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Zak

@ Zak @lemmy.world

Posts
13
Comments
1287
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.

  • Berlin: Police can secretly enter homes for state trojan installation

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  • I don't have a problem with the police entering private homes and installing spyware when authorized by a court order supported by strong evidence. That's narrowly focused on investigating crime.

    What I'm very concerned about is attempts to perform surveillance without individualized suspicion or independent oversight.

  • 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.

  • Privacy respecting blogging websites?

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  • It doesn't look like the major instances forbid posting in Portugese, and it's ActivityPub+AtProto, so people can follow you from Mastodon and BlueSky. It doesn't really matter if your audience is local.

  • India forces WhatsApp and Telegram into permanent SIM binding

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

  • Privacy respecting blogging websites?

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  • You might consider Wafrn, which is a federated system like Lemmy. There are four instances listed there as open to new accounts right now.

    You can even post to Lemmy with it, and people will be able to follow you with Mastodon, Pleroma, Misskey, etc... and optionally, Bluesky.

  • Is WordPress really trusteable?

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  • If you are trying to get the Wordpress software and install it on a server you own or web hosting account you pay for, yes.

    If you're trying to do something else, like sign up for blog hosting from a privacy-respecting service provider without having to administer software yourself, then no. If you want recommendations for services like that, you should probably make a separate post asking for that, with as much detail about what you want to do and whether you're willing to pay for it as possible.

    Edit: I see you did make such a post. If you're "not tech savvy" as your post says, I don't recommend administering Wordpress yourself. While it's something nearly anyone can learn if sufficiently motivated, it's much more effort for someone without a technical background.

  • Is WordPress really trusteable?

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  • Wordpress the software is open source and isn't known to do anything shady. Wordpress.com the hosted CMS product uses tracking pixels.

  • 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.

  • Removed Locked

    15 Year Olds are Children and they Need Protection

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  • In fairness to Boebert's son, the news stories I'm finding say he was 17 at the time. We probably shouldn't condemn teenagers as pedophiles for having sex with other teenagers close to their own age. Exactly how much age difference to tolerate is tricky, and something I'm glad not to be tasked with deciding.

  • Removed Locked

    15 Year Olds are Children and they Need Protection

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  • This distinction is useful to a mental health professional treating someone for those conditions. It is not useful in the context of the public condemning adults for sexually abusing children.

  • Removed Locked

    15 Year Olds are Children and they Need Protection

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  • Why Don’t the Survivors Name Names?

    Several of them have, and none of the offenders have faced serious consequences. No, Andrew Windsor's mild public shaming doesn't count.

  • 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.