These days, just a retired guy who likes to hike.

  • 19 Posts
  • 55 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • Avoiding dupes is, I think, an important one. We’ve had multiple instances on Beehaw of the same story showing up more than once. If you try to post a duplicate link, Lemmy will let you know (by showing the previous copies to you as crossposts). It’s harder to make sure you’re not posting the second or third story from a different source on the same topic. Perhaps we can just encourage people to search before posting.

    I’d like the rules to at least ask people to add an image description in their original post. https://beehaw.org/post/686974 would be good to link to here.

    And given the nature of many posts in the news, I think it would be good for this community to remind people to be(e) nice in their discussions.


  • The article here takes a bit stronger stance than “losing debates because of tweets”:

    The NSDA has allowed hundreds of judges with explicit left-wing bias to infiltrate the organization. These judges proudly display their ideological leanings in statements—or “paradigms”—on a public database maintained by the NSDA called Tabroom, where they declare that debaters who argue in favor of capitalism, or Israel, or the police, will lose the rounds they’re judging.

    The article calls out five judges for being biased. The NSDA site shows 47,168 paradigms. So, while there may be an issue, there doesn’t seem to be much proof here. It could equally well be that the author is cherry-picking instances that fit his ideology.











  • Yep, I get it. Effectively block ads and javascript and it doesn’t much matter what a site wants to do. I skip the few that have actually effective paywalls (as opposed to just putting a div over content on the page - as far as I’m concerned, if it’s downloaded to my computer, I am allowed to read it). Of course, the sites that load up on ads tend to be pretty low-quality content anyhow.



    • Every morning: 2 cups Cafix, 1 cup decaf coffee, 4 prunes
    • Alternate mornings: 1 thick slice homemade whole wheat bread, dipped in olive oil
    • The other mornings: 1 large sourdough pancake, dressed with olive oil and salt

    I usually eat breakfast around 5AM, and this holds me until lunch at 11AM.

    Pretty sure I’m not in the mainstream.




  • In addition to making it easier to find authentic perspectives, we’re also improving how we rank results in Search overall, with a greater focus on content with unique expertise and experience. Last year, we launched the helpful content system to show more content made for people, and less content made to attract clicks. In the coming months, we’ll roll out an update to this system that more deeply understands content created from a personal or expert point of view, allowing us to rank more of this useful information on Search.

    That seems like just a step in the inevitable AI arms race.






  • I re-read books frequently. But then, I am a fast and voracious reader. I’ve recently been trimming down my library from around 7000 books due to an upcoming move, and there’s a hardcore of about 2000 I’m unwilling to get rid of because they’re either reference materials or old friends I expect to re-read before I die. There are some things (LOTR, much Heinlein, Oz books, Alice in Wonderland…) that I’ve read a dozen times or more.

    I do re-read some non-fiction, mainly history. But most of my well-worn books are fiction.



  • Assuming innovation, it seems like there would still be a need for some way for producers to inform potential consumers. I’d love to see advertising move from “create demand” to “provide information”. Not at all sure how that might come about though.

    Meanwhile, I personally get by just fine with blocking as many ads as possible, which is almost all of them, and going out and searching when I need information. But that probably doesn’t scale to busier people.