maegul

joined 2 years ago
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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Yea, it would seem the embrace from those “who should maybe know better” is based on it being the appropriate compromise to make progress in this field.

BlueSky is not just another centralised platform. It’s open source (or mostly), based on an open protocol and an architecture that’s hybrid-decentralised. The “billionaire” security, AFAICT, is that we can rebuild it with our own data should it go to shit.

This thread from Andre Staltz is indicative I think: https://bsky.app/profile/staltz.com/post/3lawesmv6ik2d

He worked on scuttlebut/manyverse for a long while before moving on a year or so ago. Along with Paul Frazee, a core dev with bsky who’d previously done decentralisation, I think there’s a hunger to just make it work for people and not fail on idealistic grounds.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 day ago

Just to add to the many responses here with a simple quip on this issue (which I’m taking from one else)

The fediverse presumes people care more about independence than socialising. For most it’s the other way around.

IE: it’s about the socialising “stupid”.

Even for us techy types happy with the system here … it means we get to socialise with like minded people. The independence we have here is often secondary, I’d wager, to what we all get out of this.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 day ago

I mean, I hear you (we’re both here after all), but honestly, I think this is a bad take and approach (if getting more users is a goal.

It’s not the 90s anymore. And even email services are given to you by your employer or selected from the closest big brand provider (Google etc).

All of which is a far cry from “nerdygardeners.io” administered by some rando anonymous account you’ve never heard of before.

For mainstream success, the instances thing was dead on arrival. Just was and is. Which is fine, the Fedi can be and arguably should be something else.

IMO the success of BlueSky is good for the Fedi. It can take the “let’s be the next mainstream thing” monkey off of its back and just be itself.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

First, no need to apologise.

Second, no I don’t think you summarised the video, IIRC, it mostly gets into the theory of the techniques used and what can be done to do a better job.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Possibly, but when scientific knowledge and problems were smaller, one person could actually make a mark alone IMO. And if they happened upon a new discovery or insight then they’d appear to be geniuses, all alone.

At some point, when the work to make a discovery requires more than one person and the amount of theory involved in understanding its significance is too much for one person to be authoritative on all of it, then it’s a team sport.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Yep. There’s a whole world of people happy to work very hard on research for the rest of their lives … and instead we have them writing emails wrangling spreadsheets for … ??

Sometimes “shitty” work needs to be done, obviously … but I think it’s far less obvious that the pool of things that need to be done lies entirely in the random inefficient shit the business world just accepts. Instead, that’s just where the money flows.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Absolutely. It’s a shit show.

And interestingly, making the general public more aware of this is likely quite important. Because 1, they have very idealistic views of what research is like, and 2, just about everyone is entering research blind to the realities. It’s a situation that needs some sunlight and rethinking.

IMO, a root cause is that the heroic genius researcher ideal at the base of the system’s design basically doesn’t really exist any more. Things are just too big and complex now for a single person to be that important. Dismantle that ideal and redesign from scratch.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

I’ve certainly had some nice vegan chocolate (that’s not dark that is), IIRC, Whittaker’s Oat Milk choc hit the spot. But from my tastings, a good vegan “milk” chocolate is hard to come by.

For me, I’d gone for dark choc prior to going vegan, so I just stick with that. If it’s dark enough, it’s almost certainly going to be vegan.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

There was an article by Google about the security of their code base, and one of their core findings was that old code is good, as it gets refined and more free of bugs over time. And of course conversely, new code is worse.

https://security.googleblog.com/2024/09/eliminating-memory-safety-vulnerabilities-Android.html

Generally it seems like capitalism’s obsession with growth is at odds with complex software. It’s basis in property also.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Milk that's very warm, almost already gone bad, but with added yeast.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

Yea … I tried to touch on this in the “vegan cat food debate” that happened on lemmy-world in response to all the “animal and pet cruelty” vitriol.

Apart from ignoring the nuance of the conversation vegans were having, the presumption that the pet industry and all those who have pets are animal lovers and vegans were somehow in contravention of an otherwise pristine endeavour … was problematically naive and ignorant of how much casual pet owners can in fact buttress an industry and practice with plenty of cruelty baked in.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

It’s not too hard. There are a bunch of different platforms one might experiment with as well as instances. Some will use multiple accounts for different needs or interests. On lemmy, multi accounts are useful for have different feeds, for example. I probably have 7-10. I’ve probably forgotten about a few of them. If you’re curious, it happens.

