I don’t find the designation to be that much of a thing. There are former players that are great and there are former players who are completely awful clickbait clowns. Same is true for non former athletes.
The good former pros definitely have a valuable perspective though I think there’s also something to be said for a bit of a removed perspective.
I completely agree with your point of view. If you don’t control your technology, then your technology controls you.
You should know that it’s really incredibly difficult to actually establish privacy on internet connected devices. They are designed to share information. Security is often an afterthought and privacy is often directly opposed to the goals of the corporations. It is possible to get a fair amount of privacy, but it is not easy. It will cost a lot of time in learning and configuring things, money to buy specific devices with specific features, and the sacrifice of the convenience that comes with mainstream products (you will have to do a lot more for yourself). There is no quick solution, it is an endless struggle - but personally I think the learning process is extremely rewarding and the skills you gain will be very useful.
So, where to begin? I would recommend learning about the technology that underpins all of the data gathering - computer networking. In order to make real decisions about how to use the technology and how to secure it, you need to understand how it works. You won’t ever know if you are leaking data if you don’t understand how that data is collected and transmitted.
I would like to point you to Professor Messer’s Network+ training course, starting with the OSI model. This will help you learn the terminology of computer networking, and the concepts that underlie everything on the internet. If you get through the Network+ content, do Security+ also.
I also want to recommend the Selfhosted@lemmy.world community. A major goal of self hosting is separating your internet services from corporate control. This community is great place to learn and ask questions.
You should get a cheap computer (old, out of date hardware is completely fine) and install Linux on it so you can start learning how to use it (you’ll need this to get away from Microsoft and Apple, and more importantly to have some control over your computing environment).
You might also be interested in the Murena 2 smartphone. It has physical switches for turning off the microphone and camera and network connections, and it runs /e/os (a de-Googled Android version).
thanks a lot man, this is really helpful: veyr understandable. (first time that I read in clear letter that this kind of technologiy is designed primarly to share information. And it is a shame that here in Europe laws don’t force corporation to build technology that has as a goal the privacy first. I am passionate in literature and Cultural studies, thus if we were living in another world I believe I would not read this stuff, because my heart beat for humanities (in a finite and short life: reading all Cormac McCarthy’s opus for a second time it would be for me highly preferrable than learn about networks, but this is the world I live in and I am tired of these damn corporation that treat people like objects)
Does water count? It’s the first thing that always comes to mind for me. I’m certainly not complaining, but it amazes me that, no matter where you go, water, even clean water, is universally free. It’s certainly not unlimited.
Our tax dollars pay for it because a significant portion of the population is dead inside a week if the tap water stops or becomes unsafe. The government takes care of it because the populace can’t be trusted to take care of themselves lol
So as you said, it’s not free really, but there’s a really good reason for that
Yes, I feel entitled to content people provide for free consumption. Because they would like it to be freely consumed. I have been on both ends of this (creator and consumer) and I 100% agree. If I release something for free, I don’t want some corporation inserting themselves between me and my consumers, to make money from content i released for free. And moreover, to then use my content as a method of collecting demographic information to sell and make further money… why is it “entitled” to be against this?
For privacy on your computer use YouTube in a different browser than your main browser without logging in. For example I use brave with an ad blocker just to watch YouTube on my computer and then I go back to my main browser for my daily usage for anything that’s not a Google service/website
But when you think about it, beans should be cheaper than meat or something. Yeah a bag makes a whole bunch of beans but it’s straight ground to plate vs feeding a cow from birth. In fact relatively speaking of seems like the bean to cow cost ratio is out of proportion, the beans should be cheaper or the cow should be more.
Getting 20 years back means I can correct a lot of mistakes and I’ll have way more energy and focus to be the me I want to be. My 20s were so stressful I started getting white hair.
I added some words to clear it up. I often write how I talk, which is to say extremely informal. Around my area it all makes sense. It was meant to imply that I don’t have those things so I’m not abandoning anybody or leaving anybody. If you were able to magically de-age yourself it would be viewed as somewhat selfish.
For anyone curious about this, go google “cheese caves”. The US government has massive caverns full of cheese. The government keeps buying cheese to subsidize the dairy industry, and ensure they keep enough dairy cows around.
But this also means they have a metric fuckload of cheese, and no way to get rid of it. They can’t just give it away to the public or sell it at cost, because that would crash the price, which would harm the farmers, which would defeat the entire purpose of the subsidy in the first place. So they just lock it in a cave. The government has entire caves that are just packed full of cheese. It’ll never be eaten, and is simply left there to age.
