Melody Fwygon

Beehaw alt of @melody@lemmy.one

@fwygon on discord

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  • 18 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 10th, 2023

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  • We can no longer trust anything that is specifically sent to us via digital means.

    Technologies like the Document Scanner and even the Photocopier will now have to encode secret data to authenticate that a real, functioning machine has digitized the document.

    This can in fact, cause a great amount of trouble for people.

    People will be required to never digitize themselves handwriting all letters of the alphabet; lest their handwriting be vulnerable to an AI learning it.





  • Google killing more features like this makes me absolutely certain that they have no fucking idea what they’re doing over there.

    But this isn’t a shock; they’ve been dumbing down the “Assistant” by slowly removing useful features ever since Siri pulled down the Assistant’s Google colored skirts and panties and spanked it with her capabilities. Heck even Alexa joined in on the hazing, smiling smugly as she accumulates ability after ability, and being a literal voice powered “Buy it now!~” button.

    I haven’t used Google Assistant since like Android 7; where they were STILL removing features and adding more useless ones. Genuinely I can’t understand why the layoffs had to cause these reductions in functionality unless they were also hiring 3rd world Mechanical Turks to transcribe and do all the work.

    Even more frustrating is that the Assistant hasn’t changed much besides bleeding off features every year, when they could’ve been working to correctly integrate AI into the Assistant, which would’ve made her 1000x more intelligent and useful.

    I still remember how unhelpful Assistant is if you don’t give her exactly the right command with exactly the right wording. Unlike Siri or Alexa, there’s absolutely minimal effort to ensure smooth Natural Language Processing happens when it benefits the user.






  • Unless there’s some kind of bug where Discord enables the in-app setting without actually having the permissions to access contacts

    That’s the bug exactly. It’s kind of a UI glitch; but I found out through Samsung bungling my permissions preferences through a One UI (OTA System) update, that it actually does enable the in-app setting by accident and that this is going to access your contacts if the permission is presently GRANTED, but not throw up a prompt asking for permission if the permission is already DENIED.



  • What’s true is that primary sources don’t count towards notability, so if an article mostly just uses primary sources it’s likely to get deleted.

    Which is absolutely absurd. Counting secondary sources and deciding if something is “Notable” from that is completely arbitrary. Furthermore, there’s legitimate reason for secondary sources not to exist on the topic; and the Notability guidelines of the local WikiProject on Roads, which probably contained the people leaving, should have been taken under advisement as notable roads don’t always have secondary sourcing due to lack of local newspapers or publications.

    Specifically a highway may be notable because it never appears in the news… often because it rarely if ever sees auto accidents. A source is a source, and I think attacking primary sources and excluding them is problematic if the source in question never was causing issues with NPOV.

    Now if someone can prove that a website from the DOT is actually doing some weird POV pushing or is legitimately not behaving like a neutral source; then sure, challenge that citation for that article and get it struck.

    But it’s otherwise a waste of time to pretend that roads and highways aren’t notable and not of encyclopedic interest for good reason.


  • As an on and off Recent Changes Patroller; I view my job simply:

    • Prevent Spam
    • Prevent Vandalism
    • Prevent Misinformation
    • Ensure that any reliable source is cited for edits, to keep editors honest and informational.

    Per Wikipedia’s “Be Bold” guideline; I generally rollback things that I find to be not contributing…and I allow other editors to do the same…“Be Bold” back to me by challenging my decisions. 99% of people who aren’t pedaling obvious Spam, Vandalism or Misinformation I will simply let be.

    Less than 1% of my actions are “Be Bold” style interpretations. I usually stick to what I can reasonably know is just junk or incorrectly contributed.

    So it boggles my mind that any sysops with years of experience on EnWiki are being that pedantic about Notability, Sources and “Original Research”. Genuinely; I don’t consider pointing a fact out about a specific map to be such research…it’s a fact, and that fact can be backed by even more maps, going back in time. Roads and Highways may not be extremely exciting; but they definitely are important and DO in fact meet GN guidelines. Primary Sources themselves are fine too; genuinely you should need a damn good reason to challenge a source; be it primary or secondary.

    At least a citation about how a primary source might not be found to be reliable.

    It looks like as editors flee the ridiculous bureaucracy, they only make it worse to prevent more work from being created…which is counterproductive and makes people consider things like this or long-term wikibreaks. >_>



  • How can you call it sensationalist when you know that the consequences of Trump being elected that are listed in the article are highly likely to be true?

    I don’t consider it sensationalist. I consider it to be a strong warning. If you read the article through to the end; you’ll note the tone changes and explains why this has happened. Is it potentially sounding the alarm too soon? Personally, I do not think so. It might be the intention of the author to scare someone of enough power into action extraordinary enough to Stop Trump.

