DamienWise

DamienWise, 6 days ago to random

Another day, another reminder of that phenomenon where somebody copies a meme from Reddit and posts it on Tumbler. Then it gets screenshotted, cropped, and posted elsewhere. Then someone files-off the serial numbers again and posts the screenshot on Facebook.

Each iteration causes attribution decay, jpg compression artefacts, bit-rot, photocopier burn, fax jaggies, noise in the wires.

Five years pass, the original poster has deleted their account from Reddit, and digital palimpsest undergoes yet another mutation of someone pretending it's their joke: "I bought some dodgy pure copper speaker cables from a seller on Temu called Ea-nāṣir."

DamienWise, 1 month ago to melbourne

Fascinating article about the sustained work in recent years to rehabilitate the Merri Creek, and the positive results for local people, flora, and wildlife.

Making merry: how we brought Melbourne’s Merri Creek back from pollution, neglect and weeds
https://theconversation.com/making-merry-how-we-brought-melbournes-merri-creek-back-from-pollution-neglect-and-weeds-226231

#Melbourne #Naarm #Wurundjeri #MerriCreek #FriendsOfMerriCreek #CliftonHill

DamienWise, 2 months ago to Iceland

The Grindavík volcano has become effusive again. Volcanologists were observing the magmatic intrusion build-up, and predicting with great precision based on cyclic activity over the past few months that a new eruption is overdue . This eruption began around 10:23 their time, and is centred on the previous fissure near Sýlingarfell, a few hundred metres east of Svartsengi (appropriately meaning "black meadow").

As usual, the streaming webcams by RÚV are showing the event from multiple angles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXD4A9uFHcg

#Iceland #Volcano #IcelandVolcano #Grindavik #Sýlingarfell #Svartsengi

DamienWise, 3 months ago to vegetarian

Tonight, we cooked pasties from scratch. To be fair, I did hardly any of the work, and making this pastry looked like it took some effort, but it was worth it!

The result wasn't quite a genuine Cornish Pastie, but was still some sort of delicious Englander Root Vegetable Pastry Whatsit.

The recipe was based on the Genuine Cornish Pasty recipe (https://cornishpastyassociation.co.uk/about-the-pasty/make-your-own-genuine-cornish-pasty/). We made some modifications such as increasing the diversity of vegetables, and to make it vegetarian we replaced the lard with butter and the meat with Vegie Delights plant-based mince.

#Vegetarian #Cooking #Pasty

baldur, 3 months ago to random

JFC, people in tech are really out there saying that language models will be better at therapy, financial advice, and career advice than trained people.

WTF is wrong with you people? Do you really have no clue about what other people’s jobs actually involve?

Language models can’t even do maths how are they supposed to get good at financial advice?

And therapy? Just… 😑

What’s wrong with people in tech?

DamienWise, 4 months ago to movies

Barbie Fans: No Oscar nomination for Greta Gerwig or Margot Robbie, but you gave a nomination to Ryan Gosling — did you miss the point of the "Barbie" film‽
Hollywood Boys' Club: We saw the point, we didn't like it, and we want you to know.

#Barbie #Hollywood #Oscars

DamienWise, 5 months ago to random

It's all about perspective!

#TwoGuysOnABus #TrolleyProblem

DamienWise, 5 months ago to ai

Dropbox has started to give your files to OpenAI.

They claim it's only if you use their AI tools, and they claim OpenAI will use your data for only 30 days and then delete it. I think that's a terrible abuse of user rights and a security disaster waiting to happen.

Confusingly, they've rolled-out this malfeature to some users but not all (yet). My partner & me compared the "Settings" page on our Dropbox accounts — the "Third-Party AI" tab is there for one of us but not the other.

The setting is switched on by default. This is a "dark pattern" (also known as a "deceptive design pattern") that ignores user consent. If you don't know about it, you can't opt-out. Worryingly, if you're slow to opt-out then there's a chance they've scraped you data already. It's a harsh reminder of the saying "If you're not paying for the product, you are the product".

