hedgehog @ hedgehog @ttrpg.network

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887

Joined

2 yr. ago

Thought I was on r/LoveForLandchads for a second, as I know of no other place this would be appropriate.

Just checked and this was posted there yesterday, so my intuiti-meter isn’t broken after all

Keychain flashlight would be too weak compared to a phone. Leave it at home and if you notice the need, buy a proper one.

Depends on what’s meant by “keychain flashlight.”

I carry a Wukkos TS10 on my keychain and it gets quite bright - over a thousand lumens at peak compared to around 50 for the iPhone 15 Pro Max (so I’m assuming most other phones’ flashlights aren’t much brighter). There are several other flashlights that are similarly competent and compact. Mine runs on a 14500 battery, which is the size of a AA battery, so it’s a bit bulkier than the AAA-powered flashlight I started carrying over a decade ago. That one capped out at 150 lumens, so the upgrade was as much of an improvement over it as it was over a phone flashlight.

Looking that up made me curious about how good a 10440-powered flashlight could be (a 10440 is the size of a AAA battery) and apparently they can get up to 500 lumens - at least, the ReyLight Pineapple mini-Ti can. That one’s 50 USD (on sale from 60), which is more than a lot of alternatives, but none of them get quite as bright. For example, I saw that the Mankerlight E02 II is recommended a lot and it gets nearly as bright (420 lumens) for less than half the price (23 USD).

The Acebeam UC15 is explicitly a “keychain flashlight” - it even has the same form factor as the coin cell battery powered ones. It runs on two AAA (or 10440) batteries, though, so it’s a bit larger than them. Some I just saw top out at 12 lumens; by comparison, the UC15 tops out at 1000.

Thanks for that! I recommend anyone who wants to minimize risk to follow their instructions for self-hosting:

Is the source code available and can I run my own copy locally?

Yes! The source code is available on Github. Its a simple static HTML application and you can clone and run it by opening the index.html file in your browser. When run locally it should work when your computer is completely offline. The latest commits in the git repository are signed with my public code signing key.

Generally people don’t memorize private keys, but this is applicable when generating pass phrases to protect private keys that are stored locally.

Leaving this here in case anyone wants to use this method: https://www.eff.org/dice

I have more fun playing ping pong / table tennis if I can spin the ball.

unless one is sure the thing is actually beneficial, which is like actually pretty nebulous because even the people who have the Thing sometimes don't think it is better

Could you ask to use someone else’s racket to see if you like it? For more expensive equipment, you might be able to try it before you buy it or rent it.

I agree that low-effort obligatory gift-giving is wasteful, but gift-giving doesn’t have to be like that.

in the two contexts described above, I feel like it is spiritually cheating. Yes, everyone does it, but If you say something is based on skill, and then you find out that for the same skill level you get to win more games if you buy the Thing, this feels like an awkward, though way less pronounced parallel to pay to win video games

Some equipment is for safety. I hope you’re not skimping there.

When you start to get more competitive in sports that can benefit from more expensive equipment, there’s a certain amount of budget that you’re basically expected to be spending at a given level. If you’re spending beyond that level, then people might feel like you’re getting an advantage over them, but otherwise, the playing field is level. Also, more expensive gear might not even be better for you at a given skill level - with table tennis, you need more fine control with a “faster” racket than with a slower one.

That said, it sounds like you’re using a $1 rubberless racket, and those are terrible to play with. You’re literally not able to even use fairly basic techniques with them. The difference between one of those and even a $5-$10 racket is huge - far bigger than the difference between one of those and a $50 racket for sure.

It sounds like they want a representative sample, which isn’t something I’d be confident in my ability to help them with directly, so I’d advise them to first scan for a person who’s very experienced in statistical sampling and to then work with that person to determine a strategy that will meet their goals.

If they weren’t on board with that plan, then I’d see if they were willing to share their target sample size. If I didn’t have an option for the count I would assume they would be contacting 1% of the population (80 million people). I’d also let them know that being representative and selecting for traits that will make encounters go smoothly are conflicting goals, so I’m prioritizing for representation and they can figure out the “please don’t pull a shotgun out, human!” trait on their own. Depending on all that, I’d recommend an approach that accounted for as much of the following as possible.

