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buran77

6,790 karma · joined March 13, 2019

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buran77··on Nicholas Polson has authored 258 academic papers in 2026 so far
> “An Interdisciplinary Synthesis Across Economics, Psychology, Biology, Philosophy, Game Theory, and Spiritual Tradition.”

If one were inclined, they could shorten the title to "AI Synthesis Across Economics, Psychology, Biology, Philosophy, Game Theory, and Spiritual Tradition." Maybe that's an Easter egg.

AI submissions, soon AI reviewers, and shortly after only AI readers.

The guy's name is "nosloP" spelled backwards. Maybe spelled normally it's supposed to signify the opposite.

buran77··on DraftKings is using AI to behaviorally target chronic gamblers
You're diluting responsibility with this comparison and it doesn't help.

You're trying to compare the people who actively build and support these platforms knowing full well what they're doing, with the people who go to vote for lower taxes or more jobs... oh and this hidden lobby agreement to not hurt gambling platforms. If you as a voter think these two things are at the same level by all means, call yourself a shitstain and I won't get in your way.

But nobody votes on these matters, they just come bundled (and hidden for 99.99% of people) under the broad political agenda of a handful of elected representatives who mostly focus their platform on economy, military, etc. not betting sites. This isn't any candidate's platform header. The voter is at best ignorant to these hidden issues. And even if voters did vote on this directly, it's not an obligation for anyone to actively support and contribute.

People choose to build and support platforms which are 100% harmful for anyone but themselves and the shareholders. And they should be chastised. They're free to build whatever fits their moral values, we should all be allowed to criticize according to ours even if you think the blame should be spread across 150 million voters for whatever reason.

buran77··on Toyota is taking the Corolla electric
> I've never seen an actual production model look anything like the concept.

As an exception to this rule, the original Audi TT was surprisingly similar to the concept car and even the initial concept sketches. They had a crazy design idea and just went with it.

buran77··on UK military jamming other nations' satellites to defend itself, BBC told
> the military industrial complex has captured pretty much anything with real accuracy

Real accuracy is a matter of application. For mainstream civilian use the 20-30cm offered by Galileo/GPS is beyond real accuracy. It gets even better for specialized civilian use or with the aid of differential GNSS (low single digit cm). You'd have to think real hard for a reason to need better precision on a global scale especially if that involves any extra cost.

Can't say how much of a priority accurate positioning would be for civilians during an armed conflict.

buran77··on List of references on Sony websites to players "owning" their digital games
> Piracy is not theft. It is an infringement on another's right to distribute intellectual property.

That wasn't the direction I was going towards. Sony treats digital copies as if only one can have the ownership rights attached to it. This logic can be extended to any other right.

> Selling a used DVD is possible because the DVD contains the license — it is transferable and irrevocable by dint of its format.

The format does not make it irrevocable, it makes the revocation impossible to enforce. The license is attached to the content of the DVD, not the plastic disc per se. This license gives me the right to read that disk and send that digital copy to my output device. It's also why I can't just copy the content to a disc I own and call it a day. So a digital copy read straight from Sony's storage and sent to my output device can very well have the same license attached to it.

To be honest, I think it's a stupid defense but one that may just fly in places with the best justice money can buy. And there's a lot of money trying to buy a carte blanche to not give ownership rights to digital content, coming from every producer or distributor of such content.

buran77··on List of references on Sony websites to players "owning" their digital games
> "Were that the case, then Plaintiff Edward Heycock would not have been able to obtain the game Resident Evil Requiem on February 25, 2026 for $69.99 from the PlayStation Store after Plaintiff Jason Mendoza had obtained Resident Evil Requiem on February 14, 2026, because Mr. Mendoza, not Sony, would have owned it then"

That's a very interesting defense. I wonder if it opens up a door maybe Sony would rather keep shut. If I can't own a copy of content because someone else has another copy, how does this play out for piracy? According to Sony's own argument, pirating a copy of the content is fine because others can/do still "buy" or "own" (rent/lease) it.

buran77··on Rivian's gambit for full autonomy
> Realistically no

And you had that one example to prove it. That settles it.

