Signtist

Signtist , 2 days ago

Why the long face?

Signtist , 6 days ago

Is there something I'm missing, or is this letter nothing more than an old-timey version of modern internet comments and conservative "LGBTQ+ people are somehow pedophiles!" claims that are as outlandish as they are unfounded? Like, how is claiming a reverend has secret massive orgies he's clearly not having going to get him to kill himself? He probably just read this, said "Well that's a load of nonsense." and threw it away without another thought.

Signtist , 5 days ago

But they were writing the letter under the guise of just being some guy. I'd believe the government could make the public think I'm some sexual deviant, but not a random person writing a letter to me.

Signtist , 5 days ago

Huh, that's interesting. Though, how do you pick MLK specifically out of a recording of an orgy, let alone definitively enough for it to be damning to his reputation?

Signtist , 9 days ago

I tried so hard as a kid to sing the entire list in one breath, but never made it...

Signtist , 18 days ago

I hate Biden, and I do think that voting isn't going to solve our problems, but do you really think that NOT voting is going to solve our problems? Democrats know that they're always going to me more left than the Republicans, which will be enough for most people, and that very few people are going to try holding out for leftward change that could've been voted in during the primaries but wasn't.

What we need to do is vote for Biden to prevent Trump from destroying the country in 2 weeks flat, then actually force change. Voting works great when the system works, but it's been broken for a while - we need real action now, up to and including a revolution if need be.

Signtist , 18 days ago

All uprising means innocents killed. There were many innocents killed in the American revolution and every other revolution, yet most are celebrated, because we all understand that revolutions only happen because far too many innocents are already being killed, and at least this solution stops that eventually. Revolution as a whole is meant to be a horrifying last resort for people who are left no other choice.

Signtist , 21 days ago

Attack on ramen

Signtist , 21 days ago

My country was invaded by terrorists on September 11th, 2001, killing nearly 3,000 people. We waged war on the entire region the terrorists came from, eventually killing the leader of the group, and nothing changed. All our bombing did nothing, all our sacrifices of innocent people were for naught.

Amazingly, killing a bunch of people who had nothing to do with the terrorists that attacked your country is a bad move, and only serves to create more terrorists as people watch their loved ones die by your hand and grow to hate you.

If your takeaway from America's terrible actions post-9/11 is that we should've been even more brutal and wiped out the entire mostly-innocent population of the middle east, you've got the wrong takeaway.

Signtist , 21 days ago

You'd think so, right?

Signtist , 26 days ago

Well, lets see, I make my company about 3 orders of magnitude more money than they pay me every year, so I suppose if my kids gather 1000 pieces of candy, I'll give one back to them as payment.

Signtist , 29 days ago

Pretty sure they mean one less account someone could track you with, because yeah, staying on top of sending monthly checks for stuff is something I'm very glad I don't have to do anymore. My credit took multiple hits in my younger days from bills I forgot to pay on time.

Signtist , 29 days ago

Sweet Home Carolina! No, wait...

Signtist , 1 month ago

As much as I personally disagree with you, given that all you're thinking about is your own benefit, and not any of the myriad of benefits to the city, the world, the people who can't afford cars, etc, I understand that your outlook is shared by the vast majority of Americans, and can't be ignored if we ever hope to have an effective public transport system.

We're going to need to somehow devise a system so convenient that it actually sounds attractive to the huge amount of people who spend 10%+ of their paycheck on car payments not because they have to, but because they want to.

Signtist , 1 month ago

Hmm... Man seemingly dies, goes into a small space with hard walls, comes back a little while later with the ability to fly... Is Jesus mothman?

Signtist , 1 month ago

I think the biggest issue is that we don't know what to do when we're mad anymore. People think that being mad is all you need - that if you say you're mad, things will change. I often see people get pissed about something, then calm down and move on, as if they somehow achieved something with their anger alone.

I'm hoping that there's some pressure going on under the surface, and people will eventually reach a point where enough anger has built up that they can't take it anymore and they really take action, but from what I've seen, people are so against the concept of acting upon angry feelings that I worry they'll just hold it in until they die.

Signtist , 1 month ago

It fits pretty well for people who are really bad at sex. I mean... maybe it does... who knows? Definitely not me.

Signtist , 1 month ago

Is that loss?

Signtist , 1 month ago

That's not an IBM 5100...

Signtist , 1 month ago

It's important to define was "equal" is in this context. Some people hear "equal" and think they must measure exactly the same in every test, but that's not how the word is being used in this context. It's more that people are so varied from one person to another that no test can truly judge them well enough to differentiate them when it comes to inherent worth.

