Huh. I had to take a quick glance at the timestamp of this article to make sure it wasn’t old, as this was the same issue that inspired a short-lived fork a few years ago.

I get where this article’s coming from, as I got where the people trying to fork it under a different name were too, however for better or worse I think what matters even more to people is that the software works well and has a good UX. If I remember right, I think Glimpse intended to focus on improving the UX but it didn’t last long enough to do much in that regard.

Better than my memory though, here’s an article that gives some insight into what went into the cessation of its development.

Original article: https://www.reuters.com/world/biden-whats-happening-gaza-is-not-genocide-2024-05-20/

It’s pretty clear to me Biden’s trying to thread the needle on this in a gruesome way. The argument seems to follow the form of: civilian deaths are collateral damage, this is unfortunate but this is war and they are not purposely being targeted and so this is not genocide.

However that almost willfully ignores the denial and blocking of aid to the same affected civilians, which is a deliberate action that despite the cover story being to prevent it reaching Hamas, falls entirely flat as regardless, it results in direct suffering and death of the civilians. I say almost because some small efforts have been made to push back against the denial of aid, but as is evident to anyone monitoring the situation, these efforts are all far too small to address the widespread suffering and death of the Gazan people.

This whole semantics game around genocide is simply disgusting. You know those in government know exactly what people mean when they’re calling it that, they want an end to the killing and an end to the deaths of civilians, whether from military strikes or denial of aid.

At a glance this sounds even more intrusive than it’s been with Win10 (and maybe 11?), and sadly it’s no surprise as even without AI junk, I think the defaults with Win10 (and maybe 11) are to track your PC use to try to provide some “convenience” features, e.g. display of recently used programs/accessed files when you go to open a new desktop (Win key + Tab).

If they would be more transparent about this and indicate whether and how much of that info, “anonymized/depersonalized” or not, is being taken by them, I think people would still be understandably annoyed but more understanding; at least with an easy opt out or better still, the default being that you must opt in for any of it.

But compare with GOG then. They sell games, you download them with no DRM so you own the download essentially.

This is the model digital media should take, frankly. Anything less may as well be misleading marketing, as far as I’m concerned.

What would be really great is if companies could calibrate their reward structures based on what’s going to make players happy to log on, rather than trying to trap them into racking up the maximum amount of time in-game.

I haven’t played video games in awhile, so I don’t think I’m burnt out on them, which may make this a matter of differing mentality…But might it not also help to reevaluate whether a game should rely on a reward system/structure to entertain people to begin with?

It seems like these reward system designs are largely unsustainable without constant upkeep, in some part given that the rest of a game built around them often lacks sufficiently entertaining gameplay systems independent of them.

this is too perfect

When other’s, be it corporations or people start to decide which information a person can and cannot access, is a damn slippery slope we better level out before AI starts to roll out en masse.

You highlight the bigger issue here than AI alone tbh. This is why another critical element is becoming literate and teaching each other methods of independent research, using multiple sources to develop an understanding, and not relying on any singular source, especially without careful review.

All the technology in the world can’t help a person learn and understand, who hasn’t yet learned how to learn, much less understand.

I kind of agree about this not entirely fitting science, but I think the survey part is what gives it that little edge to fit here.

Without reading it in the full context, I’m also not sure what Nozick may have meant with the “want to be a certain way, to be a certain sort of person” idea. I suspect the idea may be that given a fully constructed context, you may be limited to however that context permits you to be instead of an independently actualized/realized person.

Although if that may be what Nozick was getting at, it’s not without its own problems, much as you highlight with their position supposing existence harboring deeper meaning and significance apart from conscious creations.

Finally, Nozick supposed that “plugging into an experience machine limits us to a man-made reality, to a world no deeper or more important than that which people can construct”.

I find myself agreeing with this, particularly after a lot of time spent in such man-made realities whether in the form of books, movies, or games. At some point, some element of these I think will speak to people and inspire them to pursue on their own in some way, whether a hobby of a character, or creation of their own media or sub-field. An action that cannot be anticipated and generated by any such experience machine or simulation in a way that adequately satisfies someone.

Their AI partner, they explain, “has been treating me like no other person has ever treated me”.

This is an aside, but this jumps out at me as an interesting tell…Given that these AI partners aren’t necessarily sophisticated enough to fully emulate people and there’s historical precedent for people seeing in them some traits they want to see, I wonder if this could be viewed as an angle to developing AI-intermediary therapy whereby one may learn that it isn’t the AI treating them well, but the patient themselves.

The AI may be serving as a method to direct their inner monologue into patterns of thought that are kinder and more uplifting compared to however they may otherwise be.

“As we get more familiar with technology and especially virtual technology, we are going to care less and less that something is virtual rather than non-virtual,” Weijers notes.

