Acamon

joined 2 years ago
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[–] Acamon 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Looks cool! I'd definitely try it out! Does it have options to change the key?

[–] Acamon 11 points 2 days ago

I think the number of people who care deeply about privacy and cannot tell the difference between an sms or signal message is minimal. There were plenty of ways signal could have highlighted DANGER UNSECURE CHANNEL if they had wanted to, or made it an off-by-default option, rather than drop SMS entirely. For myself and many other people it meant that family members dropped Signal rather than have an extra messaging app, and so I'm still stuck with WhatsApp on my phone...

[–] Acamon 3 points 2 days ago

Absolutely. Words change, and it's not an unhelpful term, but we already had a word for 'ruled by the best', aristocracy. Over time it became very apparent that aristocracies did not promote leaders who were objectively 'best' or often even 'adequate', so it began to mean a small group of privileged people who used their power to keep that privilege for themselves and their peers.

So although meritocracy started as a joke, it could be used sincerely. But unless it's pretty clear how 'merit' is assessed its hard to take it more seriously.

[–] Acamon 21 points 3 days ago (1 children)

In cities I'd agree, but when I lived in a closeknit rural area it was probably majority women. As the rest of the commentors are saying, I think it's mostly a perceived safety issue for a lot of women. But if you're likely to know the name, address and family history of everyone who gets into your taxi, it's less of a concern.

[–] Acamon 6 points 4 days ago

I'm two decades older than you, but growing up in rural Britain had similar experiences. Even after moving to a big city, with lots of progressive / hipster friends there was an undercurrent of biphobia. I was used to lots of guys being weird/violent if they found out I was bi, but it took me a long time to realise that girls might be cool with gay friends, but absolutely would not consider a relationship with a bi guy.

Naively I never hid it with girls, thinking that it showed I wasn't the typical sexist, macho guy. But I eventually found out they assumed I was just gay and in denial, or were creeped out by all the stereotypes (unfaithful, stds, etc). I realised there's a big gap between people saying "there's nothing wrong with being queer!" and actually meaning it.

Same with gay guys, I thought that the fact I was kinda 'straight' would be a plus, because 'turning the straight boy' was a common gay fantasy. But mostly it just meant gay men ignored me, or assumed I was repressed and 'in the closet' or insincerly flirting with them for attention. And despite all the statistics about biphobia and suicide, it's basically treated as a joke by lots of straight and gay folks who think bi people have it easy / best of both worlds / promiscuous / etc.

I hope you can find some people who accept you and help you live your identity. If it gives you any hope, I had a pretty unsuccessful and frustrating lack of romance / sexual relationships in my teens and twenties, and then somewhat unexpectedly, in my 30s, I ended up hooking up with a guy for a very casual thing. After a few years of telling ourselves we were just "friends with benefits" we realised we were deeply in love with each other, and have been together almost a decade now and even got married last year. When I was younger I never imagined marrying a guy (maybe a little internalised homophobia from myself) but we are so happy together and have a wonderful life. I see young people online saying stuff like "if I don't have a partner by 25 I might as well give up and becoming a monk" but life is long and you never know what will change.

[–] Acamon 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm not sure about your visual interpretation, but I completely agree that the two scales don't translate directly, and that if something is rated 7/10 I'd assume it's better than something rated 3.5 stars / 5.

As to the reason? I wonder if the scales five different senses of the middle value? In a five star system, 3/5 film is the middle value, and not especially good nor bad, but I'd probably give the same "totally average, not good not bad" film 5/10. Similarly, it seems weird to translate "Awful, 1/5" into "Awful, 2/10". So maybe the difference comes from a lack of clarity about half stars, it's okay to give 0.5 / 5? But not 0? Or 5.5?

And that doesn't even start to address the modern "if it's rated less than 4.6* it's probably awful" issue...

[–] Acamon 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Jolt Cola, "All the sugar, twice the caffeine!"

[–] Acamon 10 points 1 week ago

Totally agree.

[–] Acamon 32 points 1 week ago (2 children)

As the other commentator says, medieval Europe was mostly early twenties. Studies of stone age remains suggest a first birth age average of 19.5 and contemporary hunter gather societies have a comparable average. Sexual activity generally begins earlier, during adolescence, but the most "reproductively successful" age for beginning childbearing has been shown to be around 18-19. Also, this age at first birth isnt "Average age of a child's mother" as many women would have multiple kids over their life, so the average sibling would have a much older mother at birth than the firstborn.

Its important to remember that puberty has shifted massively since industrialisation, "menarche age has receded from 16.5 years in 1880 to the current 12.5 years in western societies". So the post-puberty fecundity peak, that use to happen 17-19, when women are fully grown enough to minimise birth complications, now happens at a disressingly young 13-15. Not only is this a big social yuck for most western societies, but it's reproductively unideal, because of the complications linked to childbirth at that age.

[–] Acamon 6 points 1 week ago

That's a self fulfilling cycle. If more institutions and organisation left and made a public statement of not wanting to be associated with fascism, then it would push another bunch to have to defend why they didn't think nazi salutes were a problem, and they'd leave too.

Whether it makes enough of a wave to push major groups to leave is a question of public pressure, but that public pressure is expressed through "costly signalling" that show organisations have values and are willing to take a hit to live by them. And non-profits are exactly the groups who can afford to take a symbolic stand, and make things more difficult for those that remain.

[–] Acamon 5 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Cool idea. I still use imdb to check stuff but that site is bloated as hell, I'd love a clean alternative.

[–] Acamon 3 points 2 weeks ago

That's a very good point! So that crazy desire to try and give a bear a cuddlewuddle isn't just a crazy deathwish, it might actually confuse the beast so much that he doesn't try to eat you!