One person might measure above another in one test, but there are surely many others where the results would be flipped. There are so many different things you could test a person on that in the end none of them really matter; any one measurement is like trying to figure out what an extinct animal looked like from a single tiny piece of a fossil.

That's what the IQ test is doing - it's taking one tiny piece of human intelligence, which itself is one tiny piece of what might be said to make up a person's value, and trying to use that to extrapolate information about them that simply can't be taken from such a 1-dimensional test. It's not worthless, but it needs to be paired with a bunch of other tests before it can really say anything, and even then it wouldn't say much.

Signtist , 1 month ago

This is a great point. The results of an IQ test aren't really measuring a person, they're measuring a byproduct of that person, which is significantly less informative.

Signtist , 2 months ago

Same! I had a few leg surgeries as a kid and liked to cover the scars, but even now that they're faded, I like just picking out some jeans and not having to think about it. I've never really had an issue with my legs getting too hot, either, though where I live it's cold more often than not.

Signtist , 2 months ago

Yeah, we'd be a hell of a lot closer to true equality if groups of people who are among those who need help the most were already truly receiving it.

Unfortunately, the world as it's currently designed only allows people to live well if they take from others, and those who are prepared to do that have long since realized they live a lot longer if they convince the people they're stepping on that it's the guy next to them they should hate, not the guy on top of them.

Signtist , 2 months ago

At the end of the day, it'll just be the people in charge of whatever band of rebels comes out on top, and whatever local faction of them ends up in power across the country as a result of that. That's all the founding fathers of the US were. We like to think of them as heroes, but they and their constituents were just the guys who got to choose who was a traitor and who wasn't. History painted the winners more colorfully than they were, as it always does.

I'm sure the birth of my country was a terrifying time for anyone who wasn't squarely proven to be aligned with the revolution, and the same will be true when people have had enough in modern times as well.

Signtist , 2 months ago

I'm certainly not religious, but I understand that a lot of people use religion to supplement a lacking support network. Yes, they should find healthier ways to receive the support they need, but if you force them to abandon their religion without having another source of support to replace it, they're going to feel very isolated and scared, possibly leading to tears. Especially if their son forced them into that situation and then immediately left, showing complete disregard for their feelings.

Signtist , 2 months ago

Yeah, I could see it being an issue for some less-common type of indicator, but everyone who drives knows what a blinker looks like. Nobody would mistake it for anything other than the right hand turn signal.

Hell, I wouldn't even notice the shape of the light; all you need to notice while driving is the presence of a flashing light on the right side of the vehicle - if you're looking intently enough to notice the shape of the light, you're not paying enough attention to everything else on the road.

Signtist , 2 months ago

If you're driving in the dark with someone whose entire taillight system is out to the point where you can't immediately tell if his blinker is on the left or the right, you need to hit the brakes and put as much distance between you and them as you can... Then get better headlights, because even in that situation you should still be able to see them pretty well just with your own lights.

Signtist , 2 months ago

Dude, if your headlights aren't enough to illuminate what's in front of you, then it's not that an upgrade would be too much, it's that an upgrade would get you to the bare minimum... You literally NEED to be able to see what else is on the road with you at ALL TIMES. You're complaining about the risk that a vaguely arrow-shaped blinker causes in the specific case where you literally can't see the car it's attached to. There's a much bigger risk there, and while it's not your fault, it's definitely something your vehicle needs to have the tools to deal with.

There have been times where I was driving near someone who forgot to turn their headlights on at night. But that's the thing - I knew they were there; I could see their car with the light from my headlights, and even in that dangerously-low vision, I could easy tell which side of their car a blinker came on from. Yes, I got off the road and waited a bit to make sure they weren't near me anymore, but even in the time that I had to drive with them, I had the tools to resolve the situation safely for me.

Signtist , 2 months ago

You think that headlights that can illuminate cars ahead of you are the equivalent to those shitty aftermarket LED floodlights? Really? If your car can't see a dark car on the road with its lights off, you're a much, MUCH bigger idiot than someone with a union jack blinker...

Signtist , 2 months ago

You're absolutely right that circumstances aren't always perfect... Which is exactly why you need a vehicle that can maximize safety in all situations. A union jack blinker is dumb, but if you're EVER in a situation where you can't tell what side of a car a blinker is going off on, you're in a situation where you need to pull off to the side of the road, turn off your car, and call for someone to pick you up.

