Mikina

It works simillarly to an IRC. You have a server, that server can have channels, I think it can even do voice. But, unlike IRC, you can also use your server to talk to people on other servers, similar to how Fediverse works - if I have a server hosted on myserver.com, and someone else has a public room on server otherserver.com, I can either join the room@otherserver.com or message person@otherserver.com, all from my account on myserver.com.

And bridges are basically just bots that run on your own server, and by scraping websites/using API of the service your bridging they create a private room i.e Messenger@myserver.com, with subrooms per chat, and the bot then sends every message it recieves signed into your messenger account to the room, and vice versa - anything you send there will it forward to the real messenger, basically allowing you to chat with people on messenger through your matrix server. Which solves the problem of "Each of my friend is using different messaging service, can I have them all in one app? (The app being Matrix client)".

I have a pretty fucked-up thing of my own doing, that happened out of gross misunderstandings combined with being young. I heavily regret it, and when I realized it, I was trying my best to make up for it, but it's still unforgivable.

My first relationship was amazing, and since it was a girl from a larger and tight-knit familly (middle of 9 children, we were around 15), I spent a lot of time with them and the time with them was the best part of my life so far. But, being pretty close, they playfully insulted each other, with creative insults being basically a norm and a form of affection. It was fun, but it normalized a behavior that doesn't really translate well outside of that group of friends.

I was also at the time really interested in the whole decadence, from Oscar Wilde to Huysmans, Baudelaire, Rimbaut and the bunch, their lifestyle and pose resonated with me. And for my next relationship, at around 19, this led to a pretty awful catastrophe of a relationship. I met someone with similar interests, and we eventually developed a relationship based on exactly that pose. Lots of alcohol, grand gestures, lot of arguing but then making it up. It was theatrical, we were basically imitating relationships as we saw in the likes of Total Eclipse (Verlain vs. Rimbaud, it's... not exactly healthy). We were awfull to eachother, but it was all just a part of a consensual game that sprung from the art we were both so obsessed about. We both are nice, non-confrontional people, I'm sure it didn't stem from some kind of sadistic desire to hurt on anyone's part, the relationships both of us had before and after that attest to that. But we were young, and trying to impress eachother, and we started taking it too far. It basically turned into a full-fledged abusive relationship. Or rather, the nights were like something out of a Wilde's novel, full of absinthe, fighting and make-up sex, and mornings were compensating for it with a loving and caring relationship, but it all started as a consensual game and a pose we both were ok with.

Eventually, it turned out that one side isn't really as ok with it as it seemed. When that realization drawn on me, I was horrified. It was all good fun, we were living the live from the art we so loved, but it was never about seriously hurting or abusing the other one. When I found out, I immediately stopped it and we have tried for the next year to make up for it. It was a loving and caring relationship, we were nice to each other and I was doing my best to make her life better - not because I was trying to make up for it, but because that's how we both do all of our relationships. We were happy for a while, but it didn't last long, because some abuse you can never make up for.

I beat myself over it to this day, that I didn't realize it sooner. We were basically LARPing decadence and somewhere along the way it crossed a line, which one of us didn't notice, and the other didn't speak up until it was too late. We've eventually talked about it years later, and we agreed that it was a young and stupid thing to do. We're on an ok terms now, but it's definitely something I don't want to ever do to anyone again - and I never did.

Article lacks relevant architectural details.

I'm a fan of self-hosted Matrix server. You can get a dozen of bridges for those stubborn people that refuse to leave messenger/whatsapp/telegram (at a loss of encryption, and they still get your convos, but at least you don't have their spyware on your mobile and you can have everything in one app), while also being decentralized.

Self-hosting a server is actually really, really easy. It took me like half an hour, because there is an amazing Matrix Ansible Deploy script, that has a pretty easy to follow documentation, and is also one of those super-rare projects that just works. Even if I forgot to update my server for several months, I could literally "just update", and the script is clever enough to figure out what changed, tell me what I need to update in the config files (which are still only like four rows of stuff I needed to setup), and it is a really smooth experience. Even when you want to set up some bridges, for most it's literally just adding "_bridge_enabled: true" to the ansible yml config file. I've already set up Telegram, WhatsApp, Discord and Messenger this way, and it was effortless.

