…are you serious?

There would be so much data in understanding people’s light usage. For example, you could figure out how late or early people get up, number of people living in a house, how crowded the house is, how many lights are used per room, etc etc. it would be a gold mine of information.

Let’s say you’re a home automaton designer. You want to design devices to be used in the home, but in order to design such devices, you need enough of a stockpile of user data. This lightbulb data would be incredible valuable.

You can probably even analyse the data and determine things like whether someone is watching tv late at night.

From a nefarious view, how valuable would this data be to robbers and thieves?

There was a prophetic podcast episode from the series Plain English a while back that I constantly think about.

In that episode the author describes how the internet is going through a revolution.

Basically 20 years ago, the internet was all about gaining numbers. Companies could operate at a loss if they got people signed up. Facebook, Google, YouTube, Uber, Deliveroo, etc. they were all about getting you in their mailing list or consumer list and who cares what happens then.

Now there’s an issue because that model is not profitable. In order to continue, all the internet is moving towards subscription.

In a sense, I don’t think of that as intrinsically bad. Patreon is a good example. The internet is now filled up with so much shit that people are willing to pay to filter it. So with Patreon, you pay a fee to support an artist to produce the content you want. That itself isn’t a bad idea.

Now that being said, a lot of “bad things” do emerge. The fact that you can no longer buy software like Adobe and it’s all subscription based. That’s shit. But that also inspired software alternatives like Affinity Designer.

Hmmm. If abuse happens, is the right idea to say that “I don’t need this community”?

I’m not sure how that HackerNews comment helps in the slightest. If my university has an obscure basket weaving community and people are getting abused in that community, should I just say “Eh we don’t actually need a basket weaving community”.

It’s also amusing to me that a commenter on a relatively obscure and niche website is complaining that that don’t need (or care about abuse that transpired on) a niche community from another website. And then this comment is echoed in yet another niche community.

I love how so many comments and replies ascribe some form of ‘guilt’ to this, as if HP employees would feel shame. This doesn’t really mean anything to a company that size.

One of the great things about moving to the UK is that, despite all its problems, consumer protection Europe is so much better than in the US.

Have you thought carefully? Or have you not thought much about it?

I’ll give you a benefit of the doubt and pretend like you’re asking seriously rather than trolling.

One problem is that, if studios are primarily focused on maximising immediate profit, game design suffers. Games are no longer designed, for example, to have a nice finite story because finite stories mean finite cash. It’s better to design massive multiplayer games that continue to squeeze cash from players.

You already see the effects of this in 2023. Games that were created in the 80s and 90s and 00s would never be made today by big studios because they cannot maintain a constant source of profit.

The idea of “if people don’t like it then don’t play it” assumes that there is a healthy competition for game design. Have you not noticed the dearth of offline single player games?

Eh. Not the best article but I appreciate the sentiment.

I certainly agree with it. I think that there’s a level of friendship that I never allow others to crack unless they were bridged in as members when we were young.

All the people I meet now are “acquaintances”. They’re nice, I’m okay to reach out if I need anything, but more often then not they’re the partner of someone else. I smile at them. I tolerate them. I might even have a drink with them. But there’s a distance there that you can’t crack.

It’s like that great 80s movie, “Stand by me”: “I never had any friends later on like the ones when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?” https://youtu.be/l7r-R61W1DQ

Women also make up 50% of PC video game players and 54 percent of mobile game players.

I find a lot of these figures really hard to believe, to be honest.

Looking at the link, there is little I can find about their methodology.

God. I don’t even know what to say.

The article reads so strange…like describing a cult.

His stellar career took on a sour note after he was bullied in a diversity, equity and inclusion training session for Toronto District School Board (TDSB) administrators in 2021, according to a lawsuit Bilkszto filed in court. His sin, in the eyes of facilitators at the KOJO Institute, was his questioning of their claim that Canada was a more racist place than the United States. Canada wasn’t perfect, he said, but it still offers a lot of good. For the rest of the training session, and throughout a follow-up training session the week after, facilitators repeatedly referred to Bilkszto’s comments as examples of white supremacy.

Part of the problem with AI is that it requires significant skill to understand where AI goes wrong.

As a basic example, get a language model like ChatGPT to edit writing. It can go very wrong, removing the wrong words, changing the tone, and making mistakes that an unlearned person does not understand. I’ve had foreign students use AI to write letters or responses and often the tone is all off. That’s one thing but the student doesn’t understand that they’ve written a weird letter. Same goes with grammar checking.

This sets up a dangerous scenario where, to diagnose the results, you need to already have a deep understanding. This is in contrast to non-AI language checkers that are simpler to understand.

Moreover as you can imagine the danger is that the people who are making decisions about hiring and restructuring may not understand this issue.

Vaseline is just a petrolatum jelly and a lot of creams and moisturisers have this as a component. The problem with Vaseline is that it’s basically pure petrolatum and so blocks the skin completely.

You rarely want to block the skin completely. The uses some other people noted, like stopping bleeding, is one of those uses.

The truth is that I rarely recommend Vaseline because of how limited it is on skin use.

I recommend people look into Aquaphor by Eucerin, which is only about 40% petrolatum and moisturises a bit better. I always travel with a very small container (just a tiny bit) of the stuff. It’s useful if you have any skin conditions (flaked skin, rashes, etc) that you might want to deal with pronto.

Aveeno (a very good brand for skincare) also make very similar heavy creams.

Long story short, no, Vaseline is pretty bad choice for skincare because it just blocks all air exchange. There are better choices. You often do want petrolatum…just not 100%.

Source: lifelong eczema issues

I know it’s largely made up for parody but the teacher’s point is true. The “student” showed no work, but rather used an unexplained and underived formula.

But yeah “ha ha—teacher so stupid”

I’m sure this “welcome kit” is meant as a helpful thing but I have to wonder if it is exactly the problem that prevents Lemmy from being adopted.

When someone joins Reddit, they don’t need to read a literal plethora of guides on how to use Reddit. It’s obvious.

What looks like a helpful thing to do is instead going to intimidate and confuse new people.

So ultimately the question is: why isn’t Lemmy obvious to use, and how do we make it so?