I don’t think the people complaining about Firefox’s AI integration are using or paying attention to Chrome.

Eliminating vehicle deaths by making travel impossible

And here we see decades of automobile industry propaganda in action. There is only the car, or no mobility whatsoever. You remember how everybody was just trapped inside their houses for centuries until the Ford factories started cranking out Model Ts?

Cars will never be a sustainable solution to mass transit. The immense amount of waste in materials, energy, and land use will not be offset with AVs. I don’t think AVs are a bad idea in and of themselves. But, as the article points out, they’re not going to solve any major problems.

I had never really considered how induced demand would apply to AVs…

I just saw the title and the image wasn’t loading. I thought this was about Power over Ethernet.

I find it rather disingenuous to summarize the previous poster’s comment as a “Roko’s basilisk”scenario. Intentionally picking a ridiculous argument to characterize the other side of the debate. I think they were pretty clear about actual threats (some more plausible than others, IMO).

I also find it interesting that you so confidently state that “AI doesn’t get better,” under the assumption that our current deep learning architectures are the only way to build AI systems.

I’m going to make a pretty bold statement: AGI is inevitable, assuming human technological advancement isn’t halted altogether. Why can I so confidently state this? Because we already have GI without the A. To say that it is impossible is to me equivalent to arguing that there is something magical about the human brain that technology could never replicate. But brains aren’t magic; they’re incredibly sophisticated electrochemical machines. It is only a matter of time before we find a way to replicate “general intelligence,” whether it’s through new algorithms, new computing architectures, or even synthetic biology.

The only danger to humans is humans.

I’m sorry, but this is a really dumb take that borders on climate change denial logic. A sufficiently large comet is an existential threat to humanity. You seem to have this optimistic view that humanity is invincible against any threat but itself, and I do not think that belief is justified.

People are right to be very skeptical about OpenAI and “techbros.” But I fear this skepticism has turned into outright denial of the genuine risks posed by AGI.

I find myself exhausted by this binary partitioning of discourse surrounding AI. Apparently you have to either be a cult member who worships the coming god of the singularity, or think that AI is either impossible or incapable of posing a serious threat.

The ARM translation may be less of a problem on macOS because of Rosetta. That said, integrating something like Box64 would absolutely benefit both Mac and Linux.

Yeah, Valve has put a lot of effort into bridging the compatibility gap for Linux. Most of that work could also be ported to macOS, but they just don’t care.

It’s a shame, because getting 32-bit to 64-bit compatibility working would help Linux as well. I don’t know how much longer distros want to keep supporting 32-bit libraries, and some distros have already dropped them.

That said, macOS compatibility seems like a non-sequitur for an article calling Steam a “time bomb.” DRM is definitely the bigger issue here.

The “right to control distribution” is utterly unenforceable in a world with computers and the internet. The only way to enforce that right is to have centralized institutions with absolute control over every computer.

I can understand a need for controlling personal information in order to protect the user privacy. I can even get behind the idea of having to control dangerous information, like schematics for nuclear weapon systems. I do not support the idea of moving towards a world where the NSA has a rootkit on every computer because capitalism can’t be bothered that artists make enough to eat.

Maybe there is an inherent problem with a social system in which so many people struggle to make a living. And maybe the solution isn’t to create artificial scarcity in computer systems where information can be shared freely.

That is the entire point of this, isn’t it? Allowing the Russian government to declare anyone who identifies as queer or even anyone who acknowledges the former’s existence as enemies of the state.

x86_64 is a proprietary, licensed ISA. Both Intel and AMD’s microarchitectures implementing it are proprietary. Apple didn’t design their own ISA; they’re using ARM (which is also proprietary).

Consoles may be using x86_64, but they are not PCs. Very similar to PCs, but then so are Apple’s ARM machines. Both Apple’s computers and PCs use standard components and interfaces like USB, PCIe, and UEFI.

But all of this is beside the point. Even if Apple did build everything from scratch, why should that give them the right to lock down their computers? My point here isn’t about what is technically legal under current legislation, but what should be legal based on our values as a society.

Nintendo isn’t being hit with suits for not allowing me to play playstation games on my switch.

And I unironically think it would be a much better world if they were. Why did we let corporations decide that certain computers are “proprietary” and users shouldn’t be able to own and control the hardware they paid for?

Windows is also a proprietary OS. What’s uniquely “proprietary” about Apple’s hardware that distinguishes it from a Dell or Lenovo PC?

I’ve considered this myself. A sort of “maximum allowable wealth disparity” limit. The only trouble is enforcing it. There are all sorts of ways to shuffle wealth around that might not count as “pay.” You’d need to plug all of those loopholes.

https://xkcd.com/1102/

I’m honestly baffled as to why people have had any faith in Bethesda Game Studios for years. Even if you liked Fallout 3 or 4, what they did with 76 should’ve obliterated any remaining trust.