 

I’d almost forgotten about this album, rediscovered it today, and fuck I love the vibe and energy.

 

Instead we’ve the lions, power, swans and cats.

Who were premiers in 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2007 respectively (with a cheeky eagles flag in 2006).

edit:

Or, to include repeats and losing the grand final:

The 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 07 & 09 premiers, and, the 04, 06, 07 & 08 runners up are in the prelims this year.

Not one GF in 9 years that didn’t have one of these four and only two that were win by another team.

 

How are people feeling about it? I was disappointed by season 1, but happy to keep watching as I'm a die hard fan from childhood.

Season 2 had me excited at first ...

spoilers (and ranting)The first two-three episodes at least had me even a little pumped.

The dark wizard in the east very much signals to me that the stranger could be a blue wizard, along with the dark wizard, which is honestly very cool and a nice way to split the difference around Tolkien's "speculation" on what happened to them.

Getting more complex Sauron manipulation and moving the plot along too seemed nice.

But after episode 4, I don't know. I came away from it thinking it might have been the worst tv episode I've watched since Picard S2, which was very strange given how much interesting shit they did. Ents, Bombadil, Wizards, Hobbit origins (actually I don't care for the amount of hobbit stuff in the show at all).

But there was something just boring about it all for me.

The only way I can explain what I think I'm seeing, and why it's fundamentally flawed, is that the writers/directors want to take Tolkien seriously and even feel rather pressured to do so ... and so in many ways they're actually writing/filming that sense of seriousness rather than a well thought out adaptation style.

The clue for me is how the whole show is at once strangely grounded and somehow "elevated" at the same time. The elves, such as Galadriel and Elrond, are kinda normal people doing normal things a lot of the time (compare LoTR trilogy Galadriel basically being mind-crushing and haunting most of the time) ... but talk as though they're reading directly from the bible or Silmarillion. Same for Halbrand/Annatar/Sauron. The construction of the rings is a clue into this I think, where they've attempted to portray it as powerful and important, but there's absolutely no sense of how in the world they're magical, no indication that there's some special elven craft behind them. Just "add mithril and get powerful rings".

Bombadil's dialogue seemed the same to me. Talking about being the eldest as though he's talking about what happened last week. Now in that character this sort of approach makes the most sense. But even so, there didn't seem to be any joy, jolly or aloofness about the character to signal how old he must be to be casual about witnessing the beginning of time. And there's always the concern the show should have for making us the viewer feel what's happening on screen ... and I don't think we felt Bombadil's mysteriousness much at all. Compare with, in the LoTR books, Tolkien using a wonderful way of showing that ... the one ring had no affect no him whatsoever to the point that he could see Frodo while he was wearing it.

The only breath of fresh air so far has been the dark wizard, which clearly takes cues from Saruman. It's probably been the only sense stylistically I've gotten that we're in a lost age of a fantasy world.

One take I had from season 1 was that RoP's biggest problem might be that it's being made after Game of Thrones not before it. That GoTs is absolutely the wrong influence for a show like this and yet is likely to have one due to its pervasive success. And I feel like I may have been right about that. The Tolkien world and GoT "politics and intrigue" are not compatible. Moreover, I suspect the GoT style may have run its course somewhat. A show like RoP was a chance to try something interestingly mystical and I don't think the creators were up to the challenge, perhaps not at all.

 

While territorial claims are and will likely be heated, what struck me is that the area is right near the Drake Passage, in the Weddell Sea (which is fundamental to the world's ocean currents AFAIU).

I don't know how oil drilling in the antarctic could affect the passage, but still, I'm not sure I would trust human oil hunger with a 10ft pole on that one.

Also interestingly, the discovery was made by Russia, which is a somewhat ominous clue about where the current "multi-polar" world and climate change are heading. Antarctica, being an actual continent that thrived with life up until only about 10-30 M yrs ago, is almost certainly full of resources.

 

It's funny, at time of posting, many of the YT comments are very nostalgic about how much has happened in this 8 year period ... and I can't lie, I feel it too god damn it.

