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darthelmet

@darthelmet@lemmy.world

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darthelmet ,

Yeah. My fundamental problem with things like UBI, reform/regulation, etc is that it leaves power in the hands of capitalists. Maybe in the short term you get some gains for a broader segment of society like during the height of union power in the US, (recognizing that even that was imperfect because of segregation) but in the long term capitalists can keep using their wealth and power to chip away at those societal gains. The only way to counter this while maintaining capitalism would be perpetual political activism, but that's simply not feasible. People need to sleep, eat, work, and live their lives. Corporations don't. They can hire lobbyists and lawyers to keep chipping away long after everyone else goes home.

darthelmet ,

It’s crazy that this is real. It looks like a comic someone would make to make fun of the idea. Like the fact that they’re watching some guy shoot someone, then the burger commercial comes on and the guy stands up and cheers “McDonalds!” Before sitting back down to watch more of guy shooting other guy.

This is peak “dumb Americans” humor, and they’re using this unironically to describe their business idea.

darthelmet ,

Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.

darthelmet ,

No. But not because AI isn’t gonna get better, but because hype is an ever moving goal post. Nobody gets excited about what’s already possible. Hype lives on vague promises of some amazing future that is right around the corner we promise. Then by the time it becomes apparent that a lot of the claims were nonsense and the actual developments were steadier and less dramatic, they’ve already moved onto new wild claims.

darthelmet ,

Ah yes, because what I want when I tell my computer to stop playing audio and video is for YouTube to play some audio and video of some random thing I didn’t ask for at like 3x the volume of the video I just paused. Thanks google. Such an innovative company!

darthelmet ,

Oh yeah that too. It’s bad enough when YT does the thing where it pulls up suggested videos when you pause.

darthelmet , (edited )

I already adblock. For a good reason. The ads only get worse. I'd be surprised if it didn't turn into that after some time. It's not an unreasonable assumption.

darthelmet ,

Idk, because it’s a joke and I’m not really that invested in the specifics of the latest ad garbage a tech company is pushing? Ads expand to fill all available space. If it can eventually become a video ad, it will. Just give it time. These things never go in the other direction.

darthelmet ,

...Except you knew it was sarcasm. Hence why you made your comment in the first place. Unless you thought I was earnestly praising Google for making new ads?

darthelmet ,

I've tried looking into that but I couldn't get it working. It didn't add any subscriptions to my feed. Going to the site now I don't even seem to be able to click on anything. I just tried disabling my ad blocker and now I can click on stuff, but none of it won't load any videos. Any idea what's up with it? I'd love to be able to switch off YT if I can.

darthelmet ,

“Spends more on groceries than on other categories” so they’re poor. You can just say that. It turns out your money needs to go to keeping you alive before it goes to other things, and if you don’t have much money left after that, you can’t exactly spend more than you spent on food on other things.

Imagine being a consultant and get paid to write completely pointless things like that.

darthelmet ,

Anyone got a recommendation for an open source alternative to discord? Basically just need voice, text, and screen sharing for a group of friends of like, 5-6 at most on at any time.

Even if I gotta pay to host a server, I’d rather do that than pay discord extortion money to avoid ads while still getting my data stolen.

darthelmet ,

For me, I just recognize that AI, or any technology isn't the problem. It's context it exists in, who gets to use it, and how.

We shouldn't have to choose between automating boring or dangerous jobs and letting people live dignified lives free from the fear of poverty. We shouldn't have to choose between having AIs that can generate all sorts of interesting media quickly (even if a lot of it isn't that good yet, it can still serve its purposes, like say, quickly mocking up an idea to see if it's worth going forward with it.) and ruining the livelihoods of the real artists that made it possible. We also shouldn't have to deal wit the mountain of garbage that will be created and shoved in our faces by corporations that don't understand what the limitations of the technology are.

