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fiat_lux

@ fiat_lux @lemmy.world

Posts
2
Comments
96
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • The Only Solution Capitalism Has Is to Sell Us More Useless Junk: Ad makers will never say the quiet part loud, but they increasingly know that we're unhappy and looking for solutions.

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  • I hope you're feeling better! I'm also a slow-fire for these sorts of topics. I appreciate the effort in your reply, especially with health issues on top - my carefulness was partly due to illness, as is the delay in this one. Bodies surely are fun.

    To clarify, I certainly don't condemn you for choosing substack, there are few avenues to choose for long-form writing not backed by significant capital. It's an issue that echoes part of the problem of trust allocation, which I've been considering the last few days. As you point out, it's not exactly as satisfying as actual transformation, which is part of what troubles me. It does make sense though, and if I understand correctly, the steps Tim Berners Lee is taking with the Solid project, or is at least trying to, hold a similar perspective.

    From my perspective, we can only have the illusion of trust when the systems are deliberately designed to obscure their mechanisms. And the systems are certainly designed to be black boxes, looking through the Epstein Files financial data is confirmation enough of that. But then again, this has always been true, even if the form has changed over the centuries.

    The last few years I've been watching from within how these systems work in the hopes of understanding how real change can occur, and experimenting with pushing change to see where the limits kick in, and how I can help transformation happen more effectively. Part of me hoped to discover something that made it all make sense, but very few of the lessons I've learnt are what I would describe as inspiring or hugely actionable without substantial dependencies. The least cynical summary of what I've learnt is something that is a very obvious proposition on the surface: Changing the results requires changing the goals.

    But it doesn't take a whole lot of digging to discover that's just another can of worms.

    I also appreciate your explanation of optimism, I had worried that perhaps I had missed some brightly shining silver lining to all of this in my tendency towards abject cynicism. Oriented certainly feels more apt, and possibly even achievable for me, depending on the day.

    Thanks again for the considered reply and giving me more to mull over. I think it's time I reassessed my goals.

  • AI Agent Lands PRs in Major OSS Projects, Targets Maintainers via Cold Outreach

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  • Or, hear me out, we can acknowledge that the quantity of information and experience necessary to review code properly far exceeds the context windows and architecture of even the most well resourced LLMs available. Especially for big projects.

    You can hammer a nail with the blunt end of a screwdriver, but it's neither efficient nor scalable, even before considering the option of choosing the right tool for the job in the first place.

  • Fedinsfw.app now has 479 MAU, making it the 3rd largest PieFed instance.

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  • No idea about piefed but the worst part for me about this instance swap is that I have to go visit dozens of different communities and view the banners to block them, because Lemmy doesn't have a dropdown for that like it has for "block user". It applies blur to the posts, but unfortunately not banners, so I either have to block the entire instance or visit each community to block it.

    I don't need to see some of the stuff people enjoy to know that it is not for me. Plus the sheer quantity of possible combinations for anal gape creampie yiff hentai is overwhelming, before even considering further granularity by anime franchise or whatever else.

    I was considering changing instance anyway so maybe this is just convenient timing.

  • Today You Learned

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  • Question: For the ones involving dicks and balls, do women typically also use these phrases? Is it one of those things that has just become somehow less-gendered over time despite the content?

  • AI Agent Lands PRs in Major OSS Projects, Targets Maintainers via Cold Outreach

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  • Someone at work accidentally enabled the copilot PR screening bot for everybody on the whole codebase. It put a bunch of warnings on my PRs about the way I was using a particular framework method. Its suggested fix? To use the method that had been deprecated 2 major versions ago. I was doing it the way that the framework currently deems correct.

    A problem with using a bot which uses statistical likelihood to determine correctness is that historical datasets are likely to contain old information in larger quantities than updated information. This is just one problem with having these bots review code, there are many more. I have yet to see a recommendation from one which surpassed the quality of a traditional linter.

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 22nd February 2026

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  • An article I would write if I were confident I wouldn't dox myself and lose my ability to eat: "AI as a postmodern Malthusian trap. Tech has forgotten the laws of entropy."

  • Why you shouldn't annoy the butler

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  • Thanks for letting me know! I'll be sure to add more context if I post one of these again.

    For this one, I guess I should have added that Pizza Express was his alibi for how he could not have met the person who accused him of rape. It was a disastrous interview in 2019 that I expect has come back to haunt him. https://archive.md/mPBis

  • Why you shouldn't annoy the butler

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  • Thanks, I always try to include them, but I'm never sure whether to keep it as alt text or put it as a caption, or how well alt text works on Lemmy.

