• 18 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: October 20th, 2023

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  • How does one clear space in a jail?

    It varies but it mostly boils down to understanding the difference between jail and prison. In a nutshell, jail is where you are put if you are too poor to wait for prison in your own home.

    So yeah. Some people get released on parole or house arrest. Some people just get accelerated trials or sent to prison regardless. And a few people inevitably get disappeared.

    That said, it isn’t overly uncommon before protests/riots/sporting events where a high number of arrests/detainings are expected to occur.



  • Its worth understanding that microsoft, like most companies, is rapidly rebranding most of their existing stuff as “AI”. A couple weeks (months?) back at work we managed to convince the boss that maybe it wasn’t a good idea to put all of our sensitive internal data into Teams and convinced him to turn off copilot. Literally minutes later he lost his shit because auto-transcripts no longer worked and IT turned it back on.

    But that is what we are seeing with a LOT of companies. ANYTHING that can be sold as “AI” is getting re-branded as it. So it makes perfect sense that MS will rebrand it as “installing copilot AI” rather than “not removing clippy”.

    That said: MS have also been ahead of the curve on adding even more bullshit and spyware to everything they do so… have you heard the good word about Linux? Libre Office gets personal users most of the way there (and if they worked on their documentation, all the way there. I STILL don’t fucking know how to get row/column headings to work in Calc…). And for business/power use, the browser/cloud based solutions are probably what you want anyway since none of that data should live on your laptop/desktop and should instead live in the company approved data store.


  • I didn’t read this comment because it’s a bunch of gaslighting bullshit.

    Got it, pointing out common phenomena and referencing a very well established and (mostly) respected consumer information group (Consumer Reports. Would link to the data but I always forget what is and isn’t paywalled with them) is “gaslighting”

    And everyone who points out an alternative to your conclusions is mentally ill.

    (Actually this is more of a worldwide phenomenon but Donald Glover is just too good to not post. And… it was shockingly hard to find an easy to grab image from that song that is not gun violence or way more intentionally minstrel-y than anyone would get without an even longer explanation of the joke than this).


  • And I am trying to explain to you why your “experience” is very limited insight on a heavily biased sample.

    If you sell 500 widgets, some percentage of those customers are going to have problems. If 450 of those widgets are from Innertrode, a majority of that percentage are going to be with Innertrode widgets. That doesn’t mean Innertrode makes worse widgets. That just means you, like most people, could do with a primer on statistics.

    I haven’t seen fans of Apple act this irrationally…

    Yes. Pointing out that (mostly) independent consumer information groups have drawn opposite conclusions to you and pointing out this is a very common phenomena in sales is “irrational”. Who needs facts when we have feelings, amirite?

    And people wonder why there are so many complaints online about hating sales people.


  • I am not going to say people should buy a Samsung appliance especially with this nonsense.

    But you’re falling for, and propagating, a pretty common fallacy. it isn’t that Samsung appliances are significantly worse (Consumer Reports puts them in the bottom half of the ranking but they are very much “fine”). It is that people buy them a lot.

    You see this with all kinds of brands. “Never buy Shark. Everyone who buys a Shark comes back and return it or buy a new vacuum in a few years”. It isn’t that Sharks are failing more than others (they are actually #1 or #2 according to CR, depending on the metrics). It is that they are what sell the most.


  • … did you watch Gattaca? Also it was kind of a flop so… you are in large company.

    Spoilers for a movie that is almost 30 years old I guess

    spoiler

    Vincent’s brother is more or less mentally broken and likely to face career problems if people ever investigate what actually happened with the investigation… possibly because the astronaut died en route to Jupiter or whatever. Vincent himself is likely on a suicide trip. Jude Law’s character ACTUALLY commits suicide.

    Gattaca’s ending is not a happy one. It is exactly what was said during the swimming scene. It is about putting your everything into an endeavor with no care for self preservation or “the swim back”. Which… very questionable understanding of genetics aside (very clear they were on the same sauce that Kojima was…), kind of is the “bootstraps” mentality distilled to a suicide run. Some people can succeed just by virtue of their birth and upbringing. Others more or less need to kill themselves to even have a chance. And… a lot of those people never even make it to the chance, let alone have a way to appreciate it.



  • Homie? I want you to know that while I am going to be inflammatory, I am not insulting you. In a slightly sane world, that should be fine.

    NEVER work with children. “Hey kids. You can go home or you can stay with me and a few others and learn how to use a computer!”. At best you are setting yourself up for some awkward phone calls when Little Jimmy gets caught looking at something his parents don’t approve of.

    If you are a close family friend and the parents understand what you are going to be teaching their kid (and obviously want you to teach it), go for it. If you are just watching them while they eat orange slices? Don’t fucking go anywhere near that. Let the teachers who actually train in how to handle these situations do it.

    And the other aspect: Kids (and most adults) are not rational or intelligent. They aren’t going to take “Hey, if Susie sends you nudes don’t put them on this server because it will get me sent to prison as a diddler” as education on why they should not fucking do that.


    If you ever want to get scared straight as it were? Take a teacher out for drinks (and you better pay for them!). You’ll hear LOTS of horror stories and get even a glimpse into the kind of hell they have to put up with.

    The show Black-ish (like a lot of Kenya Barris’s work) has a LOT of problems. But the number of times teacher friends have shared https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jqmj0ILwfM. And it is not at all exclusive to black people (or even men).





