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  • It's mostly the color of the light that's the problem right? Our brains register the cooler light in the contrasting darkness as blindingly bright as opposed to warmer incandescent light, despite both lights having the same measured brightness (lumens).

  • There's a reason we aren't as harsh on the Steam Deck. Actually, a couple.
  • Yeah, you can, haha (almost like the switch). You stick it in a dock with HDMI out and add a controller by USB, USB dongle, or Bluetooth.

  • There's a reason we aren't as harsh on the Steam Deck. Actually, a couple.
  • And I can install games from other store fronts if I want.

  • Trying to build viable third parties by voting for them in presidential elections is like trying to build a third door in your house by repeatedly walking into the wall where you want the door to be.
  • They have a first past the post parliamentary system, derived from the UK. The US has a separation of powers between its executive branch and its legislative branch.

    The way to build third parties is by reforming the democratic system state by state to have a ranked choice system open non-partisan primary to select the top two final candidates followed by a general election between these two candidates for each election to elect a representative or president.

    It helps mitigate the flaws of the ranked choice system to have it stop at the final two and let the voters choose between these final two choices. It helps get candidates that are at the center of voter opinion distribution.

    This means the hard work of mobilizing together and working across partisan lines, recruiting the majority of Americans that are pro-democracy in each and every state.

  • Jill Stein is a plant to nobody's surprise.
  • IMO, it should be two rounds. The first (the "primary" round) should be ranked choice voting to pick the top two and the second should be majority vote between these final two choices.

  • OpenAI Pleads That It Can’t Make Money Without Using Copyrighted Materials for Free
  • Yeah, all training ends up being pattern learning in some form or fashion. But acceptable patterns end up matching logic. So for example if you ask ChatGPT a question, it will use its learned pattern to provide its estimate of the correct ouptut. That pattern it's learned encompasses/matches logical processing of the user input and the output that it's been trained to see as acceptable output. So with enough training, it should and does go from simple memorization of individual examples to learning these broad acceptable rules, like logic (or a pattern that matches logical rules and "understanding of language") so that it can provide acceptable responses to situations that it hasn't seen in training. And because of this pattern learning and prediction nature of how it works, it often "hallucinates" information like citations (creating a novel citation matching the pattern its seen instead of the exact citation that you want, where you actually want memorized information) that you might ask of it as sources for what its telling you.

  • OpenAI Pleads That It Can’t Make Money Without Using Copyrighted Materials for Free
  • I'm less worried about a system that learns from the information and then incorporates it when it has to provide an answer (ex. learning facts) than I am of something that steals someone's likeness, something we've clearly have established people have a right to (ex. voice acting, action figures, and sports video games). And by that extension/logic, I am concerned as to whether AI that is trained to produce something in the style of someone else, especially in digital/visual art also violates the likeness principle logically and maybe even comes close to violating copyright law.

    But at the same time, I'm a skeptic of software patents and api/UeX copyrighs. So I don't know. Shit gets complicated.

    I still think AI should get rid of mundane, repetitive, boring tasks. But it shouldn't be eliminating creative, fun asks. It should improve productivity without replacing or reducing the value of the labor of the scientist/artist/physician. But if AI replaced scribes and constructionists in order to make doctors more productive and able to spend more time with patients instead of documenting everything, then that would be the ideal use of this stuff.

  • OpenAI Pleads That It Can’t Make Money Without Using Copyrighted Materials for Free
  • Isn't copyright about the right to make and distribute or sell copies or the lack there of? As long as they can prevent jailbreaking the AI, reading copyrighted material and learning from it to produce something else is not a copyright violation.

  • This month in Servo: console logging, parallel tables, OpenXR, and more! - Servo, the embeddable, independent, memory-safe, modular, parallel web rendering engine

    I'm just posting an update on the Servo project, a Web Engine written in memory-safe and secure Web Engine, that Mozilla ditched when it laid off 25% of the workforce (including the Rust and Servo developers) in 2020, and raised CEO Mitchell Baker's salary from $2.4M in 2018 to $6.9M in 2022.

