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vid

1,108 karma · joined August 27, 2013

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vid··on Linux support is coming to Snapdragon X2 series
I had Fujutsu laptops that were far lighter and smaller than Airs, touchscreens in the late 90s, convertibles, 2 in ones, touch bars (Thinkpad). Plenty of designs that don't build around ATX type specs, and things that do (open frame cases, and the vast array of expansion cards that benefit from it). PCs that snap onto a monitor. Things Apple copied or hasn't gotten around to yet then claim then as revolutionary. Apple has more integration and can be more strategic (when they don't need bailing out), but as one company they do far less exploration.
vid··on Stop Killing the Internet: No Digital ID and No Age Verification
That's what "The problem is it's difficult to verify all the promises are being kept, and if they're not it instantly becomes a true dystopia" is about.
vid··on Stop Killing the Internet: No Digital ID and No Age Verification
I'm glad they mention privacy preserving and being voluntary. It's possible to make digital ID that allows selectively revealing attributes without identity, and that could solve problems like bots, socketpuppets, etc along with reasonable age-gating. It could be an ideal internet if it's properly applied. The problem is it's difficult to verify all the promises are being kept, and if they're not it instantly becomes a true dystopia. And sites could use it in inappropriate ways resulting in discrimination.
vid··on Stop handwaving away nearly every petition that gains traction on this website
This is painful because I've worked in public consultation and privacy focused digital identity. I was at a party last week, and a non tech person said it would be better if there was no new tech.
vid··on Who Owns Your ATProto Identity? Hint: It's Probably Not You
What's the incentive for people to participate in file sharing networks? To some degree it's access to a world of free media (same as access to a world of decentralized identities), but to a large degree it's an interesting hobby/excuse to be interested in tech. Some people have racks of hard drives dedicated to hobbies like this, just because it's interesting and is worthy.
vid··on AI Police Reports: Year in Review
Court reports should as much be about human sensibility. I have met plenty of high IQ people who were insensitive.
vid··on Tiny Core Linux: a 23 MB Linux distro with graphical desktop
Not sure why I was downvoted. I legitimately need this for a demo.
vid··on Tiny Core Linux: a 23 MB Linux distro with graphical desktop
OK but I need a Linux with GUI that is less than 1.44MB so it works with my floppy disk.
vid··on Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?
Difficult to say exactly, and that's part of the problem, which is why my comment is about not being dependant on closed foreign companies.
vid··on Datacenters in space aren't going to work
I always assume, unfortunately, that once companies start to get to a certain point they become strategic, and military applications comes into play. They then probably get special consideration when it comes to funding and access. All of Musk's efforts certainly fit this paradigm.
vid··on Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?
I completely support not being dependant on a foreign company (or any company at all, standards FTW) and I don't think there should even be a shadow of possibility that an organization like the ICC could be cut off from services due to a foreign directive, but while I have seen it repeated many times, I think the article's opening assertion is not true; https://www.politico.eu/article/microsoft-did-not-cut-servic...

It is very distressing how many organizations have become dependant on Microsoft and the US cloud for core services. I hope that an unintended consequence of the current US administration's approach is that this becomes less so.

vid··on [dead]
32 GB GDDR6 VRAM through a 256-bit memory bus. Not the fastest, but could shake things up if it is available at this price.
vid··on Evaluating the Infinity Cache in AMD Strix Halo
It can use only 96GB RAM on Windows, on Linux people have allocated up to 120GB. Here's one source: https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/1nmlluu/comment...
vid··on Hacker News – The Good Parts
It's interesting how much Slashdot has receded, but I really like its predicate scoring system, as well as the ability for people to post anonymously.
vid··on Apple Vision Pro upgraded with M5 chip
Maybe I'm missing something, but I think emulating a physical screen in a virtual field of view is the wrong way to do this. Why introduce off-axis viewing and all the other unnecessary weirdnesses? What if the entire field of view were the screen, with head and eye movement as navigation? I guess make the windows transparent so it's less disorienting, and it would at least initially be overwhelming, but past that it could be quite transformative.
vid··on Larry Ellison – 'citizens will be on their best behavior' amid nonstop recording
There are still plenty of people in that group who don't want performance vehicles, highways, McMansions &c. Not only are there people who didn't "benefit" from that environment, there are many people who chose to focus on the needs of the planet or others. A lot of this comes down to urban/suburban/rural divides.

It's just really counterproductive to focus on these easy "majority" stats that break down on examination and contribute to the polarization of society.

vid··on Larry Ellison – 'citizens will be on their best behavior' amid nonstop recording
This is deeply unfair. Plenty of people, including those responsible for more focus on environment and human rights, are in that age group. They are leaders and allies. Ageism is just another way divide society.
vid··on F-Droid and Google’s developer registration decree
KDE Connect is an open source party pack of system to system tools.