I've driven for tens of thousands of hours in my lifetime so far, and I've never even been close to a situation like what you've described. Even in a snow squall or dense fog I've always been able to see where other nearby cars on the road are, and where their blinkers are. Not being able to do so goes well beyond "not ideal;" that's well past the line of too dangerous. And the fact that THAT is how extreme your scenario has to get before the union jack becomes a considerable issue shows how much more concerning your scenario is than that one.

Signtist , 2 months ago

I'm not saying to get overly bright lights. I have no idea why you keep talking about overly bright lights. When I'm not driving for work, I drive a '94 corolla with stock headlights. But even with those, I can see dark obstacles that are way ahead of me on the road. I've encountered deer, turtles, pedestrians, and all sorts of random stuff that fell off of people's cars. There's so much on the road that needs to be illuminated, even if all the other cars have working lights. The fact that you can so nonchalantly bring up a scenario in which you can't even see another car, much less all the other stuff that might show up on the roads, makes me highly concerned for the state of your vehicle. That scenario is so insanely rare and dangerous that I can't understand how you can just throw it out there like it's no big deal.

It's NOT NORMAL to be unable to see a car on the road that's close enough to you where you need to see where their blinker are. Please, if you drive in that scenario often enough to bring it up like it's a realistic thing that someone could reasonably encounter more than once in a lifetime, bring your car to a mechanic before you cause a huge accident.

Signtist , 2 months ago

It's amazing how many people I meet who think so highly of the American revolution, but are completely aghast at the idea of fighting against the government now.

Signtist , 3 months ago

My wife loves these. I'd never had one before I met her, and I never will again now that I have. I've never eaten something so bland, yet so sickly sweet, and my sister and I used to eat bowls of straight sugar when our parents weren't around.

Signtist , 3 months ago

I highly doubt that OpenAI or any other AI developer would see any real repercussions, even if they had a security hole that someone managed to exploit to cause harm. Companies exist to make money, and OpenAI is no exception; if it's more profitable to release a dangerous product than a safe one, and they won't get in trouble for it, they'll likely have no issues with releasing their product with security holes.

Unfortunately, the question can't be "should we be charging them for this?" Nobody is going to force them to pay, and they have no reason to do it on their own. Barring an entire cultural revolution, the question instead must be "should we do it anyway to prevent this from being used in harmful ways?" And the answer is yes. Our society is designed to maximize profits, usually for people who already have money, so if you're working within the confines of that society, you need to factor that into your reasoning.

Companies have long since decided that ethics is nothing more than a burden getting in the way of their profits, and you'll have a hard time going against the will of the companies in a capitalist country.

Signtist , 3 months ago

Ah, I see. It's true that these issues cast a negative light on AI, but I doubt most people will even hear about most of them, or even really understand them if they do. Even when talking about brand security, there's little incentive for these companies to actually address the issues - the AI train is already full-steam ahead.

I work with construction plans in my job, and just a few weeks ago I had to talk the CEO of the company I work for out of spending thousands on a program that "adds AI to blueprints." It literally just added a chatgpt interface to a pdf viewer. The chat wasn't even able to actually interact with the PDF in any way. He was enthralled by the "demo" that a rep had shown him at an expo, that I'm sure was set up to make it look way more useful than it really was. After that whole fiasco, I lost faith that the people in charge of whether or not AI programs are adopted will actually do their due diligence to ensure they're actually helpful.

Having a good brand image only matters if people are willing to look.

Signtist , 3 months ago

Oh, I'm sure they'll patch anything that gets exposed, absolutely. But that's just it - there are already several examples of people using AI to do non-brand-friendly stuff, but all the developers have to do is go "whoops, patched" and everyone's fine. They have no need to go out of their way to pay people to catch these issues early; they can just wait until a PR issue happens, patch whatever caused it, and move on.

Signtist , 3 months ago

It's the year 1.7×10^106^. The heat death of the universe is imminent. Still listening to this banger. Modern music sucks - I was born in the wrong generation. Like if you agree.

Signtist , 3 months ago

Well, Bleem went down under the weight of Sony's lawsuits, just like Yuzu did with Nintendo's. Sony didn't even win any of their lawsuites against Bleem in the end, but constant legal trouble is usually too much for small startups to handle. The US's legal system essentially allows any company to duel any other, with legal funds as the weapon of choice, and the bigger weapon wins every time. Legality doesn't matter unless both companies can truly afford to fight the battle to the end, and emulators will likely never have that power. So all we can do as consumers looking for options is to try not to talk about the little guys so much that one of the big guys feels it's necessary to bury them to death with lawsuits.

