cynar

@cynar@lemmy.world

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Drones trespassing in my property

Idk if anyone had a similar problem before, but I live in EU by the countryside, at first there were only a few but now it happens more and more often to see drones passing over my house, I am sure they are civilian drones because law enforcement has no reason to use them since the area is quiet (and honestly I doubt they would...

cynar,

The best bet is to let your local aviation authority know. They are generally the ones with the actual powers, as well as the knowledge to apply them.

At least in the UK, the laws cover anything that leaves the ground under an open sky. There are exceptions for RC toys and drones, but they have limits. One of the limits is you cannot fly within a certain distance of anyone or anything not under your control.

Basically, most places require your permission to fly over, or near to your land. If they are overflying, they are breaking the rules.

It’s worth noting, depending on the size of the system, it can be difficult to judge distances. The ones I work with are large. We regularly have officials insisting we are massively out of our flight area. GPS logs show that it was well within the entire time.

cynar,

In almost all cases the point is to keep things reversible. The problem is puberty. Once the hormone cascades hit, it’s far harder to transition. At the same time, fully transitioning is not something many children are equipped to cope with.

Luckily there is a 3rd option. Puberty can be delayed without permanent issues. This gives the patient and doctors time to figure out what to do long term. If they were confused, they stop the drugs, and puberty happens normally. If they truly want to transition, they are in a far better position to change than if they experienced puberty as the “wrong” gender.

By delaying the changes, it allows time for them to process what they want. It also lets them experience living as the other gender, in a reversible manner.

cynar,

teepublic.com/…/59961192-i-swing-both-ways-with-a…

Apparently it’s available from multiple places.

I’m not sure who did it originally, unfortunately.

cynar,

Thankfully we have an election soon. The current polls put the Tories in a VERY bad situation. Hopefully we can send a clear and unequivocal message about things like this.

cynar,

First things first. The Tories get a good kick in the teeth. Then we can work on the labour party. Thankfully they are generally more responsive to pressure. The Tories regularly screw them over on that front, but hopefully we can actually get some improvements out of them.

cynar,

I would suspect it’s low information voters.

Anyone who pays attention, and isn’t part of his cult, realises how bad trump is. Unfortunately, a lot of voters just don’t pay attention. To them, they seem mud slinging in both directions, and just tune it out.

A felony conviction is a different beast. It’s not just mud slinging. If he’s been convicted, it’s not just smoke, he’s a bad man!

There’s a reason that the right pushes the “both sides” mentality. This just managed to cut past the smoke screen that they threw up. Whether it sticks is another story.

cynar,

Ah, but ARE they a tiny minority? They could be anyone, ANYONE, and you would never know, until it was too late!

cynar,

I think the key difference is that it’s “easier” to apply a meta to a RTS game. In shooters, the meta often involves quick reflex decisions, where to hide, where to shoot etc. This is hard, and requires practice. It also means there is a significant number of players not applying it, or doing so sub-optimally.

With RTS games, the metas are easier to apply. This means that, in human Vs human games, the newer players often get flattened. It also means that far more complex metas can be developed and applied.

Shooters tend to back load the difficulty curve. It’s easy to get into them, and not do badly, but hard to do well. RTS games tend to front load the difficulty. You need to get over the initial hump to get “ok” with it. Once over the hump, the curve smooths off and you get good fairly rapidly.

One of the big differences between nerds and normals is that nerds enjoy punching through that wall. The difficulty is seen as a challenge, not an impediment. Most people want a faster feedback loop on the dopamine reward. FPS type games deliver that extremely well.

cynar,

I’ve seen them done well in airports. They have additional extraction and filtering. They are also kept at a negative pressure, so the smoke doesn’t roll out whenever someone opens the door.

I’ve no issues with what people want to put into their bodies. I only take offence when others are forced to be exposed to it.

cynar,

I’d definitely be the annoying shit on that one. I would insist on proper PPE for the environment. If the smokers in the team want to handle it without PPE, that’s entirely on them.

It’s also worth noting the smoking rooms are effectively empty, except for lights and some seats. Most staff can avoid it entirely.

cynar,

Take a look at some of the taxidermy at the time. It’s horrifyingly bad. Then again modern amateur taxidermy can be as bad as well.

buzzfeed.com/…/hilariously-bad-lion-taxidermy

cynar,

A depressing number also decided, I voted labour, and nothing changed (when they didn’t win). I’m going to try conservative now.

cynar,

Early access is extremely effective, when used correctly. It lets smaller studios get an income stream a lot earlier, which helps significantly. It also lets them form a tight feedback loop with fans. They can find out what works and what doesn’t. Some examples of it working well would be Rimworld, Kerbal Space Program, and Factorio. All released as amazing games, primarily due to early access.

Unfortunately, a lot of companies seem to be abusing the idea right now. Particularly bigger studios.

cynar,

At the very least, they should help because they promised to. In 1994 Ukraine gave up its nukes (it had the 3rd largest arsenal). It did this with assurances that the US, UK and Russia would all respect its existing borders.