I mean, Apple is one of the companies that volunteered to the current optional version of ChatControl. They are already sending your messages and photos to EU to scan for "illegal" content.

Hmm, we should get together some funds to buy a single unlimited subscription, and then let it continuously generate as large and complex prompts as the rate limitting allows.

I dont know the context, the only word I realoze is AES as in encryption, which makes it kinda funny, but probably not correct.

I'd love to see the math behing how much power cpuld be generated from the 400 acres of wood, and how long will it take for the solars to break even.

Also, how much co2 is saved by the solars in comparison to what the trees would generate.

It has been a while since I played, but afaik ypu can always just self-destruct the ship through one of the side menus or keybinds, and then you can either pay insurace cost to get the same ship repaired, or abandon it for the default ship, which should also respawn you somewhere sensible.

I don't recall if there's any story or anything else ypu'd want reset, the tutorial is standalone and since it's a sandbox I don't think there's much else to reset.

For me, I enjoyed Elite Dangerous way more than Freelancer. Freelancer was too much arcadey for me, and I was never able to properly immerse into it.

Elite, on the other way, thanks to it being a MMO where I got a pretty nice semi-RP guild, along with stunning visuals and VR support, was one of the first games I was able to immerse into and just chill, exploring around. Which surprised me, since I usually get bored easily without a fast progress or a goal in mind, due to my short attention span, but this game completely captured me and it was first game that I just simply spent time in.

Of course, it's just my subjective experience. But there is something Elite must be doing extremely well, because this has not happened to me in any other game to this extent.

I'd also add that IMO, it's also heavily caused by misalignment of social network personalization algorithms. It's very probable that someone developed a ML algorithm during the early years of FB/YT/Google (not LLM, just some kind of feedbacky ML), that takes data they have about you as input, and selects what posts to show you next to maximize your time spent scrolling on the app.

You have unimaginable amount of data (with literally billions of active users), and it could've been running and getting better for the last decade.

The algorithm gets better and better at gluing you to the screen, at manipulating and changing people. My theory is that one of the best ways how to keep someone glued to a social network is radicalization and introduction into a conspiraci theory. It probably removes you from "normal" people around you IRL, because you're now wierd, you feel smart because you've "figured out the truth", you don't spend time with people around you or read "traditional" media, because they are lying and don't get you, and the only safe space you have is the echo chamber on the social network. That sounds like a pretty good recipe how to keep people interacting on the platform, and there's not really a way how to prevent it, assuming it's a ML algorithm driving it. No one knows how it works, and it only works with one goal - maximize app time at all costs.

Just take a look how good some ML models are at the task of "text -> image". Now imagine it has billions of people and a decade to experiment, with a task "person -> next content to show". It's horrifying to think about what it would be able to manipulate you into, and it is even better at it that the image models, because it had exponentially more data and room to experiment in real time on real people.

Also - there's no way how to fight back. Even if you know about it, there are tens of thousands people like you, who are also "immune" to this approach. But the ML algorithm gets to experiment on them, and if there is a way how to manipulate even them, it will figure it out. Because it knows what approach won't work on people like you. The only way you can prevent this is by not using anything that has a personalized feed - no Google search, no FB wall, no YT recommendations, etc. This probably doesn't lead to radicalization in this case, because the goal is to keep you in the app, not radicalize. For now, at least. Thankfully, people managing the biggest social networks are reasonable people who are just running a business, and they have no reason to change the goal of the algorithm into something else than screen time, right?

Thank you, it was an interesting read.

Unfortunately, as I was looking more into it, I've stumbled upon a paper that points out some key problems with the proof. I haven't looked into it more and tbh my expertise in formal math ends at vague memories from CS degree almost 10 years ago, but the points do seem to make sense.

https://arxiv.org/html/2411.06498v1