there always the opportunity to rack up token costs if you accidently hit one of the AI buttons.
How do you mean? I don’t think there’s any way to incur charges for AI usages beyond your subscription fee unless you are coding against their API.
Have you ever wondered why we celebrate Richard Stallman as a visionary prophet of digital freedom while simultaneously abandoning every principle he fought for?
…
This is the Stallman Paradox: the growing chasm between our intellectual reverence for genuine free software principles and our practical convergence on venture capital-optimized extraction models that merely cosplay as “open source.”
I’m not entirely sure who “we” refers to, but it sounds like they are either very confused, or they are liars. Perhaps they have been bamboozled by corporate interests trying to undermine and co-opt the free software movement and philosophy, or perhaps they are agents of those corporate interests trying to bamboozle you.
That’s not new; it’s been happening since the moment free software started picking up steam, decades ago. Consider some of these choice quotes from Stallman himself at his speech at a Web3 conference just last year:
I’d like to say more about the difference between Free Software and open source because it’s a topic of great confusion. I founded the Free Software movement in 1983 with the announcement. The term Open Source was coined fourteen years later in 1998 when Free Software was becoming widely used and starting to be something people knew about. But not everyone who worked on or used or promoted Free Software agreed with the philosophy of freedom behind it. And the people who didn’t agree wanted to get out of connection with it by and many of them were working for businesses or with businesses that didn’t care about freedom at all. So, they found a new term, Open Source, which they defined differently but it overlapped a lot… But the biggest difference is that the term Open Source has never had any implications about right and wrong. It was, that idea was launched that way by people who didn’t see it as a matter of right and wrong. So that’s why I decided I would not start using that term.
And what does Stallman think of cryptocurrency?
I’ve never used cryptocurrency. There were things I found disappointing and worrisome when I learned about BitCoin. And it’s not clear to me that others are much better… I don’t want to do currency speculation myself at all.
He prefers GNU Taler as a distributed payment system. Taler is not a cryptocurrency, but it solves a lot of the problems that cryptocurrency pretends to solve.
Now with Taler the payer is anonymous but the payee is always identified, which means that Taler does not help millionaires hide lots of money from taxation. The world has a tremendous problem with wealth that is hidden and cannot be taxed. It’s part of the way that billionaires have been transferring more and more of the world’s wealth to them leaving less and less for everyone else. And this change is on the order of twenty percent of the world’s wealth. It’s an enormous change that impoverishes people who are not rich but even worse it gives the rich people the power of oligarchy, the power to buy governments and that threatens democracy. That threatens the rights of all of us but if we insist on payment systems that don’t permit the hiding of large amounts of wealth, that problem will get less instead of more.
“How much do you know about Web3?”
Not a tremendous amount, that’s not my field.
So again I wonder who this “we” refers to. Who is so confused as to associate Richard Stallman and Free Software with cryptocurrency and web3? I mean, the fact that he was invited to speak at a web3 conference suggests it’s a lot of people in the field, but god damn.
panel is 1366×768 but only 1360×768 is accessible over HDMI
Weird. Did they decide that resolution wasn’t cursed enough to begin with?!
I wonder if HDMI requires resolutions to be evenly divisible by 8. 1366 was always strange. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it on an external monitor, mostly just cheap laptops.
yt-dlp requests a specific format and downloads that in its entirety. When you use the YouTube web site, it dynamically adjusts based on your internet connection. If there’s lag, then it’ll drop you to a lower bitrate. So that’s one possible explanation.
There’s a little gear button on the YouTube page that lets you manually select the quality you want. If you specifically select e.g. 1080p then it won’t drop you down, it’ll just lag if your internet is too slow. I’m not 100% sure if that also applies to audio.
If by “modern” you mean anything developed in the last 10,000 years, then no. We know humans lived to roughly the same maximum ages back then as today.
If you extend that to 100,000 years, then…maybe? It’s hard to say but it’s plausible at least.