I believe one of the biggest reasons for even keeping the cheese around at all (instead of just doing something like tossing it into a volcano) is so they can use it as a strategic food reserve during war or famine. If, for instance, the government suddenly needs to feed a much larger army, it can start tapping into that massive food reserve simply by opening the cheese caves and pulling out the (now very aged) cheese. But that’s a very large “what if”. Or maybe there’s some big disease that wipes out the majority of the dairy cows. The government would be able to keep shelves stocked while farmers work on replenishing their herds.
Government cheese is called that for a reason. Anyways I totally agree with you but it’s interesting so I’m just providing a link for anyone who is interested in learning more.
Government cheese is a commodity cheese that was controlled by the US federal government from World War II to the early 1980s. Government cheese was created to maintain the price of dairy when dairy industry subsidies artificially increased the supply of milk and created a surplus of milk that was then converted into cheese, butter, or powdered milk. The cheese, along with the butter and dehydrated milk powder, was stored in over 150 warehouses across 35 states.
Isn’t there the thing where the cheese needs to age by just sitting there, the farmer needs cash flow, so the cheese is put up as collateral. (But yes there is government cheese too.)
I was always wonder how the heck did beef and milk are so cheap in US. I live in south Asia btw. Our income and wages are dog shit compared to the USA, yet our (normal) beef cost US$15 per kilo (the “good stuffs” could cost up to US$25 per kilo).
uBlock Origin and some kind of mouse gesture with rocker commands extension. Those are the only two universal types I use. Everything else I can’t live with is pretty specific to my own usage to alter the function of specific websites (like RES for Reddit, but for other sites).
The grand piano is the latest and greatest evolution of the piano. It’s become what it is over improvements over centuries.
The upright is a compromise. People want to play a suitable size for most homes and isn’t as expensive.
That doesn’t make an upright bad at all. It’s good in that it got the piano into the homes and hands of many more people. A good upright can be as good or better than a poorly built or maintained grand. Most people are also not capable of outplaying the quality of their instruments as well.
What the other commenter said is true. The mass of all that wire and wood vibrating generates the harmonics that make the sound louder or more expressive. Think the sound differences between a guitar and a uekele. Same basic design, but different string length and mass. You get richer, more complex and nuanced sound, and it’s also naturally capable of being louder and has better projection for performing in an age before application.
Is a grand piano necessary for good sound? That’s subjective like any other form of art. I take my piano lessons on an upright at my teacher’s house. It’s an ok piano, and still way better than I am at playing it for a long time. For some types of music, it is probably even a better choice, as some pieces will be written for or more commonly heard through an upright, making that the “proper” sound.
At home, I have an electric piano, a Rhodes. That uses no piano wire and instead makes sound by the hammers hitting pieces of what is essentially coat hanger wire fastened onto rectangular steel weights. Does it sound like a grand or upright? Not at all. But it still sounds great! I practice my classical pieces on it, but other types of music will sound more appropriate on it. Plus it’s smaller than an upright, and comes in at a featherweight 150 pounds or so.
People discuss and debate these things with every instrument and it can get quite intense as possible debate string brands, what woods different pieces are made of, and all that stuff, but it ultimately comes down to what you think best. Every individual instrument has its own voice to some extent. Even in pure electric instruments, people will prefer a Yamaha sound to Roland or Nord, etc.
Future pianos will probably have a different sound from today’s as well. As we develop new materials and new key actions, etc the sound will change and get better or worse depending who you asked. Bach’s piano sat on a table and had no foot pedals. Some people will play Bach pieces with pedals while others call it blasphemy!
But between me and the other person, I hope this has helped with your question!
It doesn’t really bother me, but like you I am bored of it and I generally ignore it, or block communities if I’m seeing too much of it.
It is really cool that the models can generate fairly detailed images, but they’re all so similar and… boring. I once saw someone describe it like corporate art. It just tries to imitate something popular in a very mediocre way. You can keep re-training it, but it can still only imitate.
Still, if people are into it then that’s ok too. I have used it at work on occasion to create stupid little icons for internal tools I’ve built, so I guess there’s some little bit of utility.
My guess is that it’ll be used for a while for cheap and low effort branding, but soon companies will want to hire real artists again to differentiate themselves from the ML spam.