  • Part of it is that they genuinely don’t watch or care. They just learned they like trump and will continue to say so. Never forget just how many people didn’t even know Biden wasn’t fucking running last year. There has been a massive culture (on Both Sides) of “don’t watch the news for your mental health” that just puts people in isolation chambers where they occasionally hear something.

    And the other aspect? He is them. Boomers are increasingly senile every single year and he is a boomer ass boomer. But also? Just look around on social media or in stream chats and so forth. A LOT of people sound like they speak English as a Second Language… until you realize they are making references to nickelodean shows and may even have comments or posts outright saying they are a native. They just are fucking illiterate (and this applies from boomers on down but is just a major crisis for genz/alpha because they might have a chance).

    Also odds on someone thinking they are “witty” for saying this is “TLDR”? Because… think about the implications of “you talk too much” as an insult.

    And that isn’t just their illiteracy. We mostly tend to skew middle/upper-middle/upper class around here. Spend some time actually communicating with “support staff” (e.g. custodial) or even talking to someone at a supermarket or fast food joint. The “Gen Z Stare” is definitely a thing but it isn’t just Gen Z and it is very much people who do not know how to communicate or articulate a thought literally locking up. THAT is trump.

    I remember back when the problem was that people glazed Jed Bartlet and it had to be explained to them that real human beings don’t have script writers to make every single word they say deeply beautiful and intellectual. Now? People would hunt Martin Sheen down for daring to make them feel inadequate.


  • No. Palestine has almost nothing to do with it (and Tiktok “supporting” Palestine was vastly over-reported but whatever).

    The issue is that TikTok is very blatantly controlled by China. I am not aware of any specific studies but… the “support” of Palestine lines up with trying to destablize The West by bringing eyes to a polarizing issue that China has no interest in.

    And we have watched MANY elections get stolen by social media over the years. Look at Facebook in South America (and elsewhere) or Twitter in the US and arguably UK/EU.

    The pleasure box is fun. But no country should be allowing the propaganda arm of the CCP to have complete unfettered access to their population. Just like no country should allow for Twitter or Facebook to continue to do the same on behalf of other powers.


    To be clear. Social Media and a “free internet” have been INCREDIBLY useful at getting past government censorship. The Arab Spring and the genocide in Palestine are both “great” examples of this.

    TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook aren’t that. They are corporations designed to manipulate people in the interests of their owners and THEIR owners.


  • If you are thinking in terms of building a widget or making an industrial process, it makes perfect sense. Something like a wristwatch is the kind of innovation a LOT of people more or less simultaneously made and it is just impossible to definitively prove what country the first watch was made in. Even figuring out who was the first to file becomes a mess. Same with factory processes where the players who would even have the ability to iterate are often counted on fingers and toes.

    But software (and research) in a global society is a real mother fucker. Because now the entire world can more or less see everything and reproducing things is fairly trivial. And… it isn’t like the patents actually matter all that much when so much gets done overseas. China Don’t Care but also the EU doesn’t really either and so forth. Sure there are avenues to try to pursue a studio using the patented Nemesis System but… at best you are going to be tied up in courts for years trying to get a judge to insist that a company in Germany needs to send you a check.



  • I ANAL and am not a lawyer.

    The verbiage on this is RIDICULOUSLY specific (as patents generally should be) to the point that I refused to even pass the PDF through an OCR system and instead will trust that site’s transcription

        (1) There must be a PC, console or other computing device and the game is stored on a drive or similar storage medium.
    
        (2) You can move a character in a virtual space.
    
        (3) You must be able to summon a character. They call it a “sub character” by which they mean it’s not the player character, but, for example, a little monster such as a Pokémon that the player character has at its disposal.
    
        Then the logic branches out, with items (4) and (5) being mutually exclusive scenarios, before reuniting again in item (6):
    
        (4) This is about summoning the “sub character” in a place where there already is another character that it will then (when instructed to do so) fight.
    
        (5) This alternative scenario is about summoning the “sub character” at a position where there is no other character to fight immediately.
    
        (6) This final step is about sending the “sub character” in a direction and then letting an automatic battle ensue with another character. It is not clear whether this is even needed if one previously executed step (4) where the “sub character” will basically be thrown at another character.
    

    All of those criteria must be met for this trap card to be triggered (shit… Yugioh lawyers getting revved up now).

    Step 4 specifically covers the case where you summon your little guy to fight someone else. As worded, that actually would impact a Summon in every JRPG and Final Fantasy just got sweaty. Step 5 summons a character as an assist or to replace the main character in a fight (so… Pokemon).

    What I find most interesting is that step 6 specifically says “automatic battle”. Which… to my Not A Lawyer brain, means this doesn’t even cover Pokemon since you specifically give your mons battle commands. Err, aside from S01E01 Pikachu who did not give a fuck. And then Charizard. And probably a dozen more pokemons after I stopped watching The Son Of Mr Mime’s Adventures. But, from what little I saw of it, it DOES cover Palworld where you just summon your pals to do work for you or fight for you. And it potentially covers Final Fantasy and Ichiban’s Like a Dragons (the Poundmates, not the Sujimon)…

    Which is probably the most interesting thing and why I think Pokemon Co is going to be ridiculously selective of who they try to sue. Because any of the big hitters can just say “Dumbfucks, we were doing this before Game Freak even existed”. Whereas indie devs are small enough they don’t want to risk it.


    It might be worth keeping an eye on MinnMax as Haley MacLean IS a lawyer who actually specializes in video game IP but I suspect this is too close to her day job for her to publicly speak about it even with the “not legal advice” disclaimers. Which hopefully guarantees she actually talked about it on one of the podcasts this week and I just haven’t looked yet.