Dear @Apple @AppleSupport @tim_cook

I’ve just upgraded my software to version iOS 17.4.1, and now, when I type the capital of Israel 🇮🇱, Jerusalem, I’m offered the Palestinian flag emoji. 🇵🇸 This didn’t occur on my phone immediately before this update.

Below is a… pic.twitter.com/Cw9TDmE6VD

— Rachel Riley MBE 💙 (@RachelRileyRR) April 9, 2024

I wonder if will intervene

https://www.fox5ny.com/news/report-hillary-clinton-considered-drone-attack-on-julian-assange

!nooticers

See also: Part 2

Spoiler: the bans him

Orange Site discussion

Edit:

The HN comments get to the core of this:

A moderator on Vaxry's groomercord changed a transgender person's pronouns from "they/them" to "who/cares". Vaxry did nothing about it, and even supported this change, stating that the person was making too big a deal about their pronouns

lmao based

Also someone posted screenshots from his Groomercord where he pings everyone asking for hentai:

Reddit discussions:

https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1bzna16/hyprland_creator_vaxry_is_now_banned_from/?sort=controversial

https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1bztfry/fdos_conduct_enforcement_actions_regarding_vaxry/?sort=controversial

How Freedesktop/RedHat harass other projects into submission

https://blog.vaxry.net/articles/2024-fdo-and-redhat

Freedesktop/RedHat's CoC team is worse than you thought

https://blog.vaxry.net/articles/2024-fdo-and-redhat2

Strags respond

https://drewdevault.com/2024/04/09/2024-04-09-FDO-conduct-enforcement.html

source for that is https://www.theinformation.com/articles/how-amazons-big-bet-on-just-walk-out-stumbled, which I cannot bypass the paywall on

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2024/04/how-dating-sites-automate-sexual-racism/

Edit: Browsers?

Edit 2: She also wrote a paper about "Algorithmic Reparations":

Rooted in theories of Intersectionality, reparative algorithms name, unmask, and undo allocative and representational harms as they materialize in sociotechnical form. We propose algorithmic reparation as a foundation for building, evaluating, adjusting, and when necessary, omitting and eradicating machine learning systems.

[...]

We make this case in the body of the text above, suggesting a move away from fairness, replaced by an anti-oppressive, Intersectional approach. We intend for this approach to guide algorithmic design and to act as an evaluative standard by which existing algorithmic systems are judged, adjusted, and where necessary, omitted or dismantled. Our proposal is thus geared towards building better systems and holding existing ones to account.

Alright so I have a cheap laptop that I loaded debian / plasma onto.

Keyboard cover is wonky and sometimes when I hold left or right arrow it self-inserts a '4', which is fixed with turning off the num pad.

So any time I switch to another window, any time I try to upload something and the popup comes up for me to select a file, the left or up arrow is automatically pressed. Right now it's doing it with the up arrow.

You'd think "you just said your keyboard is messed up why is this shocking" well to that I say here's the weird part.

It doesn't happen randomly, it happens specifically when I change to another window, or a window is popped up like when saving or uploading a file. As soon as I press any arrow key it stops.

For example I'm on my browser now.. if I click to groomercord it will try to edit my last message (up arrow is held), and will keep scrolling up unless I press a random arrow key. When I click back to the browser where I'm writing this post, it begins to scroll up (up arrow held) and again I have to press a random arrow key to stop it.

WTF is going on? Why is me clicking another window triggering an arrow key?!!?! It won't ever happen randomly either. It will never do it again until the window is changed.

To add a weird cherry on top, if I click my terminal (Konsole) it won't scroll up my command history. It won't trigger this weird shit, but as soon as I click to another window it'll trigger the up arrow. First half of today was the left arrow, abot an hr ago it started doing the up arrow.

Pls help solve.

I haven't made an effort post in forever so here is me being about Apple.

I asked ChatGPT to give me the top 20 complaints about Apple and I went through and collated a list from there

Apple is expensive

Models

In general I find the price discussion a weird "gotcha" when discussing iPhones in particular. You can find a smartphone to match just about every price bracket you want to and the iPhone is no exception with the current gen SE as low as $429 or the a max spec'd iPhone Pro Max going for $1600. Of course these numbers aren't through a cell provider which offer discounts for a ton of models. This is also excluding used phones which are always a great idea in $CURRENT_YEAR if you're not a huge smartphone person or just want to get a deal.

