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esarbe

2,319 karma · joined April 1, 2015

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esarbe··on September 2026: The world today, as seen by one Polish guy
Russia is currently in the denial stage of losing a war.
esarbe··on 'That's so AI ' What gen Alpha's biggest insult tells us
You're describing the human condition.

That hasn't changed for the last 300k years.

esarbe··on 'That's so AI ' What gen Alpha's biggest insult tells us
The damage done by doomscrolling and social media goes far beyond the "development of the brain for reasons of economic participation". Also, you seem to think the development of the brain doesn't have any purpose beyond that - a view I don't share.

If - and that if is doing some heavy lifting; given the underlying, fundamental problems of LLMs it doesn't make any sense to assume that we'll get there anytime soon - LLM AIs will be able to dominate economy in such a way that humans cannot compete anymore, that simply means that humans will have tons of free time at their hands. ( There's a reason for the grain dole that the Roman elites handed out to the poor of the city. I assume if you have a whole population that doesn't have anything valuable to contribute to the economy, the economy will still have to find a way to sustain them. Otherwise riots.)

A well developed brain seems to be exactly what I would want in such a case.

esarbe··on 'That's so AI ' What gen Alpha's biggest insult tells us
Knowing the tools of your trade is what you makes a artist. It's not enough to know that you would like to have the shadow there and have the face pushed to the foreground, that's just being aware of the design space. To be an artist you also need to know how to navigate the design space - know how to use the colours, brushes, vertices - to actually arrive at the place you intend. That means that you know how to use the tools of your trade so that this stroke or infill completes the brow to create the gaze you were aiming for.

Just selecting from a random sampling makes you a curator at best. You know where you want to go, but don't know how to do that. If luck is not in your favor, you will never arrive. And you're wholly dependent on luck to get there.

esarbe··on 'That's so AI ' What gen Alpha's biggest insult tells us
Exactly.

If just "being involved" in the "creative process" is enough to be called an artist, then by that measure that includes the guys that are simply involved by having the money to patron the process. Maybe it also includes the guy delivering the pizza.

esarbe··on 'That's so AI ' What gen Alpha's biggest insult tells us
Apples, oranges.

Koons didn't write a two paragraph description of his ideas and then handed it over to a porcelain factory that repeatedly tried to come up with something that fit the spec until Koons cried out "Yes, that's it! That's what I had in mind!"

He drew sketches, built models, shaped prototypes, etc. He was an active participant in the creative process from the very start to the end, not just a client that checked in on what the artists were doing from time to time to give the thumbs up or thumbs down.

esarbe··on 'That's so AI ' What gen Alpha's biggest insult tells us
Not understanding the consequences and impacts of doomscrolling and instant gratification videos on reasoning, memory and abstract thinking is not limited to persons aged 15-16. I'd argue this applies to about 90% of the population using smartphones.
esarbe··on 'That's so AI ' What gen Alpha's biggest insult tells us
They are still present everywhere. They are just badly hidden behind a leaky abstraction.
esarbe··on 'That's so AI ' What gen Alpha's biggest insult tells us
We're wasting the potential of at least two generations. It's horrible.
esarbe··on 'That's so AI ' What gen Alpha's biggest insult tells us
Just describing what you want doesn't make you an artist. It makes you a client.

Just iteratively refusing what a stochastic generative algorithm presents to you doesn't make you an artist. It makes you a client with attitude.

esarbe··on Ideas on modernizing the open-source desktop
It's not the "Gnome users" that wanted to create something different - it's the Gnome developers that did.

It's the developers prerogative to do with their project whatever they want.

esarbe··on Ideas on modernizing the open-source desktop
I'm curious; why do you minimize windows? What's your use case for that?

I remember that I stopped minimizing windows when I stopped putting application starters and folders on the desktop - this was the one thing that forced me to minimize windows, because otherwise I couldn't access those (obviously).

esarbe··on Ideas on modernizing the open-source desktop
> Relearning a new UI doesn't have any obvious benefits. People would have told me about the benefits by now.

Gnome for me has the benefit of being usable without ever actually touching the mouse. I can keep my fingers on the keyboard without ever having to lift my hand and push around the mouse to switch applications, to start applications, find applications. The only time I need to use the mouse is if I'm using applications that have some kind of obligatory/mandatory mouse usage, e.g. Blender or Gimp or the like.

YMMV.

esarbe··on Ideas on modernizing the open-source desktop
> I have too many windows open to keep them all maximised.

