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tal

@ tal @lemmy.today

Posts
42
Comments
3422
Joined
3 yr. ago

Off-and-on trying out an account over at @tal@oleo.cafe due to scraping bots bogging down lemmy.today to the point of near-unusability.

  • Louis Rossmann taunts Bambu Lab by hosting banned 3D Printer firmware fork, dares $1 billion company to sue him — more creators pledge support and boycotts, Snapmaker donates equipment to embattled de

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  • I don't really see the point. I mean, why bother to try to do something that just makes the company's printers more desirable? Even if you "win", the company is going to be a pain in the ass. Do you really want to waste time and financial resources on improving the company's product?

    Just don't buy Bambu Lab printers. Don't recommend them. And don't support them with software.

    If this was a world in which there was one 3D printer manufacturer, it'd be different, but it's not. They have competition.

  • What idiom did you initially misunderstand, but you prefer your interpretation?

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  • Not quite what you're asking for, but when I first heard the phrase "balls to the wall", I thought that it alluded to testicles. One of the Grand Theft Auto games has some radio audio that uses it satirically in this sense as well ("Lazlow, get your balls to the wall" or something similar).

    https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/balls_to_the_wall

    First attested in the 1960s in the context of aviation, in reference to ball-shaped grips on an aircraft's engine controls (typically throttle, prop pitch and fuel mixture). Pushing these "balls to the wall" would put the aircraft at maximum thrust.[1][2] Analogous to pedal to the metal. Not related to the term balls-out, which refers to a ball governor on a steam engine.[3] Neither balls-out nor balls to the wall is connected with the vulgar sense of balls (“testicles”) except via folk etymology.

    EDIT: The GTA audio in question (the song itself used the phrase satirically, and the announcer does as well):

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVWwG6RJrLA

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balls_to_the_Wall_(album)

    Balls to the Wall is the fifth studio album by German heavy metal band Accept, released in 1983. It is Accept's only record to attain Gold certification in the US.[1] The album's title track became Accept's signature song and remains a metal anthem and trademark in the genre.

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    Lithium deposit valued at over $1.5 trillion discovered in the U.S.

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  • but it literally is just Thacker Pass.

    This isn't Thacker Pass.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thacker_Pass_lithium_mine

    The Thacker Pass lithium mine is a lithium clay mining development project in Humboldt County, Nevada

    The location being discussed:

    McDermitt Caldera in Oregon

    It looks like there was some discussion that there might be lithium there a bit back, like in 2023, but this is not decade-old news.

  • Are there actually good clients for mailing lists? [Answered: No]

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  • For example a lemmy-like, threaded interface with interactivity?

    I don't mean to be rude, but surely you've used an email client that supports threading before?

    I think I used elm at one point. (checks) Yeah, it doesn't support threading. But everything after that that I've used for any length of time has.

  • Be honest: Do you still use mainstream social media?

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  • I still read a few things on Reddit occasionally, and I'll search for answers using site:reddit.com. I just don't log in or post.

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    Most Americans say AI development is moving too fast and twice as many are AI pessimists as AI optimists

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  • And...let me make it even more concrete. I'd say that there are basically two scenarios:

    1. We establish that AI --- for some definition of AI --- is simply too dangerous for humanity to have. In that case, the right path is to ban AI globally. That means that nobody gets it. Some coalition of countries is going to have to be willing to attack anyone who tries developing it. In that case, what we have is effectively an arms control restriction baked into customary international law. It is not optional to participate. And, for all the future of humanity, we need to be willing to enforce that. It means that we need a viable verification protocol to ensure that nobody is developing it, as is normally the case for arms treaties. And everyone has to submit to that verification protocol.
    2. We don't. In that case, we want to develop AI sooner rather than later.

    I am certainly not willing to say that #2 is the "right" scenario and #1 is the "wrong" one. But if we decide on #1, that comes with a lot of things that we need to be doing as a species. It's not just going to be the pre-computer-era status quo persisting, where our limited state of technology was what maintained the situation.

