Skip Navigation

User banner
InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)S
SaraTonin @ SaraTonin @lemmy.world
Posts
0
Comments
101
Joined
2 wk. ago

  • Is the AI Conveyor Belt of Capital About to Stop?

    Jump

  • Not framed like that. You have to acknowledge that investments can depreciate rather than appreciate and that you may lose your money, sure. That’s very different to saying that you acknowledge that you probably will lose your money and that you consider your investment a donation.

  • Is the AI Conveyor Belt of Capital About to Stop?

    Jump

  • FWIW, part of the OpenAI investment process is signing something to say that you understand that you’re unlikely to get any return on your investment and that you consider it more akin to a donation

  • What's the weirdest hobby you've heard of?

    Jump

  • I was just scrolling down to see if anybody had mentioned it

  • Autism Is Not a Single Condition and Has No Single Cause, Scientists Conclude

    Jump

  • Scientists from Cambridge’s Department of Psychiatry found that children diagnosed as autistic earlier in life (typically before six years old) were more likely to show behavioural difficulties from early childhood, such as problems with social interaction.

    However, those diagnosed with autism later on in life (in late childhood or beyond) were more likely to experience social and behavioural difficulties during adolescence.

    I assume that the paper itself frames this a little differently, because what this is saying is trust there’s a correlation between when traits become noticeable and when people get a diagnosis. Which is what you’d expect. You don’t tend to diagnose people who don’t exhibit the traits required for diagnosis.

  • They say remote working less productive

    Jump

  • It’s not just that. Employers think you’re “getting away” with…something…if you can manage to be productive while having something which advantages you.

    For one example, several firms - including Microsoft - have conducted experiments where they move an office to a 4 day, 32 hour week while paying people the same. They unfailingly found that productivity either stayed the same or went up. So, at the end of the experiment they…went back to a 5 day week. Because otherwise people are just getting an extra day off, aren’t they? When they “should” be working.

    Even if productivity went up and it was better for the company and for the workers, it was still ultimately seen as a bad thing because the workers were better off.

    Another example: at a previous job I had we got an hour’s break over the course of the day. 15 minutes 2 hours after start, 30 minutes 4 hours after start, and another 15 minutes 6 hours after start. On a Friday, however, the workday was 7 hours rather than 8. This meant that an hour before leaving people would have a 15 minute break, and then it wasn’t worth actually starting anything because before you’d have a chance to get into it you’d be getting ready to go home. So the workers went to management and said “let’s work through the last break on a Friday and go home 15 minutes early instead”. Management agreed, productivity went up, and everybody was happy at getting off an extra 15 minutes early.

    Then the old upper manager was fired and a new one took their place, and this arrangement was deemed to be “getting away with it”. Taking a final break & going home later was mandated. Suddenly none of the management who had agreed it had anything to do with the initial decision and they’d always thought it was a bad idea.

    So the workers were unhappy because they had a longer workday, less work got done because everybody was unproductive after break, and the company was getting less value for money becuse they were paying people the same amount for less work. But they thought it was a better situation because people were physically in the building for an extra 15 minutes, and therefore not “getting away with it”.

    There’s very often a mindset in management that employees are naughty children, and that strict rules must be good just because they’re rules, rather than because they actually lead to better outcomes for the company.

  • I would give my life savings for something that eradicates them from my apartment 😌

    Jump

  • You probably haven’t. Spiders can trap air with the hair on their skin and can survive a trip down the drain. They’ll probably climb back up again once it’s dry.

  • I would give my life savings for something that eradicates them from my apartment 😌

    Jump

  • Yup. I don’t like having spiders in the house. Know what i like having in the house less? Flies. So the spiders stay.

  • Trump says ‘war is over’ in Gaza as Israel awaits release of hostages

    Jump

  • I didn’t stop and verify, but I’ve literally just seen a post on here which says that Israel has violated the ceasefire 3 days running at this point.

  • Commercials seem to be normalizing an unhealthy work-life balance more.

    Jump

  • There was a story a couple of years ago about corporations trying to get people to work unpaid hours while working from home. The logic, such as it was, went like this: if you live an hour’s commute away from work and you work an 8-hour day, then you’re actually spending 10 hours of your day dedicated to work because the travel time isn’t time you get to do whatever you want in. Therefore, since you’re used to work taking up 10 hours of your time, you should also spend 10 hours working while working from home.

    It’s astonishing, really.

  • Do some actors or actresses date "normal" people?

    Jump

  • A lot of these replies are framing it as meeting someone out in the wild, but that’s not how most modern dating works. So, another reason why the pool is limited is that s lot of celebrities these days are on the dating app Raya.

    There’s a strict application process where you have to demonstrate that you’re financially successful, physically attractive, and in some way notable. It started off exclusively as celebrities but now you can also get in if you’re, say, a c-suite executive at a large firm or own your own high-value tech firm. You also pretty much have to live in LA or New York if you want to match with anybody.

