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2 yr. ago

  • This is the current problem with "misalignment". It's a real issue, but it's not "AI lying to prevent itself from being shut off" as a lot of articles tend to anthropomorphize it. The issue is (generally speaking) it's trying to maximize a numerical reward by providing responses to people that they find satisfactory. A legion of tech CEOs are flogging the algorithm to do just that, and as we all know, most people don't actually want to hear the truth. They want to hear what they want to hear.

    LLMs are a poor stand in for actual AI, but they are at least proficient at the actual thing they are doing. Which leads us to things like this, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKCynxiV_8I

  • Canada now gets to pick one of ours. Fair is fair.

    Any one. Anyone at all. Just pick >_>

  • Protontricks can help for some games. Personally I used it to install Openplanet for Trackmania which doesn't have any sort of explicit Linux support specified.

    What Protontricks does is allow you to run installation files within the context of a steam game, as you mentioned. Simply launch Protontricks and select the game you're trying to modify and it will mount it properly for you. Then choose "Run an arbitrary executable (.exe/.msi/.msu)" and proceed to run the installer as you would normally.

    Sometimes the path can still be a bit janky. For example when Openplanet wanted to install to the Trackmania directory as mounted through Protontricks, I had to specify: Z:\homeUSERNAME>steam\steam\steamapps\common\Trackmania.

  • https://x-plus.store/products/n150-netbook

    I saw a post on this a few weeks back and excited purchased one. I've had it for a bit now and I'm generally happy with it.

    If you've ever bought a Chinese product like this before, you know generally what to expect: about 95% quality and 5% WTF.

    Personally I put Arch on it using KDE Plasma/Wayland and touch is lackluster. Other distros might handle things better, but I'm an Arch guy and I'm sticking it out.

    • Keyboard is better than expected, but still a little janky. Key feel is surprisingly good but far from great, although sometimes they don't actuate. I think that's because I'm still learning to type on it. Key arrangement is not as big of an issue as I thought, although stuff like Tab, -, ", / can be a little awkward for typing terminal commands, plain text typing (like note taking) I can get pretty up to speed. Honestly the jankiest key is . but it's placement in the center of the cluster still makes it fairly easy to hit
    • The screen is clearly a tablet turned sideways. I've seen this before and I think even the Steam Deck does this, but it does lead to some oddities like resolution being 1200x1920 and SDDM is sideways (I tried fixing it, I'm sure there's a way but I broke it so bad on one go that I ended up just doing a reinstall)
    • It's hefty, feels like a solid device, although maybe even a little too hefty when using it folded over and trying to hold it with one hand while reading

    For me it's absolutely perfect for the kind of note taking, book/comic reading, emulator playing, internet browsing I need to do. Admittedly it may still be too close to that "toy" kinda feel though ...

  • The Safeways here in WA (at least in parts) have shifted from the old weight-based system(?) to some new AI/camera system. It gets upset if you move incorrectly in front of it because it thinks you may have bagged something you hadn't scanned yet.

    Last time I went shopping I got stuck waiting for 5+ minutes when the machine flagged me and there wasn't any available staff to review it with me. When the manager finally came over, we had to watch the video capture of me scanning (love the privacy invasion) and then she counted the items in my bag "just to make sure". Afterwards she stood behind me and watched me finish scanning "in case it happens again". Whatever. This feels neither efficient nor convenient. It feels like something else.

  • No worries! I did bring a bit of heat in my response and for that I accept the downvotes.

    It does just make me a little angry to see someone post a question out of genuine curiosity where there is a real answer to be researched and discussed and met with a string of tired dunks. That's some serious Reddit behavior right there (diss, intended for other posters).

  • Version numbering has no implications on development.

    I understand that, so then why change it?

    Firefox released just as frequently before, just that they didn’t increase the major version that often.

    This does not appear to be true.

    That blog post has an aura of marketing speak around it.

    Version numbering has no implication on development and doesn't even need to align internally and publicly, so somewhere a conscious decision was made to do it this way for "reasons". I conjecture those reasons are at least partially due to marketing. Is this not fair?

  • That's my disclaimer that my research on the topic was less than exhaustive when I posted it at midnight, smartasscool guy. I then when on to offer a legitimate, if simple answer with sources that I linked. I see now the error of my ways in trying to provider a sincere answer to a question instead of posting the same tired dunk as everyone else.

    I have learned the error of my ways and will carry this lesson with me into the future as we build this Lemmy community.

  • All the downvotes here kinda got me legit angry. Incurious fools and jokers.