You can have as many windows maximized as you want. There's not upper limit to maximized windows.

> Those are undiscoverable and should not be the only option.

Just do `<super> + appname` and you'll jump to the window in question. No discovery required. The WM will do the discovery for you.

> Shoulda, coulda, woulda. I manage with the programs that are, not the ones that could be. I'm not interested in developing my own DE, not redeveloping all the other programs surrounding it.

> One isn't even a GUI application. The second sees regular use with a GUI, but only for reconfigurations that take less than 10 seconds.

The not-gui application you could put into a user-defined daemon (check [0] on how to create user services). The GUI-for-reconfiguration thingy you can put on a workspace, then it's out of your way and still accessible for reconfiguration.

> Why would I want to relearn a new UI for only marginal benefits?

To be snarky; "Why would I want to relearn riding for a new horseless carriage with only marginal benefits?"

[0] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Systemd/User

esarbe··on Italian parliament votes for return to nuclear energy
I've yet to see any serious engineer make the argument that Li-ion batteries will be used for seasonal storage. I've more often seen it used as a straw man argument against renewables.
esarbe··on Italian parliament votes for return to nuclear energy
France's reactors became successively more expensive as the need for more layered safety features was exposed. The first generation (CP0, CP1, CP2) was quite inexpensive, the P4 and P'4 designs were already more expensive and the N4 was yet more expensive.

At this point I think if you want inexpensive nuclear, you just have to accept some risk. Going from 99.9% safety to 99.99% adds just too much complexity to remain economically viable.

esarbe··on Ideas on modernizing the open-source desktop
I just keep my windows maximized all the time. What would I need minimize and maximize buttons for? If I have need for several windows next to each other, Gnome gives me handy keyboard shortcuts.

> Sorry for wanting background programs to run in the background and get out of my way.

Sounds like those "background programs running in the background" should be user daemons instead of GUI applications.

esarbe··on Ideas on modernizing the open-source desktop
YMMV.

I think Gnome is one of the better desktops out there. It goes out of my way and I very much like the changes it brought.

esarbe··on XCancel service is suspended until further notice
https://status.d420.de/
esarbe··on If a Tesla Cybercab fleet were profitable, Tesla wouldn't sell you one
I don't think that also covers cleaning[1].

[1] https://www.consumerhealthdigest.com/health-supplements/tesl...

esarbe··on How Fairphone built the Fairphone Gen 6+
Fair enough.
esarbe··on If a Tesla Cybercab fleet were profitable, Tesla wouldn't sell you one
What if it gets damaged or a drunk customer vomits into it or otherwise soils it?
esarbe··on How Fairphone built the Fairphone Gen 6+
How is that better than having a dedicated headphones port?
esarbe··on How Fairphone built the Fairphone Gen 6+
I think I'd rather stick with a phone that has a separate headpones port.
esarbe··on How Fairphone built the Fairphone Gen 6+
Me.
esarbe··on How Fairphone built the Fairphone Gen 6+
How do you charge your phone while listening to music?
esarbe··on Nitter and XCancel receive cease and desist notices
That's it for me. No more twitter.

Elmo really has ruined it.

esarbe··on John Deere owners will get the right to repair equipment under FTC settlement
I find this a very reasonable frame of mind. Systemic issues and failures cannot be fixed or addressed by individual action. They have to be addressed in a systemic way.

It's good that people are catching up to this.

esarbe··on Claude Code is steganographically marking requests
You sound like you've swallowed pro-US-propaganda hook, line and sinker.

The reason the middle-east is at constant war is because colonialist machinations. Same goes for south-Saharan Africa. And the US is a big colonialist player, just ask Vietnam, South-America, Iran, Afghanistan, etc. They all have been attacked by the US because of US colonial interests. If anything, one could make the argument that the PRC is treading much more lightly than the US.

That said - I'm not defending the PRC by any way; it's a state-capitalist hell hole that's suppressing workers by denying them any ability to organize and whose political class is purely focused on furthering their own interests and that of the moneyed elite, the common person be damned.

The thing is - so is the US.

esarbe··on Announcing Mozilla.org, a New 501(C)(3) Nonprofit
> But we are also: an email company built around privacy; an open source AI startup focused on developers; a place for people to create and share data on their own terms; and an investor in responsible tech startups.

I'd prefer it if they'd just stayed a open source tech nonprofit developing a state-of the-art web browser and surrounding technologies.

I don't need Mozilla to be an AI startup.

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