Skip Navigation

InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)Y

Yaky

@ Yaky @slrpnk.net

Posts
1
Comments
178
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • What's a sci-fi thing you feel is achievable with our current level of technology that you'd love to see become a thing?

    Jump

  • Those are called pivots, and what you are saying seems plausible: there are vision algorithms to recognize and selectively spray weeds (see Bilberry ), recent prototypes with light-pressure grabbers to gather fruits and soft vegetables.

    Even for harvesters, there are projects to automate harvesting and swapping the grain trucks (see Outrun ). GPS-guided (or assisted) tractors are already a thing.

    Agriculture has some interesting innovations, but it often gets bogged down in corporate acquisitions and monetization.

  • AI Killed My Job: Translators

    Jump

  • How good is LLM training data for a language spoken by less than 10 million people? Keep in mind that most of those people are probably multilingual (i.e. categorizing which language is which by person is harder), and language itself is similar to its neighbors. And then, again, terms.

  • AI Killed My Job: Translators

    Jump

  • I know someone who was a translator between two (less widely spoken) languages, and some specifics I recall from our conversations about work:

    • Sometimes the translations use many technical terms, and getting those wrong (trusting LLMs) is not an option. (This was for some patents IIRC)
    • Some terms simply do not exist in another language, and it could be up to the translator to invent a term to define and carry the information across. (This was for some government digital service, and the term was similar to "digital queue")
    • Tone and nuances are very difficult to translate. Phrasing can have implications and connotations. (Simplest example: "i am afraid" does not imply fear, it's an established politeness phrase) Neutral in one language could be viewed as hostile in another, too. (And with politicians being petty, could have consequences)

    None of those would be addressed with LLMs. Small training set for language (and language being similar to a few others) is an issue. Anything technical or non-existing would be prone to hallucinations. And tone is difficult enough to convey through text to begin with, let alone with LLM translation.

  • DM me on Spotify: Spotify launches a messaging feature.

    Jump

  • Imgur had the social media element since mid-2010s at least, maybe longer.

  • What are the most useful things you've printed?

    Jump

  • Most useful was probably this holder for two 1/2in PEX pipes. Printed in ABS, it holds cold and hot pipes in parallel, and uses a #8 screw for attachment. All commercially available holders are for a single pipe, and use nails. Hammering nails in tight spaces (and doing so twice) is not particularly convenient for me, thus, this contraption was born.

    Other than that, stuff that is so practical it is easily forgettable: wall mount for a garage door opener, Y splitter for an exhause fan, various covers and containers.

  • What are the most useful things you've printed?

    Jump

  • That's one of the few subreddits that still has interesting stuff. I don't care about benchies and shiny dragons.

  • If we can find information by asking GenAI, who needs the Web?

    Jump

  • If we can get food by going to the grocery store, who needs farms?

  • I'm never going back to Matrix - Terence Eden

    Jump

  • Seeing lots of dislike for Matrix lately. Hosted a Synapse server for many years, never had issues with encryption keys, but have to agree that Element the company (formerly Vector, but they now control the protocol too?) rolls out more new things than they fix old ones. E.g: Element X is slower and calls are not backwards compatible (!). Synapse server keeps getting some (corporate-looking) auth stuff added while on-boarding and registration for plain accounts on self-hosted servers is still a pain. To give them credit, Element app is consistent across platforms (for purposes of convincing people and troubleshooting), and bridges work pretty well.

    But it seems any self-hosted solution has its can of worms.

    XMPP, being old, implements all modern-expected functionality as extensions, and servers are not guaranteed to have them (common argument). Spam was an issue as well (but simplicity of the on-device and server database allows easy message and attachment deletions). iOS clients for XMPP are meh and require integration with Apple push servers (Snikket and Monal do that, but for how long?)

    Tried SimpleX years ago, loved the idea, but it was going through growing pains. In the same vein as metadata leaks for Matrix and XMPP, if you host your own SMP server with a few users, that exposes some info vs using default servers (along with thousands users)

  • Vibe coding service Replit deleted production database

    Jump

  • That is also the premise of one of the stories in Asimov's I, Robot. Human operator did not say the command with enough emphasis, so the robot went did something incredibly stupid.

