hendrik @ hendrik @palaver.p3x.de

A software developer and Linux nerd, living in Germany. I'm usually a chill

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4 yr. ago

I believe I saw some other single board computers with some cheap Rockchip CPU /Allwinner and regular HDMI and two USB and an Ethernet port for around $10 on Aliexpress. You wouldn't need the adapters from the Pi Zero with those. And there are some generic Android TV-Boxes for $8-15...

How about we just tell the truth as is? I mean in your analogy... Would you recommend a faulty car with the same words you'd choose for a very nice one? Would you hide that the manufacturer does problematic things? I think the way you phrase it, has indeed some things in common for example with recommending a Tesla car these days. Generally, people don't keep their mouth shut about who manufactures them. So yeah, I don't think speaking the truth is babysitting at all... But of course you also don't hide the fact that Hyperland exists and if it's any good. I'd advocate for just stating the facts. As an added bonus, everyone can then go ahead and make that desicion themselves. I mean I personally wouldn't buy a Swasticar. I have less objections using Hyprland. But I always try to give these kind of info out as well, if someone asks me about software. Because I think it's kind of important if a project is healthy, has a nice community etc. I think the comparison with driving cars falls a bit short, since we don't recommend people shouldn't use any desktop. It's fine to use one. And it's also fine to drive a car. You should just be aware of the consequences. And in fact I think it'd be beneficial if we were to drive less cars, for several reasons.

Uh, I just type ssh or rsync into the terminal and that's it. It's a manageable amount of computers/servers I connect to, so I can remeber their names. Regular ssh stores all the keys or custom ports / IPs in its config. What's the advantage of using some manager?

I think that'd be VNC or Remote Desktop these days. Wayland deliberately did away with the networking stuff.

Hmmh. And it's not even a linear progression. They take inspiration all the time. I remember gnome 2 being very different from what it is today. And they tend to look at MacOS.

Uh, I don't have a good answer for that, but I'd give them something like Linux Mint anyways. That way they can look up stuff, watch tutorials and don't have a super niche thing running. Or give them one of the popular gaming distros, if it's that.

Idk. Gnome feels very much like Android to me. And KDE follows similar design patterns to Windows. And kids and teenagers tend to figure out all the things they want. If they have the motivation to do so.

https://github.com/kontrollanten/peertube-plugin-premium-users/

Nice, thanks. I gave it an upvote.

Nice. You should probably mention what makes this model special. That this is an open model, with the dataset and everything available.

Something like a Patreon? That'd probably be useful to some people in addition to the already existing donation option.

Is this already requested? They have a page for that: https://ideas.joinpeertube.org/ and listen to our feedback. So if that's not already on there, you might want to add the idea. (I haven't checked.)

I never heard that. I also think Peertube is doing great. And development has been constant, we get new features all the times, for years now.

And in addition to that: It's also kind of a big thing that they get an audience. The more people use the projects, the bigger the audience. They'll get a Discord and people will join because of the project, people will start reading their blog because of the attention via the software... People will maintain and package their software, or use it, or contribute to it... Directly resulting in interactions with the group which develops a project. That's a direct consequence of the project getting attention. And "promoting" is a way to draw attention.

Yes, thanks for the link. It says version 0.6 from january.

When do we get that version on F-Droid?

Also, is the body text just a low effort copy-paste of what Peertube is? We know that... And there is a news article about the new version which could have been copy pasted instead: https://joinpeertube.org/news/app-v1

I guess you're completely right with that. It lowers the entry barrier. And it's kind of self-reinforcing. And we have other unhealty dynamics with other technology as well, like social media, which also can radicalize people or get them in a downwards spiral...

Oh wow. In the old times, self-proclaimed messiahs used to do that without assistance from a chatbot. But why would you think the "truth" and path to enlightenment is hidden within a service of a big tech company?

And as far as I know people do fine-tuning so it picks up on the style of writing and things like that, for example to mimick an author, or specifics of a genre. I'd say to just fetch facts from a pile of text, RAG would be the easier approach. It depends on the use-case, the collection of books, however. Fine-tuning is definitely a thing people do as well.

People do this because of several reasons. Moderation policies, political alignment of the people who run the place. And because we don't want this decentral network to be just one big central instance. Though... the same thing applies to lemmy world, which became the biggest instance after the ml one.

Privacy would be the main concern. Every single one of your words, documents, pictures will probably end up in some large database over at OpenAI. I don't like that at all. And as a company for example, it might be against the law to share some information about clients with third parties.

Then you don't get any of the freedoms we got with Free Software. It's a service you rely on with very little opportunities to customize, or look inside and tinker. There is little control for the user whatsoever. Additionally we already had companies cease service. So it might become unavailable tomorrow, which is a bad thing if you're attached to it, invested or built things around it.

And since "the internet is for porn"... We also have a noteworthy community doing those kinds of things. And well... go ahead and ask the big services to generate a lewd story. Most of them even refuse to write a murder mystery story for me, instead they'll lecture me on how it is not ethical to murder someone. So that would be use-cases where local AI outperforms any of the market leaders.

Personally, I'm a bit opposed to the entire concept of letting other people's algorithms dictate my life. I don't want to rely on them. I also don't want them to pick the bias for my perspective on the world. The algorithms in social media are dwarfed by how dangerous it's gonna be once people rely on AI more and more. And it gets to choose which information to show and which to drop. What kind of bias to introduce in summaries etc. Teach people how to think. And I already don't like the way all big AI chatbots talk to me with a lot of emojis and in a "Explain like I'm 5 yo" way.

So to go back to the original question... I think the more "useful" AI is, the more reasons there are to retain some control yourself. What do you think?

I don't think it is about that. The information collection is an added bonus they happily accept and make use of. I think it's mainly about power and money, though. They get rid of everyone who isn't completely in line and subservient. That's from the playbook on how to become an autocratic regime. And they're oviously interested in the money as well. Cut off everyone and everything they don't like. Like weak people, poor people, your grandma and children. That money can then be funneled towards other people. Guess whom. I think the power and control aspect is the original idea though. And money has power as well. So does information and data, so it's more a combination of things.

But the way they act, I'd say they had a look at other oligarchies and corrupt regimes and wanted in, too. Saw you need to replace all the people in any color of power and replace them with your own henchmen. Then they also hate a lot of people and always wanted to take their money. The AI and data thing looks more to me like something they discovered while at it. And I don't believe the traditional MAGA people are smart enough to have anticipated that. But naturally, information is power. And AI can be used as a mindless slave to someone. I'd say it's worth trying to foster it instead rely on human clerks and officials. It'll be a new form of administration. One that does away with a lot of middle-men like the corrupt government workers other regimes have to pay.

And Musk looks like he has his own motivation, which might or might not be aligned with the "grand plan" I can't really see there is. He is (was) free to combine the useful with what's enjoyable to him. Currently the tactics is mostly to break a lot of stuff. Doesn't really matter how or what. So that's what they're doing right now. I think the struggle and in-fighting on who gets to replace what with exactly what kind of things hasn't really started yet. It's already there, but not the main concern as of now. So we can't tell the exact dynamics we're bound to see in the near future. I'd say mass surveillance plus yet more AI is likely a formula to success, though.