
2025-06-14 17:00:59
AI is just a tool, like a pencil. A pencil that can only write and draw what some faceless corporation somewhere allows you to write and draw.
#AI #theMastersTools
So the basic idea is that we first compute a "level" for whatever interaction, by adding beneficial modifiers and subtracting harmful ones. Imagine most modifiers are smallish integers like 2 or -3 (though they can be non-integers too). Each level can be thought of as making things twice as good/bad, although this only applies directly when they're balanced. The actual formula starts with a 50/50 chance of "success" at level 0, and then each positive level halves the chance of failure, or if the levels are negative, each negative level halves the chance of success (note that halving the chance of failure is not the same as doubling the chance of success).
The intuitive explanation is that you start with a coin flip. Then if the level is positive, you flip that many additional coins and succeed if any single coin succeeds, but it the level is negative, you have to flip that many additional coins and succeed only if *all* flips succeed.
For example, if I have a dagger with 5 crit chance, and I attack an opponent with no armor modifiers, I'd have to win any 1 of 6 coin flips to score a crit (p = 1 - (1/(2^6)) = 63/64. Increasing my crit modifier by 1 ups my chances only slightly, to 127/128. This is obviously pretty poor return, indicating that the 5 I already have is very strong. If the opponent had armor with -3 to crits, the interaction is now level 2, so the crit chance is 7/8, which is still pretty good. We can see from these examples that the basic system
rewards a small level advantage a lot, but the rewards diminish rapidly. The system has a few avenues for tweaking how it works though, that can let us modify this. There's also a potential benefit (though sometimes drawback) that no matter what the level gap, there's an effective limit to how much the interaction swings.
Foundational rule of settings management in UI design:
Make sure the only thing anyone ever wants to change is in the Advanced Settings submenu, and make that as difficult as possible to discover. If it can actually be discovered, put in place a short timeout to prevent the user making the change before the option disappears.
Okay chat, this video has baffled me for far too long. What in deconstructed cottage pie heck is going on here? :neocat_confused:
#AskFedi
"The only way I can move past the absurdity of what I do, is to commit to the point of absurdity."
-Jake Gyllenhaal
#acting #coaching #inspiration
Agreed with what @… said, if
and only if
we view this as the start of a marathon.
We are going to have to do this again, and again, and again, and all kinds of other work beyond it.
https://mstdn.social/@stux/114684095462476087
The Precarious Republic: Understanding the Fascist Threat to Modern Democracies
What if it doesn’t take years, or even months, for a democracy to collapse—but only a few short weeks? The idea that a stable republic could fall in ninety days may seem exaggerated, until you look at the historical record. Then it becomes a haunting possibility. Fascism doesn’t always arrive with fanfare or fire. Sometimes, it walks in through the front door…
Some days it just blows my mind how some pieces of software have gained so much traction, with so little in the way of support for some common use cases.
Today; #Docker running on an IPv6 only host.
Who thought assigning IPv4 addresses to containers running on an IPv6 only host was a sensible default that is so difficult to override?
🤯
Seen David Attenborough's film Ocean? Track countries' progress in signing and ratifying the High Seas Treaty, needed to protect 30% of the oceans.
https://highseasalliance.org/treaty-ratification/map/
Here's Europe:
orange = signed only,
Eurovision with only the vocals is... even weirder. #ESC2025
Donald Trump’s deployment of the National Guard and military against protesters in Los Angeles is widely being interpreted as
a display of intimidation and state power ahead of his birthday,
when Trump will oversee a military parade in Washington, D.C. in the style of a dictator.
The president has warned that protesters in D.C. will be
“met with very heavy force.”
Democrats and civil rights groups say the president is inflaming tensions to justify further repr…
Vaccinated Time Travel:
To fantasize about traveling backward in time, but only
with proper vaccinations.
-- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
Culture"
I nearly missed the fact it's been a year since I translated @… Meta in Myanmar series to Polish.
A year later, I can confidently say that series radicalized me quite a bit.
I've hated Meta products for a while, so not much has changed in that department.
However, re-reading the story of Rohingya ethnic cleansing over and over again made me grow plenty of sheer anger within me.