By not helping Ukraine resist Russia, the US is reneging on that promise (by letting Russia change the borders).

cynar,

I’m all for countries standing by their commitments, long term. The risks of not disarming Ukraine, particularly back then, is more than worth the cost now.

Appeasement is rarely a good idea, long term, no matter which warmonger it’s aimed at.

cynar,

The worst thing is the advent of AI image generation. Until now, faking a photo took a lot of skilled effort to do well. Holocaust deniers get shot down fairly easily due to the diligent documentation done at the time. One of the generals even ordered it despite protests (it slowed down giving aid). He knew that future generations wouldn’t believe the level we can sink too.

Now (or in the near future) generating near flawless fakes will be easy. A photograph of a war crime will be no more believable than a scene from an action movie. We’ll likely find work around, but until then, we are in a dead zone on reliability of images.

cynar,

It’s a bit like wiggling your ears, or your little toe sideways. Everyone can do it, some people don’t know how to make the muscles fire correctly. Once you can do it, it’s so instinctual, you can explain HOW to do it.

I can easily see some people not learning that particular motion with their hands, it’s not a particularly useful one, and so won’t be noticed as missing.

Who would win: Borg Cube or Death Star? (aussie.zone)

TranscriptionTumblr post by arctic-hands: > When I was a teenager and still on Neopets I was part of a pretty big Star Trek guild and eventually became part of its council, with the solemn duty of creating weekly polls. Well one day I created the poll “Which would win in a fight? Borg Cube or Death Star?”. Naturally, since...

cynar,

The first one was sabotaged at the design phase. We know of at least 1 flaw introduced, why not more?

cynar,

Valve are the only ones confident enough in their systems to do that. Valve’s mindset seems to be that trying to lock people in is a losing strategy, long term. Instead they are just making sure that their offerings are better than anything else available. If done right, it has all the advantages of locking people in, with none of the downsides. It also combines with the perceived openness, which gains you a lot of credit with the geek community.

Microsoft are too reliant on lock-in to risk opening it up.

cynar,

I’m guessing a lot of people don’t use them optimally. They used them how they originally used a ICE car. Unfortunately, that means they are lugging a large battery around for no significant reason.

I would also query how the hybrids are being designed however. There should still be a saving due to efficiency gains, since the engine can run at optimal RPM most of the time. The values scream that the manufacturers have over optimised for performance, rather than efficiency.

Tools for collecting traffic data on my street?

I’m working with my neighbors to petition the city to add traffic calming measures (e.g. speed bumps, one way roads) to my street. I’m also hoping to turn it into a bit of a research project. Does anyone know of any tools to monitor or even automate data collection of the speeds of cars, number of cars going by, how many...

cynar,

Depending on your technical ability, it might be worth looking at something like this.

github.com/jthomas/ai-speed-camera

A camera aimed at the road can be used to gather numbers and speeds.

Proviso, I’ve not actually played with this one. It’s a comparatively easy task for AI however, so I’d be surprised if there weren’t several options.

cynar,

Stock market shareholders want constant growth from their investments. Enough of them also only care about short term growth, even at the cost of long term.

Valve, being privately owned, only answers to its own shareholders, no-one can just buy in and start demanding more profit seeking. They have collectively decided that slow but reliable growth is better. This results in them not actively pumping their customer base for ever more profit. They have no intention of killing their golden goose.

cynar,

Both line pockets. The difference is the focus. The shareholders for valve have been invited. You can’t just decide to buy a bit of valve, then tell them what to do. Publicly traded shares mean that the people investing are often only interested in the value and dividends, anything that boosts that is good. If the company dies from it then who cares, they’ll jump ship and invest elsewhere.

Valve’s current mentality is that keeping the customers happy keeps the money flowing. It has now reached the point where compounding effects make up for the short term reduction in dividends.

Customers are happy, share holders are happy, and no-one can barge in, demanding a piece of the pie.

cynar,

Ok, and how many of those points would be improved by going public?

People want sequels because they trust value to to them justice, not roll out stale cookie cutter versions like FIFA etc.

Would investors demand that valve take a smaller cut, or would they demand they take a bigger one in future?

Would they cut support for older games?

Would they add ads to the overlays?

Would you then be able to get “Steam Premium” for an ad free experience?

Please let me know what bit of steam’s business model would be improved by them constantly chasing a higher profit every quarter?

cynar,

To his credit, the GOP seems to have significant financial issues due to him. He’s definitely draining something from them.

cynar,

This is a good example of how AI can be used well.

Current AIs are effectively fuzzy pattern detection and matching engines. This one can sift all the data coming in, and spot patterns that previously corresponded to problems. It then flags them for human interpretation.

The AI chunks the vast sea of data. A human is then involved to sanity check what it has found, and react accordingly. E.g. a pattern appears that often precedes a broken rail within a month. A human can check the subset of the data, and schedule a maintenance team a week later. Conversely, a pattern that leads by hours would require an immediate response.

cynar,

Nvidia GPUs aren’t the only way to run a machine learning type system. They are just the easiest to use, currently. China has also been developing their own AI optimised chips. Though I don’t know much/anything about them.

cynar,

While Chamberlain was applying appeasement, he was also rapidly upgrading the UK’s military capability.