 

The current news has me thinking that, while the death of any human is not something I actively relish, most people feel a certain satisfaction, relief or, at least, less sad when someone like Osama Bin Laden dies, because they were responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent people.

Which got me wondering, have studies been done estimating how many legitimate insurance cases are rejected, delayed or otherwise mishandled, and how many of those result in deaths? I guess other industries are also responsible for some pretty measurable risk factors (e.g. air pollution). It would interesting to see some rough numbers of how many deaths the CEOs who choose to continue running these companies in harmful ways account for. Obviously, they are only indirectly responsible, but the same could be said about Bin Laden, he didn't fly the planes himself, he delegated.

 

I've seen reports and studies that show products advertised as including / involving AI are off-putting to consumers. And this matches what almost every person I hear irl or online says. Regardless of whether they think that in the long-term AI will be useful, problematic or apocalyptic, nobody is impressed Spotify offering a "AI DJ" or "AI coffee machines".

I understand that AI tech companies might want to promote their own AI products if they think there's a market for them. And they might even try to create a market by hyping the possibilities of "AI". But rebranding your existing service or algorithms as being AI seems like super dumb move, obviously stupid for tech literate people and off-putting / scary for others. Have they just completely misjudged the world's enthusiasm for this buzzword? Or is there some other reason?

 

I feel like I'm encountering weird little tics and problems with my android devices, and those of family and friends. Just simple things where settings don't seem to be consistently applied, or the os switches something back repeatedly. For example, my apps are set to auto update, to use data as well as WiFi, etc, but every month or so I go into Play and see that some random app hasn't been updated in weeks.

Or my friend only gets Signal notifications when they open the app, despite giving full background data use, turning off adaptive battery, etc. My mother uses an alarm app that needs to display over the screen for a feature, but despite me setting that permission repeatedly Android keeps turning it off.

Is this just anecdotal bad luck? Or is all the work to preserve battery life, control background usage, etc led to an OS where the user can't control things reliably? It starting to feel a lot like MS Windows!

 

(I've got a pixel watch 2 and moto edge 40 neo, and some jlab earbuds.)

I usually listen to music on my phone, but recently linked my earbuds to my watch, and the same music played on Spotify sounds massively better on the same earbuds when played via the watch.

I assumed it was because I had installed the jlab app, and it was doing a bad job of meddling with the eq. But after uninstalling it there wasn't a noticeable difference. Is there some other setting I can adjust? Any thoughts on whether it's something my moto is doing wrong or something my pixel watch is doing right?

Its a substantial difference (although I'm not enough of an audiophile to describe it) enough that I'm now mostly playing music via my watch. But it's hitting the battery hard, so I'd rather go back to using my phone!

34
submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by Acamon to c/asklemmy
 

This is maybe a weird request, but I'm looking for a way to send myself some information at a specific time in the future. Basically, it's because I've got a few sites that are huge distractions for me at the moment, and I can't stop checking my accounts, responding to messages, etc. My willpower is so low, and I've got a lot of important work right now and it's starting to really mess up my life.

So my plan is to change the passwords to my accounts to a long random string, then save that string somewhere that I can't access for X days. I imagined a simple way would be to use a site that would send me an email on a date, and the content of that email would be my random passwords. But my web searches only seem to find pages telling me how to schedule my own emails, which isn't what I need.

Any advice / suggestions?

(also, in case anyone is thinking it, the sites I'm trying to block access to are all linked to the same email account, and I'm also going to change its password, so I won't easily be able to reset them).

Edit: FutureMe is exactly the site I was thinking of, thanks lemmings!

79
ELI5 How does chatgpt do its shit? (self.nostupidquestions)
 

I hear people saying things like "chatgpt is basically just a fancy predictive text". I'm certainly not in the "it's sentient!" camp, but it seems pretty obvious that a lot more is going on than just predicting the most likely next word.

Even if it's predicting word by word within a bunch of constraints & structures inferred from the question / prompt, then that's pretty interesting. Tbh, I'm more impressed by chatgpt's ability to appearing to "understand" my prompts than I am by the quality of the output. Even though it's writing is generally a mix of bland, obvious and inaccurate, it mostly does provide a plausible response to whatever I've asked / said.

Anyone feel like providing an ELI5 explanation of how it works? Or any good links to articles / videos?

 

And if so, how do they label headphones, contact lenses etc?

40
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Acamon to c/osr
21
how to find a good USB cable? (self.nostupidquestions)
 

I feel like some usb cables are great, allow my devices to charge fast, connect to data reliably, etc. But it seems so difficult to find the ones that are good! I've tried buying expensive ones but it seems pretty hit and miss. Sometimes some cheapass aliexpress cable seems to beat the "good brands".

Are there standards or anything I should look out for? USB drives, sd cards, and the like have read/write speeds or different "classes" but usb cables seem to all claim to be brilliant.

Am I just being dumb?

21
discowolf (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 years ago by Acamon to c/amoledbackgrounds
 
 

One thing I loved about Holmes and Moldvay /Mentzer red boxes was having a set of rules that didn't overwhelm new players with lots of material that they won't need until later.

I know that most osr games are rules light enough that it isn't too much, but I was wondering if there are any systems out there that seperate out the 'basic' and 'expert / advanced' levels like that?

A particular peeve of mine is that spell descriptions seem so often to be presented alphabetical so that the 10 spells that might matter are lost in a bunch of pages. But even just class descriptions or saving throw tables that cover the whole range make level 1 look like a stepping stone, rather than a satisfying place to play many an adventure!

Any suggestions?

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