Another option is to block ads using Netguard.

vid··on Beyond the Front Page: A Personal Guide to Hacker News
Thank you dang! I guess it felt like a thousand lost points cumulatively in the moment, but knowing some people, especially such a thoughtful person as yourself, appreciate diverse posts makes a high karma score wonderfully inconsequential.
vid··on Beyond the Front Page: A Personal Guide to Hacker News
Maybe they do now, but I remember losing a lot more than that for that comment. I recall it was just after I made a comment that received a lot of upvotes, which were more than wiped out by having a critical view of the ultimate morality of LoTR. Then again, my "karma" currently at 1066 after 12 years goes up and down by points at a time, so a few points lost will be felt more than for people who have tens of thousands of points.
vid··on Beyond the Front Page: A Personal Guide to Hacker News
I don't like the word "karma" because it's often, for better in worse, group affinity (and we are most often trajectories rather than pure insight). I often find minority views and unexplored paths interesting, even when they're obviously wrong.

One time I made a negative comment about Lord of the Rings, and I think I lost a thousand points. Does it really make sense that my karma as a complete user drops so much because of one specific comment? Blasphemy, but maybe Reddit's per-subreddit score makes more sense.

I can promise I don't craft my comments for karma, though many people deserve their high 'karma' because they offer genuinely great contributions.

vid··on Teardown of Apple 40W dynamic power adapter with 60W max
But you make sure to find homes for the replaced devices, right? And that future owner will appreciate longer battery life.
vid··on Britain jumps into bed with Palantir in £1.5B defense pact
The way I see it is the web was supposed to transform into the Semantic Web in 2000. What that means is you can give everything an identifier and create any type of relationship, turning the entire web into a database designed for a type of reasoning. On its own this is pretty benign, and I thought it would be a Good Thing because it would engage people past pages, links, and predetermined content. I imagined it becoming interesting for most people to craft meaningful connections. I also thought it would enable people to be more usefully and grounded-ly critical of big orgs, through projects like Sunlight Foundation and eventually Wikipedia (and now Wikidata, which uses the formal Semantic Web).

But the basic idea of "things" and relationships is easy to conceptualize, in fact those physical evidence boards with people and things connected by association have been around for a long time.

But the formal Semantic Web tech proved too complicated, so it's only really used in areas like science and to a limited degree for SEO. However, companies like Google and Facebook saw the value and built their own "knowledge graphs," and eventually companies like Palintir started selling services built on the ability to create knowledge graphs about anything. There are a few companies that do this on a smaller scale, but Palintir has really taken off, and given (and perhaps because of) the personality of the founders and its policing/military focus, and the fact that everyone is incidentally connected one way or another, it has become a very dangerous tool because it ironically does the opposite of what these tools should do on a large scale, enables big orgs to track individuals, starting perhaps legitimately with crooks and terrorists but now expanding into every field and citizen, meaning everyone can be tracked, predicted, and managed (barring good societal rules). If it isn't stopped, it gives absolute control to whoever is on top.

vid··on David Lynch LA House
Between preserving a 'compound' (presumably by a wealth private person) and converting it back to three properties and homes, I'd want to see the latter.
vid··on KDE is now my favorite desktop
True, but it "came from" KDE and is pretty deeply baked in.
vid··on KDE is now my favorite desktop
KDE is not just more configurable, they pack incredible innovation, like KDE Connect. Not to mention their semantic desktop ideas, which have been watered down post Nepomuk, nearly 20 years later still ahead of its time. It's the best of open source and user choice to have this international and often quite different source of new ideas and abilities.
vid··on Nvidia buys $5B in Intel
That's what I think of, along with favour from their new investment sibling, the US government. AMD doesn't want to be super competitive, they like their margins and being second choice in a hypetastic market. Even though Arc has very low adoption, it was making signs of doing scrappy things, like enabling two 24GB GPUs on one card from third party vendors, which got the hobby/upstart community pretty excited. Ultimately it's not a real market giving the people what they want via competition, it's all contrived by politics and the biggest players.
vid··on PayPal to support Ethereum and Bitcoin
Is it really "usually?" I think that people often think of the worse cases (Argentina, etc). Looking at https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG?most_rec..., the US is at 103, there are 102 countries with worse inflation, and 215 with better. From https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/wld/wor..., the Global Average Inflation rate for 2023 was 5.7%, more than the US but not out of control.

I don't know what the effect is called, but suddenly some unrest in some country or inflation in another calls for creating a whole new money system. It seems unreasonable and I'm a bit suspicious of where it comes from.

vid··on Introduction to GrapheneOS
I'd never thought of ATMs scanning the serial numbers of cash, but that makes sense. However, and maybe this isn't leading practice, but stores just seem to put cash in a collective cash drawer, so they can't exactly tell what cash was used for what (though cash purchase would be rare these days). Are there regulations around logging serial numbers now?
vid··on Introduction to GrapheneOS
Obviously avoiding surveillance can be a bigger red flag than being surveilled.

I use a google account for convenience for some purposes, and host my own email (out of principle, not exactly super interesting material). It would be nice if when I enter the 'duress' password it erased everything except the gmail related activity.

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