Signtist , 3 months ago

I get paid way more than my coworkers, and even my supervisor, because when I got hired I immediately made a bunch of random tools in google sheets that only I know how to maintain, and spread them around until everyone was using them. Before long, I was essential to my department, and praised for going "above and beyond" even though I was mostly just dicking around making the tools rather than doing my actual job.

I have 0 coding experience, so the tools are absolutely horrendous behind the scenes, but that just means that they break pretty often, and people are reminded that only I know how to fix them. So, when I went looking around on LinkedIn for other offers after a few years, I eventually got one that was paying way more since it was in a major metro area, and I took it back to my manager to negotiate a 50% raise and a full-remote designation that virtually nobody else in my office is given.

You don't get ahead by working hard, and you don't get ahead by working smart to benefit the company, you get ahead by working smart to benefit yourself. Think about it this way - if you're at the store to buy bananas, and you see that they're selling bananas for $0.05 ea, you'll likely think "Wow, that's a great deal!" and buy a bunch of those bananas at the $0.05 price. You're not going to pay them the price you think would be fair for a banana, you're going to take advantage of the price you're allowed to pay so that you can save money. Your employer sees you - working for less than you're worth - as a $0.05 banana. You're nothing more than a cheap commodity they were lucky to snag on sale.

Signtist , 3 months ago

I turned down the promotion they offered me. It was significantly more work, required me to come back to the office, and only offered a 10% pay raise. It doesn't matter where your "standing" in the company is - if you're indispensable, you can fight for good pay even outside of managerial roles.

Signtist , 3 months ago

That's a fair point. You're correct that my point is that the equation should be balanced, but you're understating the reality with the statement "unfortunately it usually isn't."

I put in 4 hours of work last week, though my employer thinks I put in 40. In those 4 hours of work I started and finished a project for the company that will earn over $100k in gross profit. It ended up being almost exactly 1.5x my yearly salary. Just by putting in the absolute minimum effort I'm already earning my company more in a week than they pay me in a year. And I don't even work for a large company. I'd imagine corporate giants have an even greater divide.

I'm not responsible for worrying about whether I benefit the company; most companies have gotten so good at maximizing profits while minimizing costs that even the most layabout worker earns them significantly more money than they cost to employ. My only thought is about how I can do as little as possible while still ensuring management continues to think I'm being productive.

Signtist , 3 months ago

It's one good thing to have on a resume, sure, but another is the skillset itself. For example, I work with a highly specialized software, so I frequently get messaged with interview offers on LinkedIn because I show up every time employers search for that specific software.

Signtist , 3 months ago

I don't know much about Helium, so I'm a bit confused... What's to stop us from purifying grade 4 further into 4.7 and beyond besides cost? If the only thing stopping us is cost, then it's not inaccurate to say that, regardless of grade, the non-renewable element of Helium is being used in frivolous ways because it makes more money to find profitable ways to use the lower-grade helium than to actually further purify and conserve it for more important usage.

Signtist , 3 months ago

I'm a bit of a noob about privacy, but wouldn't preventing people from knowing you're using Tor be pretty important? I know that, among people who know of Tor, but don't know much about it, the use of Tor alone is generally associated with criminal activity, and often conjures up imagery of worse things than just piracy.

If I were to tell my friends I was thinking of using Tor, and I didn't immediately have a good explanation of what I'd use it for beyond "privacy," then they'd think I was into some nasty shit. I'd imagine the ISPs, and anyone else they might give/sell their info to, would be suspicious of anyone logged to be using Tor.

Signtist , 3 months ago

If it was realistic to expect people to do that, fast food wouldn't be the enormous moneymaker it is.

Signtist , 3 months ago

It doesn't matter if you're blind or not if you're not going to bother to look. Most people simply don't assess their media for underlying messages. They see Professor X as the good guy and Magneto as a bad guy, and don't think any more about them. They don't ask how or why they can be identified as the protagonist/antagonist, they just identify the general alignment and that's it.

Signtist , 3 months ago

Yeah, we can't hear the tone in their voices, but these little jabs would make me concerned if they weren't clearly joking. I'd feel very insecure if my wife were constantly reminding me that she's ready to bolt at a moment's notice if things get the slightest bit tough. We'd never have made it this far if we weren't willing to work things out when the future looks bleak.