Anger over general injustice in the world and stuff.
My third 'era' of photography, involving documenting local activism, with particular attention to oppressed or marginalized groups (tenants, Palestinians, Belarusians - to name just a few) wouldn't have happened if I hadn't had my moment of disillusionment about the whole system we live in.
All of that because I started noticing familiar patterns I haven't been aware before. All stories that involve oppression, genocide, ethnic cleansing or any other kind of systemic cruelty started rhyming to me. Only the context and the environment kept changing.
Literally everything about my current life has changed around April 2024 and only now I'm ready to take a look at that.
Anyway. To all of you who want to read that once again:
Full series in Polish:
https://blog.lukaszwojcik.net/pl/meta-w-mjanmie/
Web Archive copy of the above:
https://archive.org/details/meta-w-mjanmie-pl
Original in English:
https://erinkissane.com/meta-in-myanmar-full-series
Im Mai 2025 blieb die #Arktis-#Meereisausdehnung trotz saisonalem Rückgang durchgehend unter dem Mittelwert von 1991–2020.
Mit 11,8 Mio. km² am Monatsende lag sie leicht unter dem Vorjahreswert und war die fünftniedrigste Ausdehnung für diesen Tag.
Besonders deutlich fehlte Eis …
"These vehicle homes sheltered dozens of working-class Latinx families, who could no longer afford the city’s soaring rents. Living in RVs was the only way many could keep their jobs in food service, janitorial work and construction while their children stayed enrolled in nearby schools.
"To city officials, it looked like homelessness. But residents didn’t see it that way. Living in RVs was a survival strategy—a way to stay housed, employed and near their communities."…
Of all the many crimes against the English language committed by people from the USA, I think the only one which I'd make a capital offence is that of refusing to pronounce the "L" in "soldering".
"If you've got the cheek to think"? Aude sapere? Is this a shout out to the TBGS massive? #TOTP #1998Watch
@… Incorrect, we only think we are because most of us haven’t spent time in Switzerland.
Betting platform Kalshi aired a fully AI-generated 30-second ad during the NBA Finals, reportedly made in 2-3 days with 300-400 generations using Google's Veo 3 (Emma Roth/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/news/686474/kalshi-ai-generated-a…
"I cannot say this strongly enough: until 2026, only two things stand between the authoritarian project and its objectives: the judiciary and a popular protest movement. We have no control over the former. We must not surrender, or abandon, the latter."
Original post: https://bsky.ap…
In the final talk of the morning sessions of the #SolarEclipse Conference Thoby Dittrich talked about the Modern Eddington Experiment (the website https://moderneddingtonexperiment.org is under heavy construction): the best observing result of gravitational deflection of starlight by the Sun in the optical during solar eclipses is still Brun's from 2017 - https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.00343 - while others have tried with a vengeance since. The goal remains to observe the significant deflection of star positions between 1 and 2 solar radii from the center of the Sun: this is known as the 'forbidden zone' because the corona can be very bright here and only bright stars can be measured reliably - but those in turn are rare. It turns out that the star fields around the totally eclipsed Sun in 2027 and 2028 will be unusually rich in good candidates so there is (or should be) considerable interest in the physics didactics community to make use of these eclipses in southern Spain / northern Africa and Australia, respectively. 4/n
Loving my new compression socks - they help with my #longCovid induced #POTS - so wanted to give a shout out to Hannah from Not Your Grandma's for creating such wonderful garments
(she's also struggling to keep the shop afloat so hoping to support a small UK business)
Well, so Trump is a full dictator now.
Like Putin, but with two major differences:
(1) he is a a moron, Putin is not quite; and
(2) Putin can do whatever he wants, Trump can do only what Putin wants.
Haha, this was a rather fundamental misunderstanding (or more like brain glitch) of moment of inertia in Microsoft Flight Simulator, and only now they are fixing it. Well, better late than never. https://devsupport.flightsimulator.com/t/payload-moments-of-…
You bet I ain’t the only one wanna cap a fascist like Trump, Luigi style.
