Spyke

Replies

caps

Comment on

And now Tuch

My gut feeling is a lot less enthusiastic about this one, but I think it's worth reserving judgment until he's had time to gel with the team. Our pro scouting has really been on point since Carbery arrived, it's worth giving them the benefit of the doubt.

linux

Comment on

Why choice of Linux distribution matters

Reply in thread

I mostly agree with this. The reason I stick with arch has nothing to do with finding it technically superior or more convenient to use than other distros. There is almost no way I would be using arch if their wiki wasn't leaps and bounds more helpful than other distros' documentation. Some other distros can meet my needs just as well or better, but arch's documentation allows for a more straightforward learning process through tinkering.

I do think repository differences can potentially matter a lot. I have a lot of respect for hyperbola being ultra-hardline in removing proprietary packages and any hint of uncertainty in licensing, but the fact that that kills off texlive makes it untenable for me to use. Keeping manual installs up-to-date is a hassle, so I can definitely understand someone limiting themselves to distros supporting a certain set of packages.

cat

Comment on

Cat training

Our little lady had some trauma in her youth and was extremely resistant to being picked up and would absolutly not take direction to go into a crate. After a few years of her getting more comfortable I knew I could probably get her in again one time by tricking her, but I should save that for an emergency and nothing else. Eventually that was needed when we had to move. Of course, knowing I had to make the most of that I scheduled a vet appointment for that day.

It was somehow much worse than I had anticipated, starting as soon as I shut her in. She was so scared, throwing her full body with as much force as she could against the walls of the crate over and over and over, keeping that up while I was carrying her to the car and the first few minutes of the drive before she finally started to calm down. Watching that shook me, emotionally painful and just building anxiety about the appointment.

She actually was very submissive for the vet, who seemed to think I was crazy because at that point I was visibly a lot more terrified and upset than the cat.

Awful day in general, I have never seen an animal more depressed than she was after finishing that appointment and getting to the new place, it was horrific. She was normally extremely skittish about potentially being touched, but would invite pets sometimes. In that first day though, she was just do whatever you want I don't care. I had to pick her up body basically limp out of the crate, she had never let me pick her up. She didn't move from where I had placed her for hours, zero reaction to any action from me. She got back to her old self after a few weeks, but that day is still very painful to think back to I feel like I'm about to cry just from writing this.

piracy

Comment on

In case anyone hasn't seen the hilarious scare screen on one of the seized ZLibrary domains. lol

It's at least reassuring to know that the DoJ values the privacy of these horrible criminals enough to warrant blurring their faces. Hard to believe those assholes were spending the money on beautiful rainbows. A rainbow isn't a physical possession someone can just keep to themselves! The idea that some guy can just own this abstract thing is deeply offensive to me and I will not be giving any more of my hard-earned money to library genesis.

Comment on

Who are some people in powerful positions or 1%ers that are genuinely good people?

Reply in thread

The Gates foundation explicitly lobbied against Oxford's initial plan to open source their covid vaccine. Gates' worship of intellectual propery law is responsible for the patent on the astrazeneca vaccine. The project was initially started under the hope that the third world being able to manufacture their own vaccines without owing royalties would be important in limiting the spread of covid.

Comment on

As I'm sure most of you are aware, Reddit is now censoring Luigi's name entirely and have been giving out warnings and bans as they are considering it to be promoting violence.

I found an article here for anyone else looking for a source that's not just a clickbait image.

This kind of thing has been a long time coming, it's why I started looking into decentralized social media in the first place. It actually feels less dangerous today than it did before the plague of GPT bots that make everyone wary of whether they're reading something written by a human or not.

I left facebook for diaspora in the early 2010s because I felt like an algorithm could influence my opinions too easily. If I see a bunch of my friends voicing one opinion, but all of my friends who voice the opposite opinion don't make it onto my feed, that will influence my own opinions regardless of how mindful I try to be about that. I was kind of addicted and it took strength to delete my account.

I started looking for reddit alternatives a couple years later for similar reasons. I'm really glad lemmy has finally taken off but things had to get a lot worse for that to happen.

Comment on

Humans cannot recognize AI-written reviews - human reviews were often mistaken for AI-generated reviews, and even more frequently, AI-generated reviews were mistaken for human reviews

I don't read five star reviews ever anymore. If I want to find a believable endorsement of a product, I'll look for a four-star review that contains a criticism that isn't that bothersome to me personally, but legitimate enough that I can imagine a customer who would be deterred by it.

We moved a year ago, and I found my favorite pizza guy, Tony, by maybe the most convincing online review I've ever read. The most recent review on google maps was a one-star that was basically like "I met Tony and he casually used foul language etc etc there is no need for profanity etc pizza was some of the best I've ever had though"

Comment on

Nevar Forget

I don't understand why people make such a big deal out of these voters. Maybe I'm just consuming the wrong media, but it feels like third-party voters get 50x the blame nonvoters get for ruining elections with probably something like a thousandth of the population. I basically never see this discussion call out both third-party voters and nonvoters equally.

I keep seeing third-party voters maligned for thinking a candidate has hope to win a national election, I see so many arguments to address why third-party candidates can't win. In spite of that, I have never come across any community anywhere where people collectively believe these candidates actually have a chance. People who consume crazy media can believe crazy things, that's why MAGA is a thing, but there's a whole Fox News etc media machine feeding those people. Is there a forum somewhere with more than ten people where there's a consensus that a third-party candidate might actually win? None of the third party voters I have known or met irl believed this, and I would be shocked if they're all weird exceptions.

Like, please, where are these people congregating to spread the ludicrous idea that a third-party candidate can win a national election? Looking on the recent green party posts on their subreddits, the only thing I see even close is a thread with a headline about "candidates are electable if people vote for them", where the furthest they go in the comments is a few people talking about how big a deal it would be for the party if they got 5% nationally, and a couple other people replying to say the greens won't even get 1% this year but the election is still very important because of some nonsense about incremental gains.

It feels like we've imagined a brainwashing machine that does not exist in reality, rather than admit to the existence of protest votes. Condemning protest votes means condemning protest nonvotes equally, and we'll never have sufficient information about protest nonvoters to reasonably make a claim about how they would have voted. That would severely muddy any attempts to assign blame for election results.

If you're trying to convince these voters to act differently, the way to do that would be to address the arguments they're actually making, like the incremental gains nonsense. If you're addressing arguments they haven't been making at all, then it's worth asking whether you're trying to convince someone other than them.

Comment on

War Thunder players have done it again: Yet another restricted document is leaked to win a forum argument

My train of thought after seeing this:

  1. I wonder if at this point an adversary ever deliberately starts arguments for intel.

  2. Man, what if fake documents get leaked to throw off my imagined adversary.

  3. Imagine the internal reaction from the org putting out the fake leak when someone replies to call them out on their bullshit by posting the authentic documents.

lemmy

Comment on

Update from Lemmy after the Reddit blackout

It's upsetting to see the shit-talking because I imagine reading that nonsense is emotionally draining, especially when you're already stressed out with a billion things to do. I've seen you guys active in the lemmy community for years and you've always been wonderful. I'm sure I'm not the only one who appreciates the work you two have put in and are currently putting in. I'm really happy that your project is starting to catch on.