Welcome to Incremental Social! Learn more about this project here!
Check out lemmyverse to find more communities to join from here!

@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

aleph

@aleph@lemm.ee

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

I prefer the original version with the Rupert Murdoch allusion.

https://lemm.ee/api/v3/image_proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fqtuqzy10r8g61.jpg

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

Or the EMF generators they carry around with them in their pockets, A.K.A their phones.

aleph , (edited )
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

Sedans were the default back in the 80s, now SUVs and pickups account for around 75% of all new sales (in the US, at least).

So, in terms of what the average car looked like then versus now, it's a perfectly valid comparison.

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

That's not an average representation of the increase in the size of pickup trucks, though.

Just look at the Ford F150:

F150 in 70s versus today

Even if you compare like with like, pickups are around 30% heavier than they were in the 90s, and around 10-15% taller.

https://www.axios.com/2023/01/23/pickup-trucks-f150-size-weight-safety

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

The Maverick is new and while it does buck the trend of "bigger is always better", all it signifies to me is that Ford are diversifying their range of pickups now that they don't make any small cars or sedans in the US any more, which is kind of emblematic of the whole problem.

aleph , (edited )
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

They didn't have crew cabs back then, which is kinda the point.

Edit: correction - they did, but it wasn't until the mid-2000s that they became common.

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

Mastodon has a major engagement problem and I'm not sure why.

It has significantly more users than Lemmy but also manages to feel a lot less social, somehow.

aleph , (edited )
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

It also assumes that the recruiter is even using ChatGPT, when the majority aren't. Companies use tailored ATS to compare the criteria of a job posting to information and keywords contained in a given resume.

Furthermore, AFAIK, these systems do not take inputs or instructions when scanning resumes, so this seems highly unlikely to have any impact whatsoever.

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

While hiding a bunch of likely keywords in the resume to increase the match rate is a good idea in theory, it's a fairly well-known trick by now, so some ATSs may already be programmed to watch for it.

Also, some of them apparently export the text of your resume into a recruiter-friendly spreadsheet, which could get screwed up if you've hidden a few hundred extra words in there.

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

I use FLAC for long-term storage, 256kbps Ogg when transcoding for mobile devices.

Opus is the best lossy codec in terms of efficiency, but many devices/apps don't properly support it.

aleph , (edited )
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

In the video, the CEO specifically claims that the device contains a proprietary AI that can do all sorts of things, when in fact it appears to be ChatGPT with a bunch of hard-coded scripts slapped on top. If that's indeed the case, then it would be an obvious scam and most likely fraud.

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

I use https://huggingface.co/chat/, which is an open source alternative to ChatGPT.

Their privacy policy is here.

aleph , (edited )
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

It depends how you're using the term 'genocide'.

While the CCP might not necessarily be intentionally mass-killing ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang region, there is very strong evidence that they are doing their utmost to stamp out Uyghur culture and forcibly assimilate them. In the process, people are being incarcerated, tortured, and raped, amongst other things.

It could be argued that this is a crime under international law, where the definition of genocide includes

intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group".

Or you could argue it is ethnic cleansing instead. Either way, it's a lot more serious than just overzealous "counter-terrorism" measures.

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

Grace Ocean and Synergy filed a petition on April 1 in Maryland federal court to limit their liability from the crash. If the court grants it, the companies’ liability could be limited to the present value of the ship, which they estimated to be $42.5 million, according to the petition. Source

Which would leave the tax payer footing the bill for the remaining $1.46B cost of reconstruction. Classic.

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

Except Debian is neither interesting nor innovative.

aleph , (edited )
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

Also, for people on distros that don't have an OOTB solution like OpenSUSE have, I recommend snapper and btrfs-assistant. You just install both packages, open the assistant GUI and create a profile for your root partition.

You can then also install a snapper plugin for your package manager, if one exists (I know DNF and pacman have one), which automatically take pre/post snapshots like OpenSUSE does, so you can quickly roll back if something goes wrong after a particular update/install/removal.

I've been using the above with EndeavourOS for a year now and it's come in very handy on a couple of occasions.

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

On the flip side, I don't consider OpenSUSE, Fedora, or Debian to be all that beginner-friendly either.

aleph , (edited )
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

I disagree.

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

As an addendum, the idea that a vaccine can produce side effects years down the line is a myth. A vaccine is a one-time payload - if any side effects are going to crop up, they will inevitably be in the few weeks following vaccination as your body processes it. After that, if nothing has gone awry, you're good.

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

I often think back and wonder about the 5G = COVID people on Twitter and r/conspiracy. Where are they now? Do they even feel in the slightest bit silly? Were they even real? So very many questions.

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

Are you LARPing as a Fox News viewer, or is that a genuine question?

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

Never underestimate the power of Poe's Law.

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

That's no justification for selling a >$1,000 MacBook Pro with only 8GB of RAM, though. It's specifically marketed as a professional-class machine.

aleph , (edited )
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

It's clear that the M3 MacBooks are noticably slower with 8GB or RAM than with 16GB for various tasks, though, including photo & video editing, and 3D rendering.

Sure, 8GB gets the job done but why are Apple selling "professional" grade laptops in this price range that clearly require additional memory to reach peak performance?

aleph , (edited )
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

I was also banned from worldnews@lemmy.ml and had comments removed for "Re-enforcing neo-liberal cultural hegemony" and "Believes in objectivity in media lmao".