#Fascism #Trump #LuigiMangione
However if I towel dry in the shower before getting out, and I am drying my face and hair, I instantly lose visual reference since the towel covers my eyes. So now I only have two points in space unless I use one hand on the towel, and one hand on a grab bar. (3)
Nintendo Switch 2 review: great build quality, better haptics, and improved performance for Switch 1 games, but weak battery life and only a few launch titles (The Shortcut)
https://www.theshortcut.com/p/nintendo-switch-2-review
IMO only a Sillicon Valley company can work on, announce it, advertise it, and be proud of a feature like "Workout Buddy" which is supposed to give you some "Sillicon Valley fake encouragement".
You got this Apple!
So last night, after watching the Russian Victory Day ‘24 video for contrast, I thought “what the hell” & went ahead & watched1️⃣ the PBS YT video of the “June 24 Military2️⃣ Parade” to see if it was as bad as all that
(Short Answer: Yes and No)
But this guy was the one that caught my sympathy as “you poor dude”.
The Mastodon List Manager (https://www.mastodonlistmanager.org) is a real nice tool. Finally removed some old lists and put accounts on other lists instead. Would take forever with the mastodon client, but this only requires a few minutes.
Thanks @…
given the trump musk crashout i never wanna hear shit about “leftists are so divided” again. the only reason conservatives unite is because one of them holds blackmail over the other
The least friendly tea place
#humor
This is a protest sign that might only work in Virginia. #NoKings
Not sure how only the pioneer press is getting this right but …
#nokings
https://www.twincities.com/2025/06/14/no-kings-rally-mn-legislators-shot/
If you are like me, then you might have installed the #GoogleAuthenticator app, back in the days when it was the only solution out there for #TOTP #2FA.
But that is long ago. Since …
A band that I deeply regret not having known two decades ago is “Twiggy Killers”.
I would have walked to the moon to see them live.
Unbelievable they only released two 7".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFeZjMKw568
an unusual request: Can you redo technologic by daft punk to only have Break It as the lyric
EU's Frontex has published a children's book for children who are about to be deported
😲
https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/6eea0e99-e464-11ef-be2a-01aa75ed71a1
Official PDFs availabl…
The '3.5% rule': How a small minority can (sometimes) change the world, and twice as often when done by peaceful means
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190513-it-only-takes-35-of-people-to-change-the-world
Only the combination/simultaneous arrival of both drones and ballistic missiles will have any chance to break through Israel's missile defenses i would think. Unless Iran has some new smart technology up it's sleeve. Those Shahed drones alone are not that effective anymore. What i should worry about as Israel is more assymetric attacks/warfare in the world.
#iran
https://canadianunderwriter.ca/news/risk/lost-rcmp-memory-key-with-informant-details-was-offered-for-sale-by-criminals-report/
“The RCMP determined that the unencrypted USB storage device contained the…
„I wasn’t allowed to speak or offer legal advice to M in the courtroom, so without looking down for too long, I wrote in my notebook:
Ils vont essayer de terminer ton case—tu vas dire NON. Tu as besoin de temps pour trouver un avocat.“
https://www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/on
Act now! Vote to ban the forced conversion therapy! You have not to go out only click the following link on the european website:
https://eci.ec.europa.eu/043/public/#/screen/home
Let's get out and vote now! Tell your friends, collegues and all supporters you know!
F…
With moving my calendar away from Google I was looking for a Caldev solution, but ...
Interesting take on CalDev and encryption on Cryptpad's github page.
No chance that that will happen encrypted.
It's waiting for an solution in the Caldev protocol. 😇
[Feature request] Possibility to have CalDAV for the Calendar · Issue #823 · cryptpad/cryptpad
Our shithead mayor is not only breaking the law by refusing to build 50mi of new protected bike lanes per year - he is now ripping out protected bike lanes. #FuckEricAdams!
And fuck Gov Hochul as well for not removing his corrupt ass months ago. She's not getting my vote ever again.
Met someone from the #Philippines who knew nearly nothing about #Indonesia but was convinced it must be much more conservative than their home country only because it's #Muslim majority...