I know you want to make your point but stacking up fallacies (same in your "Timmy" comment) isn't helping [1]. Most humans grow up having personal responsibility, then at adult age the legal system puts even more on them. A lot more, on them personally, under threat of deprivation of freedom or monetary loss from their own pockets, or in the case of driving even something as small as losing the license. There are exceptions ("daddy pays" sort of thing).

Now contrast that with corporations, especially large ones, where almost every bit of responsibility is diffused behind a corporate veil that allows every single human to sidestep any personal responsibility whatsoever. Some shareholders' money take the plunge. And starting recently you can offload even more responsibility to the computer/AI.

I might lose my license if I cross a red light. Will a company lose the license to operate all autonomous cars when one crosses a red light?

[1]

> My anti-terrorism AI drone escaped the sandbox and shot up gruez's house. The drone was punished by removing its livery. What else can be done? What next, should we punish soldiers fighting terrorists too?"

> I tested my anti-cancer medication in the drinking water of the neighborhood. gruez got hit the hardest by the side effects, God rest his soul. But what can we do, ban cancer research?

buran77··on Mistral raises €3B
Mistral is doing one more thing: building up local know-how in the European ecosystem. This is worth more than money, you can't bootstrap an industry overnight.
buran77··on Jellyfin 12.0
The Plex rug-pull is just around the corner. I've been running Jellyfin pointed at the same content as Plex for some time now. I still find some rough edges on Jellyfin but they smooth out a few more with each release so I'm confident I'll be just fine when I need to switch. The clients are getting better too, I'm using Infuse on Apple TV and Moonfin for everything else.
buran77··on Arm Mali G2-Ultra NX GPU: desktop-class mobile gameplay with AI-native graphics
Moats are obstacles against something you're trying to avoid. It can be competitors coming in, or customers going out. A moat could surround a prison to keep prisoners in. Some companies just choose to treat their customers as prisoners.
buran77··on Japan halves speed limit to 30km/h on all narrow city streets
> I pass three speed bumps on my street. I'm driving at low speed [...] I don't even brake before them

That's a lot of "I"s for something so many other drivers in the world have to drive across, in many, many different designs. Bumps, "nipples", cushions, tables, bars, made from rubber, asphalt, cobble stone, metal, with different ratios between height and width, different profiles, etc.

But it also depends on the car, doesn't it? Some suspensions are harder, some cars are lower, this creates discomfort or damage. Sometimes they have to rev the engine to cross over at very low speed. Not to mention larger and heavier cars like vans or garbage trucks which also damage the bump on top of everything else. Sometimes even cyclists have to put their butt on the line. The Wikipedia page would have put your personal experience in context [1]. Speed bumps are the cheap for the city but there are compromises.

Many countries with well thought out traffic use bumps where safety is paramount, like raised pedestrian crossings (table). The rest of the speed limiting effect is achieved with smart road design wherever possible.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_bump#Disadvantages

buran77··on Japan halves speed limit to 30km/h on all narrow city streets
The elegant way to implement such a speed limit is to have the driver do a "slalom" between things like trees or parking spots set alternatively between the two sides of the street, or green islands in the middle of the street. It forces a low driving speed without the discomfort and potential damage caused by speed bumps.

Street bumps are a discomfort even for those who respect the speed limit, and sometimes for residents (more noise) so they don't have popular support unless it's a problematic area, with a low safety record. There are high tech bumps that incorporate a radar sped detector and instantly raise in front of speeding cars but there are costly and require more maintenance.

buran77··on Japan halves speed limit to 30km/h on all narrow city streets
I'm surprised the limit was so high on those narrow, low visibility streets to begin with. In many EU countries the limit is 30km/h even on streets that are double the size, if they're in residential neighborhoods to increase pedestrian safety.
buran77··on Saving money on Google Photos with Immich: Your own personal photo storage
Was it a full moon or what's with the dick attitude? It's a few sentences that basically say "you can't have all the hobbies, some people choose something else, everyone pays with whatever they can afford". What's the point of your reply other than the attempted jab at the end?

