I admin the.coolest.zone, the coolest site on the net for online social engagement.
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So this is actually an interesting term. Looking it up from Wikipedia…
The term “sideload” was coined in the late 1990s by online storage service i-drive as an alternative means of transferring and storing computer files virtually instead of physically. In 2000, i-drive applied for a trademark on the term. Rather than initiating a traditional file “download” from a website or FTP site to their computer, a user could perform a “sideload” and have the file transferred directly into their personal storage area on the service.
The advent of portable MP3 players in the late 1990s brought sideloading to the masses, even if the term was not widely adopted. Users would download content to their PCs and sideload it to their players.
So as applied to phones it originally meant a particular type of download and install - rather than installing directly to your phone from an app store, you have somehow obtained the file on your PC, transferred the file to your phone, and then installed it. In that context, downloading an APK directly to your phone and installing it would not be sideloading.
However, semantics have shifted somewhat and now it’s used generally to refer to any install that isn’t directly from an app store of some kind, and requires downloading an actual package file and then installing it.
Important context autotldr missed:
The incident happened when the engineer was programming the software that controls the robots, which cut car parts from aluminium, The Information reported.
Two of the robots were disabled, but a third was inadvertently left on. As it went through its normal motions, it caught the worker in its claws.
Yikes, that should be checked multiple times before someone gets close to the clawed aluminum cutting robot. Failure of process, I suspect.
@ISometimesAdmin@the.coolest.zone Let me know if you need rehab.
But seriously… yeah, I get it. Especially this part about the workplace:
Nevertheless, [addicted programmers] can also pose significant risks, especially because they frequently deviate from the planned course. They follow their own agenda, introducing challenges where none were necessary, or dedicating hours to minor, tangential aspects of a project. In the process, they diverge from the project plan, programming what they believe is necessary rather than what the project itself requires.
I have been that person before, and now I’m in a position where I have to keep those folks on a tight leash and remind them “our goal is to deliver a product right now, and we can enhance it in future sprints. Let’s just focus on what our primary goal was right now.” It’s easy to fall down rabbit holes, and that’s where having proper planning and a ticketing system to backlog and prioritize future enhancements is so critical.
Ok, so I use Gboard and it doesn’t seem to do that for me, it leaves existing spaces alone. Here are my settings:
Under Text Correction I have enabled:
- Show suggestion strip
- Auto correction
- Auto capitalization
- Double space period
- Proofread
Everything else is disabled, so maybe try toggling things off and on and seeing whether the behavior changes?
I also have two keyboards I switch between: English (US) and हिन्दी . I’m unsure whether having multiple language keyboards changes how the base functionality works.
2024: Google Assistant formally deprecated in favor of Google Bard, now appearing on all new Android phones
2026: Google Bard development ceases and is left to languish as Google promotes their new Google Mobile Co-Pilot
2027: Bard finally ends service, Google Mobile Co-Pilot is rebranded to Messages Co-Pilot and is integrated into the Google Messages app for some reason so you have to basically text it for help
2029: Google Assistant is relaunched with new technology and Messages Co-Pilot now only responds to tell you to use Google Assistant instead
Boo, uncool. Shouldn’t have announced it at all if it were that unfeasible.
I realize that letting people outside Tumblr read Tumblr posts means losing ad revenue on new users, but keeping Tumblrites on Tumblr and allowing them to bring in Mastodon/Lemmy/pixelfed posts would keep the existing users more glued to the platform (more ad revenue). I guess they’re gunning for new users primarily.
While I agree in theory, it’s hard practically to give the ability to make private wording and typo edits without giving the ability to make more insidious changes - like pushing a certain narrative and then quietly changing words here and there to erase evidence of that after most people have read it, etc.
If news websites kept their own visible audit trail, much like Wikipedia, I could see the argument that Internet Archive doesn’t need to capture these articles immediately, maybe it should be time bound to a year after publication or somesuch, and therefore recent news could retain its paywall by the NYT without being sidestepped by Internet Archive. (While it’s annoying that articles are paywalled, news sites do need to make money and pay for actual news reporters.)
AI is absolutely taking off. LLMs are taking over various components of frontline support (service desks, tier 1 support). They’re integrated into various systems using langchains to pull your data, knowledge articles, etc, and then respond to you based on that data.
AI is primarily a replacement for workers, like how McDonalds self service ordering kiosks are a replacement for cashiers. Cheaper and more scalable, cutting out more and more entry level (and outsourced) work. But unlike the kiosks, you won’t even see that the “Amazon tech support” you were kicked over to is an LLM instead of a person. You won’t hear that the frontline support tech you called for a product is actually an AI and text to speech model.