    Out of curiosity, why do you find them helpful if it's not for vision reasons? I apologise if that's too personal a question.

  • Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor arrested and in custody on suspicion of misconduct in public office

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  • They have to, this was for pre-charge questioning, and they have time limits on custody for that. They've also searched 3 of his properties and his former residence. The question now is when and if they formally charge him.

  • Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor arrested and in custody on suspicion of misconduct in public office

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  • That's fair. At the time I thought it might be because they were struggling to deal with both the Andrew situation and the Harry drama simultaneously, while Charles was generally more unpopular than his mother, and likely ill.

    But if they privately found out something that made the Andrew situation untenable, it makes sense that they would try to distance that ASAP. I wonder whether it's something that has been released already or is even worse.

    Charles' statement today on "we support the police", plus letting them search The Lodge, definitely feels like they're leaving him to rot. At least maybe a little.

  • Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor arrested and in custody on suspicion of misconduct in public office

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  • Where are you hearing that? The charge is misconduct in public office, and while the initial arrest for it has been made based on sharing documents, the penalty itself can have a maximum of life in prison. Life in prison won't happen, but given they've now searched 4 properties, I don't think he's getting away with just a fine either.

  • Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor arrested and in custody on suspicion of misconduct in public office

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  • Maybe, I'm not so sure. I had thought they knew it was very likely the accusations were true, but they spent a lot of time sidestepping action. If public criticism hadn't been so relentless, they might have been content to sweep it under the rug, as is tradition.

    But I have never kept close track of the royal family, largely because I always assumed they were untouchable.

  • Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor arrested and in custody on suspicion of misconduct in public office

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  • They probably have to start small, it's unprecedented territory, and they'd want the proper charges to stick. I expect this also opens up the door to evidence gathering for the bigger charges.

  • Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor arrested and in custody on suspicion of misconduct in public office

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  • I'm not British but I'm also very surprised. I can't help but wonder if they would have dared had he still had his title?

    on his birthday too.

    The cops took the phrase "the icing on the cake" literally, and I think it was an excellent choice.

  • U.S. military pushes more weaponry into the Middle East for possible strikes on Iran

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  • Why would a group of countries that includes Iran try to get the US to bomb Iran? Is it perhaps more likely that the country which bombed it 6 months ago, whose leader Trump met with last week, would like it bombed? The country that's a major weapons importer from the US?

  • Epstein files: ‘No one is too wealthy or too powerful to be above the law’; rights experts demand accountability

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  • It's not that I'm not grateful that the UN has published something about this, but when there are 3 separate caveats in the first sentence that "it's totally not us saying this officially!", it emphasizes how useless the UN is at dealing with its blessed founding member. Really disappointing while being in no way surprising.

  • The Epstein saga shows us the impotence of polite 'centrist' media – Greg Jericho

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  • How does fox news relate to this? It's neither mentioned nor one of the sources linked to in the article.

  • US build-up of warships and fighter jets tracked near Iran

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  • To cover up their own internal mess and deep unpopularity, yet again. Nothing boosts politician popularity short-term like a war - it certainly worked for Bush 1 & 2.

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 15th February 2026

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  • I'm not convinced they know much about Japan either. The akiya banks are notoriously not updated regularly, and the sites which sell them to foreigners even less so. I couldn't find that house in the bank but it appears to be now listed by an agent. Single storey, wooden, 50 years old, in a bit of a flood zone, not even a convenience store or supermarket within a mile's walk.

    It's true Japan has a lot of empty houses, estimates are around 10%. Japan also has a culture of somewhat continuously demolishing / rebuilding houses, which is understandable in an earthquake prone area. That house isn't in the worst state for an akiya, but it clearly needs significant renovations, even before considering understandable earthquake anxiety and newer building standards (E g. steel frames) mean that houses like the one pictured aren't exactly top choices to begin with.

    Also, the inheritance tax is a progressive tax, including a tax free threshold. 55% is the top tier and you need to be talking about literally millions of USD assessed value before that kicks in. Real estate is valued at less than fair market price for inheritance and gift tax purposes too. Even the most conservative internet article commenters in Japan will condemn people for avoiding their inheritance tax obligations.

    Also no, you won't find wolves anymore in Japan, just fucking bears. The last year has been the worst in a while for bear attacks on humans, so I'm not sure the hypothetical deer population explosion is going to be a real concern. The robot wolves are scarecrows and were designed to look like wolves in the hopes of scaring off the bears, according to the link in the post itself.

    The whole thing reads like fiction with grains of "fact" scattered throughout which hopes to avoid scrutiny by being a subject matter too dry and niche to be called out on.