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Zak

@ Zak @lemmy.world

Posts
7
Comments
872
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • AI Slop Is Ruining Reddit for Everyone

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  • I don't especially want to be in the position of defending either spez or r/jailbait, but I was on Reddit at the time and I do think I should explain how 2008 was a different time on the web.

    There had been a number of attempts to censor and age-gate the internet in the late 1990s and early 2000s. People involved in creating internet tech and building its culture were almost universally against anything that even smelled like censorship. Much of the early userbase migrated from Digg in response to Digg censoring a leaked DRM key. The only sitewide rule on Reddit was "don't break Reddit".

    When r/jailbait finally did get banned in 2011 and Reddit's first content policy was imposed, that decision was unpopular among Redditors even though most thought sexualizing young teenagers was disgusting. It signaled a change to what Reddit was, and people rightly feared that it would lead to significantly more restrictions. Now I have to enforce a rule on r/flashlight that people can't sell flashlights designed to be attached to guns, and I don't want to make or enforce such a rule.

  • Enshittification aside, any new technologies you find yourself relying on/using regularly?

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  • It's fair to be concerned. I have known the author online for several years, and he has reputation to lose if he publishes malware. Of course, you have no reason to trust me either.

    It's a recent fork and rebrand of Unexpected Keyboard.

  • How do you personally use upvotes/downvotes?

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  • That's a good way to think about it because that's what it does. More people see posts and comments that have more points.

  • AI Slop Is Ruining Reddit for Everyone

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  • spez implicitly supported the jailbait subreddit when he left it up for several years

    spez did not work at reddit between 2009 and 2015.

  • Ok, honestly, is cast-iron really any better than a non-stick, stainless, copper (anything else?) pan?

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  • The reason cast iron is useful for searing a big cut of meat is that it has a reasonably high specific heat capacity (less than aluminum, more than copper, similar to steel) combined with considerably more mass than typical cookware made of other materials. It takes longer for the meat to cool the pan, so more heat transfers into the outer surface of the meat.

    Cleanup of properly seasoned cast iron should be about as easy as non-stick pans because the seasoning (polymerized cooking oil) is, in fact a non-stick surface. Contrary to popular belief, it's fine to use soap on it, but aggressive abrasives can strip the seasoning. Fortunately, that's not hard to fix.

  • Ok, honestly, is cast-iron really any better than a non-stick, stainless, copper (anything else?) pan?

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  • You can absolutely scrape the seasoning off a cast iron pan through aggressive use of metal utensils, but you can also re-season it by applying a little cooking oil and getting it hot for an hour or so.

  • Enshittification aside, any new technologies you find yourself relying on/using regularly?

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  • For something that's sure to be enshitified, I use Perplexity regularly, especially since Paypal gave me a free year of its Pro plan. I'm finding it considerably more effective than traditional web search when I'm looking for something specific, though to be clear, I'm looking for an existing web page rather than the output of the LLM. It's also pretty good at providing the exact command line incantation for some one-off task and producing short code samples for some API I'm probably never going to use again. Sometimes I pay Anthropic for the latter.

    Some other stuff:

    • Cleverkeys, an open source Android keyboard with open source swipe typing (no Google library dependency).
    • Rio terminal - GPU accelerated, written in Rust.
    • Lemmy - you may have heard of it.

    Not actually new, but more people should know:

    • KDE Connect - notification sync, shared clipboard, remote control, etc... between phones and PCs. Supports Android, iOS, Linux, Windows, Mac, and more.
    • Syncthing - sync the contents of a directory between multiple devices. Syncthing-fork to do it on Android.

  • Sam Altman’s Dirty DRAM Deal

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  • I normally dislike self censorship of profanity, but replacing fuck with fsck (filesystem check) is a Unix joke, and I can appreciate that.

  • India forces WhatsApp and Telegram into permanent SIM binding

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  • I'm sure I hit numbers like that on my DSL.

  • What prevent companies from employing only trainees, people with disabilities and desperate people to pay peanuts wages?

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  • I had someone tell me in almost the same breath that I had written the cleanest code he had ever seen, and that he could hire someone with a PhD from India for a fraction of my rate. I told him to do it if he thought that would get him better results. He didn't.

  • What prevent companies from employing only trainees, people with disabilities and desperate people to pay peanuts wages?

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  • When companies try to use the cheapest possible labor, it usually results in a decrease in productivity and quality, which causes them to lose business to competitors in a healthy, competitive market.

    If a company can find cheaper labor that performs just as well, they'll do so and outperform the competition. If they can find a way to distort a market so competitive pressure has less impact, then they'll do that absent a sufficient threat of punishment.

  • India forces WhatsApp and Telegram into permanent SIM binding

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  • Yes, that's adequate for someone who knows how their phone works and doesn't stream video while out and about.

  • India forces WhatsApp and Telegram into permanent SIM binding

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  • Signal seems unlikely to comply. It will be interesting to see how they respond. A way to register without a phone number would be ideal.

  • India forces WhatsApp and Telegram into permanent SIM binding

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  • It looks like that plan allows 35gb of data use in a month before it throttles, I don't think I've ever used that much mobile data.

  • LG 32G810SA-W.AEU for 400€ for photo editing and productivity, or something else?

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  • The deal ended yesterday without warning, which made the decision for me. If only someone would put a Dell U3223QE on sale for half price....

  • Netflix kills casting from phones

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  • The fact that casting to older devices is allowed on the expensive plan but not the ad-supported one offers a clue.

  • Do you think standard batteries like A, AA, AAA, C, and D, 9V etc will eventually become obsolete?

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  • It's a good charger if you're not in a hurry - fast is just a user experience benefit.

  • Debate sparks after OU student's essay citing Bible gets failing grade

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  • Oh, sure, her views are very concerning and totally unsuitable for a therapist. Invoking Satan and calling trans acceptance demonic should get some serious attention from the university outside of her grade for this particular assignment.

    Sadly, I fear that's not likely in the current political climate, at least not in a red state.

  • a16z-Backed Startup Sells Thousands of ‘Synthetic Influencers’ to Manipulate Social Media as a Service

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  • Debate sparks after OU student's essay citing Bible gets failing grade

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  • I read the assignment, the paper, and the instructor comments. The instructor is correct to give this a failing grade, however a zero was probably too harsh.

    The criteria were:

    1. Is there a clear link back to the assigned article? Can the reader assess whether the student has read the assigned article? (10 points)
    2. Does the paper provide a reaction/reflection/discussion of some aspect of the article, rather than a summary? (5 points)
    3. Are the main ideas and thoughts organized into a coherent discussion? Is the writing clear enough to follow without multiple re-readings? (5 points)

    These are not particularly tough criteria. It's an easy assignment aimed at ensuring students read a particular article and think about its contents. Here's how I think I'd grade it:

    1. I skimmed the article myself. In 2020, I would have been pretty confident the student read it. In 2025, I can't be sure an LLM didn't summarize it for the student. I would expect more discussion of specific details from the article rather than a general overview of themes, especially now. 5/10.
    2. The student definitely has plenty of her own reactions to the article in her paper, but all of them are based on religion rather than psychology. If she wrote that there's substantial reason to believe certain gendered behaviors are based on biology and instinct, and that going against those instincts causes stress, that's fine. In a more rigorous paper, she'd need to cite sources for that, but not here. She could even use the presence of gender norms in religious texts to argue that multiple cultures have discovered something similar to what she believes. She didn't though. She talked about her religious beliefs regarding gender. 4/10.
    3. It's easy enough to follow her writing. 4/5.

    13/25 (52%) is not usually a passing grade.