He then fell on his own (proverbial) sword, to let Churchill take power.

Don’t compare these Muppets to a politician who actually did what he could to slow the wolves down enough to fight back.

cynar,

It’s fine till you have an accident. Then your completely fucked.

Those deals, at least over here, are generally aimed at new drivers. I actually agree with them, to a level. It lets the insurance company rapidly sort the safe drivers from the idiots, and so discriminate on prices. It also trains new drivers to be safer. I remember how fearless I was when starting out. The quicker we get new drivers out of that mindset, the better.

cynar,

I’ll admit, I’m willing to pay a couple of £ for the convenience of having them available on steam.

cynar,

Once you throw in either deliberate, or accidentally high, basically all of them. Though there are/were likely some charlatans mixed into that too.

cynar,

I’m currently using space trains, along with the space exploration mod. The trains run on batteries, and they are blazingly fast. I easily lose track of them through my orbital rail grid.

cynar,

With mods you can! More specifically, a grappling hook!

cynar,

Nothing like thinking “I’ll just play for 1/2 an hour, then have breakfast.” Next thing you know, the wife is coming in, and you’re still in your pajamas, having not eaten at all.

Hamas Says Gaza Truce Possible 'Within 24 To 48 Hours' If Israel Accepts Terms (www.barrons.com)

“If Israel agrees to Hamas demands, which include the return of displaced Palestinians to northern Gaza and increasing humanitarian aid, that would pave the way for a (truce) agreement within the next 24 to 48 hours,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive issue, as negotiations were...

cynar,

The thing throwing Israel off is that this isn’t new. The only difference is that the world is now paying (half hearted) attention. This was the goal of the attacks. Get the world to pay attention to what Israel has been doing.

cynar,

The issue is that we used to have both irc and forums. Discord has taken on the role of both in 1. Unfortunately, that means that it also needs the remote search capabilities of a forum to not screw over the community, long term.

It’s amazing the number of times a 3+ year old discussion on either a forum, or Reddit has bailed me out of a hole. Everything like that on discord is cut off, unless you know it exists.

cynar,

I’ve ran into it, and it’s very slightly off-putting. At the same time, I fully understand why they’ve done it that way, and actually agree with them. The use of flat packs as an alternative makes the problem irrelevant. They maximised openness, while also protecting it from being completely borked up by a newb running random commands.

cynar,

The value for money of it is unbelievable. I’ve used mine a lot, and I can’t see many ways it could be improved (none without worse tradeoffs).

I wouldn’t recommend it as a laptop replacement, but as a gaming system, it’s incredible.

It also plays nicely with both the steam controller, and the steam link. Both can be picked up dirt cheap now.

cynar,

While they are not doing the coding, they are often providing the training data. This is what screws the process over. Garbage in, garbage out.

Who, in your opinion, is the most annoying character in any game?

Personally, it’s Faith from Farcry 5 for me. Uninteresting dialog that can be summed up to “I was bullied once” and that’s it. Literally every other character is so much more interesting. Jacob gives you a sequence where you run through a gulag which he then uses against you, John tries to kill you and is openly hateful...

cynar,

His annoyingness is part of the core plot. The progression works excellently.

  • “This guy’s an idiot”
  • “This guy’s an idiot, but funny.”
  • “Ok, too much of idiot guy, I want glados back.”
  • “Oh, hi glados”
  • Idiot guy gets really annoying.
  • Hey glados, can we go kill idiot guy together?"
  • Space Space SPACE, SPAAAAAAACCCCCCEEEEEE!!!
cynar,

For those confused, discworld dwarfs have both males and females. However, both are stocky and have beards. They also are very egalitarian regarding jobs etc. They long ago gave up correcting the surface races regarding their gender, who assume a burley minor in heavy armour, and a thick beard, is a male dwarf.

cynar,

There is an unused m.2 slot. I was considering adding an additional large, slower drive later on. It’s mainly to keep the OS as snappy as possible. It also means the black Friday discount kicks in (requires a Samsung drive). Amusingly, I work in broadcast TV, so working with uncompressed video does happen.

My research into the 980 Vs the 990 is that the sequential r/w is only a little slower, but random r/w takes a significant hit. I might just bite the bullet and adjust to a 2tb 980 for €69 more.

cynar,

Memory is definitely upgradable, I believe even the CPU is a socketed desktop one.

I’ve held back a little on the ram to keep the price within my hard budget. Ditto with the hd (though likely too far, by the sounds of it). Both can be upgraded down the line, while the GPU etc can’t.

I’ve also already got a couple of usb 3 external SSD drives, as well as some bulk backup drives, hooked to my home NUC.

cynar,

Cheap money (in the form of loans) has reduced. This means that investors are suddenly putting a lot more pressure on the top. In good companies, this is dealt with by the leadership team. Unfortunately, a lot just let the shit roll downhill.

There is also the issue of compartmentalization. In larger companies, the people dealing with the complaints have little to do with the people who actually need to change things to fix the root cause. This leads to the schizophrenic/sociopathic behaviour we see. The mouth has very little idea what the hands are doing.

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