    As much as many of us love Firefox and the early spirit of Firefox and have a strong attachment to the branding, there is an argument to be made that that a new, modern non-legacy based web engine is the way to compete with Blink and Chromium. And perhaps its a way to create a viable alternative that is out of the control of the disappointing direction the leadership keeps taking Firefox and Mozilla, including with decisions related to user privacy. So with the steady progress Servo has made in the last year and half since it was created, I think there's an argument to be made for the community to step up community funding of Servo and help it flourish and see what it can kind of beautiful and super fast thing it can become.

    Here's the year of progress report from Rakhi Sharma at the Open Source Summit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdtlD_7JAs8

    You can follow their progress on their blog: https://servo.org/blog their social media: https://twitter.com/ServoDev and https://floss.social/@servo

    You can help sponsor Servo development here: https://github.com/sponsors/servo

    I downloaded the newest build of their very basic, basic Servo shell, and loaded up ESPN.com and it loaded up so fast and rendered it so nicely (post writing, pre posting edit: and then crashed by the time I wrote this up and got to this part and decided to take a look at it again, haha). It reminded me of the first time Firefox took in elements of Servo in the Firefox Quantum release.

    https://servo.org/download/

    And you can see some people trying to build a browser around it: https://github.com/versotile-org/verso

    5
    "We've won, but at what cost?"
  • While I find your assertion inspiring and very worthy of consideration, I have to wonder what the incentive is to sustain Android development. Apple sells the hardware that goes with its OS(es), so they get the hardware revenue (not to mention the App Store and iCloud subscription revenues). They would have to start charging devices to use their operating system or something, and I have to wonder if that would be possible under open source licenses.

    I would love an open, sustained, and even open source, secure operating system for phones that's the target of app development. I think the Linux stack should should develop an NPR/PBS type ecosystem public funding of development (with maybe the corporate underwriting of those networks being equivalent to contributions from corporate employed developers to the open source code) and I'd love for it to be a real competitor in the smart phone market (knowing the Android stack modifies and sits on top of Linux).

  • "We've won, but at what cost?"
    1. Right now it's already set as the default search engine and you have to work to change it to something else as I understand it. I'm proposing that no default is set and that the user is asked to select one upon first installing Firefox from an ordered list of search engines. If that's already the case (it's been a while since I installed Firefox from scratch), then I'd argue that's fine. And it allows other search engines to contribute to be higher up in the rankings.

    2. I can't think of anything that would replace the revenue that Google pays Mozilla that sustains the development salaries to hopefully keep Mozilla competitive and hopefully making it the best performing, convenient and private browser.

  • "We've won, but at what cost?"
  • Major brain fart/typo, haha.

  • "We've won, but at what cost?"
  • Mozilla (not Google) got rid of the side projects, increased the CEO's salary, and laid off a bunch of employees during the pandemic. It basically got rid of the innovation that could have made Firefox a faster, more secure, and pleasant experience. Rust and Rust-based Servo, as a replacement for Gecko, were two of those side projects. These are the things Mozilla needs to invest in.

    Also, I think Mozilla needs to ask the user upon install what the default search engine should be from a list of search engines including Google, Duck Duck Go, Bing, and Yahoo. Maybe the order of those could be arranged based on how much they're able to finagle from the search engines.

    The real monopoly is their control over Chrome. That's what they should be forced to split from the company that owns the search engine. Development and design of Chrome should not and cannot be done by the company that runs the search engine and gets its revenue from ads.

  • TIL humans are the only animal with a chin. We aren't sure why.
  • Would you mate with somebody who didn't have a chin? Chins are sexy.

  • USC cancels graduation ceremony and dozens are arrested on other campuses as anti-war protests grow
  • The moment they canceled the Valedictorian speech, I would have simply failed to show up to the commencement. And I would have done my best to surprise USC of it. And I'd have organized or at least hoped other people would do the same thing.

  • Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun to step down in management shakeup amid safety crisis
  • He should required to be up there to answer questions from congress and the Feds.

  • Have you ever asked yourself why some priceless artifacts from far away places are in your country
  • The Met has a mixed record. It's famous Temple was rescued with coordination from Egypt from flooding at the creation of the Anwar Dam.

