[-] Syrup@lemmy.cafe 5 points 1 year ago

A bit of a quibble, but I think it's a stretch to say that current-gen AI is mind-like. I'm of the opinion that, given the way current AI works, there isn't any "creativity" in how midjourney/etc. generates images. Though you could make a solid argument for a detailed prompt being creative, or for a functional/algorithmic AI being a creative tool of the coder, in neither case would I say that the source of the creativity is the computer.

Then again, legal definitions would only allow creativity to come from humans, but I think other animal species are currently capable of creativity/art, in the sense of "do they do actions for purposes other than survival or reproduction."

[-] Syrup@lemmy.cafe 8 points 1 year ago

Yeah, and it's not like the astronauts just put up a flag and left. They took soil samples, set up sensors to measure tectonic activity, etc. Rocks are interesting when you can interact with them.

[-] Syrup@lemmy.cafe 4 points 1 year ago

I'd say content is trivial, but having the sheer variety of content that youtube has is not. Odysee has some decent stuff on there- even some decent original stuff that isn't just a mirror of someone's youtube channel. But it's not going to have the same niche, specific content I might look up on youtube.

[-] Syrup@lemmy.cafe 4 points 1 year ago

Yep. I doubt there were that many people using adblockers back when you only had one skippable 15 second ad at the beginning of a video. But when you have 1-2 ads every 10 minutes, on top off all the premium popups, it's just unbearable.

[-] Syrup@lemmy.cafe 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

1 - Get Recalbox on a GPi Case 2 and you'll have access to just about every system from before 2000 (including support for commodore and other similar systems). It can handle PSP games as well, but not PS2 or NDS. There are other cases available for a raspberry pi system, but I recommend the GPi Case 2 because you can play it "docked" and handheld. I recommend Recalbox since it already has a lot of support for the GPi case built into it, but if you're tech-savvy you may prefer Lakka for its flexibility. You may be able to get more modern emulators to run on the lakka as well.

2 - Gaming PC with Lakka, Citra, or whatever other emulators you'd like. And unless you're playing a lot of super new games, you don't need anything fancy- you could probably just throw windows 7 on a $100 refurbished business PC and run just about any game from 2010 or earlier, TBH.

3 - Wii or Wii U. I personally find emulation of these (specifically with a wii-mote) to be a bit finicky. If you don't use a Wii, you can substitute your personal console of choice for this one.

4 - Oculus Quest- though I'm not sure if it counts since you aren't connecting to a TV. This isn't the best VR headset but it is the cheapest. It has a good library of standalone games, and for anything else you can use airlink or the virtual desktop to run games off of a VR-ready PC (If you went with one that was beefy for #2). The quest has a lot of modding support through the sidequest. The main concern with this is that you need a phone to set up a Quest when you buy it/after a factory reset. So if Facebook goes under or a meteor hits silicon valley, this could conceivably turn into a fancy paperweight. To my knowledge, nobody has cracked the Quest to skip over this step. If historical preservation is more important to you than money, I would recommend choosing literally any other VR headset because of the setup thing.

[-] Syrup@lemmy.cafe 4 points 1 year ago

This is true, and I'm not against "alternative" sources for ebooks (having used them myself), but it's always better for the libraries and authors if there's foot traffic to the libraries, since that drives tax dollars which in turn makes its way back to the authors. It's less than pennies on the dollar, but it's important.

[-] Syrup@lemmy.cafe 8 points 1 year ago

I think it's important to provide children with a variety of potential careers ;)

[-] Syrup@lemmy.cafe 7 points 1 year ago

Because everyone knows if a 14 year old reads Nora Roberts (or that one penguin children's book) society will fall apart.

[-] Syrup@lemmy.cafe 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Because everyone knows if a 17 year old reads Nora Roberts (or that one penguin children's book) society will fall apart.

108
submitted 1 year ago by Syrup@lemmy.cafe to c/books@lemmy.ml

Despite the age of consent in Mississippi being 16, no one under the age of 18 will have access to digital materials made available through public and school libraries without explicit parental/guardian permission.

Mississippi has a new law on the books directly impacting access and use of digital resources like Hoopla and Overdrive for those under the age of 18 throughout the state. Even if granted parental permission, minors may not have materials available to them, if vendors do not ensure every item within their offerings meets the new, wide-reaching definition of “obscenity” per the state. Mississippi Code 39-3-25, part of House Bill 1315, went into effect July 1, 2023, and libraries across the state have scrambled for how to be in compliance.

1
submitted 1 year ago by Syrup@lemmy.cafe to c/graybeard@lemmy.cafe

life is pain

[-] Syrup@lemmy.cafe 5 points 1 year ago

This is cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Most of the activity on any given instance or community comes from outside of the instance. If you start cutting off instances because they are sharing their own stuff with Meta, then you will also be negatively impacting your own communities since the amount of active users will go down.

Most users won't react to something like this by joining your instance or an instance that you approve of (or, at least, currently approve of). They'll either find another community on an instance they're federated with or they'll switch to another social media platform. The latter becomes more likely depending on how many instances end up on either "side" of the issue. Although most user accounts are relatively new, it's still a pain to switch over to something else once you've gotten used to something.

The scale of defederation you propose, especially this early in the fediverse, would be enough to turn off a lot of folks from federation. If admins are just going to defederate from each other at the first sign of disagreement, that weakens my faith in the fediverse.

I absolutely believe that instances should not federate with meta's stuff. The largest servers had enough issues when we were getting new users in the thousands. Meta will likely bring in users in the millions. However, it makes no difference to me if another instance federates with Meta.

19
submitted 1 year ago by Syrup@lemmy.cafe to c/books@lemmy.ml

I've been on a spy fiction kick recently- I really enjoyed the recent The Man from UNCLE movie and I Expect You to Die video game. I'm looking for some novels that are in a similar vein (classic 60s spy versus an egomaniac villain out to take over the world). However, I cannot stand the sexism in Ian Fleming's books. He's got good prose and worldbuilding, but it bugs me too much to enjoy the books.

Are there any recent spy novels that fall into this genre?

[-] Syrup@lemmy.cafe 5 points 1 year ago

It usually does, however, there are cases where a hole can have two openings. For example, there's a saying/idiom about digging a hole through the earth and ending up in china/australia/etc. It would be confusing to say that you "dug two holes" to China, you would only say that you "dug a hole" to China. "Tunnel" is definitely more precise here, though it would be odd to refer to the openings in a drinking straw as a "tunnel"

[-] Syrup@lemmy.cafe 5 points 1 year ago

In fairness, privacy issues have been a bit like a "frog in boiling water". Unless you pay a lot of attention to these things or are completely out of the loop, the average person won't see the issue.

At least my grandmother's vindicated now for not wanting to get on Facebook and share those sorts of things

2

Just played through the first two games after seeing RT Game's playthrough. I am looking forward to this one!

2

I don't know if the mods of /r/LearnJapanese planned on migrating their stuff over to a lemmy instance. They seem to be permanently private as of right now, so I just wanted to link to the internet archive of the subreddit's language learning resource list.

Keep in mind that the links on the internet archive lead to other archived sites. For example, archived google docs don't load properly, so after clicking on one, you will need to copy/paste the link into your address bar.

1
submitted 1 year ago by Syrup@lemmy.cafe to c/general@lemmy.cafe

Since this is a cafe and all that...

I actually like the McDonald's ground coffee that you can make at home. For whatever reason, after you brew it, it doesn't go stale when you leave it sitting for a few hours. Maybe I should be more concerned about this.

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Syrup

joined 1 year ago