abraxas

joined 1 year ago
[–] abraxas 5 points 1 year ago

From a dev point of view, there's a relevant XKCD to this. And we all know it.

But at the same time, I've been thinking a lot of what you're saying here for quite a while regarding Lemmy in particular, and the modern Fediverse as a whole. I don't think the federation mechanisms used, even the federation strategy used, is scaleable to the type of userbase needed to get what many of the users are looking for from Lemmy.

Flipside, we all know that it's going to be pulling teeth to get people onto that new platform. That's why I never pulled the trigger on writing my take on it.

[–] abraxas 2 points 1 year ago

It is a weird linter, and it can definitely be misused. It saves me hours of work at least a couple times a month, however.

[–] abraxas 5 points 1 year ago

I have valid criticisms of statically typed languages, based around code patterns that are both expressive and efficient that are either difficult or impossible to implement in a statically typed language without "an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp."

Typescript, however, is different. Its type annotation functionality is not the same as a static type system, which means I get to keep all those things I like about dynamically typed languages while still having compile-time validation.

Flip-side, however, is the complete lack of runtime validation in typescript, and the fact that junior developers trip on that a lot. I would call that a real advantage of javascript (if not enough to stop me from using Typescript). Having no check at all is better than being convinced typescript is protecting you when it's not.

[–] abraxas 3 points 1 year ago

I agree. And ML may never be able to cross that line.

That said, we've been calling it AI for decades now. It was weird enough to me when people started using ML more. I remember the AI classes I took in college, and the AI experts I met in my jobs. Then one day it was "just ML". In most situations, it's the same darn thing.

[–] abraxas 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I think the idea is that someone buying a basic book on foraging mushrooms isn't going to know who the experts are.

They're going to google it, and they're going to find AI-generated reviews (with affiliate links!) of AI-generated foraging books.

Now, if said AI is generating foraging books more accurate than humans, that's fine by me. Until that's the case, we should be marking AI-generated books in some clear way.

[–] abraxas 7 points 1 year ago

Honestly this is what pissed me off about the reaction to cyberpunk bugs. I remember how the fallout games were at launch

I bought the fallout games at launch. I bought Cyberpunk months after launch when I found it on clearance. Cyberpunk was still far less playable for me than the fallout games were at launch.

This was due to:

  • The game crashing at least once per hour
  • Falling through the ground at least one per hour
  • Dying suddenly though nothing was attacking me at least once per hour
  • Questlines breaking and being un-repairable

Additionally, CP2077 had all the same bugs in Fallout/Elder Scrolls releases.

I usually power through buggy RPG releases, but I waited to give CP a couple more patches before actually trying to play through it.

[–] abraxas 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

NOTE: I will be using the word "Liberal" as the US term for "left of center" since you seem to be doing that as well. As such, I'm including people who would not be internationally treated as "liberal". /disclaimer

I will suggest liberal smugness might be exaggerated. Not saying it never happens.

I've spent my entire life in farm towns... deep blue farm towns. I've also worked in Boston for most of my adult life. I have not once seen some so-called "smug liberal" have a problem with my rural roots, nor treat me or farm-town locals like we're idiots. At best, people thought I was crazy to drive 2 hours to work to avoid moving closer to the city.

Even when we talk about deep-red states, we're talking about the membership that empowers and reinforces that deep-red nature... and not every individual. As such, I really think "liberal smugness" is largely a fabrication of conservatives to make them hate and distrust liberals.

There are a few "Liberal" stances that are a bit problematic, you're not wrong. Gun control is substantially different to a person in a city than they are to me, when my hometown outsourced police to the next town over and had no animal control; 20-30 minute response times and police are not equipped to help with pest predators. Nobody looking to ban firearms is looking to create the infrastructure allowing people living in the middle of the woods to live without them. I've never seen a well-focused gun control bill that effectively took the tool-use of firearms in rural America into account. Or the fact that we have population control zones that include our own property, where people with guns need to be here, killing animals (whitetail deer in my area) to prevent a collapse of our local ecosystem.

[–] abraxas 3 points 1 year ago

Sure, but you see a lot of MLs using the word "liberal" like Amish use the word "English". I got called a filthy liberal (or similar) at least 5 times in a recent discussion on lemmy.ml because I didn't support their treating Biden as worse than Trump.

It seems a good number of MLs will use the word "liberal" to mean both versions when it suits them. At least in America.