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debate
  • Yes I can!

  • Asa has a fancy box
  • That's how I wake up in the morning

  • What is so good about sync (and the other interfaces)?
  • Have you looked through the Sync settings menu? You can customize A LOT about the UI look and feel, including card type, card information, text size, text font, etc.

  • Feature suggestion: duplicate posts handling
  • Have the various comment threads on a carousel once you click in. Because of the fractured nature of Lemmy servers I feel like I see way more reposts than on Reddit. It would be nice for them to get merged in some way.

  • Appreciation post for Liftoff not collecting user data or injecting ads.
  • Because people have run analysis on the activity of the app already and the trackers don't fire if you aren't on the ad supported version.

    All of the listed stuff is also required for serving ads through services like Google and pretty normal for ad-supported apps.

  • Appreciation post for Liftoff not collecting user data or injecting ads.
  • The data privacy stuff is all related to the plumbing required to serve ads.

    If you pay for the ad-free version none of that stuff gets loaded.

  • Appreciation post for Liftoff not collecting user data or injecting ads.
  • Sync just added an option for that.

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    *Permanently Deleted*
  • We as a society have already said that we don't allow children to make their own decisions, so any trans-related care falls under that banner and is, like any major medical procedure, already incredibly difficult for minors to get approved for. If you feel that we should be legislating beyond the practices of the medical community and the FDC, then yes that will carry a high bar of medical knowledge I'm going to ask you to have, as you are advocating for knowing better than the field of medicine as a whole.

    There are still strict medical guidelines that doctors have to follow, even on an individual level. The story I hear over and over again from trans people is "it was a nightmare getting approval for my care and it took years" not "it was super easy".

    My question will always be: why is trans care special? We already have lots of rules around medical care for children. Why does trans care need to be specifically singled out?

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    *Permanently Deleted*
  • If you passionately believe that you should be allowed to make medical decisions for someone else instead of their doctor, that you know better than the medical community, you better fucking be able to answer the precise medical reasoning behind it.

    My worldview on abortions and transitioning is easy: that's a personal choice between an individual and their doctor. It doesn't affect the health of anyone but the person getting the procedure so I, but anyone else, should have a say.

    I don't need in-depth medical knowledge to defend that position. If you're position is that we should go mucking about in other people's care, you do need to know the medical particulars for why you believe that or I'm going to judge you hard.

  • Nvidia released a paper about a 100KB text-to-image model that only trained for 4 minutes but claims to be better than bigger models
  • NVIDIA's marketing overhypes, but their technical papers tend to be very solid. Obviously it always pays to remain skeptical but they have a good track record in this case.

  • Good news!
  • Yeah I'm not saying they're going to change. I'm saying they're stupid.

  • Won't someone think of the hate speech!?
  • There's no way the EFF wouldn't step in and help with legal bills if they needed to.

  • Good news!
  • And not caring makes them kinda dumb and short-sighted in the big picture.

  • Good news!
  • I've watched that before. It's not that I don't understand why it happens. It's that said playbook has obvious shortcomings in modern society that the up putting those in power in a worse condition.

    I stand by my station my assertion that hording wealth to that degree is just stupid and short-sighted. It lowers the chances that advances the wealth holder would benefit from will happen in their lifetime.

    This video on egotistic altruism covers it pretty well.

    The more you give, the more your bowl will be plentiful.

  • 12.3 Billion Miles Away: NASA Has Lost Communication With Voyager 2 Spacecraft
  • Precision for what? Knowing their cron job will fire? Knowing what was wrong with the commands they sent? Neither of those are crazy precise or ambiguous statements?

    The only highly precise thing that needs to happen is the alignment of the antenna but that system has been working for decades already and has been thoroughly tested.

    NASA tends to be pretty straightforward when talking about risks, and if they feel like all the systems are in working order and there's a good chance we'll be back in contact with it, I think it's worth talking them at their word.

    Like yeah, it's impressive they can aim an antenna that precisely, but using stars to orient an object is a very very well understood geometry problem. NASA has been using that technique at least as far back as Apollo

  • Good news!
  • But it can be removed as a possibility by circumstance, which is what this comic is getting at.