How to stop Dropbox from sharing your personal files with OpenAI
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/13/how-to-stop-dropbox-from-sharing-your-personal-files-with-openai.html

#Dropbox #AI #OpenAI #Security #Privacy #DarkPattern #DeceptiveDesignPattern

DamienWise, 6 months ago to Youtube

Last night, I watched the new HBomberGuy video; it's a brilliant extrusion!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDp3cB5fHXQ

If you've been getting déjà vu from some prolific YouTube creators, particularly big video-essay channels such as Iilluminaughtii and James Somerton, chances are their secret trick is plagiarism.
Often, I've wondered if they're on a personal mission to produce a weekly series of unauthorised audiobooks of Wikipedia articles. Or they're a content-mill powered by uncredited contributors, and ripping-off the research of journalists. Worse, they're getting paid a load of money by sidelining up-and-coming talent, or silencing the voices of people in a marginalised community or deceased activists and artists.

#HBomberGuy #iilluminaughtii #JamesSomerton #YouTube #Plagiarism #ContentMill #VideoEssay #LGBTQIA

mcc, 6 months ago to random

A good drinking game would be to bring up YouTube videos with clickbait titles and take bets on how long the video takes to actually answer the question posed by the title

18+ whatshisays, 6 months ago to random

I was talking to a colleague while making my latte and the froth sort of started to settle so i couldn't move it as much during the pour.

So here is another dick

#BadLatteArt

DamienWise, 6 months ago to random

We've all been there.

DamienWise, 7 months ago to melbourne

Victoria rattled by magnitude 5 earthquake
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/victoria-rattled-by-magnitude-5-earthquake-20231022-p5ee1m.html

The earthquake occurred around 2am. We slept through it. Bit bigger than the occasional tremors we get around here, but no harm done.
<insert meme here: photo of white plastic garden chair toppled on its side>

#Melbourne #MelbourneEarthquake #Victoria #VictoriaEarthquake #CapeOtway #GreatOceanRoad

DamienWise, 8 months ago to random

That thing where a website is hopelessly broken and won't let you login, then says it's your problem so you need to reset your password.
And the default method of password reset is by SMS, but after multiple attempts no SMSs arrive.
So, you do the dance to get your password reset by email, but the broken website still won't let you login.
The cherry on top of this shit sandwich: you go to a different part of their accursed website to lodge a complaint, fill-in the form, play the CAPTCHA game multiple times, and then the form submission fails so badly that it vomits-up an indecipherable error. 🤬

DamienWise, 8 months ago to random

Your Fisher & Paykel Front Loader Washing Machine has three compartments in the dispenser drawer.
Detergent is added to the main compartment on the left side of the dispenser drawer.
Add fabric softener to the middle compartment of the dispenser.
Place an abundant amount of glitter in the compartment on the right side of the drawer. Do not be concerned about underfilling the glitter compartment; that shit gets everywhere and never goes away. Now your clothes will be adorned by sparkly microplastics until the heat-death of the universe.

#FisherPaykel #FisherAndPaykel #WashingMachine #Glitter #Microplastics

thorne, 8 months ago to random

You know the phenomenon: that nephew you only see every year or two, who is suddenly grown up and covered in teenage acne.
Since last year, I have visited Facebook less and less frequently. I don’t know if people who visit it every day can see just how rapidly and violently it’s enshittifying, but wow
I can.

GrimmReality, 8 months ago to random

BREAKING: Political party that embraced and made common cause with neo-Nazis alarmed at neo-Nazis being surly assholes
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/21/house-gop-conservatives-block-defense-bill-00117400

DamienWise, 8 months ago to random

Philips has decided to enshittify its popular Hue lights.
https://tech.lgbt/@eclairwolf/111067232065621122
This is an absurd bait-and-switch, and will only cause pain for customers.

#Philips #Hue #PhilipsHue #Enshittification

Animated gif: Captain Picard screaming "There are four lights on the ceiling!"