Frankly, I think we’ve already been here for some time. The technological element undeniably alters matters, but society itself has arguably been in this situation for as long as people have been capable of abstract thought. People have always existed between knowledge and ignorance, amidst facts and fabrications, and indulged themselves as much and often more in fabrications as facts.

What has consistently been of more concern is how much they draw from their indulgence rather than lose, rather than the ontology of it.

Personally, although the terms have become increasingly blurred over the years, I refer to changing to a new version of software (including an OS, and both ideally with some improvements) as updating it rather than upgrading.

I reserve upgrade more for changes of hardware with some form of improvement over its predecessor. I’d suspect I may not be alone in this, but I dunno how common it may be. When switching to a mix of both, I simply say I’m getting a new [insert specific device depending on which].

Although I’d hesitate to call many new phones an all-around upgrade when they’re either removing features (headphone jack/expandable storage) or getting more cumbersome to hold (can you even call some modern phones a handset anymore?).

You might look into either the OnePlus Nord N20 or N30. N20 had an AMOLED display like the S10+, whereas the N30 has a LCD display but high refresh rate. I’m not entirely sure but I think the processor specs are comparable, storage and RAM definitely are.

I know someone with a N30 and they’ve had good experience with the battery life on it so far, albeit they also aren’t heavily using it either. Here’s a little comparison chart.

I would feel better if stories like this gave us background on the people involved. Who is Mike Macgirvin? I don’t want the person to dox themselves but I do want to know where he came from, what work he’s done before, what companies he’s worked for and what kind of people, organizations or groups he has worked with in the past. What school, university or program did he come out of? How old is he? What nationality? Where does he live and work now?

Did you miss the interview linked in the article? They interviewed Mike Macgirvin a few years back, and it goes into some of the background you’re wondering about.

[…] the group’s agenda and politics were inconsistent with Georgia’s conservative values.

In other words, supporting open access to a broad range of varied information is against their conservative values. Not that that’s news to anyone following conservative behaviors, but it must be emphasized for those that don’t.

Alongside that, undercutting a source of funds may not be banning books, but it absolutely reduces the operational capacities of libraries that were benefiting from them, in effect removing a range of books the libraries might otherwise provide.

…I’m concerned they may not recognize that the microSD slot is at least one of the nice selling points of their phones. With so many other phones tossing out microSD cards and headphone jacks, what beyond the price point remains to set them apart?

I guess there’s the gesture controls for quick camera or flashlight use, but the former is undercut by these being budget phones with mediocre to poor cameras. Also with the devices being larger it makes the gesture controls feel a little more unwieldy compared to when you were using them on smaller phones.

It’s a bummer, as I’ve otherwise appreciated their phones as cheaper, close to vanilla Android options.

Sorry, I’m afraid Google only knows how to minus

Besides it simply being different and other details others might bring up, it can also just be cheaper and simpler depending on your situations. No technical issues to sort through (“sorry my internet’s acting up/i think the servers are down”/etc.) and no need for hardware at all to simply communicate and do whatever in the same space.

Unfortunately as far as I’ve been able to find, those seem to be two of the main open source options (besides some AI TTS stuff, but I can’t seem to find Android versions of those yet). Nevertheless, I did a little digging and found you’re not alone in thinking RHVoice is on the quiet side, which led me to someone pointing out that you might try editing the config files and adjusting the volume values there, supposing you haven’t already.

The person that submitted the issue never came back to mention whether or not that did the trick for them, so best of luck!

For some reason I thought The Verge was better about having transcripts for their podcasts. I was kinda interested but not around 28 minutes of audio interested. 😞

I’d argue, oddly, that it’s easier to hold a single corporate entity accountable for data breaches than mastodon instance owners.

It’s likely the case that both of are bad from a data security point of view, but at least with the corporations you know who to shout at.

I’m inclined to agree, albeit I’m of two minds about it. On one hand, singular entity is technically easier, but being corporate means it’s likely to have more wealth/resources to make it untenable for people to hold accountable. Whereas on the other hand, if you put in the effort to pin down a Mastodon instance admin or even a few admins, chances are they won’t have those kinds of resources to really defend themselves, so you may be more likely to hold them accountable.

That is, compared to a corporate entity which may drag things out for a slap on the wrist settlement/fine or the like. I can see the different angles to where you’re coming from though.

Because bluesky and threads started with corporate interests and Mastodon has serious privacy concerns due to the amount of data that instance owners have access to.

Don’t Bluesky and Threads have similar serious privacy concerns? Those running them would, I think, have similar if not even more access to people’s information, depending on how much their respective apps request. Mastodon and its apps on the other hand, generally don’t request as much access to one’s information, meaning instance owners arguably have much less to snoop through.