 

Seems like fertile ground for coming up with something fun and interesting ... a whole shadow universe that barely touches ours ... but I don't think I've ever seen it.

 

Rant …

spoilerI’m talking about Ash/Rook, obviously.

Just saw the film recently, and while it’s a bit of a love it or hate it film I think, the Rook character is I think objectively egregious.

The idea is good, IMO, in a number of ways, and I can understand that the film makers felt like it was all done with love and affection for Holm and the character. As a viewer, not necessarily onboard with how many cues the film was taking from the franchise, I noticed the silhouette of Rook pretty quickly and was quite happy/hyped to see where it would go.

But OMG the execution is unforgivable! And I feel like this is just so much of what’s wrong with Hollywood and VFX, and also indicates that some execs were definitely intervening in this film. Somewhat fortunately for the film, it had a low budget (AFAICT, by Wikipedia) and is making a profit.

But it’s no excuse to slap some bad CGI onto shots that were not designed for bad CGI. Close ups on the uncanny valley! Come on! AFAICT, bad CGI is often the result of a complete disconnect between the director and the VFX crew, in part because the VFX industry is kept at arms length from the film industry, despite (it because of) its massive importance.

That CGI is not something you do a close up on. No remotely decent director would have done that knowing the CGI looked like that. This is likely bad studio management creating an unworkable situation.

What could have worked much better IMO is don’t have the synth functioning well. Have its facial expressions and movements completely artificial and mechanical. Rely on the likeness of Holm and the AI voice (which did and generally do work well). Could have been done just with a well directed animatronic coupled with some basic CGI to enrich some textures and details. Instead we got a dumb “we’ll do it in post” and tortured some poor editor into cutting those shots together.

For many the film was a mixed bag. For me too. But this somehow prevents me from embracing it because I just don’t trust the people who made it.

… End rant.

 

New genre just dropped!

I've liked some of the other things this guy has done, but didn't get into this track at first. As I kept watching though, I got more and more into it and am certain I'd be down for an album of this stuff.

 

I looked around and struggled to find out what it does?

My guess would be that it notifies you of when new posts are made to communities you subscribe to. But that sounds like a lot, so I'm really not sure.

Otherwise, is it me or does the wording here not speak for itself?

 

Generally, the lens I've come to criticise any/all fediverse projects is how well they foster community building. One reason why I like and "advocate" for the lemmy/threadiverse side of things is precisely because of this and how the centrality of the community/sub/group is a good way of organising social media (IMO).

Also, because of that, I recently came to be skeptical of the effects that the "All" feed can have. I didn't even realise that people relied mostly on the All feed until recently.

I think I've reached the point now of being against it (at least tentatively). I know, it's a staple and there's no way it's going away. And I know it's useful.

But thinking about the feature set, through the community building lens, I think it'd be fair to say that things are out of balance: they don't promote community building enough while also providing the All feed which dissolves community building.

Not really a criticism of the developers ... AFAIU, the All feed is easier to implement than any other community building feature ... and it's expected from reddit (though it isn't normal on forums AFAICT, which is maybe worth considering for anyone happy to reassess what about reddit is retained and what isn't).

But still, I can imagine a platform that is more focused on communities:

  • Community explorer tool built in.
    • Could even be a substitute for an All feed ... where you can browse through various communities you don't know about and see what they've posted recently
  • Multi-communities (long time coming by now for many I'd say)
    • Could even be part of the community explorer tool where you can create on-the-fly multi-communities to see their posts in a temporary feed
  • Private and local only communities (already here on lemmy and coming for private communities)
  • Post visibility options for Public communities (IE, posts that opt-in private)
  • More flexible notifications for various things/events that happen within a community
  • Wikis
  • Chat interface
    • I'm thinking this is pretty viable given that Lemmy used to use a web-socket auto-updating design ... add that to the flat chat view and you've got a chat room. There are resource issues, so limiting them to one per community or 6hrs per week per community or something would probably be necessary.

A possibly interesting and frustrating aspect of all of these suggestions/ideas above is I can see their federation being problematic or difficult ... which raises the issue of whether there's serious tension between platform design and protocol capabilities.

 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/18310802

Fun to see him (kmac2021) making shit again

 

Fun to see him (kmac2021) making shit again

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