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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 20th, 2023

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  • Compared to crypto and NFTs, there is at least something in this mix, not that I could identify it.

    I’ve become increasingly comfortable with LLM usage, to the point that myself from last year would hate me. Compared to projects I used to do with where I’d be deep into Google Reddit and Wikipedia, ChatGPT gives me pretty good answers much more quickly, and far more tailored to my needs.

    I’m getting into home labs, and currently everything I have runs on ass old laptops and phones, but I do daydream if the day where I can run an ethically and sustainably trained, LLM myself that compares to current GPT-5 because as much as I hate to say it, it’s really useful to my life to have a sometimes incorrect but overalls knowledgeable voice that’s perpetually ready to support me.

    The irony is that I’ll never build a server that can run a local LLM due to the price hikes caused by the technology in the first place.




  • As much as I don’t disagree, I think the “Apple is closest to Nazism” comment touches on something different. Other massive American companies have awful practices but they don’t care particularly how their way of making money looks. Apple wields a specific aesthetic power that generally dictates a hegemonic uniformity, that strays the line of being to their detriment at times. I don’t think any other big tech company would care in the same way if not for their desire to copy Apple.




  • Without arguing politics, the world is sliding very quickly towards facism and being on guard against it is incredibly important. I’m not buying a laptop and putting money in the pockets of someone who may then donate to or fund facism. None of that applies to a developer of a free open source software whose political ideal world is not rapidly approaching.


  • Blurry photos is fine to make an stylistic choice. The 2019 movie The Lighthouse stylistically looked like a 1920s film, before modern music intentionally used bitcrushing, it used vinyl cracks, boomer shooters made in this decade intentionally look like 1990s Doom clones.

    When a medium’s shortcoming is patched by technology, it ultimately becomes an artifact of the era where it was accidental. Once a few years have passed, it becomes more synonymous with the era than the mistake.

    It’s not necessarily nostalgia, Gen Alpha and the younger half of Gen Z never grew up without smartphones, so they don’t miss the era of poor film photography. Although every generation does this simulation of forgotten mistakes, it’s particularly poignant now, where the high quality, perfectly lit, professional feeling photos convey something artificial, i.e. smartphone software emulating camera hardware, faces tuned with filters or outright AI generated content. Even if it’s false imperfection, the alternative is false perfection.

    Art using deliberate imperfections that were unavoidable in the past is romanticising something perceived as before commercialism, and that’s admirable.


  • I’m trying to make my own smart watch as a hobby experiment at the moment, and one of my most important features is NFC payments. It’s a nightmare, although I understand why. Currently my plan is to buy another smart watch or smart ring and take the NFC chip from it, which is maddening, but more or less my only option due to contactless payment security.

    To do contactless payments, your bank must effectively permit the specific device, otherwise go through GPay or Apple Pay, who in turn just do the permitting themselves. Anything outside of the standard ecosystem just gets overlooked.

    The best workaround while avoiding these companies is to find a smart watch or ring that has compatibility with a proxy card, such as Curve. But beyond halving the price of the accessory, this is pretty much an arbitrary decision.



  • Khrux@ttrpg.networkto196@lemmy.blahaj.zonerule away Rowling
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    7 months ago

    Also I actually have less of an issue with other people buying Gaiman’s work. I have no love for the man and won’t buy anything myself again, but if you buy something of his, the money goes to him, and stops there. Rowling directly funds bigotry; the money people spend on Harry Potter is in a direct pipeline to funding the suffering of innocent people.

    At the very least, before everything happened with Gaiman, he was known for having positive philanthropic ventures. Even if you gave him money, a sizable portion went to him, another portion went on to better the world. I’d presume he still supports these trusts and charities too.




  • He’s the only actor I can think of I actively boycott other than Gal Godot. Aside from his violent racism and American nationalism which is all well documented, I just absolutely loathe the type of character he likes to play; the macho snarky asshole who feels like he got kicked out of basic training and makes being a veteran his whole personality.

    There’s few archetypes I hate more than the “former soldier who could kill a man, harbouring some deep unnerving instinct”, or the “American in a truck who loves the flag and is just a hard working guy”, and somehow he always plays and glamorises both, despite not actually being either.


  • This was my hometown’s team. It’s super strange having it put on the map, where basically everybody knows this story, and before then nothing at all.

    It’s absolutely just a random investment in a potentially very lucrative industry. 21st century football is massively swayed by who can spend the most money, especially below the very top level where the money becomes too ridiculous. Wrexham had the oldest active ground in the UK and the ground itself is particularly goodnfkr the level of play. Wrexham had dropped from 3rd division to like 5th, near 6th when he bought it (I think). But Wrexham as a city isn’t small, it’s the largest population centre in North Wales, and before it gained city status in 2022, was a larger town than many of the cities near it. All it really needed to do well was investment, where it had the facilities to be tenfold more successful if anybody actually paid for it, it’s the same for probably a dozen other teams across the UK.

    But the investment worked of course, and the team has done amazingly well since then. But don’t consider this anything but an investment where two celebrities used their image to aid it’s success.




  • He wanted the weird image. He implied he was intending to start some sort of harem cult a few years back, which was really a hippie holiday for millionaire women in a very LA way. He absolutely played up his image as a self obsessed creep looking to be worshipped to sell this experience. I honestly feel everything kinda gross about how Jared Leto feels is marketing, although God knows why, as it must hurt his career.


  • I agree about Palestine, where there was a huge, disheartening cry from America in October - December 2023, when the general attitude was that this was all a terrorist attack, and not the beginning of a genocide. I am definitely wary of celebrities who made pro Israel statements then, but I feel many felt expected to, or were just grossly misinformed.

    He does sort of just suck though. I feel the internet’s perception of his soured so fast in the 2020s, from beloved to loathed, and all he did was keep doing what he always does, just with a tiny amount more selling out, which was enough to snowball the hate.