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I remember hearing about stuff like this after windows 10 first came out. Is that sort of thing still an issue? That (and some of the privacy stuff) is pretty much all that is keeping me from updating at this point.
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Feb 16, 2016 03:12
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Mister Facetious posted:It's actually very fitting for this thread. I recently had Windows 10 refuse to update properly anymore and I had to nuke the SSD. Worst loving OS I've ever had the displeasure of using (but only because I didn't have a PC for Windows 8). About a month ago I got fed up with my Windows laptop, backed everything up, nuked Windows, and threw Linux on it. It took a week or two of occasional tinkering to get it set up the way I like it, but now that I've done so, it's so nice to feel like I actually own my own computer again. I don't have to worry about what BS the next Windows update will contain, and my computer will let me do pretty much whatever I want (no matter how stupid it is). It's wonderful.
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Aug 29, 2021 04:27
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Stexils posted:side note: is anyone able to spell "bureaucracy" without looking it up? i have to spellcheck every time I mentally split it into "bureau" + the "-cracy" suffix, and that works for me. I guess taking French in grade school helped since that makes it way easier to spell "bureau".
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Sep 16, 2021 01:11
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Antigravitas posted:I'm the kind of crazy person that tests this, and in every microwave oven I've tested heating is uneven. This is super interesting — how did you test this?
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Nov 17, 2021 00:40
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Man, what was it like to live in an America where people wanted small cars with good mileage? When I had to buy a car a couple years back, most of the hatchbacks had been replaced with crossover SUVs because that was "what Americans wanted".
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Jan 2, 2022 20:45
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quarantinethepast posted:What if the next 30 years are just a replay of today, complete stagnation. Hey now, there's been a ton of progress lately on Linux! With proton, gaming is getting reasonable, and with pipewire, the sound almost works.
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Jun 8, 2022 07:55
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Honestly, I think that Blake Lemoine's core point isn't bad: we don't have a way to assess machine sentience, and machine intelligence might be very different from human intelligence (and thus hard to recognize). I don't think that we are harming a sentient being in this case, but after reading the transcript, I can understand why Lemoine might come to that conclusion. Probably big AI companies should start thinking about these things more seriously, and have policies in place well before we reach general artificial intelligence.
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Jun 15, 2022 21:18
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I'm a little confused as to why MetaPixel was on the hospital page in the first place. Was the hospital trying to have Facebook integration on their website? Or was it pulled in as part of some dependency? Or something else?
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Jun 16, 2022 17:00
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Why not just build an electric blimp? It's not like cruises have to go anywhere fast, and a blimp flies low enough that you can have huge windows. Plus, power consumption is way lower, so you don't have to make it nuclear.
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Jun 27, 2022 18:28
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Cool Dad posted:I actually think we need full institutionalization for pedophiles because I don't even know what else you do with them. It's really pretty tragic that people can be broken in that way and there's seemingly no way to fix them. My understanding is that current forms of therapy can't change the attraction (the pedophilia), but it can help prevent that from turning into child sexual abuse. So, probably in a just world, people who sexually abuse children (or anyone) would be treated like anyone else who committed a crime: they would have to perform some form of restitution for the victim (admittedly I don't have a great idea what that looks like in this case), they would have some restrictions placed on them to lower their chance of re-offending (e.g., they can't be teachers, priests, scout troop leaders, etc), and they would get a lot of societal support to help them with their issues. My understanding is that the perpetrators usually personally know and are trusted by the victims, and given the intensely personal nature of the crime, restorative justice (especially getting the perpetrator to recognize the harm done) would help the victim heal. That all said, as a society the US really struggles to recognize the humanity in people who commit much less disturbing and serious crimes, so treating people who sexually abuse children as people is probably a long, long way off. Maybe they could do it in Scandinavia, but I'm not holding my breath for anything close to the above in the US.
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Aug 24, 2022 06:01
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Jaxyon posted:Railr I hardly even know 'er!
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Sep 15, 2022 05:24
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There Bias Two posted:This fight is already over. It was lost years ago. Depriving your kids of access to technology and the accompanying skills required to survive in today's society isn't going to fix that, it's just going to hurt them. At this point any change would have to be top down, not bottom up. Would an example of a top-down change be the government of Denmark deciding that schools can't force their kids to use google products?
