[-] Acamon@lemmy.world 16 points 10 hours ago

You don't want to mess about with that democracy nonsense. We've had a monarchy that has worked decent for a millennium, and you want it replace it with some untested, newfangled system?

[-] Acamon@lemmy.world 4 points 11 hours ago

Don't know why you're getting down voted. Bots and media manipulation are a thing, Russia and many governments are almost certainly doing it on different scales. But you make a good point that our own governments are doing it do, and even before social media stories were prompted or hushed up for reasons other than newsworthiness or public interest. That's not a conspiracy theory, that's basic media history of the last century.

[-] Acamon@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago

For a while, it was weirdly "Long Kiss Goodnight". It was getting heavy rotation on TV during my high-school exams, and improbaly watched it 15 times over the few weeks I was meant to be studying.

But now, probably LOTR extended edition, which I've seen every year since it came out, at my friend's annual birthday celebrations.

[-] Acamon@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

The things that we call accents are just collections and patterns of speech variation, usually regional or class-based. Each individual has their own minor variations, depending on their speech communities and life experience. So, you're kinda right to hear them as a bunch of individual voices.

But if you're interested in tuning back into accents, you can start learning / spotting the features that mark the difference. Do they pronounce an 'R' at the end of a word? Or just use a long vowel? Would they pronounce cot and caught the same?

Once you start noticing, its less about matching an accent to a stereotype, and more about understanding all the interesting ways that speech variation occurs.

[-] Acamon@lemmy.world 25 points 3 days ago

An increase in supply would reduce wages, unless it also increases demand. If you think about wages in cities vs rural areas, you'll see that most of the time more people = more economic activity = higher wages.

Where this breaks down, is if there's barriers of entry that prevent immigrants from participating in the economy fully. If immigrants aren't allowed to legally work or start business (as happens with some asylum seekers or 'illegal' immigrants) then they are forced to compete over a small pool of off-book / cash-in-hand jobs, which could see a reduction in wages without a significant increase in overall economic activity.

[-] Acamon@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago

I so miss feed veggie and/or bean burgers! Being served fake beef, or soya mince or something is awful. obviously some people prefer them, and they're fully. entitled to their opinion, but beyond personal taste, I have had more success moving meat eaters to good food that happens to be vegan than I have convincing them weird substitutes are worth eating. Humous and falafel - yes please! Fake kebab meat with fake cheese sauce - ๐Ÿคฎ

[-] Acamon@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

I'd happily watch some clips of all of your suggestions. But I don't think it's a great idea in reality. There's a lot more to acting that just having a specific appearance. Watching Humphery Bogart's take on the character of Indiana Jones would be awesome, but watching his face deepfaked over Harrison Ford would be meh, and watching a team of graphic artists attempt to recreate what they think would be an interesting Bogart performance might work, but also might be dull, or unimaginative.

What they'd probably need to do, is hire an actor to create the performance then cover his face up with cgi. In which case, I'd rather just watch the actual actor.

But a future where it's easy for fans to create mash ups and fan fiction episodes sounds fun. And I'd happily watch those for fun.

[-] Acamon@lemmy.world 6 points 2 weeks ago

The first image I clicked on started with "Daily - Make Bed" and I noped out of the whole thing. There's cleaning that needs done regularly for health and there's tasks that get more onerous the longer you leave them (like laundry). But I'll never understand the obsession with making beds.

Maybe people have more complex bedding setups, but mostly I just have a duvet on top and fitted sheet below. What difference does it make to anyone if I lay the duvet out flat and smooth each day? I'm immediately going to move it around when I go to bed, and I spend almost no time in my bedroom when I'm not in my bed. It's the equivalent of saying "Daily - Fold the end of the toilet paper into a neat triangle". If anything, immediately covering your used bedsheets with a duvet is trapping in moisture. At least the German habit of hanging your duvet out to air each day serves a purpose!

[-] Acamon@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

True! Gorse everywhere! It was also that the bretons seem keen on having weird spouse effigies around the place. But to be fair, they mostly seem to be at roundabouts!

[-] Acamon@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

Looks kinda like Brittany

[-] Acamon@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago

Except it mostly isn't.

[-] Acamon@lemmy.world 3 points 3 weeks ago

That was really interesting. Thanks!

276
submitted 1 month ago by Acamon@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

I've seen reports and studies that show products advertised as including / involving AI are off-putting to consumers. And this matches what almost every person I hear irl or online says. Regardless of whether they think that in the long-term AI will be useful, problematic or apocalyptic, nobody is impressed Spotify offering a "AI DJ" or "AI coffee machines".

I understand that AI tech companies might want to promote their own AI products if they think there's a market for them. And they might even try to create a market by hyping the possibilities of "AI". But rebranding your existing service or algorithms as being AI seems like super dumb move, obviously stupid for tech literate people and off-putting / scary for others. Have they just completely misjudged the world's enthusiasm for this buzzword? Or is there some other reason?

49
submitted 4 months ago by Acamon@lemmy.world to c/askandroid@lemdro.id

I feel like I'm encountering weird little tics and problems with my android devices, and those of family and friends. Just simple things where settings don't seem to be consistently applied, or the os switches something back repeatedly. For example, my apps are set to auto update, to use data as well as WiFi, etc, but every month or so I go into Play and see that some random app hasn't been updated in weeks.

