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sugar_in_your_tea

@sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works

Mama told me not to come.

She said, that ain’t the way to have fun.

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sugar_in_your_tea ,

IDK, coming from NYC to TX is probably a net upgrade in a lot of ways, especially if you're a small business owner or work for one. The laws in NYC are just so bonkers.

Then again, I'm uninterested in moving to TX either. I'm pretty happy here in Utah, and I may move back home to Seattle, WA at some point, or maybe we'll move to NC. But I'm not moving anywhere further south than NC.

sugar_in_your_tea ,

That's really dumb. Here in Utah, you sign up online, and you can get a mail ballot online too. I have never actually voted in person, I just fill out my ballot and drop it in one of the collection bins a few days before the election. We can even track our ballot to ensure it gets processed.

Why overcomplicate it? I don't need to take time off to vote, and I can take my time researching the candidates. Voting should be easy.

Netflix Windows app is set to remove its downloads feature, while introducing ads (www.techradar.com)

Netflix has managed to annoy a good number of its users with an announcement about an upcoming update to its Windows 11 (and Windows 10) app: support for adverts and live events will be added, but the ability to download content is being taken away....

sugar_in_your_tea ,

I'm going to try doing that. My wife watches it a bit though, and my kids watch it occasionally. I'm thinking I'll set aside $200 to buy whatever series they want, and if that lasts us the year, we've come out ahead.

I need to do the same for Disney+. We really don't watch either enough...

sugar_in_your_tea ,

And those added pages were probably just as worthless as the ones they replaced.

sugar_in_your_tea ,

Why? AMD doesn't make phone chips, yet they're dominating Intel. Likewise for NVIDIA, who is at the top of the chip maker list.

The problem isn't what market segments they're in, the problem is that they're not dominant in any of them. AMD is better at high end gaming (X3D chips especially), workstations (Threadripper), and high performance servers (Epyc), and they're even better in some cases with power efficiency. Intel is better at the low end generally, by that's not a big market, and it's shrinking (e.g. people moving to ARM). AMD has been chipping away at those, one market segment at a time.

Intel entering phones will end up the same way as them entering GPUs, they'll have to target the low end of the market to get traction, and they're going to have a lot of trouble challenging the big players. Also, x86 isn't a good fit there, so they'll also need to break into the ARM market a well.

No, what they need is to execute well in the spaces they're already in.

sugar_in_your_tea ,

Yup, they need to fund engineering. That's what AMD did, and it turns out that's a good strategy. Companies need to provide value to customers, and then marketing's job is easy.

sugar_in_your_tea ,

That has pretty much nothing to do with Intel's decline though. Losing the enthusiast market to AMD was a small blow, the bigger blow was losing a lot of server market to AMD. And now AMD is starting to dominate in pretty much every CPU market there is, outside of the very low power devices where ARM is dominant and expanding.

sugar_in_your_tea ,

Yes, and 5 years ago, they had very little of it. I'm talking about the trajectory, and AMD seems to be getting the lion's share of new sales.

sugar_in_your_tea ,

I don't really see ARM as having an inherent advantage. The main reason Apple's ARM chips are eating x86's lunch is because Apple has purchased a lot of capacity on the next generation nodes (e.g. 3nm), while x86 chips tend to ship on older nodes (e.g. 5nm). Even so, AMD's cores aren't really that far behind Apple's, so I think the node advantage is the main indicator here.

That said, the main advantage ARM has is that it's relatively easy to license it to make your own chips and not involve one of the bigger CPU manufacturers. Apple has their own, Amazon has theirs, and the various phone manufacturers have their own as well. I don't think Intel would have a decisive advantage there, since companies tend to go with ARM to save on costs, and I don't think Intel wants to be in another price war.

That's why I think Intel should leverage what they're good at. Make better x86 chips, using external fabs if necessary. Intel should have an inherent advantage in power and performance since they use monolithic designs, but those designs cost more than AMD's chiplet design. Intel should be the premium brand here, with AMD trailing behind, but their fab limitations are causing them to trail behind and jack up clock speeds (and thus kill their power efficiency) to stay competitive.

In short, I really don't think ARM is the right move right now, unless it's selling capacity at their fabs. What they need is a really compelling product, and they haven't really delivered one recently...

sugar_in_your_tea ,

Huh, TIL. It looks like they basically put Radeon cores into it.

sugar_in_your_tea ,

Yes, it's certainly more complicated than that, but the lithography is a huge part since they can cram more transistors into a smaller area, which is critical for power savings.

I highly doubt instruction decoding is a significant factor, but I'd love to be proven wrong. If you know of a good writeup about it, I'd love to read it.

sugar_in_your_tea ,

Oh no... anyway.

Whether my car can play games has no bearing on whether I'd buy that car. So, this is a nothingburger.

sugar_in_your_tea ,

Cool, now do the API and I'll consider not actively avoiding your website.

sugar_in_your_tea ,

Same.

