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rottingleaf

@ rottingleaf @lemmy.world

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0
Comments
2012
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • Software is evolving backwards

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  • Evolving backwards would be returning to ergonomic UIs with clear HIG being followed, having a scriptable variant for every class of applications, and any piece of software, OS UI included, not acting as an advert. Contrasts and colors and bright pictures are not what I need to see while working. It's as if your screwdriver was built in the form of an alien fish dildo, and had a chain of ringing bells. Why is this bullshit considered normal and usual with computer interfaces, I dunno.

    And a company's website is its interface to the world, for the user. Not its advert. They've already seen the advert or don't need it if they are on that website! They want to actually use it.

  • Software is evolving backwards

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  • I will, if I have no other option. Say, finding a working VPN service in Russia ... sucks (mostly banned). I think I'll end up with a VDS and an https tunnel.

  • Elon Musk wants to rewrite "the entire corpus of human knowledge" with Grok

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  • So where will Musk find that missing information and how will he detect "errors"?

  • Linus Torvalds and Bill Gates Meet for the First Time Ever

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  • There's Dave Cutler in the article. They both heard boss music and it wasn't theirs.

    See, Dave Cutler's level of "boss" for Unix would be Kirk McCusick or Bill Joy.

  • Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds meet for the first time.

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  • Yes, this is bullshit.

    While some sort of a redesign of part of Linux's internals I could imagine.

    In terms of kernel ABI stability Linux is often criticized even in comparison to BSDs.

    And in general its insides are more messy and "naturally grown", or so I've heard (OpenBSD is the only OS whose internals I've made myself familiar with sufficiently ; also put some effort for FreeBSD).

    So my, eh, alternative opinion would be that something is brewing for Linux like what Digital Unix was for BSD Unix. A hybrid cleaned up kernel, maybe support for different ABIs (like what exists in FreeBSD for Linux and older versions of itself, except maybe more ambitious). Maybe even tackling a more open alternative to NT (itself alternative to VMS and David Cutler being the man who did that) while they're at it. NT is not a bad thing. Even Windows is not a bad thing. Maybe Wine isn't enough, or maybe it would be cool to have something possible to make compatible with many Windows device drivers.

    At least I hope it's Linux learning to do EEE and not the other way around.

    Though with Bill Gates and Dave Cutler this really seems like a meeting of legends and nothing more. They're cool people, but I don't think they want to play global thermonuclear computing war at that age, unlike just global thermonuclear war IRL, this one is more attractive for younger people. Even if it's about some project being born, I'd expect that to be "just for fun" for everyone involved, they deserve that after all.

  • A building material that lives and stores carbon

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  • Is it more or less efficient than a grass roof?

  • AI applications are producing cleaner cities, smarter homes and more efficient transit

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  • Ye-es, and if you call your automation "industrial planning\programming\optimization" the way I've seen it first in a student book, you won't be understood at all, despite that literally describing what you are doing.

    Probably making every piece of progress part of popular culture wasn't a good idea.

    But that started in the middle of XX century, with various new materials based on oil products being regularly invented.

    Events analogous to a "new material" with computers are a bit rare and very removed from the customer. Yet the popular culture demands some show of progress. They don't see a lot of real progress in UI\UX\web - monopolies and stuff. So - new applications become subjects of such hype.

    I remember the P2P hype, that was kinda real. Torrents felt like magic.

    I remember the "metaverse" hype, that's rather old, I didn't find any satisfaction for that, but probably a group of friends and a Second Life instance could be nice. Minecraft suffices for people today, it's easier and cool enough.

    I also remember "dynamic web" hype in my childhood, webpages were static, you'd press F5 to check new posts on a roleplaying forum. But there were nice-looking, dynamic, cool, and very inconvenient Flash applications here and there. You wanted to have both the cleanness and interop of the Web and the power and wow-factor of such applications. I wanted that too. Now I understand how dumb I was.

    The cryptocurrencies hype - it was a legitimate subject of discussions for intelligent people, how do you use cryptography to create a value exchange resilient to oppression, because without exchanging real value freedom is not achievable. That was, unfortunately, in the narrow understanding of the rules where the government can demand something from you, but can't force you or torture you or steal from you. Thus BTC is not anonymous, intentionally.

    There was simultaneously the big data hype, it was discussed as if it's not Google's and FB's pathway to power, but the opposite - finding systemic traits in human societies, probably using that analysis to build a better web, yadda-yadda.

    Then that mutated to the AI hype. But that also wasn't about yelling "we found AI, give us money", that was about neural nets yielding funny texts and discussions as to whether good enough imitation is real intelligence.

    Almost like fashion.

  • In Militarizing Push, Russian School Children To Build Drones

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  • Teaching kids war is good in any case. Teaching kids that war is good is bad.

  • In Militarizing Push, Russian School Children To Build Drones

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  • Unfortunately that's useless, the people needing to be hit are all kinda distributed over all of Russia, and the punishment is severe.

