Then null will be returned, as the value of b.

For those who don’t know what Firefish is: https://joinfediverse.wiki/What_is_Firefish%3F

“Monad” is a shorter term though. “Structured data type” reads almost as bulky as “Curve of constant normal intersection points”.

The obvious solution is to abandon your project not too late; leave on a high note.

I also found it very useful to document every step of my setup procedures, right after I figured out what works. At least the respective CL.

“[X] Show Bot Accounts”?

Yes, you can uncheck it to ignore all bots. But then you also ignore useful bots like TL;DR, link converters and such.

It would be nice to have better control here, more fine granular. On the other hand, I’m not sure if we really need spammy bots like https://lemmit.online/u/bot and http://zerobytes.monster/u/bOt who mostly advertise for reddit.

Not only but also because, new lemmy users won’t be aware how to control their settings, and be faced with an All-feed which consists of mostly bot posts with zero upvotes and zero comments. Then they leave and never come back.

Yes, my favorite comment:

pulls out the power cord for the monitor

Job done!

followed by:

Attacker must have had 5 people on the keyboard.

We also briefly discussed this in Games Master, if only to discover how wide and diverse the range of perspectives are. I feel it misrepresents the subject to talk about a “literal definition”, and to explicitly include “win conditions”. Because there are multiple attempts of a definition, and many do not include win conditions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game

One such example definition:

“To play a game is to engage in activity directed toward bringing about a specific state of affairs, using only means permitted by specific rules, where the means permitted by the rules are more limited in scope than they would be in the absence of the rules, and where the sole reason for accepting such limitation is to make possible such activity.” (Bernard Suits)[14]

You seem to refer to Chris Crawford’s definition, which is in part:

If no goals are associated with a plaything, it is a toy. (Crawford notes that by his definition, (a) a toy can become a game element if the player makes up rules, and (b) The Sims and SimCity are toys, not games.) If it has goals, a plaything is a challenge.

Explicitly calling SimCity “not a game” is purely academic talk, detached from reality. For everyone else, SimCity is clearly a game. If you want to buy it, you look for games, not toys. I feel definitions are questionable which define something to be not what everybody thinks it is.

Was Minecraft not a game until it included “The End”? I loved playing Minecraft, but I rarely cared about The End, even after it was included. When a player cannot tell the difference between a version of a game which includes a win condition, and a version which does not, how can the existence of that condition be a decisive factor?

If we widen the scope to include any game, not just video games, we can also have a look at popular children’s games like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_Association. My theater group loves to play win-free games as a warmup practice.

From my point of view, win conditions are a common characteristic of games, but not necessary or defining. Coming up with a short definition which captures all games and excludes all non-games is surprisingly hard.

Headline:

TERRIBLE THINGS HAPPENED TO MONKEYS AFTER GETTING NEURALINK IMPLANTS, ACCORDING TO VETERINARY RECORDS

What are these terrible things?

Up to a dozen monkeys suffered grisly fates after receiving a Neuralink implant, including brain swelling and partial paralysis.

First is the case of the monkey “Animal 20.” In December 2019, an internal part of the brain implant being inserted into the primate “broke off” during surgery. Later that night, the monkey scratched at the implant site, drawing blood, and yanked on the implant, partially dislodging it. Follow-up surgery discovered that the wound was infected, but that the placement of the implant prevented treatment. The monkey was euthanized the next month.

Before that, a female monkey designated “Animal 15” began to press her head against the ground after receiving the brain implant, pick at the site until it bled, and eventually lost coordination, shivering when personnel entered the room. Scientists discovered she had brain bleeding, and in March 2019, she too was euthanized.

The following year, a primate called “Animal 22” was put down in March 2020 after its brain implant became so loose that the screws attaching it to the skull “could easily be lifted out,” according to a necropsy report.

“The failure of this implant can be considered purely mechanical and not exacerbated by infection,” the necropsy states.

As Wired notes, that statement alone seemingly contradicts Musk’s claims that no monkeys directly died from Neuralink brain implants.

And so would the account of an ex-Neuralink employee, who told Wired that Musk’s claims that the monkeys were already terminally ill are “ridiculous,” even a “straight-up fabrication.”

“We had these monkeys for a year or so before any surgery was performed,” the ex-employee said.

The testimony of an anonymous scientist conducting research at CNPRC seems to corroborate the ex-employee’s allegations.

“These are pretty young monkeys,” they told the magazine. “It’s hard to imagine these monkeys, who were not adults, were terminal for some reason.”

As per the article, it goes like this:

1. AI is trained on publicly available data
2. AI does not credit or compensate original authors
3. People don’t like their work being used without
4. People share less publicly
5. Public spaces desert

And simultaneously, AI content of poor quality drowns what is left.