I'm not a huge fan of lemmy, but I do like it better than what Reddit has become. If I had to pick today's lemmy or Reddit from 5-ish years ago, I'd go with Reddit every time. But that's not the options in front of me, so I stick with lemmy.

I also post a lot, probably too much, because I want to see more content, especially higher effort content. I posted pretty rarely on Reddit, so this is certainly more exhausting to use. However, there's enough people to make it worthwhile, so I'm still giving it the old college try.

sugar_in_your_tea ,

I don't really care how much Steve gets out of it, I just want a not-terrible platform. So I'm cool with a golden parachute if that's what it takes to get rid of him and get someone better for the platform.

That's not happening though, so I'll just avoid the platform.

sugar_in_your_tea ,

Yeah, Discord is the worst for something where history is useful. It's pretty decent for chat though, but that's about it. But even then, I'd rather use Matrix.

sugar_in_your_tea ,

They're going to do that regardless.

I want an open API so I can use third party apps. I'm totally fine with them requiring an API token or something with a sensible rate limit to limit abuse by parties like openai (they'll have to go through a sales contract).

[Thread, post or comment was deleted by the author]

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    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    Matrix.

    It still sucks, but it's at least FOSS, and you can host your own instance if you want full control.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    Why?

    My co-workers have tried to convince me, but all I've seen are a handful of funny and weird results. I haven't actually seen a real productivity improvement.

    In fact, I recently did an interview and let the candidate use copilot, and they pretty much bombed because they relied way too much on the tools. Copilot made an obvious mistake, I had to point it out, then they repeated that exact same mistake later on without noticing. LLMs like copilot make stuff up and get stuff wrong enough to be a serious issue.

    I personally don't see much value in it, and I see a large potential for relying too heavily on it and making obvious mistakes. Then again, I haven't personally used it, so maybe I don't know what I'm missing. There's no harm in trying it out, just be skeptical and don't drink the Kool aid. Then again, I'm a Linux using nutjob that would probably be yelling at clouds if I didn't work indoors.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    Just know that it won't make your games all of a sudden work well, you're still working with the same, old hardware.

    But yeah, it's very lightweight, and it honestly probably doesn't matter what desktop you use, they should all be fine on modern-ish hardware. My laptop is all APU from 2018-ish, and it is still very usable, and my kids still love playing Minecraft on it.

    A full install is something like 10-15GB. Any desktop should use <1GB RAM (usually like 300MB or so). You just don't get the bloat from MS and Apple, things just tend to need fewer resources.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    The antitrust lawsuit had a huge impact. It's just that pretty much everyone involved has moved on and been replaced, so we're seeing them trying the same thing again.

    sugar_in_your_tea , (edited )

    I'm thinking your job would be the one to do that. A lot of companies subsidize transit passes, the problem is usually there aren't enough routes, so employees don't use them.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    Exactly. Mass transit responds to what people say they want (wider roads), whereas hospitals and large companies respond to costs (i.e. cost of more parking vs a shuttle). I'm not saying transit should be privatized, I'm saying private transit filling in the gaps of mass transit is generally a good thing.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    IDK, I think it can be an effective tool against trolls because it wastes the time they'd otherwise spend harassing people.

    But that's not what RFK is, he's a legitimate candidate for president and should be given the same consideration other candidates are, not shadowbanned because someone doesn't like his message.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    So just don't commit thought crime against Big Brother and you'll be good?

    When a platform gets to a certain size, we need to consider its effects on society as a whole. Hiding undesirable content and promoting desirable content can be a monopolistic practice for the org to get outsized impact on things it finds important. Whether that's "good" or "bad" depends on how closely that org's interests are aligned with the average person.

    I, for one, do not think Meta's interests are aligned with my own, so I think it's bad that they have so much sway that they can steer the public discourse through their ranking algorithm. Shadowbanning is just another way for the platform to get their desired message out.

    Instead of trying to restrict yourself to only posting what the platform wants you to post, you should be seeking alternatives that allow you to post what you think is valuable to post.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    Yeah, I'm no fan of RFK, but I would much rather live in a world where people like RFK can speak their mind instead of this one where Meta gets to decide whose voices are heard. It's pretty easy to ignore a crazy person, it's hard to find worthwhile content the major players don't want you to find.

    So don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, having a free society means we'll have to deal with people like RFK every so often.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    Like any tool, it's bad when used improperly. Shadowbanning should be used to waste trolls' time; it's especially effective for cheaters in MMOs (lump the cheaters together so they don't bother anyone). Shadowbanning shouldn't be used to control the discussion, like silencing an unpopular or undesirable (to the platform) individual.