Reminds me of this funny talk from all the way back in 2015. (Christ, has it been almost a decade already?)

I held off on getting a Switch because I thought, “Surely they’ll release an updated version with a better SoC soon.” It’s been 7 years…

Maybe it was my mistake viewing this thing as a mobile device more than a game console.

Depends on your needs. For a lot of users, I think the current Linux desktop experience is sufficient. If you have more specific needs, I can see why you’d stick with Windows.

I was pretty excited for a Servo when it was first announced. Then Mozilla shifted priorities and development slowed down to a crawl. Glad to see some more activity on it now.

I presume the tentative future goal would be to rebase Firefox on top of this. Hopefully Servo does eventually reach that level of maturity.

This was the first comment on this post that made me feel like I wasn’t taking crazy pills. I agree completely. I still don’t see how Threads joining ActivityPub is a bad thing for us, unless it convinces a large number of people to migrate to Threads from their current instance.

I think the currently available apps not being free software is less important than the protocol being open, which is good. It allows for the possibility of FOSS clients in the future. My bigger concern at the moment is if most/all of the actual backend infrastructure is controlled by a single stakeholder.

Google and Apple are finally working together

I think this is the primary reason. Apple only announced working on RCS support very recently. Once that’s out, I don’t really see a place in the market for this.

And it isn’t just compressed images. MMS doesn’t support reactions, replies, typing indicators, or read receipts because it’s ancient. A proper, standardized replacement has been long overdue.

Granted, I’ve heard that RCS is currently heavily reliant on Google’s own servers, so it could be argued as to how “open” this really is.

Whenever I’ve shared my contact card over iMessage, I’ve been prompted to choose exactly which pieces of information I want to share. The address isn’t shared unless I explicitly select it.

You had me until the “sheeple” thing.

It’s tiring when automation is repeatedly blamed for the failures of capitalism. Yes, this might take away jobs. That should be a good thing. It’s only a problem because our economic system doesn’t value human life and only values human labor.

It is somewhat baffling that most interactive, consumer-facing operating systems are not real-time. I suppose that it’s a product of legacy and technical debt.

Apple did announce that they’re using an RTOS in the Vision Pro. Maybe the VR/AR space will make this more common, since the latency requirements are more stringent.

I think signed hardware components are actually a good thing. The problem is that Apple makes it so that unapproved hardware doesn’t work at all. I think the device should warn the user, but allow them to override and continue at their own risk.

Of course, Apple isn’t going to allow that unless they’re forced to. Glances sideways at the EU.

I understand the impulse, but I think that’s a knee-jerk reaction. I am immediately suspicious of any technology that claims to use blockchains.

I reject the framing of “ignoring your instincts” and “jumping on a fan bandwagon” as a dichotomy. You have the option to just do… neither of those things. Admit the limits of your own knowledge and avoid taking too strong a stance either way.

I firmly disagree with this post. People should not just “rely on their instincts,” which have proven time and again to be highly inaccurate and subject to bias. This is starting to look like what those “body language experts” do, and those people have lower accuracy than a coin toss in controlled experiments.

The only reliable way to tell if someone is lying is through actual evidence. What we know so far certainly paints LMG in a bad light, but I will continue to wait for more information to come out.

LLMs do replicate a small subset of human cognition, but not the full scope. This can result in human-like behavior, but it’s important to be aware of the limitations.

The biggest limitation is the misalignment in goals. LLMs won’t perform a very deep analysis of their input because they don’t need to. Their goal isn’t honest discussion, a pursuit for truth, or even having a coherent set of beliefs about the world. Their only goal is to sound plausible. And, as it turns out, it’s not too hard to just bullshit your way through the Turing test.

What do you mean? You obviously have an NFT (Nothing Fone Two).

Haven’t seen this video yet, but I’ll upvote anyways because this channel is fantastic. Really cool stuff if you like computer engineering/architecture and retro game consoles.

I understood that reference…

Probably because we consume the most resources per capita and drive demand? And because you’re only looking at articles written in English?

Y’all were right; She’s adorable!

Alright, I’ve never even played this game, but all of this gushing over Merrill made me look up some clips of her… I think I’m onboard the Merrill fan train as well, now.

the Constitution does not give Congress the power to regulate the Supreme Court

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think the Constitution gives the Supreme Court most of the authority that it has given itself either.

From my understanding, tearing can occur even if the game logic and render command submission happen on a single thread, since it’s a consequence of the OS compositor sending buffers to the monitor in the middle of rendering.

Tying game logic to the framerate doesn’t really have anything to do with single- vs multi-threading. You can properly calculate the time since the last update in a single-threaded engine.

I’ve been switching between Mlem and the PWA. I’ve honestly found the PWA to be pretty laggy, with things not loading or the whole app just freezing. Given the connection issues I’m also seeing on Mlem, I suspect the issue is server-side.