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rbits

263 karma · joined January 2, 2023

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rbits··on Three new discoveries in mathematics, computer science, and physics
It's still a lot bigger than polynomial. I don't think it would realistically be that useful.
rbits··on Your Phone Is About to Stop Being Yours: 70 Days Until Lockdown
> IMO a more precise framing is that what is being removed is the ability of anonymous developers to have wide distribution on Android devices. That is, after these changes, you (as an app developer) can either: > > - be a registered developer, and target all Android users (Google Play Store, F-Droid, distributing .apk files, etc), or > > - remain anonymous, and target only a subset of Android users (all "power users" who do the one-time 24-hour cooldown, or a small number of users if you use the student/hobbyist path, and of course anyone can install their own apps on their own device with adb). > > This is definitely an unfortunate step backwards from Android's prior openness, but is still more open than iOS (my comparison from a previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47939361), and is basically Google being forced by the governments of certain countries (Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand) where malicious-app phone scams have led to a lot of people losing their savings (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47152069 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45909348).

As far as I am aware, the 24-hour cooldown will be required to use F-Droid. Has the situation changed regarding that?

rbits··on There's never been a better time to go into math (by: 3blue1brown) [video]
Art is different
rbits··on NY announces game ownership bill requiring ownership rather than licensing
Reverse engineering the protocol is not the same as reverse engineering the entire server, though. That would be very hard in most cases, especially when you don't have access to the server binary.
rbits··on NY announces game ownership bill requiring ownership rather than licensing
You can pass your game collection to your children. Just download them and put them on a USB drive. I guess you won't get updates that way, though.
rbits··on Sorry, I'm in a meeting
Yeah it sounds like I'm listening to an audiobook, not a meeting
rbits··on SvelteKit 3
God that's depressing. I would hope that this website hasn't lost all interest in coding because AI can do it now.
rbits··on Fuck Android Developer Verification Program
Just don't show the apps in Play Store search/recommendation. There's no need to completely remove the apps
rbits··on 2DWillNeverDie
I'm young enough to have grown up with the Wii and the Switch, and I love pixel art.
rbits··on I said no and Apple said yes
How is Exapunks[1] anything like a slot machine? Or Slay the Princess[2]? Or Minecraft? A blanket statement like "video games = slot machines" just doesn't work. I won't deny that there are many games that are predatory/mindless, but video games are such a broad medium.

[1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/716490/EXAPUNKS/

[2] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1989270/Slay_the_Princess...

rbits··on Steam Frame starts at $1059
I think it would still work. A lot of people claim VR is about immersion, but I disagree. There is nothing less immersive than having a giant headset strapped to your face. To me VR is about the control scheme. Playing games with your hands with full freedom is very different to playing with a standard controller. That wouldn't be affected by a lack of 3D vision.

Some VR games assume you have depth perception and so you may have trouble with them, such as Beat Saber, but I honestly think most VR games would be perfectly playable without 3D vision. You may not be as good at the games as someone with 3D vision, but you'd probably still enjoy it.

My second favourite VR game is Gorilla Tag. I think that would play fine without 3D vision... as long as you don't get motion sickness - that game can be a lot.

rbits··on Steam Frame starts at $1059
That doesn't fix anything. The battery is still heavy whether it's plugged in or not.
rbits··on iPhone Duo
I imagine that would be to account for the bezel. The outer display is slightly less than half the size of the inner display, so to get the same aspect ratio they would have to adjust it slightly.
rbits··on Nitter and XCancel resume service after legal advice
I don't see that at all personally. Maybe 10% of the posts I see are political/drama, and almost none of them are insulting posts from other platforms.
rbits··on Kobo can run apps now
Yup. I was tempted to even just install KOReader on my Kobo so I could sync progress with my phone, but I realised I would just get distracted tinkering with it and it's meant to be my distraction-free device.
rbits··on Kobo can run apps now
I had a Kobo Libra 2. It broke and I replaced it with a Kobo Libra Colour. The biggest difference is that the Libra Colour is unusable without the backlight turned on, since the screen is so dark. The Libra 2 had a pretty white background without the backlight, whereas the Libra Colour has a grey background. I don't know if the Clara Colour also has a really dark screen or not.
rbits··on Google has stopped pushing Git tags for some Android source code
> Any word as to whether this will apply to GrapheneOS? If I had to choose, I'd block apps that did comply with this BS.