DamienWise, 8 months ago to random

If you've been wondering about price-gouging by supermarkets over the last few years (in Australia, it's the Coles + Woolies duopoly), and thought it's descended into blatant profiteering since the start of the pandemic, this thread has some data you may find interesting and infuriating:
https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@badlogic/111071396799790275

#PriceFixing #PriceGouging #Supermarkets #Coles #Woolies #Duopoly

DamienWise, 8 months ago to unity

Unity is trapped in an enshittify-or-die scenario of its own making.

A summary of the timeline of how Unity got here:

Unity went IPO in September 2020 at a price around $68. Within three months, the share price rose approximately 240%. Right on cue the post-IPO sell-off occurred: initial speculators cashed-in, which naturally precipitated a share price plunge.
But that didn't matter to the bean-counters at Unity because they had a huge sack of IPO cash and could go on a shopping-spree. Unity committed to a series of Mergers & Acquisitions, for example, in November 2021 they bought Weta Digital for $1.6 Billion.
Good way to get noticed and juice the share price, right? Unsurprisingly, around this time there was another bubbly-looking share-price peak at around $200. This sparked another sell-off, which tanked the share price, and now it looks like it isn't bouncing back.
For the past 18 months, Unity's share price has languished around $25-40. Sure, the company is worth $14 Billion, but it's unprofitable, bleeding $900 Million a year.

To survive, Unity needs to embark on a programme of laying-off staff, reducing the quality of their product, and hiking-up prices they charge their game-developer customers — yaaaay, enshittification! party balloons cascade from the ceiling

Notably, the CEO of Unity hasn't bought any shares this year, but has sold a bunch on a couple of occasions this year, including a sell-off just last week. It's almost as though he knew that the party is over and he was about to deliver some news that he hoped could save the company but would more likely be taken by games developer as as a sign of impending catastrophe.

#Unity #Unity3d #Enshittification #EnshittifyOrDie

DamienWise, 8 months ago to twitter

Sometimes you have the misfortune to meet an egotistical fool who's convinced they're the smartest person in the room. This article by @mmasnick leaves no doubt in my mind that wherever Elon Musk goes, not only is he not the smartest person in the room, it's likely he's the stupidest person in the room.
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/09/12/the-batshit-crazy-story-of-the-day-elon-musk-decided-to-personally-rip-servers-out-of-a-sacramento-data-center/

#ElonMusk #Twitter #PEBKAC

rebeccawatson, 9 months ago to random

A new study has some sobering data about how COVID-19 affects people up to two years after infection, even for mild cases: heart problems, blood clots, diabetes, neurologic complications, fatigue, difficulties with mental health, and much more https://skepchick.org/2023/08/study-why-you-should-avoid-covid-even-if-youre-healthy/

DamienWise, 9 months ago to tech

Do you remember the good ol' days of the Dot-Com Bubble? And the Dot-Com-Crash that followed?

Back then, Sun Microsystems was one of the darlings of Silicon Valley. The company is credited with inventing Java, and many of the Internet's servers at the time ran on Sun hardware. Investors jumped in the bandwagon, which pumped the share price. People were buying the shares because they expected the share price to keep going up. This can look good — for a while.
A problem with speculative stocks is that the price ceases to bear a healthy relation to the company's potential future earnings. There's no way for the company to deliver enough profit to make the price you paid worth it. The fundamentals don't stack-up, and a crash is inevitable. With the benefit of hindsight, Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems, was critical of speculative trading when the company’s stock price reached a whopping 10 times revenues.

You may think that was all just "tulip mania".
You may think sharemarket investors have learned from the dot-com bubble era.
You may think governments and banks would have changed the rules to prevent things getting so out-of-whack again.
You may think the "snake-oil salesman" tactics by Silicon Valley Tech-Bros couldn't create a disaster like that again these days...

Tesla's share price is being pumped by a fast-talking madman. Tesla's Price-to-Sales Ratio is currently about 9, and looks to be heading up to over 10 again, where it was from mid June to mid-July.

Nvidia's share price is being pumped by AI hype. Nvidia's Price-to-Sales Ratio is currently about 35, and looks to be heading up to over 40 again, where it was from mid June to mid-July.

#Tech #Bubble #TulipMania #DotComBubble #DotComCrash #DotComBoom #DotBomb #Tesla #NVidia #AI #AIHype