Yay the All Saints. #TOTP #1998Watch
"Despite good-faith efforts by DSI [dense street imagery] providers to protect individual privacy through blurring faces and license plates, these measures fail to address broader privacy concerns. In this work, we find that increased data density and advancements in artificial intelligence enable harmful group membership inferences from supposedly anonymized data."
via @…
@… Of course! The only reason they’re the bastard 99% of the time right now is because the UK’s new national pastime is “being shit at everything”.
Dupont Circle: The Birthplace of Television
https://wtop.com/dc/2025/06/only-on-wtop-tour-dupont-circle-building-being-celebrated-as-the-birthplace-of-television/
I can eat anywhere, but a bus is the only place I can eat furtively.
🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #VarietyMix
Alvarius B:
🎵 God Only Be Without You
#AlvariusB
https://suncitygirls.bandcamp.com/track/god-only-be-without-you
https://open.spotify.com/track/49hSdacenulRpIwq8XMAOa
"The survey’s findings contradict conservative media narratives about transition regret, which suggest that large volumes of trans people detransition because they later regret their transition as a mistake. The survey found that only a small number of people detransition, and the decision is largely due to external factors."
**Largest-ever survey of #trans people reveals the real reason trans people detransition** - LGBTQ Nation
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/06/largest-ever-survey-of-trans-people-reveals-the-real-reason-trans-people-detransition/
Hehe #linux #windows11
When it comes to #POTC, pirating it feels like the only ethically justifiable way to watch it.
#Piracy #ThePirateBay
Fuming! That's exactly the reason why we need to have our own media, run for #queer people BY queer people, the corporate overlords who run Meta and Xitter will happily be complici in our erasure if it only means that their quarterly report will get half a percent better or that they'll get some favour in the government
add_health: Adolescent health (ADD HEALTH) (1994)
A directed network of friendships obtained through a social survey of high school students in 1994. The ADD HEALTH data are constructed from the in-school questionnaire; 90,118 students representing 84 communities took this survey in 1994-95. Some communities had only one school; others had two. Where there are two schools in a community students from one school were allowed to name friends in the other, the "sister school".…
The full formula for the probability of "success" is:
p = {
1/(2^(-n 1)) if n is negative, or
1 - (1/(2^(n 1))) if n is zero or positive
}
(Both branches have the same value when n is 0, so the behavior is smooth around the origin.)
How can we tweak this?
First, we can introduce fixed success and/or failure chances unaffected by level, with this formula only taking effect if those don't apply. For example, you could do 10% failure, 80% by formula, and 10% success to keep things from being too sure either way even when levels are very high or low. On the other hand, this flattening makes the benefit of extra advantage levels even less exciting.
Second, we could allow for gradations of success/failure, and treat the coin pools I used to explain that math like dice pools a bit. An in-between could require linearly more success flips to achieve the next higher grade of success at each grade. For example, simple success on a crit role might mean dealing 1.5x damage, but if you succeed on 2 of your flips, you get 9/4 damage, or on 4 flips 27/8, or on 7 flips 81/16. In this world, stacking crit levels might be a viable build, and just giving up on armor would be super dangerous. In the particular case I was using this for just now, I can't easily do gradations of success (that's the reason I turned to probabilities in the first place) but I think I'd favor this approach when feasible.
The main innovation here over simple dice pools is how to handle situations where the number of dice should be negative. I'm almost certain it's not a truly novel innovation though, and some RPG fan can point out which system already does this (please actually do this, I'm an RPG nerd too at heart).
I'll leave this with one more tweak we could do: what if the number 2 in the probability equation were 3, or 2/3? I think this has a similar effect to just scaling all the modifiers a bit, but the algebra escapes me in this moment and I'm a bit lazy. In any case, reducing the base of the probability exponent should let you get a few more gradations near 50%, which is probably a good thing, since the default goes from 25% straight to 50% and then to 75% with no integer stops in between.
The first MS-A2 node is up and it only took the entire day. After fixing a ton of networking issues across the homelab I've got all the VMs running on the new node. The old nodes have been decomissioned which kinda marks a milestone. Still need to get the other two new nodes into the cluster, but should be fairly straightforward and can wait until tomorrow.