The fossil record is not so detailed. It’s hard to estimate the age of fossils, and it’s hard to draw far-reaching conclusions from the limited number of well-preserved fossils that have been discovered. Most research doesn’t say anything more than “adult” or “child”.
There are some techniques used to estimate more precise ages, and the estimates of the age at the time of death for fossils from the Upper Paleolithic period (12k-50k years ago) or older is rather young.
The Smithsonian Institution has this to say about “Nandy”, a Neanderthal fossil from around 40,000 years ago:
scientists estimate he lived until 35–45 years of age. He would have been considered old to another Neandertal, and he would probably not have been able to survive without the care of his social group.
It’s similar for early Homo Sapiens fossils. At the Dolní Věstonice site, there was a ceremonially buried woman who’s estimated to be in her 40s, from about 30,000 years ago. She is thought to be one of the elders.
I’m not aware of any others that are generally believed to have been much older than that. That doesn’t mean that humans couldn’t or didn’t survive for longer, but it was surely more rare. That doesn’t really support wild claims of what’s “hardcoded” or what a “natural” lifespan is. There were certainly more things that could kill you 50,000 years ago than there are today, and most of them have nothing to do with DNA and have little bearing on the maximum lifespan.
The article is written very strangely, to the point where I honestly don’t know what they’re trying to say. They keep referring to the “natural” lifespan but never explain what exactly they mean by that, then they slide right into talking about “maximum” lifespan.
If you ignore every time they say “maximum” and assume by “natural” they mean “general life expectancy of an adult human”, then it seems fair enough. But statements like “Neanderthals and Denisovans…had a maximum lifespan of 37.8 years” are utter bullshit. I honestly think they were trying to say something completely different, but then decided “maximum” sounded cooler. Probably because of the X.
As I think more about this, I have a new theory:
So perhaps the real story is simply “lots of tech marketers don’t understand their audience”. Which I think is true. When companies put their spec sheets and feature lists front and center, I’m definitely more likely to pay attention than if I have to dig through screen after screen of meaningless fluff to get any relevant details. So that’s something marketers could (but generally don’t) do to influence me.
And I’m comfortable with that. Yes, please make better shit, out of greed if nothing else. Stand out by not being an infuriating weasel, respect my time and intelligence, and I will reward you with my time and perhaps money.
But do you have a favourite coffee place, or restaurant? How about a favourite hotel chain?
I’d say I have three favorite coffee shops. One place in particular has the tastiest coffee to drink black, another has better flavored drinks and a generally cooler vibe (local art on display, community bulletin board, that kind of thing), and a third is a better environment to sit and work on my laptop. I consider those my three favorites. None of them are big chains, and none of them advertise, as far as I know.
For restaurants, I have a bunch of favorites for different foods. I have a favorite Indian place, favorite pizza place, favorite sandwich shop, etc. Again, nothing I consider a “favorite” is a chain. I guess if I had to pick a favorite chain, it would be…Chipotle? But I don’t feel like marketing draws me there beyond the fact that if they didn’t have successful marketing, they wouldn’t be anywhere I go in the first place. And still, if I see a small independent burrito place in walking distance, I’m probably going there first. Chipotle isn’t so much a “favorite” as it is a serviceable oasis when I’m in a food desert.
For hotel chains…nope, not even a little. I couldn’t tell you a single real difference between Marriot and Hilton. If their marketing departments have tried to instill in me any kind of emotional connection with their brands, they have utterly failed.
It’s kind of the same with airlines. They’re all the same in almost every meaningful way. Every time I fly, I consult my shitlist and try to avoid what’s on it, but at this point pretty much every airline has earned a spot on my shitlist. The only emotions I feel toward any airlines are bitterness, frustration, and anger.
I guess this is why hotels and airlines push their reward points so hard; they know they’re all the same and cannot possibly earn “loyalty” otherwise. If I were a different kind of nerd, perhaps I’d spend the time to optimize corporate reward points, but at a glance it seems like a sucker’s game to me so I mostly ignore it.
Incidentally, who do you think bought all that gamer girl bathwater?
