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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • I’m not the person who brought git up. I was just stating that work is work. Sure, git is doing something useful with it. This is arguably useful without the work itself being important. Work is the thing you’re complaining about, not the proof.

    This solution is designed to cost scrapers money; it does this by causing them to burn extra electricity. Unless it’s at scale, unless it costs them, unless it has an impact, it’s not going to deter them.

    Yeah, but the effect it has on legitimate usage is trivial. It’s a cost to illegitimate scrapers. Them not paying this cost also has an impact on the environment. In fact, this theoretically doesn’t. They’ll spend the same time scraping either way. This way they get delayed and don’t gather anything useful for more time.

    To use your salesman analogy, it’s similar to that, except their car is going to be running regardless. It just prevents them from reaching as many houses. They’re going to go to as many as possible. If you can stall them then they use the same amount of gas, they just reach fewer houses.

    Compare this to endlessh. It also wastes hacker’s time, but only because it just responds very slowly with and endless stream of header characters. It’s making them wait, only they’re not running their car while they’re waiting.

    This is probably wrong, because you’re using the salesman idea. Computers have threads. If they’re waiting for something then they can switch tasks to something else. It protects a site, but it doesn’t slow them down. It doesn’t actually really waste their time because they’re performing other tasks while they wait.

    Let me make sure I understand you: AI is bad because it uses energy, so the solution is to make them use even more energy? And this benefits the environment how?

    If they’re going to use the energy anyway, we might as well make them get less value. Eventually the cost may be more than the benefit. If it isn’t, they spend all the energy they have access to anyway. That part isn’t going to change.


  • Proof of work is just that, proof that it did work. What work it’s doing isn’t defined by that definition. Git doesn’t ask for proof, but it does do work. Presumably the proof part isn’t the thing you have an issue with. I agree it sucks that this isn’t being used to do something constructive, but as long as it’s kept to a minimum in user time scales, it shouldn’t be a big deal.

    Crypto currencies are an issue because they do the work continuously, 24/7. This is a one-time operation per view (I assume per view and not once ever), which with human input times isn’t going to be much. AI garbage does consume massive amounts of power though, so damaging those is beneficial.



  • The problem I can see with it is taking attention away from other people. It Should be in it’s own community so people can block it or follow it if they want. I don’t have any specific issue with it except that it forces everyone else to do the same thing or not be seen (assuming there’s enough content to get to that point).

    It’s like youtubers all having to follow the trend if telling people to like and subscribe and that crap. Either you follow or you get left behind. It sucks. Algorithm manipulation is bad.




  • The religion thing I dismiss as just sci-fi magic. Their religion is based on alien stuff. Sure, religions in our world are wrong, but you can’t travel faster than light either so we might as well dismiss the whole show, right?

    For example, in Stargate SG1 almost all the civilizations view the gua’uld as gods. When technology is so far beyond your understanding, it’s effectively magic. In that show religion is often said to be wrong, but not for any reason besides the ones they worship are evil. For the Norse people worshiping the “good” aliens it’s fine, and they might as well be gods with their technology.

    The people of Bajor interacted with aliens and created a religion to help them understand it. I don’t think that’s apologia. I think that’s a reasonable analogue for what we do too. We don’t understand lighting? It’s God/Thor/Zeus.


  • It’s impressive how radical DS9 was, and yet no one complained. I don’t know if people just didn’t notice or if it was just better times then. I’m sure if it were made today you’d hear non-stop complaining from a certain segment of society about it being “woke” (which it is, in a good way) and bad. They even justify the use of terrorism as a tool against oppressive regimes!

    DS9 is, by far, the best ST has ever been I think. It’s always been progressive, but almost always in a “things will just work out” sort of way. It didn’t actually deal with how we need to act to create the future we want. It just says that the ideal future is inclusive of everyone, which is great but limited. DS9 wasn’t afraid to say there’s almost no method off limits against (figurative) fascist oppressors and, like you mention, really go to town on roasting capitalists and warning us to be afraid of them.








  • I don’t disagree it’s an issue, but what should be allowed in general communities? If any other nation’s politics are allowed, then you can’t really just not allow US politics (unless you make that a rule for the community and part of its purpose, which is fine).

    There are just more Americans here than any particular other nationality, so you get more US content on average. You’ll need specific non-US communities if you want to avoid it. Expecting general communities to not reflect the general audience is a little absurd.




  • Yeah, the whole story for the show is running for their lives as the last of humanity, and dealing with what that requires. It’s so strong. Then this mostly stops being the focus and it’s so much weaker. I’d say after New Caprica is the turning point for where things feel off.

    I’ll argue the Cylons fracturing and joining the humans has some good pieces to it, but overall things just get really boring when it’s no longer about surviving and instead just on moving forward.

    Honestly, I’ve watched the show probably a half dozen times, and I typically have a great memory, but I can’t remember what’s going on at the end. I know the Cylons are working with the humans, they find Earth and it sucks, then… something, and the cycle restarts. I can’t remember what that something is.


  • Just because you only care about them because they’re not called planets doesn’t mean nobody else does. You are allowed to enjoy anything you want. Go learn about all the dwarf planets, asteroids, comets, and everything else!

    Planet is a useful term to describe a particular thing. We could keep adding more things to the list, but then it becomes less useful. We have multiple words for different things for a reason. A fruit isn’t a vegetable just because they both grow on plants, for example.