> jump through this set of hoops

And a weak jab that was for someone who's overwhelmed from trying to parse a couple of sentences. If you thought it's objectively wrong you would have already pointed that out loudly and offensively.

So you just took the opportunity to feel like a big boy and tell me "this admin stuff is not for you". Good for you big boy, glad you got that out of the system.

Of course, you also outsource the effort for almost everything around you (even your reading comprehension), to someone else - an expert, the person you're talking to, or your parents. But you can download a compose file and import it in what's probably a NAS with a nice "import" GUI so welcome to the "target audience". I'm a big boy too, you see, one with actual reading comprehension ;).

buran77··on Saving money on Google Photos with Immich: Your own personal photo storage
> It's odd that you've gone off on this

"Gone off on this"? Wait till you see me go off on people with a lack of reading comprehension, a pathological persecution complex, and a giant chip on their shoulder.

Anyway, if you ask your parents to explain my comment to you, they'll probably immediately tell you that it's a generic comment on the inability to take up every opportunity all the time. You choose one thing, others choose another, everyone does their own math (you should probably ask someone to do your math for you). I don't care about your hobby which is why I didn't mention "sysadmin", "Netflix", "Call of Duty" or "D&D", nor did I say which one I consider "better" or "worthwhile". Just that you can't do them all.

buran77··on Saving money on Google Photos with Immich: Your own personal photo storage
> I would call it more of a set of tradeoffs

This is mostly wording. It is a commitment, it has an opportunity cost, there are tradeoffs.

> This is the refreshening opportunity for us non-admins, and a learning opportunity to automate as much of it as possible.

So many opportunities but the day is still 24 hours long. You still have to choose your opportunities wisely, and give up something else in the process. And if you look at the big picture those who choose to take this opportunity are not so many compared to those who just pay with data so they don't have to pay with time and effort. Everyone pays money in the end.

buran77··on Banca Etica Suspends A/I's Account While Condemning the Sanctions Behind It
> The ICC has tools for countering this kind of thing though.

That's irrelevant and unrealistic in this case. None of this factored into the US reaching for the sanctions hammer with more and more despicable intentions, like supporting war crimes even of other countries.

buran77··on Banca Etica Suspends A/I's Account While Condemning the Sanctions Behind It
> The Italian bank says A/I’s account showed no previous anti-money-laundering concerns—but fears U.S. secondary sanctions could endanger services for 130,000 customers and members.

> Banca Etica strongly condemns the use of counterterrorism tools to target political opponents. Evaluations are underway to prevent the closure of the bank account following A/I's inclusion on the US list of terrorist organizations.

This isn't the usual debanking as a political statement, but rather the bank trying not to be sanctioned by the US, a country already bleeding all its soft power and veering heavily into hard power and coercion.

The sanctioning of the ICC prosecutor already showed beyond any doubt the level of moral bankruptcy. The beatings will continue until morale improves.

buran77··on The ChatGPT/Codex app bundles a full copy of LibreOffice
It's not really that "absolute". Laws are not all made the same. Some start as a reflection of what society considers "right" at the time. Then the laws fall behind as society's morality reaches a tipping point. So the society pulls that part of the legal system behind it. Other laws are progressive, and they pull society's morality behind them. Some are driven by/for the majority, and some by/for the elites.

But they all reflect the morality of society to a degree, whether the democratic majority, or the powerful minority.

buran77··on It takes 5 cloud services to hear my doorbell
Now you're trying to weasel out of this (whstl out?).

I was trying to be diplomatic and use "good/bad" as shorthand for "should be part of a well engineered (not over/under) product or not". You don't like it, then let me use what you actually said: engineers who implement all the requirements given to them are like the Nazi soldiers who executed the people they were ordered to execute. Neither good nor bad, just over executing, right?

I asked you a question because it was an easy way to apply your logic on something concrete, so you can see that if it fails on something so simple, maybe it's not actually useful at all. You pretended not to see it like a fine engineer with responsibilities. Tripped on a Christmas light.

buran77··on Using floci to emulate Cloud platforms (GCP, AWS, Azure)
I don't think IT has the same marketing requirements or stringent name vetting policies found for example in pharma, or car industry (Mitsubishi Pajero vs. Montero in Spain comes to mind [0]). After a quick internet search looks like "floci" is colloquially the word for "pubes" which doesn't sound really vulgar, more impolite?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_Pajero

buran77··on It takes 5 cloud services to hear my doorbell
> As an engineer (the traditional kind)

Isn't everybody? Your whole case rests on the insistence that OP's core requirement is no good. Not for any objective engineering reasons, just because you think so.