Or my friend only gets Signal notifications when they open the app, despite giving full background data use, turning off adaptive battery, etc. My mother uses an alarm app that needs to display over the screen for a feature, but despite me setting that permission repeatedly Android keeps turning it off.

Is this just anecdotal bad luck? Or is all the work to preserve battery life, control background usage, etc led to an OS where the user can't control things reliably? It starting to feel a lot like MS Windows!

2
submitted 5 months ago by Acamon@lemmy.world to c/askandroid@lemdro.id

(I've got a pixel watch 2 and moto edge 40 neo, and some jlab earbuds.)

I usually listen to music on my phone, but recently linked my earbuds to my watch, and the same music played on Spotify sounds massively better on the same earbuds when played via the watch.

I assumed it was because I had installed the jlab app, and it was doing a bad job of meddling with the eq. But after uninstalling it there wasn't a noticeable difference. Is there some other setting I can adjust? Any thoughts on whether it's something my moto is doing wrong or something my pixel watch is doing right?

Its a substantial difference (although I'm not enough of an audiophile to describe it) enough that I'm now mostly playing music via my watch. But it's hitting the battery hard, so I'd rather go back to using my phone!

34
submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by Acamon@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

This is maybe a weird request, but I'm looking for a way to send myself some information at a specific time in the future. Basically, it's because I've got a few sites that are huge distractions for me at the moment, and I can't stop checking my accounts, responding to messages, etc. My willpower is so low, and I've got a lot of important work right now and it's starting to really mess up my life.

So my plan is to change the passwords to my accounts to a long random string, then save that string somewhere that I can't access for X days. I imagined a simple way would be to use a site that would send me an email on a date, and the content of that email would be my random passwords. But my web searches only seem to find pages telling me how to schedule my own emails, which isn't what I need.

Any advice / suggestions?

(also, in case anyone is thinking it, the sites I'm trying to block access to are all linked to the same email account, and I'm also going to change its password, so I won't easily be able to reset them).

Edit: FutureMe is exactly the site I was thinking of, thanks lemmings!

79

I hear people saying things like "chatgpt is basically just a fancy predictive text". I'm certainly not in the "it's sentient!" camp, but it seems pretty obvious that a lot more is going on than just predicting the most likely next word.

Even if it's predicting word by word within a bunch of constraints & structures inferred from the question / prompt, then that's pretty interesting. Tbh, I'm more impressed by chatgpt's ability to appearing to "understand" my prompts than I am by the quality of the output. Even though it's writing is generally a mix of bland, obvious and inaccurate, it mostly does provide a plausible response to whatever I've asked / said.

Anyone feel like providing an ELI5 explanation of how it works? Or any good links to articles / videos?

111

And if so, how do they label headphones, contact lenses etc?

20
discowolf (lemmy.world)
39

My nephews & nieces aren't currently allowed much computer access because their parents worry about screen time, inappropriate content and the like. But their mother was sharing concerns with me that they won't have the basic computer skills and understanding that we learned growing up in the 80s and 90s. Having to make computers work before you got your reward of a game was such a big motivation for me as a child. We learned to program in BASIC on spectrums and Amstrads (typing code for a game out of a magazine didn't require much knowledge but taught me a lot) and about memory management by fiddling around with AUTOEXEC.BAT/CONFIG.SYS to get DOS games running, and so on.

Are there any good educational computers / distros / OSes? Searching online mostly shows simplified GUI to access educational "games". But I was wondering if there was a Raspberry PI or linux fork or something, that was geared to create a challenging but supportive environment for learning the fundamentals.

Any suggestions?

1
submitted 1 year ago by Acamon@lemmy.world to c/castles@lemm.ee

Formerly know as Castle Gloom, the castle is situated in a high vantage point in the Ochil hills. It is protected on either side of the castle by two large gorges, through which thunder streams ('burns' in Scots) the Burn of Sorrow and the Burn of Care.

9

Obviously, most social networks have some sort of engagement button for liking/up voting/promoting a piece of content. As well as helping users feel like they're participating, rather than just passively consuming, most networks also use the likes/ups to filter or promote content to other users.

As a dumb noob, what does the up/down vote do in lemmy in particular? Does it actually affect anything beyond changing the number beside the little arrows? I know there's some discussion about lemmy tracking 'karma' even if it's not visible in all clients. Can different instances implement "karma thresholds"? Or auto hide posts that fall beneath a certain down vote ratio?

And more subjectively, what do you feel up/down voting represents? Is it showing agreement with the post? That you want to see more posts like that? That other people should look at the post? Does it matter if this subjective purpose is actually unrelated to what the up votes do in reality?

1

Mix of squash / zucchini flowers. Somehow, despite the fact it'll mostly be oil, batter and salt, the fact that there's a freshly plucked flower at the centre makes me feel like I'm a healthy elf.

163
submitted 1 year ago by Acamon@lemmy.world to c/aww@lemmy.world
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Acamon

joined 1 year ago