Lvxferre [he/him]

The catarrhine who invented a perpetual motion machine, by dreaming at night and devouring its own dreams through the day.

  • 2 Posts
  • 1.47K Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: January 12th, 2024

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  • The usual: booze, games, cooking, gardening, anime.

    This time I bought some Patagonia beers. I’m not a heavy beer drinker, but they’re great. One can of each type (Pilsener to share with my mum, IPA, and an amber lager). It’s 4AM and I’m seriously considering to crack the IPA open, I love it!

    Games-wise it’s going to be Leaf Blower Revolution. I’m still farming witches and crafting leaves. (This sounds weird, I know.) I’ll probably also play some Oxygen not Included, I bought the Frosty Planet DLC a time ago and I didn’t play with it yet.

    Cooking-wise, dunno, but people always ask me to prepare some stuff. It’s typically homemade pizza. Typical flavours are

    • beef stroganoff - because my nephew loves it
    • five cheeses - moz’, Parm’, provolone, ricotta, gorgonzola
    • pepperoni - all times favourite. Made with 100% fake pepperoni made by slicing “Calabrian” sausages, coating them with paprika, and pan-frying them. I did this initially as a hack but people liked it better than the ones using actual pepperoni sausages
    • “whatever I found in the fridge” + “whatever my BIL brought as filling”. Those typically include eggs, bacon, sweet corn, peas, onions, olives, stuff like this.

    Gardening is… well. I need to plant some new cacti I bought for my cactus garden, plus check outside for hail damage - yesterday [Thursday] evening it hailed really bad. I’m worried the most about my kale and pepper plants (the tree pepper is probably OK, but the bishop’s crown and ladyfinger are probably damaged). Malena (my Sicilian / rangpur tree) and the kumquat probably liked it.

    Anime-wise I’m re-watching the series Log Horizon. It’s really good; I heavily recommend it for people who like “trapped in a game” style isekai series. I’ll probably also watch a few series airing this season: Dr. Stone, Re:ZERO, Hazure Skill “Kinomi Master”, Unnamed Memory…

    …you know what, I’m cracking the IPA open right now.






  • People like Musk rarely take into account the overall impact of this sort of tariff in the international chain.

    I’ll give you an example. I live in Latin America. My processor is AMD, so made in USA with Taiwanese semiconductors.

    But let’s pretend that I were to upgrade my processor today. AMD gets 25% tariffs over Taiwanese semiconductors, but it won’t “eat” the tariff, it simply relays it to the customers. So I’d pay more for the processor.

    Would I? Fuck no. I’ve run a potato computer for years, might as well do it in the future. If some Taiwanese, Chinese or European alternative pops up, less unreasonably priced, I’d be willing to buy it. Taiwan still profits, so does the local market, but instead of a chunk of my money going to USA, it would go to one of those three.

    Except that I’m not the only one. Others would do the same as me. Slow but sure and cumulatively, international trade swaps the middlemen in USA with middlemen elsewhere.

    AMD is getting less sales, thus less profits. Investors hate it. Why bother investing in USA? They’ll invest in a booming tariff-free alternative. Vulture capital flies away in a flock, once the carcass is gone.

    And it is not just CPUs; it’s also GPUs and everything else electronics. And it is not just AMD, but Intel and every other business relying on Taiwanese microchips.

    With less money entering USA, the local customer market is slightly poorer. Now there’s less pressure to attend that market. In those situations, is it worth for AMD to keep itself in USA? Rename itself to “IMD”, set up base in Ireland, boom, done.

    Musk is sinking the economy of his own banana republic maize dictatorship. And it’s getting amusing to see.

    [And in case anyone is wondering why I’m saying “Musk” instead of “Trump”, it’s because I genuinely believe that the later is there because the former wants it, not the opposite. Trump is that sort of tiny useful idiot, easy to control, just call him “who’s a good boy? strong man? Yes, you are, Trump! Good boy! Strong man!” and he’ll bark in the desired direction.]

    picture related




  • Kitten is a new devkit to create self-hosted, peer-to-peer web applications, using HTML/CSS and Javascript. I can’t attest how well it works but it’s a step in that “small web” direction.

    Because, like, Gemini is cool. But sometimes you want something more than just a capsule.

    But I think this is likely more a societal issue than a technical one.

    It’s both, in a vicious cycle. At the same time that big tech herds passive people into walled gardens, it also passivises the people inside them even further. And those walls are not just between different feuds - they’re also between customers and developers, making sure that each knows their place as serfs and vassals of big tech respectively.

