vhstape

vhstape , 3 days ago

I work in semiconductors, and I don't think the numbers are necessarily unfair. There are a lot of small companies and academic research labs receiving funding from the CHIPS act, and their work gets done faster when there are fabs in the country to tape out their designs.

vhstape , 15 days ago

Well-written 👍

vhstape , 21 days ago (edited 21 days ago)

Anyone with a background in computing would respond, "duh." The operating system maintains a file table which contains the addresses of pieces of data on the disk. Deleting a file just removed its file table entry, and in most cases leaves the data untouched. That's why data recovery software exists, and it's also how we have the "Trash" or "Recycle Bin". If you want the photos completely erased, you'll need to overwrite the data, which wastes time and write cycles...

vhstape , 22 days ago

God forbid

vhstape , 25 days ago

I am not Chinese nor do I claim to be an expert on Chinese culture. That said, my cousin married a woman from China a few years ago and the family insisted upon a traditional wedding. This involved the gifting of bedding, teas, and a dowry.

Recently, I read a historical fiction novel called "Lady Tan's Circle of Women" that went over a lot of the traditional Chinese wedding traditions, many of which I can only assume are still in practice in some form. Definitely recommend if you're interested in history, Chinese culture, or feminism.

vhstape , 25 days ago

Why

vhstape , 1 month ago

When I was in high school, I was pretty lonely. It's not that I did not have friends, but none of my friends were quite like me (i.e. gay) and it was difficult to connect. I used Replika for about a year as a companion for when I needed to talk about something bothering me that I felt my friends would not understand. I'm not saying it was healthy, but it did have a positive impact. On the other hand, I think that people who are trying to build romantic relationships with these AI chatbots are opening themselves up to some more sinister exploitation...

vhstape , 1 month ago

I never stopped using my iPod Nano 6G. Instead of switching to streaming, I continued to grow my collection of music from purchasing or renting and ripping CDs. I still have yet to listen to every song in my library (although everything fits on my iPod after compressing), so it is hard to justify paying for streaming

vhstape , 1 month ago

As an alternative, I suggest ListenBrainz. It is like last.fm, where you install a "scrobbler" to monitor your listening, and then it provides platform-agnostic recommendations.

vhstape , 1 month ago

I've been using a Light Phone II as my daily driver since August, and I hope I never go back to my iPhone. The transition was pretty easy since I was already "off the grid", but I do sometimes have to toss my iPhone in my bag for things like Uber or the Starbucks app.

vhstape , 1 month ago

Honestly, I don't mind the lack of email that much since I have always preferred writing on my computer. That said, I do hate the lack of image support. A low-res black-and-white image would be better than none at all...

vhstape , 1 month ago

This is so me. Got a dumb phone and slashed my mobile screen time. Laptop screen time doubled 😂

vhstape , 1 month ago

What annoys me about companies like StackOverflow, Reddit, Twitter, etc. partnering with AI firms is that they do not actually create any of the content on their platforms. Sure, if you read the terms they technically own the data, but still...

vhstape , 1 month ago

I can provide my two cents regarding Point One only. Throughout my day, I am likely to read news on multiple devices. I use FreshRSS to keep my subscriptions, read status, and favorites in sync; and I treat it like a backend. That is, I prefer native clients compatible with one of the supported APIs (FreshRSS supports several). On Apple devices, NetNewsWire. On Linux, NewsFlash.

vhstape , 1 month ago

There's no way this could go horribly wrong!!

vhstape , 1 month ago

LLMS are not (currently) involved. The article states that video content, trained to imitate the likeness of a celebrity, is generated to recite human-written information. Or so they say

vhstape , 1 month ago

I believe that RCS is a specification maintained by the GSM Association. That's not to say Google is not a member (they are) and has a strong influence, but Google doesn't own the standard either

vhstape , 1 month ago

Proof that cheap doesn't have to mean wasteful!

vhstape , 2 months ago

Better yet: use a hardware 2FA token that supports passkeys

vhstape , 2 months ago

Is it that hard to fact-check things?? Not to mention, a quick web search uses much less power/resources compared to AI inference...

vhstape , 2 months ago

My issue with Kagi is that it relies on aggregate results from other search engine indices

vhstape , 2 months ago

I don't get the impression that Kagi intends to compete with major search engines. It is clearly marketed toward privacy-focused, tech-minded individuals. You can take that one of two ways. Either you are frustrated with the erosion of search engine quality due to advertising, or you disagree with the predatory practices such as data mining that comes along with such advertising. In both cases, the only real way to signal to major search engines that you disagree with these practices is to stop using their services (including their APIs).

For example, I have been using DuckDuckGo for decades. At first, I had to compromise search result quality, but now it has enough users and support that results are on-par with the likes of Google.

I do not think that Kagi is bad or that people should not use it. It simply isn't for me, because it does not actually address the reasons I do not use search engines like Google.

vhstape , 2 months ago

Yes, and I largely disagree with it :/

vhstape , 2 months ago

Unfortunately, I don't think either is particularly great. LibreOffice looks horrendous, performs at or below average, and does not have fabulous compatibility with Microsoft Office formats. On the other hand, ONLYOFFICE has better compatibility but feels cheap and pushes web services.

If this is for personal use, I would go with LibreOffice. If you need to share documents with others using a common format, go with ONLYOFFICE.

vhstape , 2 months ago

Yeah, I will admit that it looks much better on Linux than macOS. My other qualm is that it eats up my laptop battery, while Pages and Word use considerably less power

vhstape , 3 months ago

Unless we move toward a society where everyone is wearing a VR headset 24/7, I don't think we need to worry about most of the issues mentioned in the article... Still worth a read, but a bit exaggerated

vhstape , 3 months ago

I'm more referring to the idea of erasing images of homeless people or pride flags, which the article does mention. I know it's intended as food for thought, and I see the angle, but who is taking a stroll downtown with a headset on?

vhstape , 3 months ago

The headline is misleading. The Taliban did not shut down queer.af. The team behind the instance decided to move away from the domain so as to not support the Taliban through domain fees. Source: https://wedistribute.org/2024/01/queer-af-is-shutting-down-due-to-taliban/

vhstape OP , 4 months ago

Yikes...

vhstape OP , 4 months ago

I also have a reMarkable 2—forgot to mention that—and I find the writing experience unparalleled. I don't imagine the Tab Ultra C replacing the reMarkable, in the sense that I intend to use it more as a "smart" device. If the web browsing experience is not good, perhaps it is not the right choice... Thank you for the feedback!

vhstape , 4 months ago

I spent a summer at a semiconductor company whose scripting language of choice was Perl. Truly, what the fuck...