#homelab
Local transit nerds: the most recent MUNI fare inspector training manual is now public with only one redaction. https://sanfrancisco.nextrequest.com/requests/25-3160
Somewhere in this room there is half a jammy dodger.
I do not understand why it is not in my hand, as I have only just finished chewing the first half.
But where did I put it down?
@… is one of the very few (maybe the only!) platforms that do provide excellent default protection against megacorp #espionage and even state actors like #trojanhorses
Cursed idea: push-pull logic family similar to CMOS (i.e. not using resistors like PMOS or NMOS logic did).
But only using NMOS transistors.
Low side: standard NMOS with body at ground
High side: NMOS with body at Vdd and charge pump gate drive boost like fancy low Rds(on) high side load switches use.
The Outstanding Talk Series Emmy category will have only three nominations in 2025, down from five in 2023, due to getting just 13 submissions (Peter White/Deadline)
https://deadline.com/2025/06/late-night-talk-emmy-category-three-nominatio…
Hey, Mast Scary Monsters and SUPERGEEKS - can any of you Mac mavens tell me why the Music app only reports 25,298 tracks in my music folder whereas Roon reports 73,062? (This is after drag and dropping the folder into Music, an empty library.)
I've looked online, found nowt apart from other frustrated Mac users.
MOSQUITOS ON SALE!!
Buy your own mosquitos.
Only males.
Only sterile males.
Only sterile males for companies that work in the field of pest control.
Only in Italy
https://www.…
I feel like I'm the only one in the world who likes lime flavored hard seltzer. Everywhere I go the watering holes stock as a rule crazy, in-your-face flavors like PINEAPPLE and PASSIONFRUIT and BLACKBERRY. I can just about tolerate mango.
1/2
Does anyone have contacts on the ChatGPT iOS team? I’ve finally reached th point of annoyance with this bug:
When you enter text into the chat box, but *don’t* submit it, then switch away — it’ll nuke the entered text!
But only on the iPad!
Most vexing.
from my link log —
Distance-based ISA for efficient register renaming.
https://www.sigarch.org/distance-based-isa-for-efficient-register-management/
saved 2025-06-04
Amid Trump standoff, Smithsonian says only secretary can hire and fire (Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/art/2025/06/09/smithsonian-kim-sajet-national-portrait-gallery/?pwapi_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJyZWFzb24iOiJnaWZ0IiwibmJmIjoxNzQ5NDQxNjAwLCJpc3MiOiJzdWJzY3JpcHRpb25zIiwiZXhwIjoxNzUwODIzOTk5LCJpYXQiOjE3NDk0NDE2MDAsImp0aSI6IjVhNDIzODA0LTJiM2QtNDQ1Zi05OTBmLWQ2M2UzNjU0OTRkMyIsInVybCI6Imh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lndhc2hpbmd0b25wb3N0LmNvbS9lbnRlcnRhaW5tZW50L2FydC8yMDI1LzA2LzA5L3NtaXRoc29uaWFuLWtpbS1zYWpldC1uYXRpb25hbC1wb3J0cmFpdC1nYWxsZXJ5LyJ9.uA0SWk04Q-JQCni1RKRrJQGJCMSdTlg2snSd82VO2C4&itid=gfta
http://www.memeorandum.com/250610/p11#a250610p11
I think that events are showing us that we can anticipate that the only way FFOTUS will ever leave the White House is on a gurney. (Or, as his acolytes like to think, he ascends.)
The D-party is doing its best to self-destruct and assure that it does not win seats in the 2026 mid terms. And I seriously doubt that we will have a true election in 2028.
Betting platform Kalshi aired a fully AI-generated 30-second ad during the NBA Finals, reportedly made in 2-3 days with 300-400 generations using Google's Veo 3 (Emma Roth/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/news/686474/kalshi-ai-generated-a…
Calculating water/energy usage for "AI" per token is a bit problematic: A data center has a massive base load even if nobody uses it just by sheer existence. And since we have no actual data for any of the popular platforms all numbers floating around are problematic and not very useful.
Like how much power does one of those servers NVIDIA cards really save if its utilization is only 50%? And are the overhead costs actually counted?