    I think the internet as is, is a solid choice. It’s been made to connect people (and their computers). And it’s initially been used for that.

    The main problem with the current internet is that it has no mechanism against a commercial/hostile/corporate takeover, like the one that we saw. As you said it was made to connect people and computers; it is not like this any more.

    (Sorry for not deepening the subject further. I’d need to get into political matters to do so, and doing it in this comm leaves me a sour taste in my mouth - as if distorting an environment supposed to be refreshing into the same stuff we see in 90% of Lemmy. )


  • There are steps in this direction, like the kitten application. But what we have now is still not a “new” internet; it’s a bunch of fragments, scattered across the old, commercially-driven and corporation-controlled, internet.

    For example. The old style forums are still there, I use a few of them… hosted by CloudFlare, sending data to Google, with a “follow us in Facebook” link. Remove CloudFlare from the equation and LLM training bots will DDoS them into oblivion; remove Google and they get no ad bucks; remove Facebook and they get even less exposure than before.

    I got a Substack blog nobody reads. I’m considering to close it down given that Substack is nowadays full of Nazi. Substack is built over that corporate internet, that has no protection against bad faith actors whatsoever.

    The first time I started Kristall (Gemini browser), I found a blank screen. Without websearch engines like DuckDuckGo (most people would use Google), I would never find an aggregator like gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/capcom/

    I guess that there’s NeoCities? Considerably less commercial than modern sites; but it’s no internet 2.0, it’s an attempt to relive a past long gone.

    In a sense the Fediverse is part of a new internet. It allows you to self-host, and it’s all about users banding together to control their social media. Sharing links of the new web under HTTPS, buying domain names from corporations, with admins in a constant struggle to keep spammers at bay.

    What I think that we need is something more unified than that. It’s like kitten and Gemini and the Fediverse at the same time. It’s hard to explain, but it’s direct connections in a corporate-hostile environment, where you can simply isolate bad faith actors and they won’t haunt you again. Self-hosted by amateurs, for amateurs.

    Sorry if this sounds like rambling. It is, a bit. But it’s one of those things that I still dream about. It’s how I used to believe that the internet would evolve, back in the 90s. And it didn’t.


  • OP, I fed your post into a bot. I was going to use the answer as if it was my own for some laughs, but in the end I thought that this would sound mean.

    bot answer if anyone is interested

    Your reflections on the current state of AI and its impact on online interactions resonate with many who share similar concerns. The rapid advancement of AI technology has indeed blurred the lines between genuine human interaction and artificial simulations, leading to a sense of disillusionment for some.

    It’s understandable to feel uneasy when the authenticity of online conversations is called into question. The proliferation of AI-generated content can create an environment where trust is eroded, making it difficult to discern what is real and what is not. This uncertainty can detract from the enjoyment of online platforms that were once seen as spaces for genuine connection and expression.

    However, your decision to engage more with real-life interactions, like going to the gym and spending time with friends, is a positive response to this challenge. It highlights the importance of human connection in an increasingly digital world. While AI can enhance certain aspects of our lives, it cannot replace the depth and richness of authentic human relationships.

    As for the broader implications of AI in our lives, it’s crucial to foster discussions about its ethical use and the potential consequences of its integration into our daily experiences. Encouraging transparency and critical thinking about the content we consume can help mitigate some of the concerns you’ve raised.

    Ultimately, while the landscape of online interaction may be changing, the value of genuine human connection remains irreplaceable. It’s essential to find a balance that allows us to enjoy the benefits of technology while still prioritizing real-world relationships and experiences. Your perspective is a reminder that, amidst the complexities of the digital age, the human element should always be at the forefront.

    To the point. Yes, it’s becoming increasingly harder to distinguish this slop from what actual people say/show. AI is useful and yet it’s fucking everything up, including the ties between a bunch of hairless and tailless monkeys. In Lemmy at least we know that bots aren’t that much of an issue than in megacorpo social media, but… yeah, there’s always that gut feeling that it’s all bots, no humans, dead internet.

    Youtube comments are likely real because they’re stupid. At least there’s that, uh.

    What perhaps we (at least you and me) need, and I really want, is an internet 2.0, in parallel with the current one. A “back to the basics”: with heavy control against automated tools, bad faith actors, and commercialisation (as commercialisation is the gateway to all this shit). Perhaps we’re going to see it one day, dunno.