• 2 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 8th, 2023

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  • Yeah I feel like anyone who blames Linus for this is missing the point. Was it dumb, yes, but if we want the average (or even a bit tech-savy) Windows gamer to transition to Linux then the distro they use needs to be resistant to this. Most people don’t read shit, they just want things to work so they can play their games. And they’ll happily click through multiple warnings to get there.


  • Fun fact, this loop is kinda how one of the generative ML algorithms works. This algorithm is called Generative Adversarial Networks or GAN.

    You have a so-called Generator neural network G that generates something (usually images) from random noise and a Discriminator neural network D that can take images (or whatever you’re generating) as input and outputs whether this is real or fake (not actually in a binary way, but as a continuous value). D is trained on images from G, which should be classified as fake, and real images from a dataset that should be classified as real. G is trained to generate images from random noise vectors that fool D into thinking they’re real. D is, like most neural networks, essentially just a mathematical function so you can just compute how to adjust the generated image to make it appear more real using derivatives.

    In the perfect case these 2 networks battle until they reach peak performance. In practice you usually need to do some extra shit to prevent the whole situation from crashing and burning. What often happens, for instance, is that D becomes so good that it doesn’t provide any useful feedback anymore. It sees the generated images as 100% fake, meaning there’s no longer an obvious way to alter the generated image to make it seem more real.

    Sorry for the infodump :3


  • The people who use it happily don’t make memes about it. I do have some weird errors every now and then, it’s definitely not as stable for me as X11. However X11 wasn’t very smooth with my multi monitor setup, and Wayland improved the smoothness of my PC enormously, so the random issues every now and then are worth it



  • I’m Dutch, but due to the large amount of English content I never really had an issue with English. While I struggled with German and Fr*nch, I never had to pay attention or study for English lessons. I just did what felt natural and ignored the homework etc. Not that I’m a great English speaker or anything, my vocabulary is sometimes a bit limited which makes me have to search for the right words to use. But when watching or reading I can follow pretty much anything. I also sometimes feel like I’m more resilient to accents than native English speakers, maybe because we get exposed to British and American English and therefore kinda learn a more generalized representation of the language? Idk, maybe that’s not a thing



  • Really? That would surprise me a lot. Maybe it’s a cultural difference, I’m not sure where you’re from. I can’t imagine that the majority of the people I know only brush once a day, I’ve never noticed anyone deviating from the normal morning/evening pattern. But I also haven’t really paid much attention so maybe I just haven’t noticed. How do people do that? I tend to notice quite quickly that I forgot toe brush because it feels yucky.





  • Do you think these massive companies will add even a single line of code for something and insignificant as this? Also that one string replace maymess with Icelandic text which actually uses it.

    I think these 2 factors actually make it sort of useful. As long as not too many others do this exact thing, it makes the comments with the thorn in English enough of an anomaly to probably do more harm than good to the training of the LLM. And therefore the comments are not being used in any useful way for “AI” training.

    There are some accessibility and readability concerns tho, and it’s also a bit of a weird thing to do. But it might just kinda work




  • Recently my parents showed me some stuff they saw on Facebook. It was all just AI slop, rage bait, advertisements. Seriously, there was barely anything useful on it. They were very avoidant of acknowledging it tho. “But there’s also fun stuff on it”. They were constantly wondering whether what they were reading was real, yet it did plant seeds in their brains. It’s even influencing their politics, I had to have a whole discussion with them (traditionally centre left voters) about how our left wing parties didn’t want to let an unstoppable horde of immigrants into our country. And why voting for a centre right guy because “he looks pretty competent” will also fuck with poor people and important topics like abortion.


  • Imo the whole incel thing is a symptom, not the cause. Many men feel lonely, lost, and useless in today’s society. Without a proper support network and raised to hide away our emotions, many of us don’t have the proper tools to tackle this monster. Then, conveniently, there are these people who tell you that none of it is your fault. That it’s not you who needs to change or improve yourself, but society that went wrong. That it’s the “woke people” who paint you as a villain, that it’s the women who deny you the “right” to a relationship .