These are all capitalism problems. We should probably do something about that instead of asking dumb questions like if AI can really make "art" or if it's copyright infringement.

darthelmet ,

VR has been a thing for years now and has been getting cheaper over time. I’ve had no interest in using it whatsoever. Clearly the thing that needed to change was for it to get MORE expensive. Thanks Apple! Always giving the customer what they didn’t know they wanted!

darthelmet ,

It strikes me as a mostly non-technical problem. As a method of interfacing with computers/games it just doesn’t offer anything that useful and runs into a lot of practical problems that won’t magically get better with faster processors or smarter software.

darthelmet ,

But this is actually why crypto isn’t a real currency: we haven’t collectively agreed to value it, or at least not in any way that makes it useful as a medium for exchange. Ironically it can’t possibly become a proper currency while speculators are making its price so volatile. The very act of investing in it is making it worthless.

darthelmet ,

I mean sure. Anything someone is using like currency can be called currency. But we’re talking practical terms here. Things we “collectively agree to value.” My WoW gold might be useful for buying potions, but it’s not generally accepted anywhere outside that narrow context. The fewer people who are willing to accept the currency, the less useful, and arguably less “real” it becomes, in so far as currency is defined by its value to others. I could print “me bucks” that I value at $1B USD, but that doesn’t mean much if nobody will give me a sandwich for it.

darthelmet ,

It’s a pretty low bar they have to get over. And hey, they might be even better since the AI would feel the pain of their failures instead of getting a golden parachute.

darthelmet ,

Did anything meaningful come from those leaks? People can try to do stuff to powerful people to reveal their misdeeds, but they've written the laws and are barely bound by the reach of nations in the first place. Few receive consequences for their crimes.

As for existential threats like nuclear weapons, that's it's own can of worms. So yeah, I guess in that respect they're not really in control. But short of nuclear annihilation or the eventual collapse of the human-suitable environment, they seem pretty untouchable.

EDIT: Actually, we even have a great example of the ways they can fly above some world spamming catastrophes: COVID 19 happened. Many died, many more lost their livelihoods, homes, etc. Meanwhile many of the rich got to take private transportation to private places so they could wait out the pandemic in safety while their companies' profits increased and they used that increased wealth to buy up even more capital.

I'd seriously doubt any claims that there's some cabal that deliberately caused it, but they sure do have the means to escape the worst of disasters and even exploit them for profit.

darthelmet ,

This is more language/writing style than math. The math is consistent, what’s inconsistent is there are different ways to express math, some of which, quite frankly, are just worse at communicating the mathematical expression clearly than others.

Personally, since doing college math classes, I don’t think I’d ever willingly write an expression like that exactly because it causes confusion. Not the biggest issue for a simple problem, much bigger issue if you’re solving something bigger and need combine a lot of expressions. Just use parentheses and implicit multiplication and division. It’s a lot clearer and easier to work with.

darthelmet ,

Something about the way this thread was written was kind of confusing, so I don’t really get what their point was. Is it just that the terminology is wrong? Or am I missing something?

Like, whatever you call it, a x b, a*b, ab, and a(b) are all acceptable notations to describe the operation “multiply a and b.” Some are nicer to use than others depending on the situation.

darthelmet ,

Ok, sorry about that. I'm more than happy to update it if you want to give me some constructive feedback on what was confusing about it. Note though that this was the 3rd part in the series, and maybe you didn't go back and read the previous 2 parts? They start here

NP. I'm not really great at giving writing advice, so can't really help there. Something about it just didn't click when I read it. The extra context you linked did help a bit.

As far as the issue: After reading it I think it does just seem to be a matter of terminology mixed with problems that arise with when you need to write math expressions inline in text. If you can write things out on paper or use a markdown language, it's really easy to see how a fractional expression is structured.

8

2(1+3)

is a lot easier to read than 8/2(1+3) even if they technically are meant to be evaluated the same. There's no room for confusion.

And as for distributive law vs multiplication, maybe this is just taking for granted a thing that I learned a long time ago, but to me they're just the same thing in practice. When I see a(x+1) I know that in order to multiply these I need to distribute. And if we fill in the algebraic symbols for numbers, you don't even need to distribute to get the answer since you can just evaluate the parentheses then use the result to multiply by the outside.

Conversely, if I was factoring something, I would need to do division.

ax + a

a

= x+1, thus: a(x+1)

I think we're basically talking about the same thing, I'm just being a bit lose with the terminology.

And while we're at it, the best way to make sure there's no misunderstanding is to just use parenthesis for EVERYTHING! I'm mostly kidding, this can rapidly get unreadable once you nest more than a few parens, although for these toy expressions, it would have the desired effect.

(8)/(2(1+3)) is obviously different than (8/2)(1+3)

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