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

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Joined 6 months ago
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Cake day: January 12th, 2024

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  • Eh, sounds like a conspiracy theory.

    Not really, even if false. It’s just a hypothesis.

    It’s the kind of thing that would look really bad if it got out, but doesn’t have much upside.

    We [current and former Reddit users] babble a lot about shit the admins do. If this got out, it wouldn’t cause much damage to the already barely existent reputation of that shithole; and as HelixDab2 said, the ones still in that shithole would outrage for 15min then go back as if nothing happened.

    If it significantly affected profits, maybe, but this doesn’t register there.

    I think that a system like this would actually increase the margin of profit, in the medium term. Because it would allow them to cut some slack to the cash cows, while you’re still removing some users who are pissing the others off.



  • What I’m going to say is just a hypothesis from my part. It might be bollocks. But.

    For a long time I’ve suspected that Reddit runs some sort of algorithm to predict the profitability of each user, based on factors like

    • platform used (desktop vs. mobile)
    • running / not running an ad blocker
    • if not running an ad blocker, clicking on ads or not
    • likelihood of that user to buy Reddit junk (e.g. the “coins” of the past)
    • likelihood of that user to attract newer users
    • etc.

    and then the output of that algorithm is taken into account when handling rule violation. As in: you can go rogue and they’ll give you a short ban if you’re deemed profitable, or a small offence will give you a permaban if unprofitable.

    With that said I don’t think that they manually review your earlier posts/comments before enforcing the rules.





  • For my main thoughts on this matter, refer to this comment. I’ll only mention what’s different from this source to the other:

    “We are more transparent than many players in this industry who have used public content to train their models and products,” Meta said.

    “Since some people kill puppies, just kicking one is totally fine” moral reasoning might perhaps give you some breach in countries following Saxon tribal law, but not in countries following Roman civil law. In those, what matters is the law, not how the relevant organs handled other similar cases.

    The law in this case being the LGPD (Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados - Data Protection General Law). If it’s found that Meta’s activities violate the LGPD, well, cry me a river, “I dun unrurrstand, Google does it worse, I’m so confusion…” won’t save Meta’s skin.







  • Those are used with urine, not blood. Urine is yellow-ish, but since it’s just a drop, it doesn’t stain the strip; instead, the blue tip changes colour as it reacts with the glucose in the urine. Then you compare that coloured tip with a chart, and you get an idea of the concentration of glucose in your body. Picture related:

    I remember seeing those bottles in my bathroom all the time as a kid (my sister is diabetic).

    These almost look more like ph or ketone test strips…

    It is roughly the same idea as the one behind the litmus test for pH, indeed. The difference is which substance you’re putting there (Benedict’s reagent vs. pH indicators) and which substance you’re testing for (glucose vs. H₃O⁺ / OH⁻).




  • This screams FAITH (Filthy Assumptions Instead of THinking) from a distance, on multiple levels:

    1. Assuming that the current machine learning development will lead to artificial general intelligence. Will it?
    2. Assuming that said AGI would appear in time to reduce power consumption. Will it?
    3. Assuming that lowering the future power consumption will be enough to address issues caused by the current power consumption. Will it?
    4. Assuming that addressing issues from a distant future means that the whole process won’t cause harm for people in a nearer future. Will it?

    Furthermore, Gates in the quote is being disingenuous:

    “Let’s not go overboard on this,” he said. “Datacenters are, in the most extreme case, a 6 percent addition [to the energy load] but probably only 2 to 2.5 percent. The question is, will AI accelerate a more than 6 percent reduction? And the answer is: certainly,” Gates said.

    The answer addresses something far, far more specific than the main issue.


    If I may, here’s my alternative solution for the problem, in the same style as Gates’:

    Kill everyone between the North Pole and the Equator.

    What do you mean, it would kill 85% people in the world? Well, you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs, right? Nobody that I know personally lives there, so Not My Problem®. (Just keep Japan, I need my anime to watch.)

    …I’m being clearly sarcastic to deliver a point here - it’s trivially easy to underestimate issues affecting humankind, and problems associated with their solutions, if you are not directly affected by either. Gates is some billionaire bubbled around rich people; this sort of problem will affect the poor first, as the rich can simply throw enough money into their problems to make them go away.





  • I thought about this a while ago. My conclusion was that the simplest way to handle this would be to copy multireddits, and expand upon them.

    Here’s how I see it working.

    Users can create multireddits multicommunities multis as they want. What goes within a multi is up to the user; for example if you want to create a “myfavs” multi with !potatoism, !illegallysmolcats and !anime_art, you do you.

    The multi owner can:

    1. edit it - change name, add/remove comms to/from the multi
    2. make the multi public or private
    3. use the multi as their feed, instead of Subscribed/Local/All
    4. use the multi to bulk subscribe, unsub, or block comms

    By default a multi would be private, and available only for the user creating it. However, you can make it public if you want; this would create a link for that multi, available for everyone checking your profile. (Or you could share it directly.)

    You can use someone else’s public multi as your feed or to bulk subscribe/unsub/block comms. You can also “fork” = copy it; that would create an identical multi associated with your profile, that then you can edit.