Laptop-wise I feel the M1 MacBook Air is still an excellent choice at it's $650-$700 price point - clearly not a bargain laptop but the experience of using it is very solid and a great gateway into the Mac ecosystem.

The M2 Mac Mini is a very easy sell at $599 to for an ultra-slim desktops.

Storage and Memory upgrades

This is my biggest complaint with Macs.

The storage and memory upgrades are highway robbery. It's clearly a tool in their "price ladder" strategy and simply used to get you to work your way up to the next highest model.

While I feel like the base model M1 MacBook Air is an excellent machine for a lot of people, it's crazy they're shipping much higher priced models with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.

The copium you hear from Mac fanboys about macOS running fine 8GB RAM because the "storage is so fast" makes no technical sense - NAND used in storage is measured in microseconds and DRAM is measured in nanoseconds. The latency differences we are talking about here are an order of magnitude different.

Privacy / Security Concerns

Privacy and security inspire the most religious fervor out of any IT topic. It's extremely hard to have discussions about privacy and security in a logical manner with nerds because they'll often see glowies that aren't there and ignore the glowies in front of them.

The most important question to ask for any security question is what is your threat model?

Are you trying to avoid nation state actors? Good news, you can stop worrying because they will win! Stop using computers for anything that will get Israel after you, they have an unlimited budget and carte blanche to ignore the law.

If you are expecting the glowies to lack the ability to infiltrate GrapheneOS or Tails supply chain, I have a bridge to sell you.

If your threat model is "I don't want my smartphone data to be cracked in a few minutes", good news - both Android and iOS are fully encrypted and your data is safe. The most important thing there is choosing good passwords (passphrases).

If your threat model is more privacy focused I think there's a better case to be made for custom Android ROMs but if you're anything approaching normie I think it's self-explanatory why Apple is easier than a custom ROM more trustworthy than an advertising company.

Apple is lacking repairability front

Planned Obsolescence

The planned obsolescence take is easily taken down by the fact of Apple's software support on iOS devices. Apple released the iPhone SE (1st Gen) in March 2016 and released a security update last month.

"Battery Gate"

The entire saga of battery gate I think I've argued about on here multiple times so I'll recount what I've argued before:

Lithium ion batteries degrade over time, they also are reduced in performance if they're too hot or too cold.

If old enough or cold enough lithium ion batteries can reach levels where they won't supply enough power for your device to function at all.

To support this let me quote, not Apple, but Sammy:

If you're experiencing frequent shutdowns, visit your nearest service center.

It may be time for a battery check-up, as batteries are consumables, which naturally wear out over time.

https://www.samsung.com/us/support/galaxy-battery/care-and-maintenance/

Apple of course outlines this on their own page too

https://support.apple.com/en-us/101575

The takeaway then is your can either 1.) let a phone shutdown when it can't get enough juice or 2.) reduce the amount of juice being used.

Apple chose to do two and, clearly communicated this poorly hence the lawsuit , but the act itself is the obvious correct choice. This is due to the nature of lithium ion batteries not the jews of planned obsolesce.

Overheating

Overheating was an issue of MacBooks in the past, my theory is that Apple simply believed Intel's roadmap which had them getting past the 14nm process much sooner than they ever did. I also think this was what finally pushed them to go Apple Silicon as the headache of transitioning to an entirely new architecture would be worth it if they could get chips that actually worked at their listed thermal specs.

I think that Apple Silicon has been a resounding success in this regard.

I didn't read this. They're Romanian btw.

Neither can I tbh

Edit:

https://old.reddit.com/r/AsianMasculinity/comments/1bvbk5q/metas_ai_image_generator_cant_imagine_an_asian/?sort=controversial

Some azn nerd wrote a longpost about this phenomenon in DALL-E and it's hilarious

>AngryCommieSt0ner

Yeah, I was under the impression y'all had literally any clue what you were talking about with this line, but seeing as the NYT case has now proven that you absolutely do not need an overfitted model (and can, in fact, use an overfitted prompt to replicate the body of copyrighted texts) I'm not sure why anyone would find this line of thought convincing.