  • Good news!
  • Because by limiting access to those resources, they can't be used in ways you wouldn't expect.

    Sure, you might invest in cancer research. But did you back the right horse? Soon enough? What about the person who would have engineered earlier detection if they had gone to grad school, but the resources that could have been used to provide that are tied up in your net worth?

    No concentrated approach will ever have the same results as letting millions of extra people work on their millions of ideas. The chances of someone hitting on something that sticks increase dramatically with the number of people throwing shit against the wall.

  • Good news!
  • This is why, in my opinion, billionaires are incredibly stupid.

    By hoarding wealth and forcing people to live paycheck-to-paycheck, with little-to-no time for self improvement or leisure. With few resources to devote towards education or career-building, you are strangling the pool of people who could make your life better. Who could find the cure for whatever illness finally gets you. Who could invent something you'd never have thought of that will improve your quality of life.

    Before the pace of modern technology I can kind of get the impulse, but modern billionaires are operating on rules of 'how to win' from 100 years ago. They are -- by any metric -- not only socially backwards, but fundamentally stupid. They are too dumb to even get being greedy right.

  • 12.3 Billion Miles Away: NASA Has Lost Communication With Voyager 2 Spacecraft
  • Lol. The knee-jerk contrarianism online really gets under my skin, especially when it's towards experts.

    Like yeah, sometimes experts are wrong or systems don't behave as expected. But framing that as some sort of erudite insight really bugs me.

    "I hope the recovery system works!" doesn't need to be rewritten as "Mmm yes. But what these engineers haven't considered is the possibility that they are wrong".

  • 12.3 Billion Miles Away: NASA Has Lost Communication With Voyager 2 Spacecraft
  • This is one of those things that sounds meaningful, but can be said about literally any problem in any system. Not all knowledge requires the same level of precision for confidence.

    If the engineers at NASA who are familiar with the system say this is a known error state that will be fixed the next time the system designed to correct it fires on its set schedule, there's not a whole lot added by saying sure, but what if they're wrong?

    It's just restating the table stakes of existence.

  • With Meta exploring the fediverse, would it be possible to create a copy-left federation license to block for-profit entities from federating with a server?

    I.E. a way to legally enforce that servers which federate with you are not allowed to serve ads alongside content from your server, and must be run by not-for-profit entities?

    I'm curious about some sort of strategy that blocks Meta from extracting money from the content creators in the current fediverse by using legal licensing of some sort, similar to how the GPL software license requires any derivative software to be open source.

    13
    [Wheel of Time] Padan Fain is our biggest window into the Creator's mind
    kbin.social [Spoilers All] Padan Fain is our biggest window into the Creator's mind - Wheel of Time discussion - kbin.social

    Figured I would start moving over some of my high effort posts to the fediverse. This is a post I originally made on the /r/wot and then posted to books@kbin.social. Hope it's all right that I'm re-posting here....

    [Spoilers All] Padan Fain is our biggest window into the Creator's mind - Wheel of Time discussion - kbin.social

    Cross-postong from https://Kbin/m/wheeloftime

    ⚠️⚠️ FULL SERIES SPOILERS ⚠️⚠️

    0
    Arcane is a masterclasses in how to mine for drama and surprise in genuine human interaction rather than miscommunication, forced conflict, or contrived choices.

    Moving some of my higher quality posts over from Reddit. Originally wrote this for /r/Arcane

    ⚠️⚠️ FULL SERIES SPOILERS AHEAD ⚠️⚠️

    Original Post ----------

    One of Arcane's achievements is it's ability to not reach for cheap drama, which I find especially refreshing in a fantasy context. There were a lot of moments where Arcane geared itself up to do The Dramatic Thing™ and then subverted it, not by doing The Dark Thing™, or the Out of Left Field Thing™, but by doing the human thing instead.

