phario

joined 1 year ago
[–] phario@lemmy.ca 39 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (12 children)

…are you serious?

There would be so much data in understanding people’s light usage. For example, you could figure out how late or early people get up, number of people living in a house, how crowded the house is, how many lights are used per room, etc etc. it would be a gold mine of information.

Let’s say you’re a home automaton designer. You want to design devices to be used in the home, but in order to design such devices, you need enough of a stockpile of user data. This lightbulb data would be incredible valuable.

You can probably even analyse the data and determine things like whether someone is watching tv late at night.

From a nefarious view, how valuable would this data be to robbers and thieves?

[–] phario@lemmy.ca 50 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

Hmmm. If abuse happens, is the right idea to say that “I don’t need this community”?

I’m not sure how that HackerNews comment helps in the slightest. If my university has an obscure basket weaving community and people are getting abused in that community, should I just say “Eh we don’t actually need a basket weaving community”.

It’s also amusing to me that a commenter on a relatively obscure and niche website is complaining that that don’t need (or care about abuse that transpired on) a niche community from another website. And then this comment is echoed in yet another niche community.

[–] phario@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I think people really missed my point, and thought I was somehow arguing in favour of poor working conditions.

My point was that the Lemmy response that “well why doesn’t the boss do this?” is not the right negotiation tactic.

The right negotiation tactic is, for example, to argue that it’s in the benefit of the company and society to improve working conditions. For example, you argue that by allowing remote working, you are encouraging not only a happier and more productive environment, but you are widening access and better able to recruit the top people.

There are lots of ways to argue for better conditions. The reaction of “well the boss doesn’t do it so I won’t either” is not a great tactic. If the boss does put in crazy hours, where does that leave your negotiation stance?

[–] phario@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago

I don’t know anything about small US towns but these stories always remind me of stories from Jack Reacher involving small town corruption. Pretty incredible.

[–] phario@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Unfortunately here in the UK there has been systematic defunding of things like libraries.

[–] phario@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This wasn’t what I read but this looks excellent.

https://archive.org/details/jonah-edwards-presentation

Another super interesting story is about Marion Stokes, who recorded around 71000 cassettes worth of television media from 1975 to 2000s. She houses them in 9 apartments. I need to watch the documentary about her. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Stokes

I remember I started reading about about this when I wondered what kind of media is “safe” for storage. It sounds like a simple question but it’s not. Digital media, unlike print media, is so easy to lose.

[–] phario@lemmy.ca 17 points 1 year ago

I love how so many comments and replies ascribe some form of ‘guilt’ to this, as if HP employees would feel shame. This doesn’t really mean anything to a company that size.

One of the great things about moving to the UK is that, despite all its problems, consumer protection Europe is so much better than in the US.

[–] phario@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sorry, I think you misunderstand that I’m talking about a large scale problem rather than a personal problem. Of course people can individually download videos to preserve.

Imagine losing YouTube’s videos next week. You would have effectively lost nearly two decades worth of media chronicling human and technological development (more if you take into account that YouTube has repositories of older media).

Someone described it like the Library Alexandria. In terms of density of information, I think the comparison is apt.

A good comparison that might be too old for some readers. Back in the 80s and 90s, the early internet was populated via usenet discussions. Google eventually bought this data and merged it into Google Groups. However Google Groups was disbanded. This meant that some archives can no longer be accessed because to do so requires some active component no longer in service. We have effectively lost gigantic chunks of early 90s internet history. A lot of this history was quite important in many facets of life.

[–] phario@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

There is already something like this via the Wayback Machine (who indeed do copies of video media but more typically VHS and other things) and things like the Russian Library genesis, which is kept in torrent format.

The problem really is that storage for video media is insane compared to storage of document or even photo data.

If people here haven’t read into it, it’s incredibly interesting to look into the way the Internet Archive works. In particular you have to begin to concern yourselves with how long it takes for HDs, SSDs, and other media to degrade in time.

[–] phario@lemmy.ca 15 points 1 year ago (9 children)

Hmm to be fair with YouTube you don’t think this is now a repository of incredibly valuable resources? If YouTube went down and we lost all videos, we would be losing many important resources, from historical documentaries no longer easily found in media, to guides on woodworking.

It’s a bit scary. Once you remove the crap, it’s an incredibly valuable library resource and time capsule.

[–] phario@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Nah this is changing.

This of course is what they said about tablets. Now people are replacing desktop or laptop workflow with tablets, or alternatively tablets are being designed with removable keyboards so the lines are blurred.

I know scientific researchers who now only travel to conferences with tablets instead of their laptops.

Finally, I predict that we’re moving to cloud computing. It’s the natural way. You VPN into a network and your computing is done on a cluster or on a central computer.

The same is already happening for gaming. People are connecting controllers and glasses like the Xreal Air to phones, then networking into a computer to play a desktop game on their phone.

 

I guess being on the Fediverse it’s more inviting to share random thoughts.

I started playing NES around the early 90s, then through PC gaming and PS1 before stopping for university. I had a brief stint with Xbox and PSP but never really gamed for the last fifteen years. Anyways, now as a father and with a purchase of a Steamdeck I tried out ME Legendary.

Just finished ME2.

I really enjoyed my time so far. I had played Knights of the Old Republic but ME2 seemed like the evolution of that game—better characters, cinematic plot, really interesting gameplay.

Anyways this is just a note that I enjoyed learning about the magic of this game and why it was such a fuss some 10+ years ago. I never experienced it the first time but there is a tinge of nostalgia with being re-exposed to games that might have formed my childhood.

I’ve heard the criticism of ME3 but I guess there is a better experience now with the DLC ending.

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