few of us have been trying to sound a warning about this, but it's muted amid the outrage at Reddit.

Lemmy's developers are often described as "tankies" but the word seems to be acting as a euphemism, as though it's just an eccentric subculture. The fact is Lemmy's devs are stooges for the CCP. They actively welcome its propaganda on their instance, and they've compiled apologetics for the CCP's human rights abuses including the Uyghur genocide.

At the same time, lemmy.ml is the primary instance for Lemmy, and an important support resource for instances that run on it. On top of that it's now home to a lot of Redditors trying to build their own communities there. For those reasons I don't think it should be defederated, but I think kbin.social might need a way to prevent the instance – or at least some specific communities – from reaching the front page.

For myself, I've blocked its china and technology communities, as well as a few specific users that I've seen post propaganda pieces there. I'm satisfied with that solution to address my own use, but your own experience makes me realize it still reflects on kbin.social to have that stuff reach our front page.

tojikomori,
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Makes sense. I've unblocked some things so I can help with reporting.

It's looking a lot better right now, so I think ex-redditor posts are overwhelming and diluting a lot of the problematic content. There were even some things I thought I'd blocked but hadn't – they just haven't reached the front page since I created my account a few days ago.

It's good to know there's another solution on your radar, though. Thanks!

tojikomori,
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Upton said that Zero and Zero 2 stock would start returning and also said there would be "substantial" recovery for the 3, 3B+, and 4.

Sounds like we'll have to wait a little longer on the Zero, and I'm curious to see where its price settles because that's a big part of its utility. I had a few project ideas the last couple of years that I put on ice as soon as I saw the $10 Pi was currently $100. Eek!

On Reddit and it’s federated rivals, Lemmy and kbin (www.jayeless.net)

As you may have heard, Reddit’s decided to pull a Twitter and start charging an extortionate amount of money for access to their previously-free API, in order to drive third-party clients like Apollo and RIF into extinction. Under Reddit’s proposed pricing, …

tojikomori,
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Absolutely. The details do seem to surprise people, but I think that's because they're often elided in euphemistic summaries and don't stand out in someone's profile history the way that trolling and right-wing invective often do.

It's not like they're all-caps yelling about gas ovens, they're just politely welcoming people into their instance and occasionally upvoting or suggesting that wellactually everything's fine in XinJiang and it's racist to believe Uyghurs who say otherwise, etc.

tojikomori,
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It's definitely a work in progress, but seems to be a good one. I prefer its comment nesting and some other UI aspects to Lemmy (it's a little more Apollo-like) but my primary reason for switching is distrust of Lemmy's developers. Lemmy is basically developed by two people, and both seem to be westerners fetishizing Mao Zedong Thought – literally to the point of writing apologetics for the Uyghur genocide. The instance they maintain together is saturated with CCP propaganda, and they welcome it (I asked). If I'm going to move from Reddit, it's not going to be into the arms of someone who thinks authoritarianism is way cool. They're clearly skilled engineers, but I can't trust or support them, and using any instance of Lemmy means I'd have to do both.

Back to kbin: I've not tried following anything on PeerTube, but I'm able to follow Mastodon users (and vice versa). And yep, "magazines" are subreddits. There's also a "microblog" tab in each magazine that seems to pull in relevant posts from other fediverse platforms – Mastodon etc. It's not very well explained yet, but the developer said it's based on hashtags similar to the magazine name.

It seems to federate well with lemmy instances, so I'm able to dip into conversations like this one while keeping my distance from lemmy's dev team.

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