  • Linux use on Steam ends 2023 with a multi-year high (thanks Steam Deck)
  • Yeah, https://chimeraos.org/ or https://rhinolinux.org/ or https://garudalinux.org/

    But any linux with modern hardware really. I play games on my desktop (and get work done too) with EndeavourOS (which is an easy to install and maintain version of Arch Linux, which is also the base of SteamOS. With Arch Linux you have bleeding edge updates, like new Linux kernel versions. SteamOS slows that down, only letting in those bleading edge updates after they've vetteed it on the SteamDeck hardware).

    Steam takes care of proton support. You can try to support other store fronts with applications like Lutris, that try to apply that compatibility layer to those games.

  • Malaysia bans Israeli owned and linked shipping citing ‘cruelty against the Palestinian people’
  • Why isn't OPEC imposing sanctions on Israel, refusing to export oil to them, like the US did with Japan in 1941.

  • U.S. urges Israel against Gaza ground invasion, pushes surgical campaign
    www.washingtonpost.com U.S. urges Israel against Gaza ground invasion, pushes surgical campaign

    Washington’s advice to mount “surgical” operations instead contrasts with the public U.S. backing of an Israeli military campaign.

    U.S. urges Israel against Gaza ground invasion, pushes surgical campaign

    >The Biden administration is urging Israel to rethink its plans for a major ground offensive in the Gaza Strip and instead to opt for a more “surgical” operation using aircraft and special operations forces carrying out precise, targeted raids on high-value Hamas targets and infrastructure, according to five U.S. officials familiar with the discussions. > >Administration officials have become highly concerned about the potential repercussions of a full ground assault, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic matters, and they increasingly doubt that it would achieve Israel’s stated goal of eliminating Hamas. They also are concerned that it could derail negotiations to release nearly 200 hostages, particularly as diplomats think they have made “significant” advances in recent days to free a number of them, potentially including some Americans, one of the officials said. > >The Biden administration also is worried that a ground invasion could result in numerous casualties among Palestinian civilians as well as Israeli soldiers, potentially triggering a dramatic escalation of hostilities in the region, the officials said. U.S. officials think a targeted operation would be more conducive to hostage negotiations, less likely to interrupt humanitarian aid deliveries, less deadly for people on both sides and less likely to provoke a wider war in the region, the officials said.

    17
    U.S., in policy switch, urges humanitarian pauses in Gaza

    >After weeks of declining to back growing international calls for “humanitarian pauses” in Israeli airstrikes to allow a steady flow of aid to enter Gaza, permit American and foreign citizens to exit into Egypt and facilitate the release of hostages, the Biden administration is now fully in favor of them and is pressing Israel to agree. > >The abrupt policy shift comes as the humanitarian situation inside the enclave has become more dire and much of the world has declined to follow the U.S. lead in withholding public criticism of how Israel is conducting its war against Hamas. > >David Satterfield, President Biden’s special envoy to the humanitarian situation in Gaza, has been in Israel this week seeking progress on both aid and egress to Egypt. But according to U.S., United Nations, Egyptian and Israeli officials, many of whom spoke only on the condition of anonymity amid a welter of finger-pointing among those involved, no substantive progress has been made.

    3
    Families of kidnapped Israelis meet Netanyahu, only to find unknown family boosting PM

    The article has a soft paywall. Just put in an e-mail address to get access.

    Here's a relevant excerpt: >Journalist Jacky Levi and his partner, whose five family members were abducted to Gaza, said last night in an interview that Netanyahu tried to create a divide between the families. "There's a deliberate intention here, we are sure of that, no one knew him," Levi said of one of the four family members who unexpectedly joined the meeting. "We're looking into who he is and who he represents, because it cannot be that he just showed up out of nowhere to a meeting with the prime minister." > >Tzvika Mor, whose son Eitan has been missing since the attack, said on Monday in an interview with Kol Barama Radio Station that he was the one who participated in the meeting. "I want to debunk the lie that we arrived out of nowhere, it's a lie." > >"No one can just opportunely come in and meet the Prime Minister. We represent four families whose loved ones were abducted, and we wanted to convey a national message to Netanyahu. We need to stop this whiny behavior. We need to win the war. In a time of war the people of Israel have to make sacrifices, even when our children are there, and prevail," Mor added.