    Or maybe it will scare an everyday reader into leaving the country to escape the growing fascism, or into actually turning up at the polls and voting for anything but the Orange Tyrant.

    Emphasis added - I will try to avoid highlighting who is responsible for the failures but they are listed in the article. I am not sympathizing with Trump Supporters; I am pointing at how this article outlines how we got here today.

    What is certain, however, is that the odds of the United States falling into dictatorship have grown considerably because so many of the obstacles to it have been cleared and only a few are left. If eight years ago it seemed literally inconceivable that a man like Trump could be elected, that obstacle was cleared in 2016. If it then seemed unimaginable that an American president would try to remain in office after losing an election, that obstacle was cleared in 2020. And if no one could believe that Trump, having tried and failed to invalidate the election and stop the counting of electoral college votes, would nevertheless reemerge as the unchallenged leader of the Republican Party and its nominee again in 2024, well, we are about to see that obstacle cleared as well. In just a few years, we have gone from being relatively secure in our democracy to being a few short steps, and a matter of months, away from the possibility of dictatorship.

    TL;DR: The odds are higher because the listed barriers have been cleared.

    Yes, I know that most people don’t think an asteroid is heading toward us and that’s part of the problem. But just as big a problem has been those who do see the risk but for a variety of reasons have not thought it necessary to make any sacrifices to prevent it. At each point along the way, our political leaders, and we as voters, have let opportunities to stop Trump pass on the assumption that he would eventually meet some obstacle he could not overcome. Republicans could have stopped Trump from winning the nomination in 2016, but they didn’t. The voters could have elected Hillary Clinton, but they didn’t. Republican senators could have voted to convict Trump in either of his impeachment trials, which might have made his run for president much more difficult, but they didn’t.

    TL;DR: There were many people in power who could have stopped him, but did not, as they felt certain that "Surely the next obstacle will stop him. The next obstacle did not stop him

    Throughout these years, an understandable if fatal psychology has been at work. At each stage, stopping Trump would have required extraordinary action by certain people, whether politicians or voters or donors, actions that did not align with their immediate interests or even merely their preferences. It would have been extraordinary for all the Republicans running against Trump in 2016 to decide to give up their hopes for the presidency and unite around one of them. Instead, they behaved normally, spending their time and money attacking each other, assuming that Trump was not their most serious challenge, or that someone else would bring him down, and thereby opened a clear path for Trump’s nomination. And they have, with just a few exceptions, done the same this election cycle. It would have been extraordinary had Mitch McConnell and many other Republican senators voted to convict a president of their own party. Instead, they assumed that after Jan. 6, 2021, Trump was finished and it was therefore safe not to convict him and thus avoid becoming pariahs among the vast throng of Trump supporters. In each instance, people believed they could go on pursuing their personal interests and ambitions as usual in the confidence that somewhere down the line, someone or something else, or simply fate, would stop him. Why should they be the ones to sacrifice their careers? Given the choice between a high-risk gamble and hoping for the best, people generally hope for the best. Given the choice between doing the dirty work yourself and letting others do it, people generally prefer the latter.

    TL;DR: The Psychology is briefly explained; and it highlights how extraordinary that taking action would have been for the person(s) in question.

    A paralyzing psychology of appeasement has also been at work. At each stage, the price of stopping Trump has risen higher and higher. In 2016, the price was forgoing a shot at the White House. Once Trump was elected, the price of opposition, or even the absence of obsequious loyalty, became the end of one’s political career, as Jeff Flake, Bob Corker, Paul D. Ryan and many others discovered. By 2020, the price had risen again. As Mitt Romney recounts in McKay Coppins’s recent biography, Republican members of Congress contemplating voting for Trump’s impeachment and conviction feared for their physical safety and that of their families. There is no reason that fear should be any less today. But wait until Trump returns to power and the price of opposing him becomes persecution, the loss of property and possibly the loss of freedom. Will those who balked at resisting Trump when the risk was merely political oblivion suddenly discover their courage when the cost might be the ruin of oneself and one’s family?

    TL;DR: More Psychology is explained briefly and it highlights that the price to stop Trump has been rising exponentially with each step.



  • Why on earth would I pay $10 a month for search when I can get everything I need using SearXNG? For Free.

    It costs me exactly $0.00 to run SearXNG locally using Podman and WSL to host the docker image. It Just Works; and I don’t have to worry about paying money every month to anyone; nor do I ever have to count my search queries as precious.

    Unfortunately this “$10/month = Unlimited” is also likely to be available only for a limited time; and once Kagi feels it has enough users; then you’ll be stuck back on some arbitrary number of searches each month.

    Worse is logging in. To search. Yuck.

    There are so many “Public” SearXNG instances as well for the less-than-technical; https://searx.space/

    All of them provide the option(s) to use whatever engines you’d like.