    It's not a complete answer, but it's partially because the development of Chrome and Firefox have always been highly competitive resulting in them both adopting rapid release cycles around the same time in the early 2010's.

    I haven't read too much into the topic, but I wouldn't be surprised if this was as much a marketing decision as well as a developer one. Similar to how Microsoft didn't want to release an XBox 2 in competition with a PlayStation 3.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_version_history https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome#Development

    These are just the Wikipedia links, but there is interesting discussion of development history to be had, here.

  • I really hope this goes somewhere.

    Not because I have any sympathy for the shareholders, mind you, fuck absolutely everyone involved. But I think it would be very funny to make Apple prove in court that AI is such dogshit it would've hurt the product more to implement it than not.

  • There's so many reasons this is a dumb, bad idea, but locally running models doesn't even build confidence that they won't exfiltrate the queries and other privacy invading telemetry. Just wait until you're online next.

  • I, like a lot of people, got briefly obsessed with the Voynich manuscript. It's just interesting is all. We love a good mystery.

    At some point I had the thought, "I should make my own manuscript in the same fashion, just as a fun art project!" Followed almost immediately after by, "oh, this is just someone's fun art project, isn't it?"

    That's fine, that's enough. It's still cool and has created it's own story in history now.

  • Oh shoot! I missed posting to this topic on my cakeday by 20 minutes, but me!

    Came over after they killed third party apps because I couldn't use my beloved Sync, which is now never updated anyways.

    I'm not ashamed to admit I moved to Reddit during the great Digg migration. Platforms come and go, you just keep on rolling.

    In all seriousness, I do feel like content has got better here in that time and I enjoy the raw, early Internet vibes. There's still plenty of room to grow, but I feel very positive about it all.

  • Touch support really needs some love because OOF. I understand why it's maybe not a priority, but I have a nice little 2-in-1 and I'm tired of pretending like tablets don't at least deserve their niche.

    Any good gesture support software I might be missing?

    https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Touchscreen#Wayland/Weston

    If I'm reading the wiki correctly, touch is just reduced to pointer input and yeah, that's exactly what it feels like

    EDIT:

    Yes, the writing is on the wall. X11’s upstream development has dropped off significantly in recent years, and X11 isn’t able to perform up to the standards of what people expect today with respect to support for multi-monitor setups, high DPI monitors, HDR, VRR, other fancy monitor features, multi-GPU setups, screen tearing, security, crash robustness, input handling, and more.

    I glossed over it on first reading, but I guess there's a small nod to it there and that's something.

  • It's hard to pick what current AI application I hate the most, but music is right up there at the top.

    It's absolutely ruined any sort of ambient/lo-fi/vaporwave/city pop mix on Youtube. And I think now it's coming for dungeonsynth too, AUGH!

    Endless AI slop channels. You can tell it's AI because they all have AI generated logos, overly intricate but garbled album art, no individual track names or citations, and most tellingly usually seem to be pretty consistently 1 or 2 hours exact. I'm guessing this is a sort of limitation of whatever software or paid subscription they're using. You'll also notice them upload a new album at impossibly prolific rates; if not daily then usually at least 2-3 times a week.

    Example: https://www.youtube.com/@ChillCityFM/videos

    Most of them admit to using AI tools if you poke around the descriptions, I think they're obligated to if it weren't already apparent enough.

  • I feel your pain. I'm a big fan of the PS controller design as well. This isn't a serious recommendation as I haven't done it yet myself, but your best bet may just be to buy a PS5 controller with some HAL effect replacement sticks.

    (Just using Amazon as an example, there are probably cheaper/better European options but it looks like a 2-pack would run you about $14USD / €‎12) https://www.amazon.com/PS5-Hall-Effect-Joystick-Replacement-2-Pack/dp/B0DN8T9KJW

    https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/DualSense+Joystick+Replacement/142488

    Be warned as it looks like in order to do the replacement you'll need to desolder the old sticks and solder in the new ones.

    This'll probably be my plan, one day, but I suck at soldering so I'm likely going to find a friend to do it for me and bribe them with some beer.

  • I tried the DevOps pivot, but wasn't real happy with it. Maybe some of it is just being located near a big tech hub right now, but I found most of the roles tied to startups that were just going to reinforce the kind of burnout I'm in.

    Cyber Security is the new pivot. I figure the sysadmin background will give me a good leg up and there'll always be a call for security.

  • Cyber Security. It's close to the IT/Sysadmin world I know so I feel like I'll have a good start. I figure there's no such thing as job security anymore, but there'll always be a need for strong security.

  • Hey thanks, I sincerely appreciate the offer, but I already have plans in the works 😊