    Those stories did not age well... Or now I guess they did?

  • Giving Up on Element & Matrix.org

    Jump

  • What specific version/feature fragmentation and clients are you referring to? As is common now, newer Synapse drops support for older Postgres (for example). Voice and video calls is the only feature that I can think of that is half-assed in Element/ElementX or not implemented in some clients.

    Otherwise, Element, Element X, FluffyChat, Fractal, freaking Cinny on Ubuntu Touch (!), and terminal-based gomuks all support basic functionality, DMs, rooms, encryption, and attachments.

  • Giving Up on Element & Matrix.org

    Jump

  • You can interact with Matrix server through basic curl commands... and I thought the documentation was pretty good. There are plenty of third-party clients.

    Sure, E2EE, keys and cross-signing is not trivial, but I don't know where it is.

  • Giving Up on Element & Matrix.org

    Jump

  • Snikket is the rebranded-dockerized XMPP environment (uses prosody for server, Conversations clone for Android, and Monal clone for iOS).

    Worked pretty well for me in the past.

  • Giving Up on Element & Matrix.org

    Jump

  • I've been hosting a server without much problems for several years now.

    Synapse and Riot.im (now Element) became much better around 2019 or 2020. But not too long ago, I also found out that Synapse also bloats the DB with state_groups_state table. There are a handful of commands that come with synapse, but no built-in admin tool or panel, so I wrote my own. Moving server to another host has been seamless for my (few) users. TURN/STUN for calls seems to work okay (I don't really use it though).

    I appreciate Element being uniform across platforms (which I cannot say about XMPP clients), but the sign-in is pretty tedious, and registration with a token is still impossible last time I checked (which is either a hassle for the user to use another client and then their smart device, or a security issue if you open registration to anyone). Most normal people probably don't care and don't want to deal with keys, cross-verification, and all that jazz.

  • Is it wrong that i would like to start a small 3d print business?

    Jump

  • The somewhat successful 3D-printing businesses I have read about (reddit, maybe here) are those with a rather specific niche. One that I recall was for reproducing vintage car parts (knobs, levers, decor), modeling, matching color, high resolution prints. Another one, I think, was producing hundreds of very specific part for another company (how they had the connection I do not recall)

  • What book(s) are you reading right now and recommend for others?

    Jump

  • Finishing the Imperial Radch sci-fi trilogy (Ancillary Justice/Sword/Mercy) by Ann Leckie. Despite the agender language feature (everyone is addressed as she) the books deal more with colonialism, imperialism, and personal identity, rather than gender. Writing style is very information-dense, lots of thoughts and actions happening simultaneously. Compared to other science fiction that I read, it gets much more into the cultural and interpersonal situations, especially the second book.

  • What book(s) are you reading right now and recommend for others?

    Jump

  • Revelation Space series (specifically the "future" part: Revelation Space, Chasm City, Redemption Ark, Absolution Gap) might not have the best writing, but the wild (and sometimes insane) ideas and scale of everything is great.

  • WhatsApp Deploys AI, for Those Incapable of Comprehending Straightforward Messages From Their Friends and Family

    Jump

  • My friend works for a startup that does exactly that - trains AIs on conversations and responses from a specific person (some business higher-ups) for purposes of "coaching" and "mentoring". I don't know how well it works.

  • What direction do you think tech in general will go in 5 years (ignoring AI)

    Jump

  • Another interesting exploration is in Light of Other Days by Stephen Baxter. New technology allows creating light-passing micro-wormholes at any location (and time!), erasing privacy nearly entirely. At first, tabloids run wild with "shocking" photos of famous people, but eventually the hype dies. There are people who outright do lewd things in public ("anyone can see me at any time anyway"), some go about their life as usual, and some join secret groups who meet in the dark and use touch language for the deaf-blind.

  • Signal – an ethical replacement for WhatsApp

    Jump

  • IMO the best on-boarding I have seen in a chat app. Just scan each other's QR codes or click a link. No account management because ID is unique to each conversation.

    Signal and WhatsApp need a phone number, Matrix/Element is needlessly messy, XMPP/Conversations is sensible IIRC (ID + password)