sj_zero @ sj_zero @lotide.fbxl.net

Posts

5

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440

Joined

2 yr. ago

I think for most people talking about algorithms, the problem isn't an algorithm, it's "The Algorithm".

The distinction is that everything on a computer screen is displayed using an algorithm, but The Algorithm is instead this sinister thing that arbitrarily displays things for the benefit of the company rather than the benefit of the user.

An Algorithm might show posts by upvotes or by comments or by some combination of the two, or by time, or by some combination of the three. The Algorithm will show stormfront posts to black people because it drives engagement. On Youtube for example, a thumbs down is just as acceptable for the purposes of The Algorithm as a thumbs up.

Pretty decent list. It covered a lot of the myths I think about.

One myth you mention that I see a lot is the idea that people you don't like won't be on the fediverse. On the face of it it's an absurd idea -- So anyone can start an instance and run it however they want but somehow it's going to be more locked down than big tech sites that spend millions of dollars on moderation?

The myth that "it's all called mastodon" that you mention I feel is less like the gnu/linux distinction, and more like your mom calling every video game system a "nintendo". I'm running 6 different services that use some form of federation, and none of them are Mastodon (nothing against the program, it's just that I've always been running with system performance at a premium so something heavy and scalable like that wasn't on my radar)

I really hope that they've added some algorithms for mirroring. I still want an algorithm to mirror based on user subscriptions, since those are the videos most likely to be watched on one instance and so the most useful ones to mirror...

I made fermented maple syrup a few years ago.

It tastes like shit. Imagine you take a green branch off a tree and suck on it, then you add alcohol. Bleh.

There's a hard rule about quantum physics. It goes: "it's all fun and games until you're at the Quantum level, then everything is all fucked up"

According to what we know, electrons don't "move between" energy states on an electron, they're just in one one moment and another the next. That's so disconnected from reality we perceive it still breaks my brain.

It's sorta strange that complex numbers seem to be basically used as an ersatz coordinate system.

One does not just fold space time into mordor!

Wait...

Crap they could, couldn't they?

If you think you can make a better lemmy instance than anyone else, just start one up. It's free and open source, and there's good tutorials out there.

Since it seems that you're convinced that with your ideas you can create massive communities, you should surely be able to become the largest Lemmy instance out there.

This fact, paired with the fact that first it will become a red giant and completely destroy our little ball of dirt, is a serious problem when you're trying to come up with any sort of universal value for our lives. Eventually, every single thing human beings have ever done but we bathed in atomic fire for a billion years.

The only solution I could ultimately find was to stop thinking about the universe, just because something that matters to me as a human can't be explained by looking at alpha centurai doesn't mean it doesn't matter to me.

Gemini seems to be lighter version of HTTP and HTML for creating lightweight pages to view. I've seen some examples in the past.

WordPress is an option, so is writefreely, but so is just using a normal activitypub compatible platform and just increase your maximum character limit.

One thing with wordpress, make sure that you test it. I had one plug-in installed, and it claimed to be federating okay, but then I subscribed to my own feed and there was just nothing.

Honestly, knowing what I know about the last slide, it might as well be the middle slide.

Printing din rail?

On a long enough timeline, we don't have a choice. Whether we cause a catastrophe or not, there is always going to be another worst case scenario.

At the same time that writing was being developed in mesopotamia, most of Northern Europe was under a mile of ice. As that ice receeded, the cradle of civilization, mesopotamia, went from being the breadbasket of the world and a lush garden to a desert. Eventually, well within what we would consider to be civilization, there was a collapse in the bronze age because the climate in those regions stopped being capable of supporting the life that it did previously. So things get warmer, it's a worst case scenario. Things get colder, it's a worst case scenario.

Honestly this is my perspective too. Not saying bad times are good, but that history shows us many different times periods and of wide variety of environmental conditions.

Honestly, there are a lot of places that the climate could go and none of them are good for us. Human history had already begun and we were still in the midst of an ice age which, if we had the same sort of ice age today would wipe out half of the countries on the planet. We've also had warmer periods, and they ended up making the center of the supercontinents that existed at the time completely uninhabitable because water just wasn't making it over there.

Looking at things from geographical scales makes you realize how ephemeral a lot of the things that we consider to be important to be. If we plan to Forest today, over geographical time. It will grow, die, decompose into co2, and grow again and there won't even be a big impact on the geographical record not like the carboniferous period. On the other hand, sedimentary rock makes up entire mountains, and represents life taking unimaginable amounts of CO2 out of the atmosphere, binding it up with minerals like calcium, and that carbon precipitating onto the ocean bed over millions of years.

The dominant species on Earth didn't alway survived these events, but even when the ice age after the oxygen catastrophe turns the entire globe into an ice cube, 10% of Life survived and went on to become everything.

So besides the lesson that we can change the world for the worst, I think we need to be thinking about how we can make sure our species is resilient because another ice age will come. It's inevitable. There may be another time that we pulled too much carbon out of the atmosphere, that could come too. There are so many things that we need to be worrying about and instead we focus on one problem. I really think that that's human nature.

On lotide I click likes on a post and it lists who posted. If you make a post or comment with mastodon you get notified every time someone upvotes.

It's the only thing you're allowed to talk about on some instances. Really need to choose carefully.

Otoh the fediverse is what you make of it. I checked the top posts on my feed and I didn't see a single post about Linux.

Honestly, the less special treatment any one corporation gets, or the less special treatment corporations as a whole get, that's a win for everyone else in society.

Most people on both sides of the aisle if you stepped away from the specific political situation would agree that companies should not be allowed to form their own municipal governments, either.

Copyright isn't patents. I think patents are presently 20 years, nowhere near the lifetime + 70 years of copyrights.

To be fair, pretty much every government breaks its own rules, particularly when privacy is involved.

We have the largest and most invasive world governments in the history of the world thanks to the overwhelming technology that allows such a thing. And even governments that pretend to follow the rules just get their buddies in another country to do their dirty work for them. "I can't spy on you, but England can!"