There were jokes about the whole Wendy’s drive thru workers being replaced by AI, but I’ve seen this stuff used live. I’ve seen how flawlessly they’ve tuned the AI to respond to someone who makes a mistake while speaking and corrects themself (“I’m going to the Sacramento office – sorry, no, the Folsom office”) or bundles various requests together (“oh while you’re getting me a visitor badge can you also book a visitor cube for me?”). I’ve even seen crazy stuff like “I’m supposed to meet with Mary while I’m there, can you give me her phone number?” and the LLM routes through the phone directory, pulls up the most likely Marys given the caller’s department and the location the user is visiting via prior context, and asks for more information - “I see two Marys here, Mary X who works in Department A and Mary Y who works in Department B, are you talking about either of them?”
It’s already here and it’s as invisible as possible, and that’s the end goal.
Oh man, you’ve got me itching to get into the intricacies of JavaScript…
One fun example of the difference: when doing arithmetic operations, null is indeed converted to 0, but undefined is converted to NaN. This has to do with null being an assigned value that represents empty, whereas undefined is not actually a value but a response indicating that there was no value assigned in the first place.
Piracy exists because it’s easier than the alternative. Textbooks are expensive as hell and publishers are working to demolish the used book market - first by changing the version every year, and now with one-time-use mandatory software keys. Sites like Libgen wouldn’t have to exist if textbooks were $20 a pop, or if the used book market was allowed to exist. These problems are created by greed.
This whole thing is absurd and overcomplicated - they could have just copied Unreal and slightly undercut them.
It isn’t too complicated, but for example, a game which made $2 million in gross revenue would owe Epic Games $50,000, because it would pay 5 percent of $1 million, keeping the first million entirely—minus whatever other fees are owed, such as Steam’s cut.
There should also absolutely have been a grandfather clause for games already released.
I get Unity needs to make money. They’ve never been profitable. But they’ve seriously overcomplicated the whole thing and gotten people angry at them.
IMPORTANT EDIT: I have learned that Unity is going to charge for games already released now. This is a scummy move. I have still not found info on whether devs will be back-charged, like suddenly a huge bill will show up for games which already have a million downloads and a lot of revenue. I was previously in tentative favor of this change only so long as:
- it would apply to newly-released games after the change (no longer valid)
- the first 200,000 installs would not be back-charged even after the change over (still unknown to me)
Scummy move, Unity.
ORIGINAL POST:
I’m seeing a couple pieces of misinformation in here so I just wanted to clarify:
- This applies to the free Unity and Unity Plus - the enterprise version has different thresholds.
- The fee will apply to games that have made $200,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 200,000 per-game lifetime installs.
- Even then, the costs are different depending on which country you are in - “emerging market” is only $0.02 vs $0.20 for other countries.
Essentially it looks to me like you have to have made a significant amount of money already to be charged these fees - someone releasing a free game that goes viral won’t be charged. One thing I haven’t found is whether those first 200,000 installs will or won’t be back-charged. If the initial installs aren’t back-charged then I would consider this very reasonable, frankly, and cheaper than Unreal provided the game you release costs more than $4.00 (since Unreal takes a flat 5% of revenue I believe).
Unity does need to make money to be able to keep developing their engine, and right now as far as I understand it they aren’t making money.
So, I’ve been mulling this over. I know Microsoft Word web version is free and I suppose that’s their replacement, but it needs to be more accessible if that’s the case. Like, for my very Average Mom who buys a laptop, she actually was using Wordpad for years until I got her onto my M365 family plan because it was a built in program and she knows how to navigate the Start menu and open programs.
Assuming a parallel universe where she didn’t have access to desktop Word, how does she know Microsoft Word Online is available to her? Is there a shortcut on the desktop, or directly from Edge? Should there be a start menu icon which opens it up directly? Has Microsoft considered this? I would hope they have.
When these things were originally being tested, at least the Waymo ones I’m familiar with, there was a driver who could manually override in case of issues. Honestly, if these things still have issues with emergency situations (and other unexpected situations), they absolutely still need a driver with the ability to manually override the car. That way, they can still test the self-driving function while being able to actually maneuver the car out of the way of things like this.
Apologies if I sounded flippant. The first part of the article made it sound to me like companies weren’t developing this with any real urgency, hence why they had to do it themselves:
They knew that a fairly straightforward piece of software could make their lives much easier, but no companies were developing it quickly enough.