Still, if people are into it then that’s ok too. I have used it at work on occasion to create stupid little icons for internal tools I’ve built, so I guess there’s some little bit of utility.
IMO, thats sort of the main use I see for AI image generation (and a lot of other “art”-AIs). There are plenty of cases where a graphic is needed that doesn’t need to be original, nor have any meaningful thought put into it. This could be a small icon that would normally be a free peice of stock art or programmer art, or it could be adding a unimportant backdrop to some character art that would otherwise just be left blank. Not all graphics have to be “art” and things that are “art” don’t have to be 100% original and hand crafted.
It’s because people are lazy. It needs extra work to generate something non generic. Also a lot of people using AI have no sense of beauty, as without AI, they are not very creative.
Using stable diffusion on a1111 myself, with controlnet, regional prompter, different checkpoints, a ton of Lora and inpainting, one can create much much better stuff. It’s not harder that way, just takes longer than copy pasting prompts and hitting the generate button.
I know this is true, because I see this daily by now. The amount of generic images uploaded to for example Civitai is proof of it.
Highways notoriously create more traffic , every time we expand a highway or create a new highway, traffic gets worse.
If you just search “highway creates worse traffic” or something similar, there are many, many videos that will give you very good information and statistics about how building roads does not help convenience traffic or a sense of narrow or broad community in most situations, and new roads or new highway lanes almost always create more traffic in urban situations like cities.
Not always the case, but you’re not wrong. Most of the times the new road or added lanes was needed because the traffic density had already increased. Kind of a chicken or the egg scenario. For a new road, well roads arent just built for no reason…obviously the road was needed, so now there will be traffic on it. Sometimes even just an influx of people using the new “alternative route” because they think no one will be on it from the old route, yet many other people had the same idea.
Exception to all this, however is evacuation routes. I grew up in the south, on the gulf of mexico. When hurricanes are coming and everyone is trying to leave, you need those huge highways. 30 years ago you would just have 1000s of people grid-locking 2 lane highways just trying to get anywhere away from the storm, and in some cases being stuck in their car for the storm. Now a lot of those highways are full-on 4 lanes with medians, huge shoulders, etc. These are everywhere across the south, more still being built. Even extra bridges built across bays and sounds that are largely unused (usually have high tolls). 99% of the time the big highways are mostly empty (which makes road trips super nice!) and someone not familiar would think it’s a huge waste. But come an emergency situation, and their purpose is served!
It’s definitely the egg, since the chicken was the road and the egg(traffic density) increases after adding another highway or lane to a “super highway”.
Before that highway or lane was added, there was less congestion.
Ehhh, i still disagree, because that doesnt make sense. Less congestion with less lanes? The extra lanes are added to ease the growing congestion in an area. OP asked about traffic engineering, there is it very simply. Adding lanes doesnt magically create more cars on the road.
I’ve seen the exact opposite in places like Hawaii when they expanded H1 at Honolulu, shrinking all the lanes down to the minimum 8ft so they could add another lane. Now at, I think 6 lanes each way, in places. No space to expand, so the lanes were shrunk to make room for another. You know what adding another lane did? Lessen congestion. Sure there’s still congestion, but it’s way better. They, and other big cities (ie- San Fransisco), literally add and change lanes throughout the day (zipper lanes) to ease congestion. Or even legally allow the shoulder to become yet another lane during peak hours. Because more lanes = more flow.
I’ve also seen what happens when the extra lanes arent open (like the zipper lane cant function because the truck is broke) the whole place is gridlocked taking people up to 9 hours to get home. Because of 2 less lanes.
Not just in America. Places like Auckland, NZ and their famos Nippon clip-ons. If adding lanes added congestion just because of the fact that there is more lanes, then why are roads expanded in the first place? Everything should just still be 2 lane roads.
Adding more lanes does not “magically create more cars on the road”, but it does mundanely create more traffic, so that increasing traffic lanes provides diminishing returns of reduced congestion.
You have to factor in how many cars are acquired every year, how many people are driving, how they are driving where, and when.
Every year people are buying new cars and the old cars don’t just disappear, more people move to where more people already live, and adding new lanes only invites more drivers to where everybody is already going.
A simple, related and more accessible example is adding parking spaces into a downtown area. This does not lessen congestion but increases congestion as more people drive downtown and everyone drives around looking for a parking space rather than walking an extra 7 minutes from a less congested area.
A similar thing happens with highways, and research backs it up.
asklemmy
Active
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.