In terms of arguments, have you heard about control / alignment problem or x-risk?

Personally there is no way I would ever pay for a service that has ads.

Somehow we got used to it when it comes to sports events, a long time ago.

But yeah, I get you, and fully agree. Seeing no ads is like the major selling point.

if we could just “drain” the existing battery quickly and load in new pre-charged fluid

That would be huge!

For this, of course, it matters a lot how energy dense the battery is. Also for the environmental impact. If I have to exchange three gigatons of liquid for my trip to the grocery store, a rolling coal truck might have the smaller footprint.

It’s not some struggling hospital in a poor country, but an award-winning, Xbox-equipped premium institution in Michigan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C.S._Mott_Children’s_Hospital

They obviously do good work and probably could use more money and, sure, I want sick children to have an Xbox, but I’d still feel misled by calling that ‘charity’.

Seems appropriate for a generous pizza. You developers love pizza, right?

Me in tech support.

Customer calls: “Internet is not working!!”

Me: “Router lights status?”

Customer: “Can’t tell.”

Me: “Why?”

Customer: “Router still in box.”

Me: “…?”

Me (pretends it was just an error of communication): “Can you please describe the lights on your router?”

Customer: “I can’t. It’s still in the packaging. The box is on my table.”

Me: “…??? … You … need at least electricity to power this device.”

Customer spirals into rage and madness: “I ordered wireless internet!! I won’t plug any cables in! I did not want any wires!!!”

The mega corps took the internet from us, changed it from a million small sites that people created because they had big ideas, or were passionate about small ones, and turned it into a few enormous sites with no new ideas, no passion, just an insatiable desire for money.

I read it as: ‘They embraced, extended and extinguished what you held dear’.

It’s not the device whis is made obsolete (objectively). It’s a very specific group of users who perceives it as obsolete (subjectively), since they want to always have the newest thing. Other people are different, and will be happy to pick up one of those “obsolete” phones at a discount and use it until they physically fall apart.

For example, I’m just switching phones after having used a 2nd hand phone for 8 years. Screen was broken for years, battery is struggling more and more, freezes are getting too frequent to ignore. Another reason for the switch is, there’s more and more apps I cannot install because my phone is too old.

The last point is a good reason for your argument, discontinuation in support. When they stop supporting my old device, that is making it obsolete. But whatever new stuff they release in the meantime does not affect me at all.

Admittedly, I spent very little time on Mastodon. But as I remember it, there is something like a ‘home feed’. And I also remember only seeing the most recent entries at the top, which is not necessarily what I would have found the most interesting. For example, I think I’d be at least equally interested in entries with engagement, where people talk about the post. Which sometimes requires some time to pass.

You’re right I lost track about the precise topic, sorry for that.

What are these algorithms you talk about?

Currently, we have these: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-docs/blob/main/src/users/03-votes-and-ranking.md

You want it to be sorted by what is interesting. How do you deterine what is interesting to you?

People don’t need to science it. They can choose different modes from the dropdown, stick with what they like for whatever reason, or play around. Or even ignore the option altogether. Personally, I use ‘New Comments’ as my default, inspect communities with ‘New’, and occasionally switch to ‘Hot’, ‘Active’ and ‘Top X Hours’ when I’m looking for more.

In terms of manipulation, I guess the biggest lever here is to which instance I log in, followed by which communities I subscribe to. This heavily influences the type of content I see, the political leaning, and things like that. How this content is sorted into a feed is a minor decision in comparison.

How about give the users control over the algorithm? Akin to Lemmy, where we can at least choose one of many sorting algorithms, including chronological. But I only use ‘New’ when checking out specific communities. For the actual feed, I very much prefer an algorithmic approach.

I don’t see it as the platform’s responsibility to “create an unbiased recommendation algorithm without creating echo chambers”. Give me the means to prevent that, yes. But please let me decide for myself wether I want a wide or narrow range of topics, and which flavor.

you telling me that I’m not allowed

You are not your Lemmy account, and you are specifically not one single Lemmy account. If you don’t like the policy of an instance, you can try to change it or go somewhere else. Ok right, in the attempt to influence policy, you can play the ‘you telling me that I’m not allowed’-card.

Now that I think about it, the most uncensored Lemmy experience is being logged out. Every content is visible, no middle man can hinder you to visit these sites. It’s a bit like when a public library decides to organize their books into separate rooms. Would you call that censorship because you have to walk between the rooms to access all the content?

Censorship would be fitting if certain content would be erased from the library. I think that’s only possible on Lemmy if all instances agree.