I doubt it, considering Android developer verification will go through Google Play Services, which GrapheneOS has siloed off from most of the OS as far as I'm aware.

rbits··on Anthropic's ‘watermark’ text adulteration in Claude is a perversion of writing
> I said that the quality of the system is in the quality of the probabilities. That quality is being degraded.

How is it being degraded exactly? The probability that it picks each option will still be the same, just deterministic based on a seed generated from the text.

LLMs already use PRNGs. This is just changing the source of the seed. And a different seed does not change the "quality" of the random numbers. Even if you are worried that it somehow might, they can just use a cryptographic PRNG, then it is literally guaranteed that the source of the seed will not affect the output in any noticable way.

rbits··on KOReader
I was considering installing KOReader on my Kobo. However, I have decided that I don't want to do any tinkering with my Kobo. The entire point of my Kobo is kinda to be a distraction-free device, and messing around with installing stuff on it would ensure I would get distracted messing with the software when I should be reading or sleeping. It means I don't get to sync my progress with my phone, but I'm ok with that.
rbits··on Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3
Yeah I think most of the people who super into Minecraft still play Java Edition if they can. Also MacOS and Linux still don't have Bedrock edition (officially) for some reason.
rbits··on Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3
As far as I'm aware Gnembon still works on Carpet Mod, which seems like a pretty complicated mod. And he still updates it for every single Minecraft snapshot.
rbits··on Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3
This fixed a lot of bugs related to input. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page you can see all the bug fixes from this snapshot, there are a lot related to input.
rbits··on Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3
Well that's why it's a snapshot. It will probably be fixed in the next snapshot.
rbits··on Just Let Me Write Digits
When I get sent a verification code from myGov (via text message), the message contains the 6 digit code, AND a 6 digit phone number for the help desk. I have to stop and double check which is the code, because I have accidentally entered the phone number many times.
rbits··on LineageOS Statistics
My phone's bootloader is unlocked but LineageOS doesn't support it (Zenfone 9). I would use it if I could.
rbits··on TypeScript 7
I don't think that's what the comment you're replying to is saying
rbits··on Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation
They didn't say they were buying them. It is just undeniably a bad thing that you can't buy it without DRM. You can say "just don't buy it", but that doesn't make the existence of the DRM any better.
rbits··on Asahi Linux 7.1 Progress Report
What do you mean? You mean not on Apple hardware? That exists, that's basically every other Linux distro in existence.
rbits··on Pact: Anonymous Credentials for the Web
> i’m not sure what they mean about agents, however. would this mean a human generates legitimate traffic, and that goodwill can then be utilised by a browser agent?

I feel like this is explained in the article:

> AI agents acting on behalf of a user slot into the same flow. An agent can carry its user’s Credentials, in which case the user remains accountable for how the agent behaves. Sites would not need to grant any more access than they would to the user themselves. Alternatively, the operator of an agent can run its own Anchor and vouch for its agents the way other Anchors vouch for human users. Sites retain control over which Anchors they accept, so they can choose how to treat agent traffic without needing a separate detection mechanism.

So there are 2 things that could happen, depending on how the agent works.

1: An Anchor gives the user Credentials, with personhood verified by e.g. the user's phone number. The agent can then use that to act like a normal user.

2: The operator of the Agent (OpenAI, Google, etc.) acts as the Anchor themselves. That Anchor gives the agent its own separate Credentials, maybe with personhood verified by the user's paid subscription or something. This approach would allow Moderators to block agents, if they wanted.

> and will it be possible to host your own Moderator?

Yes. They say that the website itself can be the Moderator > In the common case the site itself plays the Moderator role, so there’s no new entity or trust boundary.

rbits··on Deno Desktop
What do you mean by that? Does this[1] not count?

[1] https://capacitorjs.com/

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