And I suppose what I meant by “basic medical care” is more that, at least to the extent I am aware of, the medical community is well-versed in how to manage the issue, and with the amount of people who suffer from T1 diabetes and the rapid rate of technological progression in society in general, these solutions should not only already be available but should be available to everyone, and shouldn’t be as expensive to manage as it is. Near the end of the article is the comment:
A team at the University of Otago in New Zealand has run a successful early-stage clinical trial of an open-source insulin pump. The goal is to provide free-of-charge design plans to qualified manufacturers to build pumps for a fraction of the cost of current commercial ones.
I suppose it just upsets me in general that the goal of building low cost insulin pumps isn’t a globally shared one across manufacturers.
Hell of a world where people have to build their own open source systems for basic medical care, but I’m all for it. It’ll help the technologically savvy, and then for-profit med companies will race to catch up to maintain their dominance and the less tech-savvy will also have the improvements they need.
retain control
Notably, in Quarks, every user operation and information exchange that takes part on a channel is carried out via the ledger’s so-called smart contract. In practice, this means that no-one outside of a channel should be able to send or read messages on it. In addition, all messages on the channels cannot be altered or edited, yet they can be audited, meaning that users should be able to derive information about when they were created, sent, delivered, and so on.
Ah, yes. I definitely want anyone in the world to figure out who I’m communicating with by checking the timestamps of when various messages were delivered. Much like how the “anonymous” Bitcoin could be pretty easily de-anonymized just by checking where various bitcoins go and inferring who those wallets likely belonged to.
People need to feel some sort of pride in their lives. Traditionally this has been pride in their accomplishments or their contributions to the community or to society.
But in today’s hyper capitalist society, what is there to be proud of? Most jobs are a single redundant cog in the wheel and one’s absence either wouldn’t be noticed or quickly backfilled. And we spend the weekends doing the chores we couldn’t get done during the week, or just existing and recovering, so we don’t have the time previous generations had to contribute as a member of society, go to our clubs or church gatherings and bring a potluck meal or whatever.
So in an absence of pride based on accomplishments, people sometimes turn to pride based on identity - there’s no criteria to meet, you were simply born and you can be proud of that. And that can be twisted and mutated into a feeling of superiority over people who aren’t the same identity as you.
A widely shared type of video, created by Africa-based Chinese social media influencers, portrays Africans as impoverished and dependent, while Chinese people – often the content creators themselves – are shown as wealthy saviors who provide them with jobs, housing, food, and money.
Another common type of racist content reviewed denigrates interracial relationships. Black people married to Chinese people are accused of “contaminating” and threatening the Chinese race. Perceived relationships between Black men and Chinese women are particularly vilified.
This isn’t just China, it crops up everywhere in different forms, and it’s distressing on all fronts because it speaks to a failure to address a critical need of society - the ability for people to meaningfully contribute and feel accomplished.
Jira is a customizable ticketing platform. I manage a different ticketing platform at my company (ServiceNow), and I see a lot of crossover in system complaints.
- People ask for a tightly controlled workflow and then get mad when they can’t freely move between states. There will always be exception cases so don’t lock down your states in Jira unless it’s for some audit reason.
- Too many custom mandatory fields to enforce some sort of process compliance. If you have a process you want people to follow, do your job and educate and have recurring trainings on the damn process. The system can’t do the educating for you, and if everything is locked down and mandatory all the time it means the ticket can’t even be worked on in phases, or the requester responded to quickly, without having to spend five minutes on data entry - for every ticket.
- People try to use a particular ticket type for something it’s not meant to be used for and get mad when it doesn’t work. This seems to be less of a concern on Jira than ServiceNow but use the correct ticket types for what you’re doing and you won’t have a problem.
- People hate the underlying processes put in place, and blame the system. This is what the article is addressing.
I do have to agree with this article as a whole. There are a lot of managers who see what Jira can do and expect employees to do it all without considering whether it will be worthwhile. Especially if you’re not running agile and sprints, Jira isn’t the tool for everyone. Most companies have a Microsoft 365 license and Planner works well for team task tracking in general (and it’s integrated with Teams).
At the same time, some employees just hate the idea of ticketing at all and rage against the idea of being held accountable for their tasks, and sucks to be them I guess.
Someone else in the thread linked this article which has just come out as well and seems to be a summary of an ex-employee’s accusations of terrible working conditions on Twitter. (I can’t see the Twitter thread because of no account so I can’t link to a primary source, sorry.)
The company my workplace partners with for our IT Helpbot has given a lot of insight into how their LLM system works, and the big thing about it is the langchain and the checks and balances.
Like, you ask “how fix printer error” and instead of hallucinating a response, it first queries our help articles for the correct information and finds the correct snippet to include, along with a link to the source. It also checks whether the user has access to that source material, and if not then it won’t return it but it will proactively tell the user that and ask whether the user wants to open a help request for access to that info. (We haven’t implemented a lot of this stuff in our own workplace because it requires so many coordinating integrations - this is a best case scenario.)