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Sep 28, 2022 18:15
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withak posted:Reminder: When you use a "free" service you are not the customer, you are the product. Note that this doesn't really apply to FOSS stuff, or stuff backed by non-profits. You're not a product when you use Wikipedia or Blender, for example. I'm not trying to be pedantic; I just think it's worth pointing out that there are alternatives to "pay or be the product".
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Oct 31, 2022 00:48
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evilweasel posted:and i mean, i say this as someone who hasn't owned a car in my life or regularly driven one since i lived with my parents. i fuckin love public transportation. new york having subways everywhere is loving amazing, but if you didn't build them all 70 years ago it's hard as hell to build more. and buses are, just, not good. it would be nice if they were, but they're not. there is a reason that buses have a reputation as "for poor people" and it's not rich people snobbery at the concept (just look around a new york city subway stop in lower manhattan to see what rich people will put up with), its because buses are the solution to areas that aren't dense enough to have a very good network of public transportation that takes you wherever you need to go. if it's dense enough that a bus could take you anywhere, the traffic is terrible. i've taken buses plenty of times in my life. they're never superior to a taxi. the subway? hell yes, that beats a taxi. This sounds like it might be more of a New York-specific problem. I used to commute from Berkeley to San Francisco by bus, and it was great. It was so, so much more pleasant than BART (which, to be fair, is a uniquely terrible subway). The buses themselves were clean and comfortable. The presence of dedicated bus lanes meant that it was significantly faster than driving, plus I didn't have to worry about parking. My only complaints were that the buses didn't run often enough (only every 20 minutes during peak hours) or late enough into the evening (IIRC they ended at 7 pm), meaning I occasionally had to fall back to alternative transit. But it made me realize that buses can actually be pretty great if a city is willing to invest in them and give them dedicated lanes.
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Nov 15, 2022 20:01
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Nothingtoseehere posted:Like, it's interesting in that Twitter probably could have been run on a skeleton crew of like 25% of it's former workforce and still functioned as it currently does, and that matches the direction of the rest of Big Tech atm. It's not yet clear that Twitter can run on its skeleton crew. We don't know if it can still respond to major traffic spikes (like this weekend's World Cup), or if it can recover from bad software roll-outs, or if it can still resist nation states trying to hack it, or if it can survive the fines from being unable to comply with regulations. And even if they can do all of that, it's unclear whether they can still release any new features or continue to monetize successfully enough to pay off their investors. I think there are a lot of tech MBAs out there right now thinking that they can cut work forces by 75%, but I think there's a good chance Twitter goes down as a cautionary tale for exactly why you don't do that.
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Nov 18, 2022 20:04
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Morrow posted:Tires are still technology, I'm waiting for a tech genius to try to reinvent them with smart tires that are ten times more expensive and are occasionally burst into flames. Tires produce a shitton of pollution, so I'd be very cool with someone reinventing them! (Or, you know, trains)
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Dec 8, 2022 07:39
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Dietrich posted:And frankly we should just let people disable content warnings on their feed and have content auto-uncovered so the whiney people on both sides can shut up. I'd be the first to disable it because I hate having to constantly click to see art because "Content warning: EYE CONTACT" I had never seen the eye contact thing before Mastodon. Are there cultures where eye contact is considered distressing enough to put behind a content warning? (Not trying to be dismissive of those cultures if so.)
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Dec 20, 2022 20:41
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"Actually people still murder even though murder is illegal" is a really bad argument against regulations. For starters, the murder rate would definitely go up if we legalized murder, so banning murder is an effective way to reduce the amount of murder. But also, we absolutely could reduce the murder rate with better regulation. Heavily regulating / banning guns would be a great first step. Guns are considerably more deadly than other weapons that people use to murder each other, and make impulsive acts much deadlier. A better social safety net and better community design would make people feel less stressed and desperate, which would mean that less people would be at the point where they are ready to murder. These aren't impossible fantasies; other counties have successfully done these things. They'll take decades of work in the US, but they are absolutely doable.
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Jan 5, 2023 18:50
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ponzicar posted:Tech Nightmares: 5. Unlock Adolf Hitler for 500 coins. This thread title will never be surpassed
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Jan 20, 2023 19:44
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I also think the tech layoffs are partly because the MBA class thinks that tech workers are treated too well. The layoffs are at least partially meant to put the tech workers in their place. The only thing better than running the most profitable companies in the world is if you can conspire to avoid sharing that wealth with the workers who generate it.