My offense? Saying that a report sourced solely from an eye-witness account via Al-Jazeera regarding another massacre of civilians and aid workers in Gaza needed to be corroborated by further evidence before we regard it as hard fact. The irony is I'm very much pro-Palestinan.

According to the mods, however, that apparently means I have to throw all media literacy out of the window and blindly accept any anti-Israel claims without question.

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

Exactly what prompted me to comment, since the blog that sourced Al-Jazeera also added certain details that didn't seem based on anything like actual evidence. Although I admit it wasn't anything near as extreme as the IDF canibalizing babies.

If we must call out pro-Israel propaganda that makes outrageous, unsubstantiated claims like that, we must do the same for pro-Palestinian propaganda, regardless of how we personally feel about the conflict.

aleph , (edited )
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

Darn, for a minute there I thought this app might allow you to add pages to rearrange pages in existing documents like Notebloc. So few scanner apps offer this, but it's super useful.

Edit: BTW I was talking about Android, plus if you read the comment chain below, this one does! Just long press the page number icon and drag to move.

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

I just figured that out, thanks!

From what I can see, there's no way to rearrange the order of pages, though, right?

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

Thanks, that does look nifty, but unfortunately I was thinking specifically for Android.

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

Lol omg. I tried long pressing everywhere except the page number icon, which I only tapped, and nothing happened. I'm clearly having one of those days.

That's cool, though. I haven't been able to find any FOSS app that has this feature before.

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

And 24/192 vinyl rips.

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

It's funny that this article doesn't mention the one company that pretty much single handedly created the need for this legislation in the first place.

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

This. People assume that because it's "compressed" it must sound flatter, less dynamic, or just vaguely worse than uncompressed audio, despite the fact that audio compression specifically uses psychoacoustic models to remove the bits of data that our human ears and brains cannot hear to begin with.

Expectation bias is a helluva drug.

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

This is correct, although it's not the bass that is limited on vinyl; it's the dynamic range compression (or 'loudness') in general.

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

Don't forget digital music stores like Qobuz and www.bandcamp.com.

Artists get more money when you buy their music outright instead of stream it.

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

Yup, although that doesn't stop some weirdos out there claiming that CDs sound better than FLAC.

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

Seriously? Fucking hell, that's depressing.

aleph , (edited )
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

Killer samples do happen, sure but vorbis at Q9? I'm highly dubious. That track in particular just sounds badly recorded to begin with. If you have that same version in FLAC i would be interested to see some ABX test results or test it myself.

For archival purposes, though, I agree FLAC is the way to go.

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

Lol, I'm not saying that brickwalling the mix to achieve a certain effect isn't a thing, but at the extreme levels of compression and clipping apparent on that track, it's unlikely that a FLAC would sound even remotely different. Apparently the band agreed - in 2020 they issued a remaster which seems noticeably less crushed:

Dynamic range comparison screenshot

Incidentally, I saw Sunn O))) live once. I can still feel my bowels shake.

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

Nah they got it right the first time.

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

Here's the full complaint, for those who want to read the whole thing.

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

It seems like Israel don't just take their military equipment from the U.S. but also their treatment of non-combatants. Abu Ghraib, anyone?

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

Agreed, and additional thanks to you, @sunaurus, for all your ongoing contributions to the project and for being such a good instance admin as well.

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

But 24-bit audio is useless for playback. The difference is literally inaudible. In fact, the application of dynamic range compression during the mixing/mastering process has a far greater impact on perceptible audio quality than sample rate or bitrate does (the placebo effect notwithstanding).

If you care about audio quality, seek out album masters and music that is well-recorded and not dynamically crushed to oblivion. The bitrate isn't really all that important, in the greater scheme of things.

aleph , (edited )
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

Literally the only difference between 16 bit and 24 bit is that the latter has a lower noise floor, which is really only useful for sound production - It doesn't translate to any increase in meaningful detail or dynamic range when dealing with playback.

16-bit was chosen as the defacto standard for CDs and digital music precisely because it contains more than enough dynamic range for human hearing.

Any difference your gf hears is due to the placebo effect rather than any inherent difference in the actual audio.

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

Have you ever done an actual double blind listening test? You'd be surprised. Even with good listening equipment it can be very challenging.

Have a go on the 128 kbps AAC test on this page and see how you do:

https://abx.digitalfeed.net/spotify.html

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

As a recovering audiophile, I can safely say the hobby is heavily based around FOMO (the nagging doubt that something, somewhere, in your audio chain is causing a loss of audio quality), and digital audio is no exception. Not only is 320kbps more than enough, even with $1000s worth of equipment, but with codecs more efficient than MP3 (especially Opus), even 128kbps can be good enough to sound identical to lossless.

If you have plenty of local storage then 16-bit FLAC is ideal, but if you are just streaming then you really don't need a lossless service except to keep the FOMO at bay.

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

Presumably it was using an older/outdated codec then. With modern encoders, especially with codecs like Opus, Ogg, and Apple's AAC, the vast majority of listeners find 128kbps to be transparent, and certainly nowhere near night-and-day when compared to lossless.

Check out the results of this public listening test here:

https://listening-test.coresv.net/results.htm

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • random
  • incremental_games
  • meta
  • All magazines
    •