• gender (male, female, non-binary)
• race
• culture and sub-culture (so this would include everything from religion to music to hobbies)
• profession
• age, broken down into micro-generations
• mix of neurotypical and neurodivergent
• different varieties of neurodivergence
• range of intelligences

Traction control and other related features is a bigger deal than AWD in my opinion. In the past five years I’ve had AWD engage maybe twice.

Also, you can replace two tires at once as opposed to all four, depending on the specific vehicle and how much the difference will be between the tires you’re keeping and getting rid of. You only need to replace all four if the difference is enough to cause issues.

There are a ton of crossover SUVs with FWD, though. Here are a few:

• Honda CR-V
• Toyota RAV4
• Lexus RX 350
• Toyota Highlander
• Hyundai Tucson
• Hyundai Palisade
• Kia Telluride
• Nissan Kicks
• Nissan Rogue
• Nissan Murano

Just so you know, Elon’s AI is “Grok,” which is unaffiliated with Groq, the AI platform used by Groqbook.

Here’s a Gizmodo article about Groq. The notable thing about Groq is that it uses specialized “LPU” hardware in order to return results faster. It also exposes an Openai compatible API, so developers can use Groq with their choice of available models (as far as I can tell that includes anything you could run with llama.cpp, though you may have to convert a model yourself if nobody’s already made it available for Groq).

That said, since Groqbook uses Llama3 via Groq, you could edit your quote to replace “Elon Musk” with “Mark Zuckerberg” and it wouldn’t change much.

(To be clear, I don’t think Groqbook is made by anyone officially associated with Groq or that either is associated with Meta, but I also didn’t check.)

How do you define “intelligence,” precisely?

Is my dog intelligent? What about a horse or dolphin? Macaws or chimpanzees?

Human brains do a number of different things behind the scenes, and some of those things look an awful lot like AI. Do you consider each of them to be intelligence, or is part of intelligence not enough to call it intelligence?

If you don’t consider it sufficient to say that part of intelligence is itself “intelligence,” then can you at least understand that some people do apply metonymy when saying the word “intelligence?”

If I convinced you to consider it or if you already did, then can you clarify:

The thing with machine learning is that it is inexplicable, much like parts of the human brain is inexplicable. Algorithms can be explained and understood, but machine learning, and its efficacy with problem spaces as they get larger and it’s fed more and more data, isn’t truly understood even by people who work deeply with it. These capabilities allow them to solve problems that are otherwise very difficult to solve algorithmically - similar to how we solve problems. Unless you think you have a deeper understanding than they do, how can you, as you claim, understand machine learning and its capabilities well enough to say that it is not at least similar to a part of intelligence?

• The open source scene is completely dead in the water and so is fine tuning for individuals.

Why do you think that? The existing data sets won’t be going anywhere. Fine tuning doesn’t require nearly the same amount of training images and it’s not infeasible to get them from individual artists.

Not that that actually matters to open source developers, though, as the developer obligations only apply if you’re making the product available for a commercial purpose, so they’re not relevant to developers of gratis solutions - and most libre developers are also gratis developers. If your platform is not commercial and doesn’t have at least 25 Million monthly active users, you don’t need to allow users to add content provenance information in the first place. If it’s not for a commercial purpose, you aren’t prohibited from training on content containing content provenance information, or from removing it and training on it.

There are plenty of internet culture outside Western that still respect ownership, people don't just take random things on internet without permission. Western internet culture =/= entire internet.

Which cultures are you referring to?

Ah, good point. Apparently it shows 4 different things: https://twitter.com/foone/status/1301718864573554689

If you’re using the screen on the front of your fridge and your fridge’s built-in buttons, if your computer is in the door or walls of the fridge as opposed to just chilling on a shelf like a leftover burrito, if your computer doesn’t have its own distinct power source, and if your fridge continues to cool your food like a fridge… why not?

No, it’s not running entirely on the fridge’s hardware at that point, but you did basically hack your fridge to be able to play Crysis.

In this case it does all of the above and also triggers device functionality based off of game events.