    Many men are looking for answers. And the whole incel alt-right pipeline gives easy answers. It blames everyone else. And when you’re already in a dark place, tired and lost, it can be hard to resist. Not that I want to excuse incels in any way, they’re dangerous and we have every right to vilify them. But imo they’re not the cause, just a symptom of the broader issue. And to prevent more incels from appearing, I think it’s time they men’s mental health is taken a bit more seriously. Society needs to adapt, starting from how boys are raised.


  • Lol no. I’ve been using Linux for 10 years and it’s been a continuous dumpster fire. Constant issues l, especially with Nvidia, across many different machines. Issues with wine, no X11 (or Wayland) after updates, games not starting, etc, etc. Across Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch (and derivatives).

    Yet I almost exclusively use Linux nowadays. Why? Because it’s a dumpster fire I can influence. Windows is going to shit, they were taking my PC hostage, installing spyware, ads, forcing updated without my consent. On Linux I have to invest hours to fix shit, on Windows I can get fucked whenever something happens that I don’t want.

    With proton advancing, Wayland working somewhat usable even with Nvidia,my threshold was passed. I’d rather fix the fixable Linux issues that cost me time than deal with Windows any longer. But for the layman I’m not sure I’d recommend it. I’m a computer scientist. I can fixodt issues, it’s just a question of time and energy. But that doesn’t go for everyone.


  • I need it to sleep comfortably, but airconditioning is not common here so when it’s 28 degrees Celsius inside the blanket gets yeeted. Having all balcony doors open without really any light cover and sleeping on a bed without any cover feels very exposed. But at lest it makes it somewhat bearable. This is only like 3 days a year tho, I really try to avoid it


  • Your view is totally fine, but I guess you’re not understanding why people do this. I’m a millennial, around 30. Personally I buy CDs, I buy vinyl, and I even have some stuff on tape. I’ve also recently picked up film photography and among my friends it’s common nowadays to bring some 2000-2010 digicams.

    So why? flac is perfect, and streaming services stream whatever high-quality music you’d ever want to play. Film is expensive, and digicams are often way more shit than whatever a modern smartphone that’s already in your pocket can do.

    Personally I’ve become bored by perfection, overwhelmed by choice, and frustrated with the lack of owning anything. When I play a physical album I sit down for it, I am focused on the music. I cannot easily choose the music, I’ll just have to accept the order of the album. There are way fewer choices to overwhelm me. Likewise, with film photography, it feels simpler in a way. You shoot a few images in a go, because film isn’t cheap, and you’ll only get to see them weeks later when the roll is developed. No pressure of the perfect shot, no insane resolution to show any imperfection. And mistakes just happen, because you cannot see what you’re doing, so you just have to accept them. Digitally you can just take 20 pictures and take the best one.

    So back to music. Why would one prefer vinyl or tape over CD? As a life-long CD collector, I wondered the same thing a few years ago. But when artists that I enjoy started skipping CD releases in favor of vinyl I hopped in, invested in a shit vinyl player, and didn’t really get it. Sure it had a character, but it wasn’t great in any way. After some more research I found out that it was probably just the vinyl player (please don’t get some cheap shit for a 100 bucks with a red unbranded needle). I invested in an Audiotechnica LP70XBT, and oh boy did stuff improve. I finally get it. The sound is gorgeous, though not necessarily better or worse than CD imo. It’s a bit warmer, with detailed bass but less clinical high end. And I love the whole tactile experience of it. Older vinyl definitely sounds worse than modern CD quality though.

    I think it’s the whole experience that people enjoy. Putting the vinyl or cassette in the player, having something move and, as if it were magic, suddenly there’s music. With a slightly different character that differentiates it from the clean and clinical sound of high quality digital audio. Modern digital audio is great and definitely has its place, but at times it can feel sterile, too perfect. The crackles and warmth of vinyl, the grain and slightly off colours of photographic film, they feel like they have more personality. They stem from a time where the imperfections of the medium still kinda hid the imperfections of the artist.

    (Okay this turned into quite a ramble but I hope there’s something useful in there :3 )