Honestly, I have no idea. Did people actually buy it? I thought the whole thing was a joke.
I’m not about to no-true-scotsman nerdhood here, but I will say that I don’t relate to whatever group bought into that. I’m just not that kind of nerd, I guess.
Which raises another point: there are no monolithic demographics of any significant size. Anytime you generalize about “nerds” (or any other group), nothing you say will be 100% correct across the board. Generalizations are still useful when viewed in terms of trends and distribution curves. It’s fair to say that men are taller than women even though there are short men and tall women. It would be more precise to say that the height distribution for men skews taller than for women, but I think most people intuitively understand the truth behind the simple, plain English generalization anyway, even if they don’t think of it in precise terms.
But would you choose, say, a computer acse without caring about the way it looks or makes you feel?
The way it looks: yes, absolutely. My current box is metallic black with a window. If I could’ve bought a functionally equivalent one with no window at the same price, I would have. If I could’ve bought a functionally equivalent one in hot pink for cheaper, I probably would have. (There is a functional aspect to appearance as well, since it’s in my field of vision and bright colors could be distracting, so I’d have to think about the pink. “Black” and “no window” are on my wanted-features list for this reason, but other factors can override those wants.)
The way it makes me feel: well, cramped space, bad cable management options, and poor airflow will make me feel bad, so…arguably? But I’d consider that a matter of functionality more than feeling.
I feel like at this point we should talk about the oft-neglected difference between marketing and advertising. There is an aspect of marketing that directs product development down a path toward what they understand people actually want. When done well, this is good. It should be the marketing department’s job to learn what problems people have with products in the field, and make sure those problems are addressed in future products. Advertising is a subset of marketing that tries to directly influence consumer behavior to buy whatever they’re trying to sell.
For example, there was probably a marketer involved in the location and design of my favorite coffee shop, and if they did their job well then they deserve credit for helping make the kind of place I enjoy sitting in. Cheers to them for that.
But I’m no more likely to go into Dunkin or Starbucks just because they are advertised incessantly. You might find that hard to believe, and I wouldn’t blame you! I can’t prove it to you. And I understand that among the general population, repeated exposure affects perception, and by extension behavior, in subtle and deeply-rooted ways. I don’t imagine that I am immune to the effects that, for example, cause preschool children to prefer the same food from McDonalds bags vs unbranded bags (see https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17679662/). But we are more than our base nature, and these effects can be negated in practice. I suspect tech nerds in general have internalized stronger countermeasures than the general population. Not full immunity, because reality is too messy, but a notable resistance.
Yeah, there was a time when that was true, but Reddit’s been heavily compromised for…I dunno, at least a decade now. Pretty much every public forum becomes compromised after it reaches a certain size, and now with The Power of AI, it’s economical to compromise smaller and smaller forums, too, and it’s harder and harder to properly calibrate your bullshit detector. yayy…
There are still some great specialized nerd forums out there though. Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1603/
It’s a mistake to attribute purchases to marketing just because a marketer breathed the same air at some point. First-degree advertising influence and umpteenth-degree influence are very very different.
I mean, I probably wouldn’t buy a car from a company I’d never heard of, but that’s mainly because there are none. If I happened to buy a car from <insert company here> after researching what was available, I wouldn’t attribute that to <insert company here>'s marketing department. At least, not unless they bribed the independent reviewers, ratings boards, etc.
Same deal with most of my tech purchases, except that in that space there often are brands I’ve never heard of. And I’m (usually) savvy enough to tell when they’re legit and when they’re not. (I know more than I ever wanted to know about SSD controllers and I’m kind of angry about it.)
You’re right that nobody is truly “immune” to marketing, but as a matter of degrees, there’s a big difference across groups. There are people out there who look at ads and register them as useful information. There are people who intentionally click on ad banners on Instagram, rather than treating them like digital leprosy. There are people who click on the first Amazon referral listicle they find on Google and then treat it like independent journalism. There are people who use GoDaddy, when the only possible reason anyone would is because that racecar driver is hot. These are not behaviors you should expect among the kind of nerds this article is talking about.