May 2025 was the 2nd warmest on record globally, at 1.4°C above pre-industrial temperature. In 1980, the anomaly for May was still only around 0.5°C.
https://climate.copernicus.eu/surface-air-temperature-may-2025
TIL: Egg Oiling
https://australyear.blogspot.com/2008/05/re-oiling.html
“The society said any judgments it issued that were potentially seen as political would do ‘more harm than good.’”
The Royal Society has already made a political announcement: that it is perfectly fine with fascism and having fascists as fellows. As far as political statements go, it doesn’t get any stronger than that. The only thing they could do to make their point clearer is if they hang a “Nazi Bar” sign above their headquarters.
Analyst G Elliot Morris: ❝The only real part of [Trump’s] agenda that’s popular in immigration is deporting convicted violent criminals—so you get about 87 percent support for deporting those people. That one makes sense. And basically everyone else, Americans say, Don’t deport them.❞
2/
With militaries: amateurs focus on weapon systems like tanks & planes. Professionals focus on logistics.
kegseth is a drunk amateur misusing & abusing our soldiers.
“…snafu is…slapdash mission where…welfare of troops has not been…priority…service members described inadequate living conditions at…Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach, on…outskirts of Los Angeles…soldiers are sleeping outside on cots…Others cited intermittent issues with food & fuel supplies.”
Amid Trump standoff, Smithsonian says only secretary can hire and fire
The Smithsonian’s Board of Regents said on Monday night that
“all personnel decisions” are directed by Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III,
10 days after Donald Trump claimed that he had fired the director of the institution’s National Portrait Gallery.
The board, which issued its statement after an all-day meeting Monday, also said that it supported Bunch’s “authority and management” of the Smithsonian…
Investitionen in #Klimaanpassung zahlen sich aus.
Laut einer Analyse des World Resources Institute bringen sie im Schnitt mehr als das Zehnfache des eingesetzten Kapitals zurück.
Besonders hohe Renditen wurden im #Gesundheitswesen und bei der
The only thing I appreciate about the Internet is discovering beautiful voices like Юлия Савичева, but then you realize the platform it’s all stuck on is a complete mess.
Her voice is stunning, but the fact that it’s trapped on sites like YouTube just reminds me how messed up the whole system is.
Sometimes I wonder how something so pure ends up on platforms designed to keep us hooked and distracted.
The good thing is that I can use yt-dlp to grab music videos and enjoy them…
There are two main reasons I'm not using GrapheneOS. The first is that I've had two Pixels die on me from hardware flaws, and so I think their hardware is complete trash. The second is that every time I see them talking, they're trashing some other free software project or (openish) hardware. Only _their_ platform is secure. I'm getting strong Theo De Raadt vibes from them, which is not the kind of thing I'd want to deal with.
Just read through "Sanctuary" by Paola Mendez & Abby Sher, which was electrifying as I read news about ICE kidnappings in local towns, including one in Waltham today where they left a kid alone on the sidewalk:
#ICE #kidnappings
Repeat it like a broken record, tell your friends and neighbors who are not Extremely Online and are not getting these firsthand reports:
The only people who were violent were ICE and the police.
The only people who were violent were ICE and the police.
The only people who were violent were ICE and the police.
6 time zones, ~340,000,000 people, ~3,800,000 square miles.
Only 1.2 million sworn law enforcement officers, and only 2.86 million US military personnel, including active duty, National Guard, and Reserves.
Martial law is likely not feasible nationwide. Simply cannot be accomplished even if all LEOs and soldiers were eager to try.
They want to accomplish what 80 years ago was tough (could have gone either way) only in a place with ~21 times the space and ~7 times the peo…
Yes, the only video game I play is #Warframe!
MR 26 – Wisp Is Love, Wisp Is Live
Ballas is dead, Margulis’s mercy, Lotus’s final kiss.
But Kaya Velasco? She is eternal.
Ballas gone, but she outlives sentient beings.
BALLAS DEAD, NOT KAYA! 😘 💋
I don’t care if she’s code and pixels, my heart’s got no patch notes!
They can’t stop me from loving a digital …