Combating artificial intelligence with natural stupidity.

  • 12 Posts
  • 129 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: September 13th, 2024

help-circle


  • HiddenLayer555@lemmy.mltoLinux@lemmy.ml•An amazing directory: /proc
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    17
    ·
    edit-2
    2 months ago

    I bet this is done with inodes. Deleted files aren’t truely deleted until nothing has it open and its inode gets dropped. Like ARC for files.

    You can also do interesting things like overwrite a “file” (as in a specific filesystem path) with new contents while keeping anything that already has the file open on the old contents by unlinking the old inode to the path and writing the new contents under a new inode. I believe mv does this. The kind of lesser known feature that probably strikes a good balance between preventing super annoying silent errors/corruption and causing them.

    Relevant Kevin Fang video




  • You can run a local LLM capable of assisting in software development for less energy than running a AAA video game. I’m not denying the environmental impact of the current AI landscape, but I kind of disagree that it’s intrinsic to LLMs as a whole, I think it’s more a symptom of capitalism and its disregard for sustainability causing everything it touches to have a high environmental cost.

    Also, nearly all modern computing has high environmental costs, certainly all cloud computing. I think instead of focusing on AI only, it would be more helpful to engage in a broader discussion on how computing can be made more energy efficient as a whole, and do proper cost benefit analysis of all things we use computers for, including but not limited to LLMs. We may well still conclude from that process that we need to stop using LLMs, in which case we should.

    If you’re against LLM use on environmental grounds (which I’m not disagreeing with), I submit to you that we should take the idea even further and things like gaming, video streaming, high frequency trading, social media, and any other nonessential computing should be on the same chopping block for the same reason. Applications of computing that we also use at scale with high environmental impacts, but that have been normalised and practically seen as a right by many of the same people against any amount of AI use (not saying that’s you, speaking generally). Why should AI be the only thing we raise concerns about if we’re to raise concerns? Doing environmental protection piecemeal by independently targeting single things and not the entire system has been shown time and time again to not work at best and make it worse at worst.






  • I didn’t even google much about GNOME or KDE. But I did have an exploration period where I opened every dropdown I saw to see what options are there and perused through the settings to see all the things I can change, mapping out how the software works.

    A little curiosity goes a long way for getting to know a GUI software IMO. A computer is a complex tool that needs to be mapped out at least a little bit before you need to seriously use it.


  • I don’t deny that many Linux apps have bad UX and can benefit from improvement. But I don’t like the pretentious way these blogs talk about it, and act like the developers are somehow obligated to fix it for them like it’s a paid product and they’re the customer. If they identify a problem in open source, why not contribute to the solution instead of just demanding a solution from people working for free out of passion like they owe you?


  • HiddenLayer555@lemmy.mltoLinux@lemmy.ml•Hammers Without Handles
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    21
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    4 months ago

    Honestly, the entitlement of the “Linux has bad UX” crowd really pisses me off. Yeah Linux is definitely as unusable as a hammer without a handle, guy. Hit the nail on the head with your handleless hammer right there. Give yourself a pat on the back for your metaphor skills 👍

    Mac and Windows have billion dollar UX teams. Linux apps have almost entirely volunteer developers with at most some employees in a tiny company or nonprofit with shoestring budgets.

    Mac and Windows have invasive UX “research” by recording user interactions behind their back. Most Linux apps don’t even have the ability to record interaction data by design and intention.

    Mac and Windows make money directly from people using their platforms so obviously they’re going to do everything they can to keep you on the platform. Linux apps are donation funded with the occasional enterprise/professional support contract.

    Windows and Mac users don’t give a shit about how well the underlying code works because they’re not supposed to see it, and it’s very clear the companies know that and have prioritised accordingly. Linux developers are disproportionately in it for the love of programming and prefer to spend their time actually programming as opposed to doing wireframes or UI markup. Linux UIs tend to get made once and then not touched for years until something absolutely needs to change.

    If you compare Linux’s (read: mostly random people developing in their free time’s) UX to the literal biggest tech companies in the world, then you will never run out of things to bemoan Linux for. This is like complaining that your gearhead buddy’s project car has metal toggle switches in random places instead of a nice flowing panel like a brand new car straight off the dealership.

    TL;DR: Pull request, long term funding toward establishing a UX team, or STFU. Stop making demands to volunteers and nonprofits and start actually contributing to UX improvements if you care so much. A major ethos of open source is “you don’t like it? You fix it.”


  • HiddenLayer555@lemmy.mltoLinux@lemmy.ml•Hammers Without Handles
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    edit-2
    4 months ago

    I picked up both GNOME and KDE as a long time Windows user like that. On both mouse and trackpad.

    I can’t even figure out how to drag and drop on my friend’s Macbook. Or a lot of other basic things.

    If anything Macs are the odd one out with their control scheme, though I’m certainly not ruling out skill issue. But if you claim skill issue on my inability to use a Mac then I’m claiming skill issue on your inability to use Linux.




  • Minimalism in GUIs, maybe (still, give me CLI any day). But minimalism in housing and infrastructure is absolutely critical and they are absolutely not equal to software. We need to be as efficient as we can because I don’t know if the author has noticed the state of housing in the world. How many more “boring, dull” buildings could be built for the same price? How many more if we copy pasted the same designs instead of demanding everything be unique? (But god forbid they be too different from the existing style or else the NIMBYs protesting minimalist buildings complain about that too.) The people who “prefer” the visually complex building have never been homeless in the back alley of that building before, nor have they ever been priced out of their neighbourhood by gentrification when their boring gray building gets torn down to build the pretty building.



  • Honestly if you’re at the point of suspecting that your Linux system is infected, just back everything up, wipe, and reinstall. Make sure to use a known good computer to make the install disk, and completely wipe the drive before install and not use existing partitions.

    People have mentioned Wireshark which you can use to monitor for suspicious network activity, but IMO for most people this isn’t super helpful because it’s hard to tell what’s suspicious and what’s normal from Wireshark alone without quite a bit of networking/software knowledge. Maybe there’s more user friendly packet capture software though, something that can string the packets together into their respective connections and summarise key information like the protocol and domain involved.

    QDirStat can visualize the contents of your drive as an interactive map. Might be helpful for finding files that aren’t supposed to be there.

    ClamAV is an open source antivirus available for Linux but I don’t know how well it does at actually detecting Linux malware. Seems to be more for people running file/email servers to scan incoming file uploads.


  • HiddenLayer555@lemmy.mltoLinux@lemmy.ml•GIMP rebranding as WLBR?
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    9
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    6 months ago

    I mean corporate names aren’t better meaning wise, they just have WAY more marketing behind them so they sound natural by virtue of being in your face until you capitulate.

    What does 10^100 have to do with search engines? Also they spelled it wrong.

    What does the biggest rainforest in the world have to do with shopping?

    What do slight muscle spasms have to do with streaming?

    What does a fruit have to do with shitty locked down phones and computers?

    What does a colloquial superlative prefix have to do with taxis and food delivery?

    What does the sound of a clock have to do with short videos? And before that it was a plant structure.

    What does a reflective finish/coating have to do with web browsing?