Personally I didn’t think the pregnancy test one really counted, either, but I’m with you on this one. This isn’t just “I put Doom on a sex toy,” but “I put Doom on a sex toy and used game events to trigger its functionality,” which is a level above.

Also looking at the pregnancy test one now I might change my mind. They did use a different microcontroller and screen, but the pregnancy test already had a microcontroller inside it; it just wasn’t programmable. If the replacement microcontroller and screen had the same specs as the old one, it’s more than fair to call that a win IMO. At that point, it’s the same hardware, after all.

When I was in like first grade, my parents got us a Super NES, which I took to a friend’s house to play, thinking it was the same thing as a regular NES (just “super,” y’know?). I spaced and left it behind... and never saw it again.

I don’t even know who the friend was anymore, tbh.

When I was in fourth or fifth grade, a teacher did this thing where you could earn bonus points during the year and later spend them on prizes. I had a lot of points and so got to make my selections early, and I got a bunch of gaming magazines because I liked to read them, even though we didn’t have a modern console. Some other kid in the class, whom I do remember, got annoyed at this and stole them from my locker. I think I found out, because I remember that he explained it was because I wasn’t even a gamer - I didn’t have a PlayStation or Dreamcast so obviously (in his mind) it didn’t make sense for me to take those magazines. Sorry for being poor, I guess? I’m pretty sure I got the magazines back, because I remember reading them, but I’m not positive.

First situation I blame myself more than them. Second one I’m still annoyed when I think about it.

Oh, good. In that case, carry on!

Did you just imply that dbrand employs humans? I’ll have you know that the company is robots all the way down.

I actually watch porn on public transit

Why?

I guess that not many people do.

Would it make you uncomfortable if they did?

if Apple has that group on their "approved" list and they match donations, they are effectively donating to that group.

Not really.

First, like I said in my previous comment, the article doesn’t say if there’s an “Approved” list or if they just approved everything the donation platform supports (all 2.1 million nonprofits). I’ve never used Benevity and so have no way of knowing how corporations select which nonprofits they’ll match donations to. I looked at the Benevity site and they didn’t make it clear, either.

Secondly, like I said in my previous comment, it doesn’t state whether anyone has actually donated (particularly over the last 9 months or so). Benevity has 2.1 million nonprofits in their database but has only supported less than a quarter of them - 470 thousand.

If nobody has actually donated, Apple hasn’t, either. Heck, suppose a hundred people have donated an average of $100 each. That’d be $10,000 that Apple has donated and $20,000 more than should have been donated, but that’s still ultimately not a remotely relevant amount. The IDF gets $3.8 BILLION every year from US taxpayers. And unlike with donation matching, those taxpayers don’t get a choice in where their money goes. In this case, the employees are in control.

It’s completely feasible that Benevity doesn’t provide an easy way for corporations like Apple to prevent donations to particular “charities” like this one without impacting other donation options. I.e., they might have an all or nothing approach, where the company selects groups of charities, and in order to prevent donations to the Friends of IDF, Apple would need to also prevent donations to every other actual charity in the same group.

It’s also completely feasible that it does provide this option. But the article doesn’t say.

The article also doesn’t explain why the signatories aren’t also making a big deal about the donation platform facilitating donations to Friends of the IDF in the first place. Heck, it doesn’t even mention how many of the “900+ leading brands who use Benevity” have donations to Friends of the IDF enabled.

OP is basically saying “Grab your pitchforks! It’s Apple harvesting time!” and using an article written by someone too lazy to even email Benevity and ask for the basic missing info I’ve outlined above.

From the article (emphasis mine):

The controversy stems from Apple’s employee donation-matching programme, which allows workers to make contributions to various non-profit organisations and receive matching funds from the company through a platform called Benevity. Among the charities Apple’s controversial platform allows funds to be sent to are Friends of the IDF

This doesn’t say Apple is donating to the IDF, just that it allows its employees to, and will match that donation. That’s an employee benefit. It doesn’t say how many employees are taking advantage of this, if any.

It doesn’t say if Apple has simply allowed every Benevity cause or some subset of them that happens to include Friends of the IDF.

I get that this was organized by Apple employees, but Benevity is the one facilitating this - and not just for Apple. They should be the ones getting pressured to stop enabling it.