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somethingreen

204 karma · joined January 29, 2015

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somethingreen··on AI was supposed to help juniors shine. Why does it mostly make seniors stronger?
AI was supposed to replace juniors and then climb up the ladder with each new release, eventually leaving any work only for the creme of the crop. Which would make the current generation of software engineers the last, but who cares - stocks go up.

Now apparently we've switched to pairing poor kids with an agreeable digital moron that reads and types real fast and expecting them to somehow get good at the job. Stocks still go up, so I guess we'll be doing this for a while.

somethingreen··on AI is killing the web – can anything save it?
Every user in bittorrent network is self-hosting. All it takes is to launch an app.

Evidently, if you combine content access platform with a hosting platform and make running the latter a requirement for the former, it works out.

somethingreen··on AI is killing the web – can anything save it?
Invite only, laws, law enforcement, exile. Federated sovereign clusters. Digital nations, ultimately. Except you don't need weapons and a piece of land to establish a new one. (We already have these, we just let corporations run them)
somethingreen··on Now might be the best time to learn software development
Now might be the last time to learn software development.
somethingreen··on Leaked data reveals Israeli govt campaign to remove pro-Palestine posts on Meta
Corruption of power is an inherent property of power. It is expected that people in power will get corrupted. The methods of power grabs are also fairly universal.

The difference between a corrupt shithole and free world is not in what the government tries to do, but in how the governed respond.

somethingreen··on Zelensky leaves White House after angry meeting
US gets to decide how at least half the fund gets spent, so it's US businesses who get the investment and eventually reap the profits. Ukraine obviously doesn't have the cash to give back and it will never have any without reconstruction. This is one way US gets anything at all back at a pace it has any control over.

But you are correct that without security guarantees there will be no development, no reconstruction, no investments. The deal just does nothing.

somethingreen··on Zelensky leaves White House after angry meeting
The only part of you post that can be steelmanned into what can be considered an argument is "NATO expansion". And that argument falls apart if you actually think and explore it for like 15 minutes. Like, what is NATO and its purpose, how does "expansion" actually work in terms of process, what events took place on the continent between 90s and new NATO members joining, what else could have compelled parties to go through the process and how durable that would be?

And then the rest of your "question" is straight up factually false.

somethingreen··on AnandTech Farewell
The article states fairly clearly that they've lost to clickbait (and, I would guess, increasingly, to AI-slop). I.e. it was advertising that defeated them, not the ad blockers.

The fundamentally corrupt business model has grown big enough to reach its own tail and has been happily chomping on it for a while. Now it's getting to the juicy parts.

somethingreen··on The lie of music discovery algorithms
I feel those are how Pandora and Last.fm (used to?) work respectively. Nowadays everything seems to just put a bunch of tags on a track and suggest you things with the same tags to the tracks you liked. Doesn't even need to match the same combination of tags, just some number of them. The problem is, you probably care about the small, specific tags, and the system cares about wide "popular" tags. If you like a couple niche genre covers of songs that happen to be featured in TV openings/OSTs, you are not getting more songs in that genre - you are getting a bunch of covers and OSTs.
somethingreen··on Taking away iPhone made daughter a better person
I don't know from where came this idea that not having a certain thing will inevitably ruin child's relationship with the parent and cause a collapse of at least some part of their life, but if it was implanted - someone somewhere should have a pure gold Marketer of The Century award on their table.

Also, install Unhook Youtube - it allows reducing YT to pretty much just subscriptions and watch later.

somethingreen··on How Home Assistant is being used to protect from missile and drone attacks
The actual horrifying part is that this is more of a coping tool than a warning system, as its utility as the latter is limited even in Kyiv. If you are not at the point of accepting your fate, but have already given up on attempting to get to actual shelter, you can set this up and only hide from glass shrapnel for an hour when the cruise missiles and killer drones arrive instead of hiding for hours while they fly all over the country through the gaps of air defense.

For anywhere closer to the frontline than Kyiv this is almost completely useless. Travel time of even non-hypersonic ballistics, hell, even of glide bombs is so short you'd be listening to your alarm and the sound of explosions almost simultaneously.

somethingreen··on Florida's DeSantis signs law restricting social media for people under 16
Anonymous verification could be something like OAuth. Government run or certified probably. You'd need to provide an ID to OAuth provider once, but the actual service requesting verification would get as little as your age and email.
somethingreen··on Welcome to the ad-free internet
Modern internet is not in business of producing content and using ads as means of paying for said content production and delivery. Modern internet is in business of selling ads and is using content producers as means of keeping users in front of screens while ads are being shoved into their faces.