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Feb 10, 2023 21:27
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FlapYoJacks posted:Imagine caring about your career, putting in countless hours, working harder than everyone else on your team, producing higher quality code than anyone on your team, and always volunteering to help. Then getting randomly axed while the slackers get to stay. Giving an object lesson in this to your entire workforce, which was previously unusually loyal to you, is certainly a business strategy
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Feb 10, 2023 22:19
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OddObserver posted:I suspect you have to believe that to get an MBA. That's the other wild part about all of this. The Google tech stack is infamously complicated and unique, so it takes them a long time to gey new hires up to speed. Despite that, Google just got rid of probably a couple dozen person-millenia of expertise for no discernable reason.
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Feb 10, 2023 22:59
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Even if you buy that layoffs were necessary (I don't), there were better ways of handling them. They could have just said "We need to do layoffs. Here's the severance package we are offering. If you want to take it, go ahead, and you'll be saving a coworker". That would:
Yeah, you can't then use layoffs as an excuse to get rid of your low performers, but as discussed above, it seems like Google didn't do that anyways.
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Feb 11, 2023 03:03
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Apparently Google can't even afford to give its in-office workers a desk anymore. Instead, they are telling people (including people who currently come in every day) to come in two days / week and share their desk with someone else for the other two days. I can only imagine how well this will work out for people who need ergonomic keyboards or other accommodations.
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Feb 27, 2023 18:49
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I was listening to a podcast episode recently about the Japanese economic crash of the 90s. The outline was roughly:
With so many companies moving to hot desking with the explicit intention of selling off their real estate, I am wondering if we are on step 8 of our own version of the above. Especially with the drive to bring workers back into the office, why else would companies be suddenly reducing their office space?
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Mar 1, 2023 20:54
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evilweasel posted:people don't really get why stocks are categorically different than Digital Beanie Babies. I'd actually like a little more info on this, as a non-finance guy. If a company is unlikely to ever issue dividends and the stocks in question are non-voting shares, how are those stocks different than Digital Beanie Babies?
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Mar 5, 2023 21:22
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Motronic posted:Because it's partial ownership of the company. Surely you see the difference between that and ownership of an unregulated token that has no intrinsic value or even wide adoption/acceptance. If it's a non-voting share, how is it meaningfully partial ownership of the company? This is an honest question, I'm not trying to be obtuse.
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Mar 5, 2023 21:49
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Motronic posted:Because it's an ownership share of both current and future assets and profits. Why do you feel that voting rights are what makes this meaningful? Voting rights for a regular retail shareholder are 100% inconsequential. Because I figured voting was how you exercise that ownership. What the value in owning a part of those assets and profits, if you can't directly partake in the profits (via dividends) or exercise control of them (via voting)? Put another way, what does that ownership even mean?
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Mar 5, 2023 22:07
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evilweasel posted:I'll type up an answer back at a computer but is there a specific stock you are thinking of? I can use it as an example if so. Sure, how about GOOG (to bring this back to somewhat relevance to this thread). Motronic posted:It means you can sell it to someone else who wishes to own it when you decide that you no longer do. And hopefully the company has made profits, grown, reinvested, etc between when you bought it and when you want to sell it so the people interested in purchasing your ownership are willing to pay more for it than you did when you bought it. This feels identical to a Beanie Baby, if there is nothing beyond "other people will pay for it" to give it value. And actually, a Beanie Baby has a secondary use as a toy. That said, I think SaTaMaS answered my question below. SaTaMaS posted:Stocks represent a legal claim on the assets and earnings of the company. If the company were to be sold or liquidated, the shareholders would still be entitled to a share of the proceeds based on their ownership stake in the company. This actually makes sense. For example, the possibility of a twitter stock owner getting $54.20 per share last year when Musk bought it made Twitter stock valuable. I hadn't really thought about that aspect, thanks.
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Mar 5, 2023 22:28
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Thank you, this helps clear things up a lot. This sort of effort post is a lot of work, and I really appreciate it.