    Examples:

    • Mel not being a Femme Fatale. She genuinely wanted what was best for the people and respected Jayce. I thought for sure she was just using him, and I'm sure it started that way, but they really developed their relationship in a beautifully natural way so there's no Moment™ where she either sees him for the first time and totally changes or betrays him.
    • Powder overhearing Mylo vent to Vi about her and leaving before Vi takes her side. They talk it out later that night and reach an understanding.
    • Powder and Vi's reunion. They just hug and share a genuine moment before their differences begin to manifest.
    • Vander's tough but supportive reaction to the failed job. He uses it as a teachable moment for Vi, and Vi takes the feedback rather than it being a well you're not my real dad moment. We get to learn a lot about the trust and care these characters have for each other.
    • Vi and Caitlyn cooperating with each other right out of the gate, resolving differences as they come up in good faith (even when heated) rather than constantly being at each other's throats the way most shows would do. Storytelling, as a craft, has an obsession with conflict. Almost all works on how to tell stories focus on how to craft good conflict. And yes, every story needs good a central tension (which Arcane has in spades), but Arcane shows that moments of cooperation can be just as dramatic as conflict, and isn't afraid to let it's characters find ways to come together as a way to mine drama.

    I can't think of a single contrived dramatic beat. There's no forced misunderstandings or characters overreacting. It lets the drama flow from the characters and their choices, rather than a contrived situation they are being put into. It forces the show to dig deep and find the things the characters truly care about so it can push those buttons.

    Silco's genuine care for Jinx and his people underneath how abusive and shitty he is for both is another great example. Most villains -- even when given a good motivation and philosophy -- feel Evil™, like the philosophy they are espousing is more an excuse to be cruel, or is a purposefully twisted misreading of a moral precept to justify and deflect their actions; the fiction needs to prove to you that they deserve their demise. Arcane manages to give it's villain an actually noble goal of freedom for his people and lets him genuinely believe in it while he paves his way to hell.

    No moment of tragic redemption, either, where he repents his choices and accepts the moral of the story into his heart. Arcane mines it's characters for additional depth instead of changing who they are. Character arcs, while strongly present, are just as often a study in revelation as change. Silco's moment of crisis when he is asked to give up Jinx is used to reveal another layer, rather than change what we've already seen. The show isn't afraid of making us feel for it's villain without changing him. His evil is able to be the best he is capable of for who and what he cares about.

    Silco is such a great villain: A man forged by the cycle of violence who can only love and care in toxic ways. He's both awful and tragic. A choice that genuinely surprised me: In act 2 I thought for sure he was going to betray Jinx and reveal she was just a tool to him, only to be changed in some moment of connection. Instead -- again -- there is no Moment™ where he either gives into his evil completely or repents to the light. He is a consistent, contradictory human to the end: genuinely ruthless, genuinely caring, genuinely idealistic, and genuinely cynical to his last breath. The scene of him agonizing over his situation at Vander's statue isn't one of a crisis of choice, but a crisis of acceptance. He is lamenting what's important to him. We get to see a beautiful moment of self reflection and sorrow because Arcane echews the normal cheap conflict many shows would grasp for: drawing out the suspense of what Silco will do to mine for drama. Instead, Arcane mines the acceptance of his inability to choose anything else.

    Even between adversaries there is often a deep respect and/or complex history that isn't just boiled down to a single feeling. Silco vs Vander. Ekko vs. Jynx, Jayce vs Victor, Mel vs her mother, Marcus vs Grayson. All these relationships have a rich interpersonal interaction that never makes it feel like they are completely at odds, even when they are in each other's way.

    Sevika, who is set up to be super jealous of and frustrated with Powder has that "She'll come to you when she's ready" moment with Silco; we learn SO MUCH about her character in such a small interaction. We get to see her in a redeeming moment of reassurance, where many shows might twist the knife a bit with a catty line because well, she doesn't like Jynx.

    Instead, Arcane chooses to let us see over and over that while there might be an overriding top layer to a character or relationship, moments of deeper layers peeking through are where the real story lies.

    3
    zalack zalack @kbin.social

    Formerly /u/Zalack on Reddit.

    Posts 3
    Comments 122