    I think we're doing too much of the latter, but that doesn't mean shadowbanning as a tool is morally bankrupt.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    That's fine. But he shouldn't be silenced. If he gets some traction, debate him to show voters what's wrong with his ideas, that really shouldn't be hard.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    I'd love to see Trump and RFK Jr. debate. Two old nutjobs duking it out, with Biden just sitting back eating popcorn.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    I don't know, I guess we'll need to see how the lawsuit turns out. I'm sure RFK Jr. will bring some evidence that'll help us understand what Meta may or may not have done.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    The most recent version now includes a lot more extensions, and I think you can get even more with the nightly build. If you really can't find what you need, try one of the Firefox forks, which often have even better extension support.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    Yup. We don't allow AI tools on our codebase, but I allow it for interviews. I honestly haven't been impressed by it at all, it just encourages not understanding the code.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    I literally did an interview that went like this:

    1. Applicant used copilot to generate nontrivial amounts of the code
    2. Copilot generated the wrong code for a key part of the algorithm; applicant didn't notice
    3. We pointed it out, they fixed it
    4. They had to refactor the code a bit, and ended up making the same exact mistake again
    5. We pointed out the error again...

    And that's in an interview, where you should be extra careful to make a good impression...

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    Instructions unclear, aluminum powder stuck in my naughty bits.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    Wow, how do you suck that bad at aiming?

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    That's how a lot of people handle deleted data in database, it's literally just a flag. That's why there's a recommendation to edit Reddit posts before deleting them, to ensure they're actually overwritten so they can't just be restored.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    It was sort of true in the past, but not anymore. I think writing random data once is probably fine, even for most state level actors.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    Well, there's a non-zero chance they were too lazy to implement that.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    Yes, that's certainly possible, but it's also out of my control. I have basically three options:

    1. Delete account - we know this doesn't delete comments
    2. Delete comment - "seems" to delete comments, but we've seen comments get restored - so probably using a "deleted" flag
    3. Edit comment with nonsense and when delete - should poison comment if they're just using the deleted flag

    That's it. There's no guarantee it works, but it has a much higher chance of working than the other two.

    And there's a good chance they delete old backups. Hosting every edit is expensive, so there's a decent chance they clean up old data after some months.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    Warning, here's the cynic in me coming out.

    The NY times has a vested interest in discrediting AI, specifically LLMs (what they seem to be referring to) since journalism is a huge target here since it's pretty easy to get LLMs to generate believable articles. So how I break down this article:

    1. Lean on Betterridge's law of headlines to cast doubt about the long term prospects of LLMs
    2. Further the doubt by pointing out people don't trust them
    3. Present them as a credible threat later in the article
    4. Juxtapose LLMs and cryptocurrencies while technically dismissing such a link (then why bring it up?)
    5. Leave the conclusion up to the reader

    I learned nothing new about current or long term LLM viability other than a vague "they took our jerbs!" emotional jab.

    AI is here to stay, and it'll continue getting better. We'll adapt to how it changes things, hopefully as fast or faster than it eliminates jobs.

    Or maybe my tinfoil hat is on too tight.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    I honestly don't understand why they didn't just use RFID for the grocery stores. Or maybe they are, idk, but it's cheap and doesn't require much training to apply. That way you can verify the AI without needing much labor at all.

    Then again, I suppose that point wasn't to make a grocery service, but an optical AI service to sell to others.

    That said, a lot of people don't seem to understand how AI works, and the natural response to not understanding something is FUD.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    The purpose of the RFID wouldn't be to catch thieves, but to train the AI. As the AI gets better at detecting things, you reduce how many of the products are tagged. I'm seeing something like $0.30/ea on Amazon, ~$0.10/ea on Ali Express. I'm guessing an org like Amazon could get them even cheaper. I don't know how well those work on cans, so maybe it's a no-go, IDK.

    Barcodes could probably work fine too, provided they're big enough to be visible clearly to cameras.

    Regardless, it seems like there are options aside from hiring a bunch of people to watch cameras. I'm interested to hear from someone more knowledgeable about why I'm wrong or whether they're actually already doing something like this. I don't live near any of the stores, so I can't just go and see for myself (and are they still a thing?).

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    Eh, someone needs to be the first to exit the matrix.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    There's something on the tip of my tongue. Something like ____ Zuck. Something that rhymes, and expresses how I feel about him and his platform. I just can't quite put my finger on it...

    😉

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    I think I'm closer to 10 years, but I do remember needing to recreate one for a few weeks while I worked with a few Facebook employees on a project.

    Anyway, I don't even know what Facebook looks like these days. My contacts occasionally mention it, but nothing important seems to happen there.

    Just delete your account. It's not a big deal, it's just toxic people showing off for other toxic people.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    Fortunately, my area has a popular classifieds at a local newspaper website, so I've never even looked at Facebook marketplace.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    That sounds roughly about when I bailed on it.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    Chats are not the most basic use case for Teams, meetings are. And meetings work pretty well.

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