abhibeckert @ abhibeckert @beehaw.org

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2 yr. ago

it’s also absolutely taking too much money to run

Well, maybe they should raise their prices then?

If they raise the prices too far though, I'll just switch to running Facebook's open source llama model on my workstation. I've tested and it works with acceptable quality and performance, only thing that's missing is tight integration with other tools I use. That could (and I expect will soon) be fixed.

Generative AI (for writing text, coding,… ) is of course no where close to being useful, but it can interesting to try. It is just a toy, expensive one, but still a toy.

I disagree. It's absolutely useful... in certain industries, for appropriate tasks.

That doesn't stop it from also being used as a toy.

It will be easier for devs to justify moving away from Unity if there's more consumer demand for non-unity games.

And presumably @Sina isn't going to stop buying games entirely - they can still buy the same number of games and continue to support indie developers as much as they otherwise would.

Proprietary game engines like Unity are a dead end. The company behind them is always going to extract as much revenue as they possibly can from the industry and that hurts indie developers. A lot. The sooner devs rip off the bandaid and switch to Godot/etc the better.

If Godot is missing a feature you need... it's open source and you're a developer. Simply add that feature to the engine.

I could live with an ad before every video

I can't live with that. Often I don't even know if I actually want to watch the video or not, and if I have to sit through three minutes of ads, only to close the video five seconds after the ad because it's not what I expected... yuck. Preroll ads are often a deal breaker for me unless it's content that I'm very familiar with.

Mid-roll ads I'm OK with - by then I've already decided the content is worth watching.

I don't think I'm alone and YouTube seems to be very aware of this issue. They are selective about which videos have a pre-roll ad.

How much do you think the military response to this will cost if it escalates?

This, 100% this.

I'm able bodied, but I was a full time carer for my mother who was wheelchair/electric scooter bound for years before she passed away from complications. Cities with pedestrian only areas were, in practice, a nightmare whenever we visited them... which we rarely did because life was so hard there.

And it's especially bad when it's a temporary setup. If you want to have a pedestrian only area then make it pedestrian only 24/7/365. That way whatever issues there are (stairs/etc) will actually be removed instead of just "oh I'll do that when the market is closed".

I'm pretty sure nobody is actually listening to the songs... they would just be playing them in an empty room. Probably with a bunch of devices playing the songs at once.

Sorry but you're not going to find a good impartial write up. Anyone who's impartial on this issue is ignorant of the facts. The issue is far too emotionally charged and important for anybody to possibly have no opinion if they understand the issue at hadn.

Here's my partial one:

• White people did some horrible shit when we settled in Australia.
• In some pockets of society those atrocities are still happening now.
• Not enough is being done about it.

Indigenous people (and any white person who's aware of the issues and has a shred of compassion) want more to be done to deal with the issue.

A joint effort by both the Liberal and Labor parties spent years asking the affected people what should be done, and considering the issue, and the number one thing those people asked for was a "Voice" or rather a dedicated group of people who's entire job is to recommend ways the government can improve things for indigenous Australians. The joint Liberal/Labor effort also produced a report recommending exactly the same thing. And that's what will happen if we vote Yes.

Indigenous Australians feel like nobody in the government listens when they talk. They want a Voice, and we should give them one.

It will cost almost nothing. There's no requirement for the government to act on the advice, the elected government of the day can make that decision on a case by case basis after seeing the recommendations. There is zero downside to voting Yes... other than acknowledging that atrocities have and are being committed which many Australians are unwilling to do.

How much it will help... well that's something we can debate. But mostly it will depend what government is in power when the recommendations are made The Voice. If Pauline Hanson is Prime Minister then, yeah, The Voice would be a waste of time. But she's not Prime Minister and touch wood she never will be. The worst possible outcome is a "Yes" vote won't achieve the sated goals, and then we'll just continue life as we are.

Voting No, on the other hand, will absolutely make things worse. That will significantly divide and anger indigenous people. There's going to be years of civil unrest and burned bridges all over the place if we vote No.

So:

• Voting Yes - costs nothing and won't do any harm and it might do some good.
• Voting No - will be a fucking disaster.

Which one of those would you prefer?

I live on the coast in a humid area now, so they wouldn't work.

But when I was growing up I lived outback - it was almost desert there and on hot summer days the temperature approached 60C some years. Just standing in the sun for a minute felt like you were dying on those days. Our primary cooling was reflective insulation on the house (we didn't have any thermal mass insulation, I don't think that would have worked).

Reflective insulation is very cheap. If you're on a budget - simple white paint works well (make sure it's rated to withstand UV). It won't do much for you in winter though... you want thermal mass insulation in winter.

Indoor temperatures were still quite high and we used primitive evaporative cooling to deal with that. Fine mist sprays, wet towel on your head (or wet hair), etc etc. It was extremely effective and comfortable.

If I lived in that climate again, I would combine evaporative cooling with air conditioning. Or just use aircon and add a humidifier. We just had solar power and back in those days it was too expensive to buy a system that could run an air conditioner. These days big solar systems are dirt cheap and air conditioners use less power as well.

PS: Larger split system air conditioners tend to produce a lot more cooling, with lower power consumption, less noise, and they dry out the air less than small box window ones. If you don't like aircon.. maybe you just need better aircon? It's not expensive - in fact might save you money if it reduces your power bill.