    EDIT: I'd also add that, just as that I'm not sure that Friendly AI is a solvable problem, I'm also not sure that it's really viable to have a verification protocol where we can prevent development of AI. Past arms control treaties where I think that verification was likely much easier --- it's hard to hide development of major warships under the Washington Naval Treaty, for example, yet there were still parties evading restrictions --- were not always successful. #1 comes with its own set of hard problems too. Are parallel compute processors legal? What about their development and production? Under what restrictions are they used? Is it possible to achieve advanced AI using CPUs (my guess is that it likely is)? If so, what new restrictions will need to be placed on use and access to CPUs? How will we identify entities building production facilities to build CPUs and GPUs? Will we need to track all existing CPUs and GPUs, to try to identify entities who might be stockpiling them? How will we monitor what the great stores of those out there now are being used for?

    If we go with #1, that also entails a different world from the one that we live in today.

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    Most Americans say AI development is moving too fast and twice as many are AI pessimists as AI optimists

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  • I've got some pessimistic views as to long-term AI concerns --- I'm not sure that aligning advanced AI goals with human goals in the long run is a viable problem to solve. We may not be able to achieve Friendly AI. I could believe that.

    But I certainly don't think that AI development is "moving too fast". Not really anything to gain in slowing down development. I remember Elon Musk proposing a six-month moratorium on development --- that doesn't make any sense, only would be something that you'd want to do if you had an immediate milestone that you believed that there was major risk attached to. In general, either AI is something that you should ban globally because it's too much of an existential risk for humanity, and halt all development and enforce that halt, or you'd like to achieve it as soon as possible. We are not at a point where there is a consensus that that level of unacceptable risk exists and there is a global commitment to enforcing such a global prohibition.

    I can believe that there might be an excess of infrastructure development in particular, that we might not have the research side moving as quickly as need be to support that. Like, we might be doing misallocation in buying a lot of specific chips without establishing that those chips are going to provide a worthwhile return. But in terms of the technology advancing...no, can't agree there.

  • xkcd #3245: Results Age

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  • 24 years ago

    Oh God how is the Internet this old

    So, I'm being a nit-picky, but while I'd say that personal Internet access really became a major thing in the US in the late 1990s or so, and that led to a huge explosion in the creation of the stuff like commercial websites, and so from consumer "the Internet is directly part of my life" standpoint, a lot of people might say "that's when the Internet became a thing," the Internet as an entity has been around since it was created from the ARPANET.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet

    The ARPANET initially served as a backbone for the interconnection of regional academic and military networks in the United States to enable resource sharing. Access to the ARPANET was expanded in 1981 when the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded the Computer Science Network (CSNET).[39]

    In 1982, the Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) was standardized, which facilitated worldwide proliferation of interconnected networks. TCP/IP network access expanded again in 1986 when the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNet) provided access to supercomputer sites in the United States for researchers, first at speeds of 56 kbit/s and later at 1.5 Mbit/s and 45 Mbit/s.[40]

    The NSFNet expanded into academic and research organizations in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan in 1988–89.[41][42][43][44] Although other network protocols such as UUCP and PTT public data networks had global reach well before this time, this marked the beginning of the Internet as an intercontinental network. Commercial Internet service providers emerged in 1989 in the United States and Australia.[45] The ARPANET was decommissioned in 1990.[46]

    It's just that the places using it were more universities and companies doing engineering stuff and stuff like that for a while.

    So if you say that the Internet was really born from the ARPANET when networks shifted to TCP/IP, you're talking something like early 1980s; by that metric, the Internet would be something like 55-ish years old.

    EDIT: Some users here are on lemmy.sdf.org. SDF was around well before 2000.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDF_Public_Access_Unix_System

    Super Dimension Fortress (abbreviated as SDF, also known as freeshell.org) is a non-profit public access UNIX shell provider on the Internet. It has been in continual operation since 1987 as a non-profit social club. The name is derived from the Japanese anime series Super Dimension Fortress Macross; the original SDF server was a Bulletin board system created by Ted Uhlemann for fellow Japanese anime fans.[1] From its BBS roots, which have been well documented as part of the BBS: The Documentary project, SDF has grown into a feature-rich provider serving members around the world.

  • Any use for a rooftop patio?

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    • Mount a rooftop antenna if you're into various forms of radio --- CB, ham, shortwave, running a radio scanner, terrestrial broadcast digital TV, etc. Height is helpful there.
    • You can probably get some kind of automated watering system, if that's your concern with the vegetables. Maybe need to fill a tank occasionally, but outside of that...shrugs.
    • Some people like rooftop beekeeping. Don't need frequent access for that.