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Mar 5, 2023 23:48
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One of my friends works in a scientific field, and has reached out to me several times with variations on "I had ChatGPT write this code and I can't figure out why it doesn't work, can you help me debug?". I suspect that if the MBAs have their way, this will become my full-time job. (For what it's worth, I responded by helping him understand the general concepts and then told him not to use ChatGPT to code in the future because if you don't understand the code that it generates, you have no assurance of its correctness.)
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Mar 6, 2023 21:04
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Epic High Five posted:Isn't the general best practice with layoffs to go big, be generous, but only go once? You'd think this was some kind of rare mystical knowledge for how many companies seem to be ignoring it. The best practice with layoffs is "don't do them except in extreme circumstances". They almost never actually save money, they don't help your stock price much (since it looks like you are struggling), they obliterate morale, and you lose a ton of expertise with your systems that is extremely hard to replace. If your workforce is too big, you can slow hiring and let attrition do its work.
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Mar 14, 2023 16:50
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Epic High Five posted:Yeah, no argument here, but "just don't do them" at a time when profits are still soaring for a lot of these companies doesn't seem to be an option for whatever reason The reason I was pushing back here is that I think it's important to keep in mind just how nihilistic this all is. The execs almost certainly know just as well as us that layoffs just make things worse. But one company does them, and then suddenly it's the new trend that every company board is chasing, even if they all know it won't help anything.
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Mar 14, 2023 18:10
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Jethro posted:profile picture One of the tell-tale signs that something was written by an AI is that it reads like a middle schooler's five-paragraph essay
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Mar 23, 2023 21:12
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Your eyes are super important, are pretty prone to issues, and can subtly manifest issues without you noticing; just go get them checked every now and then. My wife is an optometrist and has constant stories about someone coming in from a less-regulated country, and they are mad that they need a prescription for glasses in the US, and then surprise surprise they were wearing the totally wrong prescription, or their current prescription didn't take into account their significant astigmatism, or they had some major undiagnosed vision issue, or [a million other things]. You'd be shocked at how many people go through life barely being able to see, when their vision is very correctable (or would have been if they had been diagnosed sooner). Edit: like all healthcare advice in the US, "just go get your eyes checked" is subject to "assuming you have the time / money to do so". Not trying to blame people for not getting their eyes checked more here; I just want to emphasize that if you can, you should. Don't neglect your eyes!
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Jun 8, 2023 18:20
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Absurd Alhazred posted:I get my eyes checked pretty regularly but I was also doing that back when I was in a I shouldn't have used the phrase "less-regulated country", that was inaccurate and condescending. Sorry about that. If you were getting your eyes checked regularly in your prior country, though, I don't think my post really applied to you. I was trying to encourage people to get regular eye exams, as my wife's experience is that a lot of people think they don't need an eye exam because they "already know their prescription" or whatever, when getting an eye exam would significantly improve things for them.
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Jun 8, 2023 19:23
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less regulated country
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Lol why? I can think of no problem where I would say "hmmm let's ask the YouTube comment section for insight"
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Jun 15, 2023 02:23
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Boris Galerkin posted:My goon read the screenshot embedded in the tweet at least. It’s literally right there. Lol gently caress. My excuse is that I'm recovering from surgery at the moment so my reading comprehension is not at its best
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Jun 15, 2023 02:37
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pumpinglemma posted:TBF if you’re a serious competitor for a FAANG job then you’re in a good enough place career-wise that you can probably walk into a smaller company not run by morons that will “only” pay 2x or 3x what you would have got from FAANG with remote working, while still allowing remote working. I hear this all the time, but I've never actually seen it. Are these smaller companies all hype scams and/or finance companies? Or is there some actually-useful sector that pays more than FAANG for programming talent?
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Jun 25, 2023 18:53
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Professor Beetus posted:I'd get a new GPU and finally pick up a PS5. I would probably also splurge and get a second fancy cocktail at happy hour. I went from being a grad student researcher to getting a tech job, and my income septupled overnight. This is literally exactly how I reacted (minus the GPU). I would also like to point out how dumb it is that my income shifted like that; the work I was doing as a grad student was objectively more useful to humanity than what I was doing at my tech job. My theory is that people are paid inversely to their contribution to society, which is why artists and teachers are paid peanuts and MBAs get infinite money.
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Jun 27, 2023 16:54
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