Then, before sending, a second AI comes in and double-checks whether the response is going to be truthful and factual and non-toxic, or else the response has to be regenerated.
This stuff is incredibly powerful but it’s not as simple as “train an LLM and release it on the world” - you need to really think through it as one tool in your toolbox, and how it will interact with those other tools. The only people it’s good at replacing, at least in it’s current state, is L1 Help Desk who only read and respond from SOPs. Otherwise, Copilots can be a good way to assist in coding for example (ChatGPT has given me great insight into my PHP errors for example) but it certainly can’t do the actual work for you.
I wouldn’t say the hype is dangerous or overblown, because this stuff can be absolutely transformative if applied correctly, but executives see dollar signs and think they can replace real thinking humans and then they suffer the consequences, because they didn’t understand the very initiative they directed.
At my old job we had a system of first initial + last name, or if that was already taken then the first two characters of first name + last name, etc. A ticket came into us from an Lo[…] Li who had some concerns about being loli@bignamecompany.com. We obviously gave him an alias.
Every app wants to capture all of your time, but what these app companies don’t realize is that it’s sometimes better to do one thing really well and capture 100% of time spent on that particular thing.
TikTok already handles text posts - it’s called “teenagers pointing at captions on their videos and making faces”. It’s the culture, and TikTok has excelled at this very video-focused culture. Adding text posts will bore the sorts of people who are on TikTok for videos and may result in less engagement, not more.
“oh shit we drove away our core user base by making our site actively hostile and it turns out the end result of that is no money”
It’s interesting that they plan to just milk remaining nostalgia rather than move forward by converting games to HTML5, etc., as that indicates no new games. Or, being more optimistic, maybe the plan IS conversion and new games but this is a stop-gap?
Neopets has changed hands so many times. I was there from the beginning, when it was more of a weirdly British satire site (the original Bruce was not a penguin FYI), and watching everything unfold has been so weird.
However, like PlayStation Plus, you’ll only have access to those games that you claim as long as you’re subscribed to the service.
Not a fan of these subscription services that don’t let you keep what you’ve already claimed. I would vastly prefer a subscription service that allows access to discounted games or something, and then if you cancel you still can access whatever games you have bought. But, then again, I’m a known games packrat - maybe for the duration of time one might reasonably use the Quest, this shakes out to still be valuable? How often do regular users go back to old games?
I have excellent news for you! (nsfw in that you likely don’t wanna play this in the office)
I mean, the issue the RIAA is raising does not seem to be on AI training, but piracy:
The RIAA has asked Discord to shut down a server called “AI Hub,” alleging that its 145,000 or so members share and distribute copyrighted music: Shakira’s “Whenever, Wherever,” for instance, or Mariah Carey’s “Always Be My Baby.” These songs, and several others by the likes of Ludacris, Stevie Wonder, and Ariana Grande, were named in the RIAA’s June 14 subpoena to Discord (pdf).
The music files were being used as datasets to train AI voice generators, which could then churn out deepfake tracks in the styles of these singers.
Later in the article:
It wasn’t clear, from the RIAA’s letters, whether the body was complaining about the databases of original music or about the AI tracks being generated out of them.
Like, I’m sure they’re spooked by AI generated tracks and losing control of the industry… but this seems like a pretty clear cut case of shutting down a Discord server engaged in music piracy.
So, the physical release is just… actual garbage? Like sure, someone may proudly display it in their bookshelf or whatever, but then, it eventually becomes trash, and there’s no reason to keep any of it because there’s no physical copy of the game which can be resold or even borrowed out to friends?
That’s not a “physical release”, that’s a piece of merchandise, as useful as a Funko Pop.
I believe it’s similar to AutoHotKey in that the app must be running for rebinding to work, but less complex in there is no advanced scripting I have found so far.
Microsoft PowerToys is basically a suite of small enhancements for Windows that Microsoft knows should be in Windows but for whatever reason can’t integrate directly into the OS yet (due to time, due to conflicts with other functions, who the heck knows). So they’re focused on being small Settings-esque quality of life improvements.
😲 Amazing! I’ve just remapped my End key to Windows+. since I have never ever used the End key. :) (Windows PowerToys has a Keyboard Manager function to remap keys.)
🥸 well you see, you own a digital license to watch the movie so long as we have it available, have you read our terms of agreement–
Agreed that this is scummy marketing, though. The only real way to own media (legally) anymore is through physical copies, and even then maybe there’s some provision that makes a DVD illegal due to license shenanigans… but no cop’s gonna bust down your door for owning an illegal DVD of Aquaman.