Sailor, software engineer, musician, terminally online.
I miss the pre-adtech internet.
- 5 Posts
- 114 Comments
mobyduck648@beehaw.orgto Technology@beehaw.org•Using the term ‘artificial intelligence’ in product descriptions reduces purchase intentions2·11 months agoThey’re trying to praise the Machine God, little do they know the Omnissiah considers abominable intelligence a deadly sin.
mobyduck648@beehaw.orgto Technology@beehaw.org•SponsorBlock (and DeArrow): "YouTube is currently experimenting with server-si…" - Fosstodon2·1 year agoI’ve noticed pretty much zero disruption on Firefox with uBlock Origin and SponsorBlock despite Google’s best efforts. Every time I thought I’d eventually be paying Google the Danegeld to avoid the firehose of spam I’ve been pleasantly surprised.
mobyduck648@beehaw.orgto Science@beehaw.org•breaking news: light pollution is purgatory for bugs6·1 year agoThe old low pressure sodium lights we had in the UK were great on this front. They were about as efficient as LEDs as well but the bulbs got too expensive to make, so the last factory making them in Europe closed down and they mostly disappeared quite quickly.
I reckon they should switch street lights over to monochromatic yellow LEDs, they’d look the same as the old lights and not affect insect populations so much. They’re good for astronomers too as the light is only one wavelength.
mobyduck648@beehaw.orgto Technology@beehaw.org•‘There is no such thing as a real picture’: Samsung defends AI photo editing on Galaxy S248·1 year agoIt depends on the artistic and technological intent I think. Valve (tube) amplifiers are inferior to any modern amplifier in every way you could actually measure with an oscilloscope yet people still build them and valves are still produced they same way they were in the 1950s because the imperfections they produce in the sound can sound pleasant, which is down to psychoacoustic factors which have subjective as well as objective components. A photo that looks exactly like what we’d see naturally is one potential goal but it’s not the only one in my opinion.
IP maximalists really screwed the pooch by inventing the term ‘piracy’ for copyright infringement, they made the act sound ten times cooler.
mobyduck648@beehaw.orgto Technology@beehaw.org•PSA: Reddit is Forcing Users to Accept Personalized Ads8·2 years agoThere’s enough astroturf on Reddit for a continent’s worth of obnoxious suburban fake lawns.
mobyduck648@beehaw.orgto Music@beehaw.org•Any songs where it's amazing or perfect... except for that one part that sticks out like a sore thumb?2·2 years agoI’m not generally anti-Donna when it comes to the Grateful Dead but there’s definitely the odd track delivered with all the grace of a toddler with a recorder. Then again, every member of that band ruined the odd track at one point or another!
Still wish I had been around to see them more than any other band though.
mobyduck648@beehaw.orgto Technology@beehaw.org•Elon Musk says Twitter, now X, could charge all users subscription fees7·2 years agoYeah I’ve no love for Musk but Twitter is full of pretty unpleasant people in general and it made political journalism worse by encouraging low-effort hot takes over slower more thoughtful content. I won’t miss it when it’s gone.
My problem isn’t really with its politics (I’m quite left-wing myself these days) but its personalities, you can be politically progressive without having the mentality of a schoolyard bully and that’s what Twitter was fundamentally about, bullying the main character of the day.
mobyduck648@beehaw.orgto Technology@beehaw.org•Elon Musk Suggests He Will Charge All X/Twitter Users a Fee to Be on the Platform1·2 years agodeleted by creator
mobyduck648@beehaw.orgto Technology@beehaw.org•The smart(shit)ification of TVs pisses me off.1·2 years agoDepends on the monitor, my one has a 3.5mm jack to get analogue audio out of the HDMI input which I use to get audio from my Xbox to the rest of my setup.
mobyduck648@beehaw.orgto World News@beehaw.org•Wales lowers speed limit to 20 mph to cut car use and save lives3·2 years agoGood for them, doesn’t change the fact I find driving at 20 mph very frustrating compared to 30 mph for that reason.
mobyduck648@beehaw.orgto World News@beehaw.org•Wales lowers speed limit to 20 mph to cut car use and save lives11·2 years agoI think this policy will fail to be honest; while I’m not in Wales any more Oxford where I live now is a supposed ‘cycling city’ with most roads at 20 mph and honestly I hate being on the road there either in a car or on a bike; I get the bus in even though it’s often flaky. Driving you’re sat between second and third gear the whole time so you’re either revving too hard and wasting petrol or the car naturally speeds up so you’re spending a lot of attention on not getting fined rather than keeping it on the road, and when you’re cycling the cars that do keep to 20 mph linger beside you for what feels subjectively a lot longer when they overtake which isn’t fun either and the tiny bike lines make you feel vulnerable to traffic. I had a lot of near misses when I did it regularly and Oxford is a very small city, the idea of cycling somewhere like Cardiff would be terrifying to me.
mobyduck648@beehaw.orgto World News@beehaw.org•Wales lowers speed limit to 20 mph to cut car use and save lives1·2 years agodeleted by creator
mobyduck648@beehaw.orgto Programmer Humor@programming.dev•Haskell researchers announce new discovery5·2 years agoCan confirm, I write Scala at my current workplace and spend my days over the moon about the fact I’m not writing Java.
mobyduck648@beehaw.orgto Technology@beehaw.org•Criminals Have Created Their Own ChatGPT Clones3·2 years agoThat’s fundamentally why you can’t replace a software engineer with ChatGPT, only a software engineer has the skillset to verify the code isn’t shit even if it superficially works.
mobyduck648@beehaw.orgOPto Music@beehaw.org•Give Me a (Solid) Reason - one of my current works in progress1·2 years agoThanks! I know what you mean, you’re right the flow will improve with practice especially when I’m properly used to playing with a click track which I’d not done until recently.
mobyduck648@beehaw.orgto Politics@beehaw.org•Bail for Trump Set at $200,000 in Georgia Election Interference Case5·2 years agoWhere I’m from if you’re out on bail or not (and what conditions are attached) is up to the court or the police depending on where you’re currently at in the justice system, you don’t pay anything regardless of your wealth.
I prefer this system as the reasons whether or not someone ought to be bailed don’t really have a lot to do with wealth usually so it seems unfair to make it a factor, but I can certainly see the reasoning to put a number on it as I suspect it does dissuade people breaking their bail conditions.
Cheers for the heads up, fixed!