I have a simple question that any engineer can answer in a heartbeat. Is a Christmas tree light installation with a bunch of series connected incandescent lights (I'm talking literally one of those classic Christmas lights set with absolutely no extra components or complexity beyond wires, bulbs, and plug) over engineered? Could you do it with even less engineering?

buran77··on It takes 5 cloud services to hear my doorbell
Don't overthink it. If you judge the engineering then you look at how the implementation reflects the requirements, not whether the requirements are good.

Over-engineered simply means there is much more in that implementation than the baseline needed to tick off the requirements.

buran77··on Sovereign Tech Agency invests €500k in Flatpak
Just to be clear, that wasn't a judgment value either way from my side.

This being said I would expect they contribute a lot for ffmpeg, which was mentioned explicitly, since this is such a critical building block for them.

buran77··on OpenClaw 2.0, Accidentally
> Just last weekend I used it to do PDF editing which previously would have required me to download really shady software online to do.

Last (only) time I used AI for this it helpfully made additional unwanted changes to the document. I decided never to do this on complex docs where I will have to re-check everything.

buran77··on Get your Windows license refund
Yes, Amazon and other retailers will have one laptop with OS, one laptop without. They need to track two different SKUs even if the conversion is easy. When upgradeable, SSD or RAM are also easily "convertible" but the SKU still needs to uniquely identify that "thing" that you have in stock or in the manufacturing pipeline.
buran77··on Get your Windows license refund
Even without Microsoft's interference, it would still complicate logistics. Two OS options means double the number of SKUs. Some manufacturers offer this option but I wouldn't hold my breath that retailers want to bother.
buran77··on Sovereign Tech Agency invests €500k in Flatpak
The point isn't how much Google spends on stuff in general, it's their wallet. What's important is how much they contribute back to the development of the tools they actively use to fill that wallet.
buran77··on How credit card rewards became a $9.2B wealth transfer
> Businesses raise prices to account for interchange fees

Agreed, which makes the picture even worse for those low income people. Even poor people are guaranteed to occasionally pay the "rich person tax" included in the prices of some of the products and services. At least until some AI pricing starts changing the price real-time based on the buyer's estimated wealth (sort of already real).

> So they are essentially is paid by the consumer.

Not from a bank's perspective. Only in the sense that prices are higher between the seller and buyer.

> If we outlawed rewards credit cards (by capping interchange fees), everything would likely be slightly cheaper.

I don't agree on the second point as a blanket statement. When Epic game store lowered its fee not a single game got cheaper for the buyers.

buran77··on How credit card rewards became a $9.2B wealth transfer
What does that graph tell you? Because I think patio11 wanted to send one message and people accidentally misunderstand the graph.

That's the interchange income corresponding to wealthy people. Interchange is paid by the card-accepting business, not by the buyer. The buyer pays interest and other fees and that graph looks very different.

From that original study the full picture table says in % of ADB that the "poorest" (below 620 FICO) pay ~45% interest and fees but bring only 2% additionally in interchange income. The wealthy (at 800+) pay ~10% interest and fees but bring another almost 10% interchange income, on 4 times higher spending, and 3 times higher rewards (so the wealthy get ~12 times higher rewards in $ value than the "poor").

Just the percentages paid by each group more than offset the difference in spending. There are also way more "poor" accounts than wealthy accounts. Intuitively you can tell that the banks are effectively subsidizing the fees and interest for the wealthy with the income from the poor, for the sake of the interchange income which is mostly generated by the wealthy but doesn't come from their pocket.

Those poorest of people (<620 FICO) pay more interest and fees (percentage and absolute terms) than any other group. There's a range in the middle on the wealth scale where the customers are actually a net loss for the banks (the 660-760 FICO range).

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