• 0 Posts
  • 49 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 5th, 2023

help-circle
  • You can’t just use an audio file by itself. It has to come from somewhere.

    The courts already have a system in place that if someone seeks to introduce a screenshot of a text message, or a printout of a webpage, or a VHS tape with video, or just a plain audio file, needs to be able to introduce that as evidence, with someone who testifies that it is real and that it is accurate, with an opportunity for others to question and even investigate where it came from and how it was made/stored/copied.

    If I just show up to a car accident case with an audio recording that I claim is the other driver admitting that he forgot to look before turning, that audio is gonna do basically nothing unless and until I show that I had a reason to be making that recording while talking to him, why I didn’t give it to the police who wrote the accident report that day, etc. And even then, the other driver can say “that’s not me and I don’t know what you think that recording is” and we’re still back to a credibility problem.

    We didn’t need AI to do impressions of people. This has always been a problem, or a non-problem, in evidence.







  • I wonder if someone could set up some form of tunneling through much more mundane traffic, perhaps even entirely over a legitimate encrypted service through a regular browser interface (like the browser interface for services like Discord or slack or MS Teams or FB Messenger or Zoom or Google Chat/Meet) where you can just literally chat with a bot you’ve set up, and instruct the bot to do things on its end, and then forward the results through file sending in that service. From the outside it should look like encrypted chat with a popular service over that https connection.



  • Ok so most monitors sold today support DDC/CI controls for at least brightness, and some support controlling color profiles over the DDC/CI interface.

    If you get some kind of external ambient light sensor and plug it into a USB port, you might be able to configure a script that controls the brightness of the monitor based on ambient light, without buying a new monitor.






  • this seems really dangerous for anyone who might get stranded.

    I’d take a step back and say no, this isn’t actually as bad as some of the comments seem to suggest.

    The vast, vast majority of building emergencies are safe to shelter in place. Modern building codes generally prevent fires from spreading too far, and isolate smoke to a specific place in the building.

    Then, for certain types of catastrophic disasters, being able bodied doesn’t actually help, as people can still get stuck and need rescue from firefighters anyway.

    You need some kind of disaster Goldilocks zone where things are bad enough to where quick evacuation is helpful and things aren’t so bad that evacuation isn’t feasible, before it starts making a difference.

    And in those situations, many buildings do have evacuation chairs in the stairwells. And stronger people can assist carrying down the stairs, too. There are a lot of variations on two-person or single person carries that depend on exactly what mobility limitation there is. If you live or work with or around people with mobility issues, it’s worth looking them up, maybe taking a first aid/survival class or something.



  • reaching those limits requires more manpower in creating assets to populate these larger worlds

    Yeah, when a character design consisted of like 30 sprites of 32x32 pixel resolution, that could basically be done by an artist in a day. Then the “physics” of game play could be simply defined in a two dimensional space.

    Going to 3D, with different models of clothing, armor, weapons, hair, requires a lot more conscious artistic choices within a broad but consistent visual design language. Each time resolution or polygon count or frame rate or hit box number go up, the complexity of the visual design, gameplay design, etc. go up accordingly.

    Physical realism in games increases game development cost exponentially with each generation in tech. A lot of studios simply stepped off of that rat race and went towards cartoony visuals and physics that don’t even pretend to be realistic.


  • In addition to the stone/clay based works that you might be thinking of, I find certain metalworking sculptures to be interesting, too. Alexander Calder made a bunch of red steel sculptures, almost architectural art, in addition to things like dynamic mobiles. Louise Bourgeois’s “Maman” is an interesting one, too.

    There are small metal sculptures, too. From little trinkets made from wire, to welded metal parts, to elaborate chandeliers, these all involve artistic creativity in manipulating materials in a three dimensional space, and it’s a skillset that I admire and respect (and do not have any, myself).


  • After XP, though, the work in the core OS was basically done

    There were a lot of big things happening in computer hardware: migration to 64-bit instruction sets and memory addressing, multicore processors, the rise of the GPU. The security paradigm also shifted to less trust between programs, with a lot of implementation details on encryption and permissions.

    So I’d argue that Windows has some pretty different things going on under the hood from what it was 20 years ago.


  • Weight distribution and jiggle control is something I can’t relate to though

    It’s not hard. Put on a really heavy backpack and leave the straps super loose, and go try to move around, maybe a few athletic moves that involve changing speed or direction. Compare to a tight backpack with a waistband and shoulder straps properly strapped to your body, and try to move around again. The straps help control the extra motion so that you’re in better control.

    Or run around in shoes 5 sizes too big. Or go for a run with your arms loose and intentionally left limp, swinging around like pendulums.

    The whole world has a million examples of why providing bracing and support makes for more efficient and comfortable movement.