    • Can throw some solar panels up there as a source of emergency power if the power goes out; if you put them above head height, then you've also got shade.
    • I'm guessing that this is an urban environment ("access to" sounds like a multiunit building) so it probably has light pollution in the area, but if not, could maybe throw a telescope up there for unobstructed access to the sky. I've occasionally wondered about how hard it'd be to get some kinda motorized pan-tilt-zoom telescope-attached camera just to pan around and look at stuff on the ground on a monitor, and if you're looking at the city, it might be fun, kinda like adding an expansive view downstairs. I have some relatives that have housing with a nice view, and they liked to have tripod-mounted telescopes to look out and check out everything. In your case, probably want something remotely-operated, but same idea.
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    Kickstarter bans all NSFW content from the website

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  • Does Kickstarter have liability in general for Kickstarted projects? I'd kind of assume that that's on the specific project. I can't imagine that Kickstarter is in any kind of position to really do a domain-specific evaluation of whether a given project is in line with local regulations.

  • Cats vs humans

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  • "Observe my anus. I will place it directly in front of your eyes to facilitate inspection."

    "I was feeling under the weather and wanted to find a safe place to hide, so I threw up in various nooks and crannies around the house."

    "I want to go out. Actually, I want in. Actually, no, I want out. On second thought, I want in."

    "I just thought I'd drop by and check to see whether I could get food a few hours early. No? Okay, how about now? No? How about now?"

    "As a sign of my undying loyalty, I have placed a dead mouse on the foot of your bed."

    "A new pleather couch? Oh, you shouldn't have! Permit me to extend my claws and take a jaunt to enhance its breathability."

  • Trump says he’s seriously considering making Venezuela the 51st US state

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  • TIL of Carpenter Bees.

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  • Sony's new wearable air conditioner runs even cooler

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  • First, Peltier elements are pretty inefficient. Second, I'm dubious about the design --- a Peltier element moves heat from Point A to Point B, and the whole device appears to still sit beneath the shirt. I suppose that the hot side is the outer side, but what you'd ideally want is to have hot air blowing as far away from you as possible.

    I'm skeptical that it's better to carry a battery-powered Peltier element than to carry something like an evaporative cooler. That's more-energy-efficient, and you don't have the problem of part of the device getting hot.

    EDIT: Or, if you can't leverage phase-change from liquid water to water vapor because of high humidity, cooling vests that leverage solid to liquid phase-change.

    How a Cooling Vest Invented by a Furry Made Its Way Into the U.S. Military

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    I've been out of the loop the past month. What major current events have I missed?

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  • Removed

    Lithium deposit valued at over $1.5 trillion discovered in the U.S.

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    Mark Zuckerberg Just Told 8,000 Employees Their Layoffs Are a Line Item in His $145 Billion AI Bill

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  • Given that the Metaverse stuff hasn't been commercially successful thus far, burning a lot of money.

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    Lithium deposit valued at over $1.5 trillion discovered in the U.S.

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  • The Oregon Chapter of the Sierra Club indicates they support cleaner energy but believe drilling must not come at the expense of fragile habitats.

    Foreign lithium isn't magic, zero-footprint lithium. We are a major consumer of lithium, and will probably increase if we're going to move to BEVs. If we're going to consume it, it only seems fair to the rest of the world to have some of the footprint in our own territory.

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    Mark Zuckerberg Just Told 8,000 Employees Their Layoffs Are a Line Item in His $145 Billion AI Bill

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  • I'd kind of expect more than that.

    Meta's said that they're going to to be shifting focus from VR to AI.

    It looks like Meta's VR wing employs 15,000 people:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_Labs

    Number of employees: 15,000 (2026)

    Though...hmm. It says that there are some AI things under that as well, so maybe that's not all VR:

    Reality Labs, formerly Oculus VR, is a business and research unit of Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook Inc.) that produces virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) hardware and software, including virtual reality headsets such as the Quest, and online platforms such as Horizon Worlds. In June 2022, several artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives that were previously a part of Meta AI were transitioned to Reality Labs.