• 13 Posts
  • 202 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 6th, 2023

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  • That’s compatible with information theory. You have a piece of information, the moment you encode it (turn your idea into words) that piece of information is transposed to a little different piece of information, then the channel of transportation adds a bit of noise (depends on the environment, most often literal background noise), and then the receiver decodes the to a different piece of information (turn your words into an idea of their own).

    Understanding this concept is an important communication skill. Information theory gives a bunch of tools to minimize the difference between the idea in your head and the perception of the idea by your peer.

    • You can add redundancy, aka say the same thing twice in a slightly different way.
    • Use questions to validate your understanding.
    • Have your peer use their own words.
    • Use a different encoding, aka draw a picture, a diagram, or use gestures instead of using language to communicate


  • I can provide some context from Greece.

    First of all, the unemployment rate is high. The official figure is currently at 12.5% but has been steadily decreasing from its peak of 27.7% in 2013. The real numbers are probably higher since people that haven’t been employed within the last few years are not accounted.

    As a result, labour rights are non-existent, overtime is rarely paid, wages have been stagnant since 2008, it is really common to work in unsafe conditions, and worker abuse occurs so often noone bats an eye.

    While we do have unions more often than not they are powerless. For example, last year we had a major train accident (57 people died), the goverment blamed the train workers, their response was pretty much “our strikes for the safety issues that lead to the accident were deemed illegal, while our attempts to raise the issues were dismissed by the ministry of transportation”.

    We have had major nationwide protests with more than a million of people taking to the streets, but noone feels like that ever lead to anywhere.

    IMO one of the greatest problems is the lack of information. Mainstream media are corrupt, and independent media are sabotaged or persecuted by the government. People do not know their rights, we have been trying to survive for so long that we cannot imagine a better future, and that allows employers to freely profit from laborers.

    One interesting development is that lately more collectives are popping here and there, from coffee shops to softwafe development houses, more and more people are fed up and try to take matters on their own hands (even if in absolute numbers they are still very few).





  • IMO it’s not about what metric is used, but how it is used. The current approach, completely avoiding any karma like mechanism, solves the farming issue, but IMO does not cater to the needs of every user.

    For example, I have ADHD and if accumulating karma gives me much needed motivation and feel good chemicals, I am going to take them.

    At the same time, holding a user to a higher regard because of their karma is stupid, it’s better to build real connections with usernames you recognise through continuous communication.

    Personally, karma was an easily digestable piece of information about how my outreach into the social media is performing. Accumulating karma helps me feel connected with the community, feel accepted.


  • Weed can be addictive for people with ADHD, it’s one of most common of forms of self medicarion but in the long run it probably going to make things worse.

    Source: I was addicted for 3 years, at first it did wonders for my sleep issues and increased my productivity. At some point, I had to smoke daily or I would get headaches and huge cravings, my tolerance would constantly increase, and then it didn’t help with my sleep issues anymore.

    Now, I am only using it recreationally once every few months. It’s fun but I have to be careful otherwise I know things can turn sour really fast.



  • Dopamine received, initiating hyperfocus protocol!

    As a rule of thumb, we’ve observed that a team of 5 trained moderators appears to provide ample coverage and redundancy for servers of about 1,000 active users

    That’s a fascinating bit of information. I would expect 5 moderators to provide coverage for more users. I am wondering how they came up with that statistic (will update the comment if I find an answer).

    Remember that offliine/IRL community management experience can be just as important as online experience

    Interesting idea, wondering what’s the IRL presence of the fediverse…

    If you’re building toward participatory or democratic governance, consider establishing a proposal and voting system (some teams we spoke with use Loomio, but multiple options exist) for major policy decisions.

    That’s soooo important, I love when communities create polls to decide on policy changes.

    Avoid promoting brand-new members unless you already have a pre-existing relationship with them

    I have followed some discussion on multi-level hierarchies on the fediverse, wondering if there are any instance implementing that…

    Consider charging for accounts or offering paid memberships.

    Hell no!

    We hope there will be more resources available in the future, particularly tooling around legal compliance. This is one of the big infrastructural gaps we point out in our main report

    That’s a big issue, I would be interested in hosting an instance available to other people, but I don’t want to end up in jail and I lack the resources to make sure that won’t happen…

    That was an interesting read, it seems there is an in-depth analysis of the report here.




  • While the consumption for AI train can be large, there are arguments to be made for its net effect in the long run.

    The article’s last section gives a few examples that are interesting to me from an environmental perspective. Using smaller problem-specific models can have a large effect in reducing AI emissions, since their relation to model size is not linear. AI assistance can indeed increase worker productivity, which does not necessarily decrease emissions but we have to keep in mind that our bodies are pretty inefficient meat bags. Last but not least, AI literacy can lead to better legislation and regulation.







  • In it, Walz argues that the lessons of the “Jewish Holocaust” should be taught “in the greater context of human rights abuses,” rather than as a unique historical anomaly or as part of a larger unit on World War II. “To exclude other acts of genocide severely limited students’ ability to synthesize the lessons of the Holocaust and the ability to apply them elsewhere,” he wrote.

    What an antisemite, he wants people to learn so such acts of horror never happen again.

    Edit: Obviously, I am being sarcastic, I totally agree with Walz.