    But teaching children to build tools for modern war is an absolute positive. Possessing an AK is no good for a revolution today anyway, while with small drones you can do a lot.

  • Russian cannibal soldier ate his own comrade, leaked audio from Ukraine's HUR claims

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  • We-ell, I've seen it in a Russian TG chat. IIRC the conversation implies two soldiers deserted, were in a house in the middle of nowhere, one killed another, ate him for a couple of weeks, then died. Then their, eh, brothers in arms found that place.

  • Operation Narnia: Iran’s nuclear scientists reportedly killed simultaneously using special weapon

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  • Equating Israel to USA in its right to exist is not swallowing its cock.

    They are right. Except one problem still can be solved, the other not so much. Maybe a few centuries after now somebody will think of something. Slow demographic changes and more modern weapons, that stuff.

  • Operation Narnia: Iran’s nuclear scientists reportedly killed simultaneously using special weapon

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  • But that is their dream for the future. Purely automatically managing the populace as some sort of a farm.

    It's an arms race. Like at any other point in history. Between those who think personal dignity and freedom and equality are a mistake of history or a device to keep the herd patient, and that they deserve to rule, and those who don't.

    The good part is that this has already been tried. A fast system with deadlocks is not that different from a slow system with deadlocks. And a big redundant system deterministically degrading in itself is not that different from a smaller less redundant system deterministically degrading in itself. No USSR and no Nazi Germany anymore on the map.

    The parts about lying and false pretense of law and democracy are new, but not too much - rulers of Frederic the Great's time had false pretenses of knightly behavior and following imperial mechanisms. One can even compare 30 years war to our two world wars in the sense of creating a new world order, which was considered impossible to change due to endless horrors following that, but eventually become a farce.

  • Millions of Americans Who Have Waited Decades for Fast Internet Connections Will Keep Waiting After the Trump Administration Threw a $42 Billion High-Speed Internet Program Into Disarray.

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  • That is apparently going to have competition soon.

    But ... yeah. Operating via satellites is profitable for sparsely populated areas, operating via wire - for densely populated ones. In addition to that Earth's orbit is not under anyone's sovereignty.

    Both have their uses, but, I think, in locations in a developed country with old infrastructure because it's not profitable, - this means there won't be any.

    The sad part is that if, say, I want to have unabused Internet connectivity from Russia, a Starlink terminal is not my solution, cause Elon still wants to be friends with those obnoxious people. And also if it were a solution, a terminal could be triangulated and my ass would meet a soldering iron. Maybe not, but some fines.

  • How Much Energy Does AI Use? The People Who Know Aren’t Saying

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  • It's not free, but it's the good part nonetheless - nuclear energy and thus increase in people trained to operate and build nuclear reactors.

    Nuclear energy is, planning-wise, very high quality, you have a lot of control in scaling the output.

    That allows, together with lots of accumulators of various kinds (pumping water up and such), to actually make renewables with uncontrollable output useful.

    Making the average cost of energy better than just that of nuclear.

    So, when Microsoft dies, those reactors and people will be of value.

  • How Much Energy Does AI Use? The People Who Know Aren’t Saying

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  • AI slop poisoning is value too. The more everything is poisoned by it, the less useful things trained on new data are. The poison spreads in many ways, it's not something that can be removed.

    It's important for prevention of totalitarianism driven by such technologies in the future.

    So I honestly hope it kills the bullshit web and we'll be back to small communities based on personal ties, where the person making the rules is the webmaster you know, not an anonymous moderator or a bot. That's killing two birds with one stone, no downsides whatsoever.

  • Russia prepares to get rid of WhatsApp and possibly Telegram: Parliament passed a law pertaining to a national messaging app

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  • It's basically a frontend to VK with functionality like that of Telegram.

    Funny how much you can do if you do it slowly. Say, if 10 years ago someone would say all of Russia is moving to the only state-approved IM which is the same as VK, I think there'd be riots, LOL, even in Russia, LOL, it'd be like blocking all porn.

    Since TG is most likely compromised, I think this won't be a significant change really.

    Not being able to use WA for voice calls would suck though.

  • Websites Are Tracking You Via Browser Fingerprinting

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  • Things which were obvious for any paranoid I2P user 15 years ago, and were being discussed in Freenet 20 years ago, and by cypherpunks 30 years ago, are again new and unexpected.

    See, you can murder people in the open if you can make it comfortable enough for everyone to ignore it.

    Surveillance and censorship should be scarier, because without them you can cry out about the murderer or avoid strategic disadvantage against the murderer, but are not - most people haven't been in real danger they understood. And even if they were - suppose that's already happening, people are being murdered in the open, censorship and surveillance happen, and the latter causes more outrage, - we all can see nobody cares enough to pay with a few bruises for opposing it, not just their living, health, life.

    Here we are.

  • Honda successfully launched and landed its own reusable rocket

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  • "... it'll be the same, but it's a huge honor to work on this project in our company."

  • UK police working with controversial tech giant Palantir on real-time surveillance network

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  • We have batteries. But yeah, attacking the grid might be smart.