I have a browser plugin now that summarises links (without needing to click on them). More people should use those and I think we should encourage that over these bots.

If the bot was posting a summary as part of the post I'd be fine with it, but please don't do it as a comment. It's often the last comment anyway, which isn't helpful at all.

I dunno where you live, but about twice a day now I drive past a phone and seat belt detection cameras (that move every day, they're mounted in a trailer). They issue a $1,116 fine and four demerit points for not wearing a seatbelt - which means if you do it three days in a row your license is gone. I know someone who was caught three days in a row too - they received the three fines in the mail a week later and the judge showed exactly zero compassion.

They needed to drive for their job, so the judge gave an exemption for the company car. But commuting to/from work had to be by bus for six months.

The numbers probably aren't in yet for how effective the camera is, but something is definitely being done about seatbelts.

Why do it on a street? I'd much rather do it on a footpath. Or a school sports oval. You know, the places we already have diverse markets, tasty food, live music, etc every weekend in Australian cities.

My local market runs on the main street of a beach suburb, and it causes all kinds of disruption. For example if you stay in one of the hotels there, you can't access the hotel car park which catches tourists out all the time - the road closes at 5am and if their car was in the park overnight - too bad, can't use the car until 5pm. Sucks to be you if you're flying out of the country that day and now you have to pay whatever the hire company will charge to pick up your car from the hotel.

And, being the main thoroughfare in the suburb obviously it's also the bus route. Except on market days. On market days all of the places people want to access (even the market) effectively don't have public transport. It's a 45 minute walk in often very hot weather to the nearest bus stop. Waiting for a Taxi will take even longer since they're like 10x busier on market days.

Every other breach market in the city is on the footpath between the main street and the beach. That works a thousand times better.

Android runs on basically anything

Sure, but lots of really great software doesn't run on Android. In fact, none of the apps I use regularly on my iPhone are available on Android.

Those 12 year old kids were not running a people smuggling operation. They were clearly victims not suspects.

Kids can definitely commit crimes, for example if they're caught driving 140km/h on a residential street in a stolen car... absolutely detain the kid.

But even then, you don't detail them for years. You detain them overnight, and you prosecute immediately (after, obviously, letting the kid talk to their parents and a lawyer).

No, the car did the right thing.

Removing pressure from her leg could have meant bleeding to death before paramedics could arrive. As horrifying as it is to have a car parked on your leg, she was stable and as safe as she could possibly be. Removing the car from her leg wouldn't have reduced the pain - chances are it would've got a lot worse and I bet emergency services didn't remove the car from her leg as soon as they arrived, they would've done a bunch of prep work first (especially given her drugs for the pain).

When there's a serious accident, you stop what you're doing and wait for help. Only act if you're trained or if it's very clear that something needs to be done right now (e.g. if a car is on fire and someone is inside it).

It’s the police prosecution’s job to prosecute

It's also the their job to not prosecute when doing so would be inappropriate.

How many times has an Australian law enforcement office prosecuted a 12 year old kid for people smuggling? Surely the number is zero. So why were 12 year old kids detained pending a prosecution that was never going to happen?

If it was "detained until we could find somewhere safe to take them" that would be perfectly fine as long as they find somewhere very quickly. These kids were held in jail for years.

Imagine if the cops walked into an Australian school, grabbed a a kid out of a class room, put him in prison for three years, and then released the kid, and it turns out later they never had any evidence the kid committed a crime. They just did it because it because someone told them to. We wouldn't be OK with that. And that's exactly what happened here, the only difference is the kids weren't born in Australia so somehow that makes it OK (to some Australians).

Those kids held in adult detention centres didn't break any law. There was never anyone who accused them of breaking any law. They should never have been locked up.

Really? I don't see any ads at all on Fandom with ublock. Perhaps check if it's setup right.

Foster carers also just aren’t trained professionals

A lot of them actually are and training is available for those who aren't. For example, a friend of mine is a foster carer and also works, professionally, for a government office dedicated to keeping as many kids as they can out of juvenile detention. A lot of funding is being allocated to the problem.

What kids need is a safe home. Don Dale certainly isn't that, but it is better than being on the street.

Often these ”serious crimes” they’re caught doing are acts of survival.

When a 12 year old kid decided to steel our car and take it for a joy ride, that wasn't an act of survival. Thankfully nobody was killed.

What should Don Dale be replaced with? Should those kids be sent to an adult prison instead? Or released to fend for themselves? Their own family has usually demonstrated they won't look after them properly and released kids are typcally caught committing serious crimes immediately Often within hours of being released.

It's easy to say "this isn't good enough" but there's a serious lack of actual meaningful solutions being proposed by anyone.

In my opinion the only good alternative to youth detention is foster care. But there aren't enough foster carers - especially ones willing to take in teenagers with a criminal record.

According to federal government, there were 0.63 deaths per 100 million kilometres travelled in 2010, and 0.44 in 2020.

That's a 30% improvement in actual road safety (nationwide) over the last ten years. I'm not sure what the numbers are for Victoria, but I'm sure it's in the same ballpark (VicRoads publishes "per capita" stats, which is a shitty way to measure road safety).