Telorand, telorand@reddthat.com

Sigh of course it’s a Nordic thing. I should have guessed. White nationalists also love other Heathen/Norse symbolism.

Good to be careful, so thanks for educating me.

Can you explain why you feel that way? “Hyperborea” is not a term I’m familiar with vis a vis Nazism.

Join an instance without downvotes, and you’ll never have to care about them again.

Thanks for the reference!

Because I’m tired of people making flimsy arguments for why LLMs are “akshully really good and underrated.” I’m tired of regular people, wittingly or unwittingly, carrying water for the billionaires who are currently fucking over the economy, the environment, and even entire supply chains in an effort to show—against all evidence to the contrary—that LLMs are much more than fancy chatbots.

It has been an incessant drone of sloppy arguments and omitted facts, and I am tired, boss.

Obviously, my mini-benchmark only had 6 questions, and I ran it only once. This was obviously not scientifically rigorous. However it was systematic enough to trump just a mere feeling. … If and when AI usage expands from here, we might actually not drown in AI slop as chances of accidentally crappy results decrease. This makes me positive about the future.

Spoken like a true AI apologist. You ran one test, and you extrapolated your results to an optimistic outcome that conspicuously matches what you wish to be true. Not scientifically rigorous? Bruh, this is the very definition of confirmation bias.

If this is actually a hypothesists you want to test, maybe contact some computer science researchers to see how to best design an experiment. Beyond that, this is virtually the same as flipping a coin once and drawing a conclusion about how often heads is the outcome.

I know it sucks, but drunken starfish got me lol

Maybe I’m not understanding your question, but you said you feel like an alien in a human suit…? That seems to fit with the definition of therian, unless you want to exclude “alien” from the animal category.

NYC Mesh!

https://www.nycmesh.net/

There’s likely others, but this one has been around for about a decade and is still operational.

Maybe a therianthrope?

https://therian.fandom.com/wiki/Therianthropy

Makes me wonder if the future of the internet is federated network hardware. There’s already efforts in bigger cities to distribute mesh networks (especially to lower-income areas), so it doesn’t seem like a far leap to create an internet by users and for users.

Literally nobody is saying that or asking white people to do, except right wing trolls and propagandists.

Anyway, somebody working for Microsoft isn’t proof positive that they share the values of Microsoft (unless you’re in upper admin); you’re not guilty by association. People generally need to work to eat in this capitalist hellscape, and FOSS doesn’t tend to pay well.

Funny that you mention Niri, because I’ve been getting my ducks in a row to switch from Gnome + PaperWM to Niri, and I was wishing it could be as safe as Nix or some of the other atomic options.

Reproducibility. Once everything is set up, you can copy your exact configuration, with all the packages and tweaks, to another system via a few configuration files. If your system crashes, as long as you have your configs, you can do a clean install and apply your changes in a few commands.

The other benefit is that it’s immutable-ish. You can make non-permanent changes to test out new software or customized configurations, but none of that is permanent until you make it so; even then, you can roll back to a previous version if needed.

But I agree that it’s a huge amount of effort for those (arguably very good) benefits. I’ve tried several times to wrap my head around it, and I just can’t seem to get over that learning curve, partly because I want to get using my system right away.

I don’t know that I’d be on board for clamping to zero. You would have to decide if you are going to have a weighted zero (i.e. secret negative tally), and if so, why bother with clamping? If not, why have downvotes?

Scoring just demonstrates popularity. It’s a voluntary poll, and it has no bearing on the quality or validity of someone’s comment. I’ve seen good posts go unnoticed, and I’ve seen bad ones get lots of points. Voluntary polls are almost useless as a metric, and especially for a system like this one where all you have to do is click a button, it’s even less useful than one where you are required to write a statement about why you voted the way you did.

I’m not saying people shouldn’t be allowed to have downvotes as a way to gauge popularity, if that’s a metric they want to use to filter their content, nor do I think they should be forced to experience the Fediverse my way. I am however saying that reporting helps everyone, regardless of whether downvoting is enabled or not (plus it has the added benefit of potentially removing content that doesn’t belong; server space is a premium here, after all). We have options here on the Fediverse, and it’s a small ask to use the reporting feature and not assume there’s a “correct” or “standard” way to experience Lemmy. We can create something better than Reddit.

Not having. Enforcing.

If better means “more inclusive,” then yes. It’s better. Did I say to stop downvoting? No. Did I tell people to abandon their downvoting-enabled instances? No (though have a look and see how I’ve been told multiple times to leave mine).

Dunno why people are hellbent on excluding people who don’t want optional downvotes when non-optional reporting exists.

But do go on about how I’m excluding the poor instances with downvotes by recommending an inclusive action that they also benefit from.

It’s not basic functionality. It’s optional, and I don’t want it. So, no thank you.

The insistence that everybody experience the Fediverse in a particular way is what makes centralized services garbage and prone to enshittification.

If you mean a mod from this comm, I’d love some clarity on this matter, too.

But as a general application, what would that tell you? Moderators aren’t some special class of people; they’re regular people who volunteer.

The better question is: what would you do if you were a moderator? Would you want to review and remove a post that was potentially AI slop, or would you keep it and let users rely on downvotes and sorting?

For my part, if a particular community’s mods aren’t interested in clamping down on AI slop, then I know where I don’t want to be.