    There are all kinds of rules, too. You’ll get banned for like if you take a screenshot in the app or publicly identify someone that you know is on the app. You’ll even get banned for publicly mentioning that the app exists too often.

    Because of that it’s difficult to confirm who is on it, but it’s rumoured to be incredibly popular amongst celebrities. Keirnan Shipka in an interview once declared herself to be “Raya for life”.

    These days most people meet people through dating apps. And the app that most celebrities are on is deliberately very exclusive, to the point where a middle-class person absolutely would not be allowed on it.

  • Are there any games you don't play as it was intended to be played? If so, what game and how?

    Jump

  • Yeah, we can basically just put every speedrunner of every game into this topic. “Man, I love this game so much. Let’s see if I can break it so I can 100% it in under a minute!”/“This is the best shooter ever made! Let’s see if I can complete it without hurting anybody!”

  • Are there any games you don't play as it was intended to be played? If so, what game and how?

    Jump

  • There seems to be one or two Sims channels on YouTube where the people running the channel have little or no interest in playing the game and instead just build and furnish houses/shops.

  • Are there any games you don't play as it was intended to be played? If so, what game and how?

    Jump

  • Not me, but there’s a great example of this in chess.

    There’s an opening called the Bongcloud. You move the pawn in front of your king out for your first move, and then for your second move you move your king up a square. It’s memed as being the strongest opening possible, but it’s actually almost the worst 2 opening moves you can possibly make. Because modern chess does have a large online component and the current best players are young and like memes, it has been played in tournaments, which means that if you play it in an up to date chess programme the programme will name it as the Bongcloud.

    A lot of people seem to think that it’s called the Bongcloud because you’d have to be stoned to play it. But almost all chess openings are named after one of three things: a person, a place, or an animal. In this case, the Bongcloud is named after a person - Lenny Bongcloud.

    Lenny Bongcloud is a now-inactive user of chess.com. He would always open with the moves described above. That’s because, unbeknownst to them, Lenny wasn’t playing the same game as his opponents. They were trying to checkmate him. He was trying to walk his king to the opposite side of the board as quickly as possible. If he gets checkmated, he loses. If he gets his king to the other side of the board he counts it as a victory and resigns.

    So, yeah. One of the oldest known games in the world has an opening the “official” name of which comes from a jokey alias adopted by someone who was deliberately playing the game wrong.

  • Renegade graphics warlock makes Half-Life look like Half-Life 2, then runs it on an ancient laptop, raising a middle finger to poorly optimised PC games

    Jump

  • Sure, I’m just arguing against the framing of this as “he got this super-graphics-intense programme to run on a PC which would have been considered a relic at the time”, when actually he ran significantly downgraded graphics on a PC which would have been 2 years old at the time.

  • Visually indistinguishable

    Jump

  • I haven’t seen that in ages. The main thing I remember being wowed at was her hair.

    Brave probably still wears that crown now, though.

  • Renegade graphics warlock makes Half-Life look like Half-Life 2, then runs it on an ancient laptop, raising a middle finger to poorly optimised PC games

    Jump

  • The article says it’s a 2002 laptop and says it would have been “significantly out of date” when Half-Life 2 launched. Half-Life 2 launched in 2004. So that’s 2 years. He’s also reduced the resolution to 512x512 - less than half the original resolution - and hasn’t recreated several of the lighting effects.

    I don’t know what unoptimised games this is supposed to be a middle finger to specifically, but it strikes me that it wouldn’t be considered particularly out of the ordinary to find a modern game that could run on a 2023 machine at less than half resolution and with significantly reduced lighting effects.

  • We're doomed

    Jump

  • There are two types of people in the world:

    1. Those who divide the world into two types of people
    2. Those who do not divide the world into two types of people

  • yea

    Jump

  • Rand was married to Frank O’Conner for 50 years, and he spoke about his deep love and devotion for her. She also had a lover, Nathanial Branden, for 14 years (with Frank’s knowledge and permission) who also spoke about his love and passion for her.

    She was a horrible person with a repulsive, nonsensical philosophy, but she did have people who loved her.

    She was a fascinating person, and if you’re genuinely interested in learning more about her, I recommend the installment about her of the podcast Origin Story, which you can find on this page: https://www.podmasters.co.uk/origin-story or, as they say, wherever you get your podcasts. It’s very well-researched and informative (one advantage of being a podcast written and presented by actual seasoned journalists), while also being told with a light, funny touch.

  • What is your favorite version of FTL in science fiction?

    Jump

  • The exact mechanics are never explained, but I’ve always loved “fenestering” in David Zindell’s Neverwhere and Requiem For Homo Sapiens trilogy.

    A pilot, in a one-person “lightship”, interfaces with their computer, merging their minds into one. They then solve maths equations which have never been solved before and prove new mathematical theories. This opens up a window underneath the ship, which it falls in to, into hyperspace. They then need to do more novel maths to open up the window to where they’re going and fall through that.

    It’s weird and it’s nerdy and it’s poetic and it’s mystical, like everything in the books, and it’s just so incredibly cool.