It’s just a murder of crows, coming up slow.

  • 0 Posts
  • 25 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: January 23rd, 2022
  • doom_and_gloom@lemmy.mltoWorld News@beehaw.org•Russia is on fire: forests and houses are burning en masse in Siberia, urgent evacuation has begun
    0·
    2 months ago

    The taiga has been burning for years due to climate change. Some of these fires are nonstop, with so-called ghost fires burning underground through the winter that reignite into bigger fires when it gets dry. Siberia has had it the worst. I wonder if this is related. I would think it probably is.

    It is noteworthy that the mayor of Bratsk (Irkutsk region) has already stated that “in all cases, fires are handmade, everywhere the human factor.” In all likelihood, the season of kebabs with alcohol in nature gave a new impetus to the elements. In some settlements, the fire was close to multi-storey buildings.

    This could be a possibility too, although I don’t know whether the statement is in earnest or coming from a climate-denial perspective like you hear in the US and Canada. Hopefully the former. Is anyone familiar with the mayor, by any chance?

  • doom_and_gloom@lemmy.mltoLinux@lemmy.ml•Thoughts on this?
    3·
    6 months ago

    I think adoption is king. The best solutions often fail when it comes to adoption, though. And starting a new solution when one is already adopted is not at all easy.

    I understand that this author is working at a much lower level than the gamers and other casual users, so they will be much more likely to have to deal with the repercussions of poor design choices and edge-case bugs and missing functionality. But if they can make things work well enough when they are paid to do so, then adoption will continue. (On the other hand, they will also be the among the first to hit any showstopper issues if they do exist.)

    I don’t think this kind of community is the best place for discussing nitpicky technical details because to most of us it is effectively whining about issues we will never have to deal with. (Nor is it a bad place, per se.) I think the comment would find a better home being digested by the technical experts who work on display solutions and other interoperating pieces of the larger environment. They are in a good position to weigh the criticism’s merits, and if any concerns are highly merited then they are the ones who would decide whether and how to design and and implement improvements.

  • doom_and_gloom@lemmy.mltoLinux@lemmy.ml•Linus Torvalds on the state of Linux today and how AI figures in its future
    2·
    7 months ago

    I agree it was a sober statement, but a narrow response. I like what Hondel said:

    but obviously, the impact that it has on our lives and the reality we live in is significant.

    And I was curious of Linus would comment at a more meta-level as well.

    I just threw together a portfolio Flask app (infinitely simpler than doing kernel work, of course) that was 2000-3000 lines of connecting APIs and processing data. An AI wrote basically all of the code. 95% of it was scripts that I absolutely could have written myself with my usual references, and the other 5% I would have eventually found explained on StackExchange. (I still managed to learn from the code, thankfully, because I was still proof-reading and continually debugging it.) I knew what I wanted the app to do and how I wanted it to be done, and the AI gave me more-or-less functional code for each mechanism. It saved me hours of tinkering with CSS and other front-end tinkering that I loathe. It does take time to get the AI on the same page with your design - and to maintain its focus - but I can see myself becoming significantly more productive through these tools. I’m no expert, but neither is most of the workforce (although kernel work is, again, much more in the expert realm).

    Afaik any sort of predictive and prototyping features have led to notable productivity gains. If this is predictive text on steroids, which I do not inherently disagree with, then we’re still talking about some pretty crazy steroids. What happens when even kernel work gets done in 10% of the time it normally would have taken? Is a surplus of labor maintained, and if so where does the newly-freed effort get utilized? We’re getting closer to the passing of the torch, and this technology could have profound organization consequences. But maybe it is too early to speak confidently on these matters. The resource consumption of AI and its growth isn’t particularly sustainable, after all.