So, yeah, internet would be different, but to me it isn't obvious how it would be any worse or less in value.

somethingreen··on YouTube's 'War' on Adblockers Shows How Google Controls the Internet
I believe both options are available. But inserting ads manually is more work on content creator's part, so they often use algo provided.
somethingreen··on TikTok is changing the way books are recommended and sold
The argument, I think, is that these book sales are in big (-er than historically) part driven not by their quality, but by either physical attraction to the author or admiration for their perceived success.
somethingreen··on When to invest in marketing
In somewhat related news Studio Ghibli recently released new last Miyazaki animated movie - The Boy and the Heron - with pretty much no marketing, as in not even a trailer. Its opening box office surpassed that of Spirited Away.
somethingreen··on "About 67k” sites are banned from submission on HN, the list is kept secret
4chan maintains an up to date brief snapshot of internet consensus on represented topics. If I'm not interested in reading walls of text, watching 20 minute youtube essays, trying to discern genuine review from blog spam or infomercial, or doing 3 pass statistical analysis on rating aggregator as it's being brigaded by 3 different parties, and just want to find out what's good/bad/current - I don't really know any other place to go.
somethingreen··on "About 67k” sites are banned from submission on HN, the list is kept secret
I do agree that in general case heavy moderation is preferable and most shitty communities are shitty because of too little moderation, not to much. But the rest of your reasoning gets destroyed by the fact that 4chan is, despite its age, infamy and continuous slide into lunacy, still an order of magnitude more popular website than HN and for a number of purposes, still the best community on the internet.
somethingreen··on Pirate site not impressed by Global DNS blocking order
Again, it's not a hypothetical. The obvious goal of russian propaganda is to erode western support for Ukraine. Without western support Ukraine cannot fight country 4 times its size with infinite oil money. Armed Forces of Ukraine are the only thing standing between Ukrainan nation and its genocide. Russian propaganda succeeds - genocide completes. It's not that hard.
somethingreen··on Pirate site not impressed by Global DNS blocking order
You are talking about hypotethicals and I'm talking about reality of today. If you let actual real innocent people die for your principles - you are not virtuous, the future you build and try to protect is not virtuous. It doesn't matter how correct your principles are.
somethingreen··on Pirate site not impressed by Global DNS blocking order
I used to be a free speech absolutist, but now I believe phylosophical principles exist in service of humanity, not the other way around. If you consider that the goal of russian propaganda is to help Russia succeed in genocide of a 40 million nation, I think it should be fairly easy to handle some censorship, at least until genocide is stopped.
somethingreen··on Twitter has officially changed its logo to ‘X’
Platform features and limitations do matter. Tumblr is considered the original rage mob platform, because the only way to write an extended response to a post was via reblog, so if you ranted about something you hate, you'd put that something in front of your followers to hate too. Good engagement though, so now that feature is everywhere.
somethingreen··on Show HN: Workout.lol – a web app to easily create a workout routine
Please don't do SS as a beginner, unless you are sure lifting heavy is what you want and are positive you'll be able to get through setbacks.

Absolutely, read SS the book and apply its wisdom to corresponding lifts in the bodybuilding program you'll pick up instead. Then, once you are comfortable in the gym, slowly progress to add heavier lifts/sessions into your program. From there decide if you want to prioritize either.

somethingreen··on Show HN: Workout.lol – a web app to easily create a workout routine
That specific suggested program is a 5x3 with 85% effort. People following it will be lifting considerable percentage of their body weight very quickly. Without proper muscle control, joint conditioning, knowledge of how to deal with minor injuries etc. Good program with a trainer, ok for a highly motivated individual with strength goals, terrible for an average beginner.
somethingreen··on Show HN: Workout.lol – a web app to easily create a workout routine
Good job! Couple suggestions:

- Put heavy compound movements before isolation - tiring themselves before compounds is what I see a lot of beginners do.

- Consider encoding exercise selection in URL so it can be bookmarked/shared.

- Dip bars?

somethingreen··on Stop trying to make social networks succeed
> The cost per user to maintain these kinds of platforms is extremely low

> Many people (especially tech people) have an almost psychotic adversity against any kind of paid online services.

I'd guess it is exactly because we know how cheap running base social network is, how little value is in all the feature and fidelity overhead and realize that ultimately we aren't invited to pay for the service, but for the whole bullshit business built on top of it.

somethingreen··on Update on Twitter's Rate Limits
The post itself says that publicly announcing the policy in advance would be detrimental. The policy is now public and they clearly notify the offender of violation. It probably took bot maintainers less than an hour to update their scripts to pause attempts/switch accounts on first failed request. It's the humans who keep trying. Any heuristic they'd want to apply to detect bots would be applied to action history, tuned to acceptable false positive rates and silently rolled out. This circus doesn't align with the statements at all.
somethingreen··on Leo Tolstoy on why people drink (2014)
> Serfs could not be sold to another landlord

They could in Russia. And when direct trade and trade with land were eventually prohibited, they were "rented out" to the same effect.

somethingreen··on What Reddit Got Wrong
Which is why I don't think that moderator strike will have much effect. All these popular trash filled subreddits are moderated. Moderators just don't do that good of a job. Managing a community is hard and I sympathize with people doing it for free and failing. But as result, the number of subreddits that will actually be destroyed by their mods leaving is too small to affect company balance sheet. Vast majority of Reddit is already pretty low quality and its users are fine with it.
somethingreen··on Killing Community
Another aspect I would note is honesty. Because there is no long game, interactions are much more raw. A lot of social meta game like dogwhistling, virtue signaling, sockpuppeting largely loses its meaning and is jarringly obvious when someone brings it verbatim from other communities. The experience is closer to shooting shit with friends than a council meeting of HN or a talent show of Reddit.
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