Weird that they don’t even bother mentioning the backup feature they’ve had on Android for years.
The good news is that this is an addition to the existing backup option to back up everything to a local file, not a replacement. At least in the current beta.
I would like to hear official confirmation that this isn’t going to be a replacement, because if it is, then it’s a huge downgrade. The current system backs up everything, including media, with no time limits, for free.
Bummer that they’ve gone downhill. Not sure what to recommend to people now.
Anker used to be my go-to recommendation for USB cables and chargers. All my Anker products have been working perfectly for 5-10 years now. But I don’t own any of their newer products.
Lots of recommendations for groups, recommendations of random people to follow, and things like that. If these are paid ads, they are not clearly presented as such.
Though I just logged in (first time in a while) and I didn’t see that, so…maybe it changed, or maybe my ad blocker is doing better than it used to? Not sure.
I honestly don’t know how I could use Facebook that way. Seriously. I log in once in a blue moon, and half the stuff I see scrolling through the main feed has nothing to do with any of my friends as far as I can tell. And that’s with an ad blocker.
I don’t understand how anybody can stand it. Maybe it’s a “boiling frog” situation, or maybe they’ve developed better counter-strategies than I am familiar with? I quit Facebook about 10 years ago and when I poke my head in now, it’s completely different. It is terrible in ways I wouldn’t have believed 10 years ago.
I’m not well versed enough in Android app development to answer whether or not one userspace app can even access the screen contents of another app without root or special permissions
This requires special permissions and explicit user approval every time an app starts screen recording, plus it shows a red notification whenever screen recording is active.
I think you could get by with a one-time user approval as a device administration or assistive app permission, which you’d need to manually grant in Settings. Unlikely anyone would do that by accident.
That might be different for system-level apps. I haven’t bought a carrier-branded phone in 10+ years so I’m not sure what that’s like these days.
Oh! I knew European outlets operated at higher voltage, but I didn’t know the standard circuits supported such high current. Jealous!
Almost has to be. 2400W would put it completely outside the consumer market. Consumer PSUs don’t go that high. Home power outlets don’t go that high unless you have special electrical work done. I can hardly imagine what a cooling system for a nearly 3KW system would look like.
Works for me in Wayland on Bazzite. Maybe depends on your distro and GPU drivers.
It means that when they go to KFC, they bring their own tactical spork.
It depends on what you want. I use Kagi but I have not sold it on my friends and family because for most of them, it doesn’t really make sense.
I’ve found it to be the best search engine, but I also think DuckDuckGo is generally fine. The $5/month plan with 300 searches per month is too limiting, IMO. I feel like anyone who searches that lightly will struggle to justify paying for Kagi over using DDG. For unlimited searches you need to step up to the $10/month plan.
When I started using Kagi, I did the free trial and every time I did a search, I’d do it in both Kagi and Google or DDG. It quickly became clear to me that Kagi was better, but I suspect this will vary a lot by your field, your tastes, and your personal search style. I mean, maybe there’s someone out there who actually wants to look at Pinterest results. I guess?!
If you ever considered paying for ChatGPT Pro or Claude Pro ($20/month), then Kagi’s Ultimate plan ($25/month) is probably a better value. It includes unlimited search, plus access to all the major premium models. On the other hand, ChatGPT Pro gives you access to image generation too, if you care about that.
Kagi’s research agent is legitimately great. It is nothing like the bullshit generator Google has. It will take a prompt, then run multiple web searches to get relevant info, recursively if needed, and then give a meaningful response with citations. It shows you the exact search queries it uses, along with the results it pulls from. I’ve used it to find accurate answers to problems that I realistically could not have found with traditional search engines; in one case the actual answer was something like 18 results deep in the 5th search it performed. I think most people would give up before digging that deep in search results.
This is what AI is good for: automating gruntwork. Not doing things I couldn’t do myself, but doing things I don’t fucking want to do myself because they are tedious and frustrating. 99% of AI applications are pure garbage. Kagi’s is part of the other 1%.