"Overfitted prompt"? 🤣 🤣 🤣

You don't know what overfitting is, yet you still have the audacity to share your opinion on the thing.

Please continue loudly declaring that you know nothing.

Overfitted prompt

Yeah. What else would you call what the NYT case has put up for display?

Edit: Actually nvm u probably wanna ignore as much of that as possible huh?

If the work its transformed enough to get away with saying it is your own, it is no longer a copyright violation.

LMFAO HOLY SHIT THAT IS SO NOT HOW COPYRIGHT OR PLAGIARISM WORKS HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Strangely enough it is.

In United States copyright law, transformative use or transformation is a type of fair use that builds on a copyrighted work in a different manner or for a different purpose from the original, and thus does not infringe its holder's copyright.

What an actually fricking pathetic piece of shit you have to be to try to lie so blatantly. If you take someone's written work and re-edit it so that it follows a different narrative structure but still use their work completely word for word, saying the words you stole in front of a camera and making the written work into a video, you're still a fricking plagiarist, and if people believe you when you call it your own work, you're still a plagiarist.

So what you have is a for-profit "tool" for the mass violation of the copyright of all training data for any user who knows the right prompts to use. Does that not present a massive security and copyright concern? Not just for image generative AI, but also for text-based LLMs? If literally anyone can recreate the full body of copyrighted text with "overfitting" as simple as "what is the next paragraph?", should the people carelessly profiting from these "tools" not be held liable for that?

Whatever device you used to post this comment is a copyright violation.

It's really just "haha you use iPhone capitalism good ooh-ooh-aa-aah-throws shit" logic this morning?

BIC sells copyright-violators for less than a buck.

Well that would be a great argument if you lazy wastes of human sperm could be bothered to pick up a pen and learn to draw.

Aww, thread wasn't going the way you would like?

No, I was expecting people to actually contribute thoughtful conversation, rather than pretending buying a pen and tracing the Mona Lisa's face is the same as a generative AI recreating the Mona Lisa's face in full when told to draw a smiling woman in a Renaissance style. Guess that's my mistake to expect anything resemble critical thought from the people who can't grasp Starship Troopers and Helldivers.

Don't quote me on this but I believe you can also violate any copy right with a pencil

Wow, crazy. It's almost as though there's a difference between the fair personal and/or transformative use of copyrighted work and generating the body of copyrighted works to present as your own.

The U.S. is a failed society actively in decline. The contradictions of capitalism are sharpening, and AI is seen as a golden goose for an ever more enshittified tech industry that has for so long been drowning in cheap venture capital and wall street investments that simply don't exist anymore, almost entirely on the premise that AI will eventually be able to automate much of the skilled labor that these venture capitalists still have to pay so much for. Between Disney's deepfakes, or video games and animation studios trying to use AI-generated assets and voice actors, or even this most recent class of utterly incompetent programmers who just have ChatGPT write their code for them and they just tweak it until it just barely passes muster, it's clear what the suits at these big tech companies pouring so much money into AI want to do with it, regardless of whether or not the technology even has the potential to do so. If you want to talk philosophically, why should we treat generative AI like technology that came before it? It's clearly not being used like other technology that came before it, and this isn't the turn of the 19th century.

I mean....ok. You threw a bunch of labels I barely understand at me in an attempt to ignore my point. I guess if that's your coping mechanism, more power to you.

Given your post, these comments, and well our interaction I don't think you're in a very stable position mentally. This isn't the behavior of a rational or productive person, and I admit I probably shouldn't keep goading you on. Have a good life, and hopefully one day you stop jumping at shadows.

I don't speak for anyone else, but I fundamentally don't respect copyright or IP and think both that is has no moral basis and that practically speaking it's detrimental to mankind.

Ah, got it. Just loudly yelling that all art should be subsumed for profit until eventually there's nothing left. Lemme guess, you're also one of those who don't get the satire of Helldivers 2 and Starship Troopers?

Any tips on getting a job right now?