    So basically, a Netanyahu lackey who has a child missing, comes "uninvited" into a prearranged meeting with families of hostages drawn from an organization set up by these families, gasses up Netanyahu, and argues against hostage negotiations and calls for the families to prepare to sacrifice their family members taken hostage.

    3
    Two new communities on Lemmy.world geared towards starting collective movements and organizing collective action: !movement and !organize

    Hi all,

    One of the things that bugged me the most about Reddit was how people never used it to organize at scale large enough to make a difference (other than to protest Victoria Taylor's firing and the demise of the third party apps), and by the time I thought to make subreddits designed to do it, Reddit was too huge and I had no real hope of making any sort of traction. I feel like lemmy.world is at the right stage where something like this can take off, but I have no idea what I'm doing. How do I go about getting mods? What sort of guidelines and tutorials are there to making, respectfully advertising the community around Lemmy, and moderating and guiding one's community into a thriving one? How do I make sure I know what good etiquette is and that I'm following it?

    I made two different communities: !movement@lemmy.world and !organize@lemmy.world. I figure you gather people at let's start a movement and then move over to Organize! to organize action.

    The spiel for !movement community is:

    Come here to gather like minded individuals to ignite a movement. If you already have a movement in mind, post it and let’s go!

    If you don’t have a particular movement in mind, you should still join this community if you want to be alerted to somebody organizing a movement on something you might end up being passionate about. Don’t you get tired of feeling like you’re all alone in wanting to make a change in the world? This is the place to alleviate that. Let’s figure out what we can team up together on and accomplish!

    Once you’ve gathered people and started a movement, you can head over to our sister organization !organize@lemmy.world to organize and coordinate action to accomplish your goals.

    Here is the spiel to the !organize community is:

    The place to organize together on the internet.

    Do you want to team up with a group of people and organize some sort of action? Get it started here!

    Examples:

    Organize to clean up a local or national or international spot.

    Organize to create the next NAACP.

    Organize to canvas for a referendum you are in favor of.

    Organize a protest in coordination with the community over in !protest@lemmy.world

    This is the place to work with your community to discuss and organize action. You can gather people over on our sister community !movement@lemmy.world and bring them over here to strategize organize the movement into action!

    5
    I created a couple of communities dedicated to starting and organizing movements. As a first time ever admin or mod to something like this, I would love some advice from you all

    So I made https://lemmy.world/c/movement and https://lemmy.world/c/organize

    I figure people can gather like minded individuals on https://lemmy.world/c/movement and then discuss and organize a ground game on https://lemmy.world/c/organize

    Do you all have any tips on what sort of rules I need to set up, where to get help leading and modding the communities, and how I can go about respectfully advertise the communities?

    An example of a movement that would be great to start and organize, led by people from Lemmy who know what they're doing like lawyers andfor people who know browser and web technology really well, is filing well thought out antitrust complaints as members of the Lemmy community about Google's forceful implementation of ManifestV3 and how it would disadvantage users of other browsers and reduce their market share and people's options. I made a post about it on c/technology: https://lemmy.world/post/2060683

    4
    In light of articles all over Lemmy about Google pushing ManifestV3 onto Chrome and the majority of web users, isn't that an antitrust violation?
    www.ftc.gov Report an Antitrust Violation

    If you have a question or comment about an antitrust issue, submit it to the Bureau of Competition by one of the methods below.

    Report an Antitrust Violation

    So as I understand it, Google’s using it’s monopoly market position to force web “standards” unilaterally (without an independent/conglomerate web specification standards where Google is only one of many voices) that will disadvantage its competitors and force people to leave its competitors.

    I'm not a lawyer, and I'm a fledgling tech guy, but this sounds like abuse of a monopoly. Google which serves 75% of the world's ads and has 75% of the browser market share seems to want to use its market power to annihilate people's privacy and control over their web experience.

    So we can file a complaint with FTC led by Lina Khan who has been the biggest warrior against abuse by big tech in the US.

    https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/report-antitrust-violation

    We can also file a complaint with the DOJ:

    https://www.justice.gov/atr/citizen-complaint-center

    And there have to be EU, UK, Indian, Chinese, and Japanese organizations that we can file antitrust complaints to.

    125
    SankaraStone SankaraStone @lemmy.world
    Posts 8
    Comments 94