Just a dorky trans woman on the internet.

My other presences on the fediverse:
@[email protected]
@[email protected]

  • 0 Posts
  • 21 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 12th, 2023

help-circle
  • That probably counts as a privileged page, as in something uBlock Origin can’t access or modify.

    Mozilla has probably been running another “experiment”, meaning not every user is affected. In the past they claimed it’s not advertisements because they are “continually looking for more ways to say thanks for using Firefox”. (Bullshit.) If you go to Settings > Home, you disable anything you don’t want to see, or just set your home page to a blank page, period.


  • Apologies, I don’t understand. Is any modern Linux distro lacking “general usability” or applications? Anyway, for Bazzite, there’s a bunch of ways to install software. (Though I haven’t used it myself.) I’m also not sure what you’re looking for when you’re saying “support”. Good documentation? A helpful community? Continued active development?

    Just because there’s a strong focus on gaming doesn’t mean the distro would suddenly do bad at everything else, especially… general home/office use. Linux is good with that across the board. I hope I didn’t misunderstand. Please explain.




  • What is meant by “sensitive information” here? Browsers can’t just willy-nilly access your local files or something like that. The one thing I can think of is using JavaScript to collect information that can be used to identify you. (Is that “sensitive”? I’d put that in “identifying information”.) My honest suggestion is to keep using NoScript and just allow as few domains as possible. The next best option is to stop using websites that break without JavaScript when there’s no reason why they’d need it.

    I can imagine there being a plugin that spoofs some common ways that allow sites to identify you cross-sessions / browser / websites without your consent, but blocking JavaScript (by default) is likely one of the best ways to reduce the amount of information collected about you. When you do find such a plugin, check out one of the “browser fingerprint” testing sites to see how unique your fingerprint is.

    (That is, if I even understood the request properly in regards to the “sensitive information” bit.)


  • There is something called “local storage” that allows applications to store more information than just a cookie. Cookies are sent to the server, while local storage, as the name implies, stays local. (That doesn’t mean that this data can’t be sent to the server via JavaScript.) But local storage makes it possible to make 100% offline applications if the whole webpage is cached / downloaded (assuming no online functionality is required).

    edit: As for deleting this, if I click on the lock icon in the address bar in Firefox, I have an option to clear cookies and site data for the current site. I assume the “site data” is the local storage I mentioned. If you’re using a Chrome based browser, you can probably google how to do the same thing.


  • I happened across a podcast episode that was about AI, that I was listening to with friends. I don’t know if you want to take away anything from it but I figured I’d mention it here in case anyone wants to. Look for Serious Inquiries Only episode 477, “Debunking Bad AI Research, and Bad Coverage of AI Research”. For you it might not be super interesting, since it’s trying to explain the matter to those who might not already know much, debunking some bad studies, but towards the end they talk about the environmental impact. And this is with two experts, I believe.

    One thing that pops up there is that training a “moderately large” model requires produces twice the CO₂ output of an average American over their entire lifetime. They mention water usage is really bad, too. And “moderately large” refers to what a University research team might be cooking up. Big companies have magnitudes more environmental impact from training their huge models.

    (There is also a part 2, with the followup episode.)




  • copygirl@lemmy.blahaj.zonetoADHD memes@lemmy.dbzer0.comIf only people knew
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    29 days ago

    I’ve heard some scary numbers when it comes to waste, but I don’t have a source, nor do I intend to go digging for one because I’m already depressed enough. But you addressed neither of my other grievances. In the end I’d just prefer a future where work is automated, and not creativity nor thinking. I will speak up in this small space where I might be heard, when I believe corporations are betting on getting people hooked on AI because they’ve never learned to think or bothered to create for themselves, just so they can extract massive profits.

    By all means, keep investing and being interested in specialized AI, AI research and AI ethics. But stay away from generative (text/image/video) AI.