Could you hire me?

Torn because he would be like omg ai

For my last post on this see "You turned Stack Overflow into a nuclear test site" - StackOverflow opens up voting to all registered users; jannies revolt (again).

Basically the SO staff announced that they were going to let all users be able to vote, in order to reverse the site's participation issues and problems with engaging new users. The jannies (many of whom are still on strike) hated this and downvoted the shit out of the announcement.

Today the staff announced that the decision has been reversed and the trial won't be rolled out.

I acknowledge the feedback shared by community members and by moderators. We felt that this experiment was important because it allowed users to participate and engage in a low-effort core action on the site. We believe a healthy community involves encouraging participation from new and existing users, among other aspects. We understand there are ways to engage with new users and to further de-risk the experiment other than how it is currently designed.

also

we would like to apologize for the concern, stress, and tension caused by this experiment

lol

The SO powerusers and jannies still shit on the wagies anyway:

However, I am a bit disappointed that it has been paused only after the general disagreement from the community on Meta, and not after all the moderators told you how terrible of an idea this is.

and a particularly enormous post from Catija who used to work as an employeed SO employee and has hung around just to shit on her former colleagues. I'll not even paste 10% of her screed but it includes subtitles and subsubtitles.

It's unclear to me (and to many others, it seems) what you actually want from SO—and SE. What are the goals of this or any other change?

Subtitles include:

Content Quality as a KPI

Step 2—Review and reward curation of old content

Voting as the key activity metric

Activity as a KPI

Someone makes the mistake of saying they wished that the trial would go ahead, and they end up on -4:

I support having experiments like this, even I don't like them. I share the gratitude shown on comments by some people so far. I'm glad to know that what I thought will happen regarding the user experience when the experiment was shared privately with Stack Exchange Network moderators and when volunteer sites were required, was right.

• For large screens, centres text so it's not way over on the left (some subs have custom html styles, hence the two sections)
• Expands images automatically
• Hides the image hiphopcirclejerk stuck over their sub (thx j cole drama)

// ==UserScript==
// @name         old_reddit_improver
// @namespace    http://tampermonkey.net/
// @version      2024-01-26
// @description  Make old.reddit.com more usable
// @author       You
// @match        https://old.reddit.com/*
// @icon         https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?sz=64&domain=reddit.com
// @grant        none
// ==/UserScript==

(function() {
    'use strict';
    console.log('---- tampermonkey initiated ----');

    // Remove hhcj pic.
    let earl = document.querySelector('a[href="#EARL"]');
    if (earl) {
        earl.style.display = 'none';
    }

    // Centre page body.
    let body1 = document.querySelector('div[id="siteTable"]');
    if (body1) {
        body1.style = 'width: 70%; margin: auto;';
        console.log('body1:', body1);
    }
    let body2 = document.querySelector('div[class="commentarea"]');
    if (body2) {
        body2.style = 'width: 70%; margin: auto;';
        console.log('body2:', body2);
    }
    console.log('ran centre aligner');

    // Expand images.
    let xpath = "//a[text()='<image>']";
    let iter = document.evaluate(xpath, document, null, XPathResult.ORDERED_NODE_ITERATOR_TYPE, null);
    let array = [];
    let text_elem = iter.iterateNext();
    while (text_elem) {
        array.push(text_elem);
        text_elem = iter.iterateNext();
    }
    array.forEach(i => {
        let img_tag = new Image();
        img_tag.src = i.href;
        img_tag.style.maxWidth = '500px';
        i.parentElement.appendChild(img_tag);
        i.parentElement.removeChild(i);
    })
    console.log('---- tampermonkey complete ----');
})();

This whole thread is so peak HN, it even has a couple of idiots arguing "Bayesian priors" over whether another HNcel is a genuine chomo or not

I know some of you make music, I've even heard some OC that was posted here.

Anyways, I'm trying to get into all kinds of synth stuff as a hobby and I'm not about to spend 2000$ on plugins, so instead I found this. You input the name of a particular synth or plugin VST, and it checks several whitelisted sites to see if any uploads match your query. Supposedly it's reliable, but like any pirated software- use it at your own risk.